Sunday Funnies...

I had expected No 2 to be impossible, due to being between two different genus...

Oh, Edward, If Only That Were True...

Edward Skidelsky – director of the Committee for Academic Freedom, academics fighting to maintain free expression on campuses – said: 'It's extraordinary that in 21st century Britain eavesdroppers can be rewarded, and a student punished for remarks made to a friend in the privacy of his room.

If it was true, we'd not see an organisation like yours so busy, would we?

At the time of the complaint, Mr Ivinson – who had just started his first year of a philosophy degree – was alone with the door closed. Mr Ivinson, who is 6ft 5in with a deep intonation, said his voice often carried without him realising. When an officer from the university's estate patrol banged on his door to tell him his female neighbour had complained, the mature student was shaken. 'It was like the Stasi had come to my door,' he said. 'He stuck his foot in my door and said you've been saying some very offensive things.'

To whom? Was he on the phone or talking to himself? 

Mr Ivinson was called to a disciplinary hearing and grilled by university officials.

Why did he attend? The thing to do with kangaroo courts is to ignore them!  

He told The Mail on Sunday: 'The first thing they read out was that I had said veganism is wrong. I couldn't believe it – I thought I was mishearing them. I asked them to repeat it three or four times because I didn't believe I was sitting there for saying that veganism is wrong.' He says he made the comments about gender fluidity and veganism, but maintains other statements he was alleged to have made had been misheard, such as that President Assad of Syria was 'a good guy'. He says he stated the dictator was 'not a good guy'.He also denies saying 'people should not parade their sexuality in a gay bar'.

I suspect it's not the veganism comment that landed him before Exeter's Star Chamber, but the gender one.  

He says he apologised to the officials for the disturbance but maintained his right to speak freely in his own room. 'I was totally private apart from that someone heard me through a brick wall.' Mr Ivinson attempted to challenge the decision by Exeter – a member of the prestigious Russell Group of top universities – but says that this was batted down.

How? They must have a process, did he meet its conditions, or not? There's a lot missing from this account.  

Exeter University was approached for comment but did not respond.

Maybe they did comment, but in the privacy of their own rooms and no-one overheard?  

And ‘These People’ Isn’t Who You Might Think…

Who does she mean, Reader?

Things have changed in my local sandwich shop. Every so often, in the middle of ringing through my americano, the server will go stock still, like a savannah predator who has spotted a tiny rustling movement in the grass. Then, whiskers twitching, he will suddenly dart out from behind the counter and rush after some youth who has just made it out of the door, swipe their pilfered lunch from their hands in one practised movement, and then return with the spoils: a Coke, say, or a chicken wrap, to general applause. He doesn’t appear to have been harmed, yet, by his light-fingered customers — but I do worry about him. It seems to be getting worse.

Is it, perhaps, 'shoplifters'?

Labour has fingered a culprit: this week Yvette Cooper put the blame on what she called a “shoplifters’ charter” — a change brought in under Theresa May which made lifting an item under £200 a mere “summary offence”, intended to speed things up and take the burden off the courts: police can deal with it themselves. Cooper has argued that this cut deterrents and has therefore encouraged more crime.

Oh, so it's one of Britain's worst PMs in living memory, then? But she's only one person (thank heavens!). 

Removing the lesser “summary offence” will mean shoplifters will have to be sent through the court system, putting more strain on a service which already has a vast backlog. Ramping up deterrents for this relatively low-level crime will also send vulnerable people to jail.

Oh oh! When the new meaning of 'vulnerable' comes in, you can tell where this is heading... 

But stricter rules mean little if you can’t catch offenders in the first place. And this is hard to do, even with far more police on the case.

Your sandwich shop man managed it.  

First, shoplifting is generally done surreptitiously within the store — the steak in the coat pocket, the baby formula in the nappy bag — but shops are not public spaces, so police can’t follow suspicious people down the aisles.

That's what security guards are for!  

All they can do is patrol past the door — an obstacle the practiced shoplifter can overcome by waiting until they pass. Police can’t frisk everyone on the way out.

Here’s the problem that neither party can face up to. The real culprits behind the rise in shoplifting may also be among its victims: large chain stores. And the real solution may not in fact lie with the justice system. Let me explain.

Well, who had supermarkets on their bingo card? Certainly not me!  

While automation has generally reduced crime — new locking systems have virtually eliminated car theft — in large chain stores it has done the opposite.

Car theft is up not down! 

A rise in sensors and self-checkout, particularly during the pandemic, has saved these shops money on staff but has created losses elsewhere: it has made it much easier to steal things. Why didn’t these shops put people straight back behind the tills once they realised what was going on? Well, perhaps they were making a cost-benefit calculation — writing off stock shrinkage against savings in salaries. Fair enough, but what if it is the lawlessness generated by these policies that has now resulted in thefts in my local sandwich shop? Once theft becomes normalised, it can spread. It is unfair for large retailers to strip their shops of staff and then place the burden of resulting crimes on the state.

That's not convincing, frankly. I use these self-service tills when I have to, yet I've never waltzed into Greggs and swiped a sandwich then walked out without paying. Why do some people do it?  

Sounds Like, For Once, It Went Right!

Neighbours said the incident appeared to have been a 'burglary that went wrong.'

A woman, who lives close the farm, said: 'The farm is in a remote location, quite deep in the valley and set back from the main road.

'I suspect it was an opportunistic burglary that has gone wrong.'

One thieving scumbag dead, another (hopefully) injured severely enough to give up a life of crime. A better result for society than the justice system provides.

Chief Superintendent Dave Kirby, of Derbyshire police, said he believed the incident was a 'targeted attack' and there was no wider risk to the public.

'Residents in the area will see an increased police presence in the area for some time as investigations continue and we will provide further updates as soon as we are able.'

Perhaps if you'd had that presence beforehand this wouldn't have happened. 

Hakuna Matata, Gillian...

Using English names for African wildlife is 'jarring', a BBC Springwatch presenter has claimed. Gillian Burke said she prefers to refer to animals by their traditional Swahili names rather than those commonly used in the broadcaster's acclaimed nature programmes. The 49-year-old speculated that there is an 'inequality' in 'who gets to do the naming' and we are 'unwittingly wielding some form of power by naming wild animals'.

*sighs* Oh, well. A lifetime of reading African safari novels & non-fiction has at least stood me in good stead here! 

Writing in BBC Wildlife magazine, Burke said: 'The English names for East Africa's iconic wildlife - so heavily featured in natural history films and in this magazine - jar, at least to my ear.

'In my own writing I prefer re-introducing these familiar animals by their Swahili names: ndovu (elephant), twiga (giraffe), fisi (hyena) and my personal favourite, because I used to love how my dad said it, kongoni (hartebeest).'

Wait, what? Ndovu? It's Tembo, surely?  

 

It Really Is 'The Land Of Fruits And Nuts'...

UCLA medical school had been condemned by a renowned Harvard doctor for forcing students to take a 'fat-positivity' class.

Yes, you read that right - medical school.

All first year medical students at UCLA are required to read an essay by Marquisele Mercedes, a self-proclaimed 'fat liberationist' who claims that 'fatphobia is medicine's status quo' and that weight loss is a 'hopeless endeavor.'

Just put down the doughnuts, Marquisele! It can be done!

Jeffrey Flier, the former dean of Harvard Medical School and one of the world's foremost experts on obesity, slammed the course and said the curriculum 'promotes extensive and dangerous misinformation.'

UCLA 'has centered this required course on a socialist/Marxist ideology that is totally inappropriate,' said Flier. 'As a longstanding medical educator, I found this course truly shocking.'

If you're only just now shocked by how far prestigious universities have fallen down the DEI rabbit hole, you need to read more. 

The essay by Mercedes details how weight has come to be 'pathologized and medicalized in racialized terms.'

She offers guidance on 'resisting entrenched fat oppression,' according to the course syllabus. Mercedes claims that 'ob*sity' is a slur 'used to exact violence on fat people' - particularly 'Black, disabled, trans, poor fat people.'

Oh, of course! The Alphabet Mob shows up. 

She uses her social media account to voice more of her 'fat-positivity' activism. 'It's so f***ing isolating to be a disabled Black fat person working towards individual and collective liberation,' she wrote in an Instagram post - adding that being fat is a disability.

She has also led presentations on how does 'anti-fatness show up in the work you do' - which she says includes using 'fear-mongering language in order to encourage healthy eating and physical activity.' Mercedes also taught students in a public health seminar that 'fat people are forced to contend with anti-fatness every day in every domain across the lifespan.'

Which lifespan is going to be pretty short, so every cloud, eh, Marquisele? 

She can't even carry the other lunatics in Cali:

Nicholas Christakis is a sociologist who has spent decades providing medical care to underserved communities - including in the South Side of Chicago. He has called the curriculum 'nonsensical' and says that the course is 'embarrassing to UCLA.'

I think it's immune, Nicholas. 

This Is A Good Thing...

...not a mark of disaster.

The YouGov survey for the Department of Politics at Royal Holloway University of London found 24 per cent of Londoners aged 18 to 24 were not aware of this legal requirement for local and regional elections in England and at the general election.

Because frankly, if they are so incurious as to have ignored all the adverts, the posters (one went up in my Tube station last week) and the mailshots, not to mention all the MSM and social media campaigns, then they are people who shouldn't deserve a vote, and if they are turned away, it can only improve society. 

This compares to four per cent of Londoners aged 65 and over having this lack of awareness about the need for photo ID, seven per cent for 50 to 64-year-olds, and 13 per cent for the 25-49 age group.

And these will have been people voting without it for most of their lives. They've managed. Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?  

Streaming TV: Moon Knight (Disney+)

Disney+ has been an absolute powerhouse for Marvel, and clearly the back catalogue is vast, so I was a bit surprised they went with this particular character. 

I did at least know the character and some of the backstory this time, though it was never a series I read, as he turned up in lots of other comics I was reading at the time. But I was surprised at the choice. And the very first trailer - introducing us to Oscar Isaac's rather strange interpretation of an English accent - didn't really make me say 'Wow! Got to catch this one!'.

But of course, I did, and was hooked! The main protagonists worked well, and F Murray Abraham's Khonshu was a delight! And there were some inspired musical choices. I see a second season isn't on the cards, and that's a real pity.

It's Why Everyone Else Joined, Surely?

A new bill in the state, known as SB 375, was being pored over on Monday by legislators, LGBTQ groups and educators before the state Education Committee. It is one of two bills in the state that would ban transgender girls from competing on sports teams aligning with their gender identity.

Just the 'girls'? Is that because no 'men' try this trick, perchance? That should tell you someing in and of itself, shouldn't it?

Trans teen Maelle Jacques, who was born a male and previously won a girl's high jump state championship, insisted she didn't join female sports to win outright.

I think that's similar to 'saying the quiet part out loud, 'Michelle'... 

Jacques told the hearing: 'I'm here to testify in opposition of SB375. Throughout my entire life, sports have been an integral part to my belonging.

Her testimony continued: 'Playing soccer since the age of three, when I began my transition in the sixth grade my school welcomed me onto the girls team.

'This act of being part of the team allowed me to skip through the phase of social ostracization. The other girls accepted me as who I was.

'Being part of the team allowed me to be seen as normal, where everywhere else I could be perceived as a pariah.

'I didn't join sports with the goal of dominating competition or being better than anyone else.

Did you ever ask the real girls if that was true for them?  

'No one would go through the bullying and self hatred of transition purely to win a sport, especially woman's sports, which are under appreciated in our nation.

'I joined because it is something I am passionate about and enjoy. If banned from sports teams and locker rooms, joining male teams wouldn't be a choice for me.'

Why The Kid Glove Treatment?

Yesterday, as the horrific events unfolded in Hainault, I spent a fair amount of time on social media, correcting idiots who demanded the police should shoot the attacker dead 'like they would if it was a dog on the rampage' and not worry about taking him alive. 

Not how justice is done here, I informed them, do we really want the police to act like a Third World Police Force or something out of a dystopian movie? Let justice be done properly, I said.

Boy, do I feel like an idiot now! 

He has since been arrested on suspicion of murder, although police are yet to question the suspect as he remains in hospital being treated for injuries sustained in the van crash.

Yes, you read that right. A man who rampaged around the streets attacking and murdering random people, jumping over fences and climbing on top of garages for 20 minutes after crashing the van, is apparently too frail to be questioned. 

'He was running around, still after the police officers came, with the sword in his hand.'

You couldn't make it up, could you?