Rejoice, Rejoice...

 Your landlady has made it to another year on this planet, the 61st to be exact.  

My, what a lot of candles...

So I have a long weekend to do as little as possible in ☺

For Once, You're Right, Rhiannon - Why Should I Care?

What do James McAvoy and my three-year-old son have in common? Very little, you might think, notwithstanding their shared awareness of the book The Dinosaur That Pooped a Planet. Yet their lives overlap in a more tangible way, because they, along with Benedict Cumberbatch, patronise the same cafes on Hampstead Heath. Both actors have signed a petition protesting against the takeover of four family-owned north London cafes by the Australian-inspired chain Daisy Green. It’s a move that has dismayed the local community, leading to protests, and threats of legal action against the landowner, the City of London Corporation, whose new funding model for green spaces prioritises “income generation”.

You’re probably wondering why you should care, either about what Hollywood actors think, or about this notoriously chi-chi part of London.

Yes, you're right.  

And yet, like them, and like me, you probably have a favourite cafe, one that feels very special.

OK, back to wrong again! My, that was quick. I certainly don't.

The UK used to be full of cafes such as this: often immigrant-owned, and serving a combination of cuisines. On the surface they seem basic, perhaps even a little scruffy. They are certainly not Instagrammable. Yet what they offer – friendliness, inclusivity – is worth more to the clientele than social media kudos.

So why are they threatened? Is it because in Labour's failing economy, they are unsustainable? 

This isn’t just a story about gentrification and the homogeneity that comes with it, but one of social atomisation. As more and more chains dominate high streets all over the country, truly mixed, inclusive spaces become rarer and rarer.

If mixed, inclusive spaces were so desirable, wouln'y these high street chains offer them?  

I know I am not alone in not wanting my local cafe to turn into what so many others have across the UK and beyond: a list of signifiers, part of a corporate, global language that masquerades as friendly and laid-back but is – in its aesthetic and its pricing – tailored only for a certain demographic, and is indistinguishable from a thousand other similar places.

It sounds as though Rhiannon doesn't consider herself part of the demographic that patronises chains like Costa and Starbucks. Is that maybe the real issue. Certainly, every one of these chains I've been in is full of immigrants serving the coffee and cakes, so it can't be that. It has a name, you know - snobbery. Why not use it? 

Where's The Modern Day Keith Anderson To Deal With This Sort Of Thing?

Terrified villagers have been forced to sleep on rooftops or abandon their makeshift homes over fears a rampaging elephant which has killed 22 people will return. The young male, which has one tusk, is still at large in the West Singhbhum district of Jharkhand, around 730 miles east of the Indian capital Delhi. The elephant – thought to be in a mating phase known as musth, a period of increased sexual libido and aggression which can last for up to 20 days – started its killing spree on January 1.

But unluckily for these Indians, there's no longer any capable Scottish Indian ex-Army officer able and willing to sort it out. These are more enlightened times. 

Indian authorities have deployed at least 80 forest officers to find the elephant and tranquilise it.

And then what? Relocate it? A huge undertaking in a Third World country with the typical transport problems they always have. 

The rampage comes as deadly human-elephant conflict is on the rise in India, attributed to rising deforestation, food and water scarcity and increased residential encroachment in areas that were once elephant corridors.

The price of human population explosion is always thus. 

The Star Chamber 2026

Peter Mandelson has issued an apology for his association with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein – after declining to do so in an interview broadcast on Sunday.

Now, I hold no brief for this slimy disgraced politician at all, but the hysteria over Epstein is really starting to aggravate me now.  

The Labour peer, who was sacked as US ambassador when details of his support for Epstein emerged in September, gave an interview to the BBC in which he suggested that as a gay man he knew nothing of the disgraced financier’s sex life.

And yes, this is exactly the sort of absurd identity politics that you can expect from  a former member of Blair's cabinet. 

On Monday night, Lord Mandelson apologised “unequivocally” for associating with Epstein after his conviction.

In a statement, he said: “At the weekend, I gave an interview to the BBC. In answering questions about my association with Jeffrey Epstein I did not want to be held responsible for his crimes of which I was ignorant, not indifferent, because of the lies he told me and so many others. 

And if anyone should be able to spot lies, it should be you! But forcing someone to recant a friendship is like something from the dark ages...

“I want to say loudly and clearly that I was wrong to believe him following his conviction and to continue my association with him afterwards. I apologise unequivocally for doing so to the women and girls who suffered. 

“I was never culpable or complicit in his crimes. Like everyone else I learned the full truth about him after his death. 

“But his victims did know what he was doing, their voices were not heard and I am truly sorry I was amongst those who believed him over them.”

It's ridiculoius that these mea culpas tske up valuable news time and newspaper space, and that they are demanded at all. And why does no-one ever have the courage to refuse to do them?

You Can 'Fool All Of The People, All Of The Time' If They Work For You

Civil service morale rose slightly after Labour took power in 2024, with the biggest jumps in satisfaction in the energy and health departments, an annual Whitehall monitor report will show.The survey from the Institute for Government (IfG) thinktank, due to be published this week, found that morale rose from 60.7 to 61.2% on the civil service employee engagement index.

The engagement index recorded a decade of steady improvement in civil service morale from 2010 to a peak of 63.6% in 2020, followed by three consecutive years of decline from 2021 to 2023.

Most departments’ scores rose slightly in 2024 but the biggest improvers were the Department of Health and Social Care, led by Wes Streeting, and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, led by Ed Miliband, where morale increased by 5 and 7 percentage points respectively.

Is there a 'but' coming? Reader, you know there is... 

Only four departments recorded falls in morale in 2024 – the Foreign Office, HM Revenue and Customs, the Ministry of Defence and the Department for Transport.

Hardly surprising, when you look at the choices on offer on the form: 

The transport department had the largest drop, of three percentage points. This included 13-point falls between 2023 and 2024 for the questions “when changes are made in my organisation they are usually for the better”, and “I have the opportunity to contribute my views before decisions are made that affect me”. The department had falls of 9-10 points for “I think it is safe to challenge the way things are done in my organisation”, “I believe that change is managed well in my organisation”, and “I believe that senior managers in my organisation will take action on the results from this survey”.

It's damning, isn't it?  

We're Just Such An Inconvenience To The NHS, Aren't We?

As ambulances queued in front of Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading last week, corridors full of patients were waiting for a bed on a ward. Emergency department consultant Omar Nafousi was at his wit's end. "We've no space," he told the BBC last week. "This is not what I signed up for when I became a doctor."

Like the appearance of Cheesy Footballs in the supermarkets and Cliff Richard on the sound systems, this is a regular part of winter. 

Currently nearly 4,000 beds in England alone are taken up by patients with flu, Covid and the vomiting bug norovirus, according to NHS England, and the situation is on a similar scale in the rest of the UK. But that is dwarfed by another pressure – the patients who should not be in hospital.

Such as?  

Every day there are more than 13,000 people whose treatment has been completed who are still in hospitals in England, the latest figures from NHS England suggest. Plus there are a further 4,000 around the rest of the UK - which means around one in eight beds are occupied by people who don't necessarily need to be there. Many of these "delayed discharge" patients are older and may be frail and living with multiple health conditions who need support in the community.

This isn't new, is it?  

The issue of delayed discharges is far from new. For years, it has been talked about, if not agonised over, and the NHS started tracking the delays in the early 2010s.

Tracking the delays - not solving them. Doesn't that just sum up the NHS? And now they are thinking the unthinkable.

Yet the problem throws up many deeper questions about the care system, coordination and planning in hospitals - with some doctors even asking whether the NHS is over-treating patients, particularly those at the end of life.

Yes, pay in to the obscene Ponzi scheme that is National Insurance all your working life, only to find some heir to Harold Shipman is going to consider you a burden to the glorious NHS and ship you off to die... 

Some NHS trusts have bought places in care homes to allow them to discharge patients. University Leicester Hospitals NHS Trust has taken this one step further: it has spent £10m buying and renovating a former care home in the city called Preston Lodge, which opened in July and has more than 50 beds.

And they'll tell you it's all for your own good: 

In Price's view, her own profession bears some responsibility, too. She says about a third of people who are admitted for medical reasons are in their last year of life. "We admit them and end up over-treating them with interventions, scans and pills," argues Price, who is president of the Society for Acute Medicine.

She says for many of these patients, palliative care and managing their symptoms, mainly pain, would be preferable: "Their quality of life would be much better and we would avoid a hospital admission."

I don't know why I'm surprised they are admitting it. 

And I Bet I Know Who Is Looking To See If He Can Implement The Same Policy Here...

 ...I'm sure he'll have his beady, ever blinking eyes on it.

“State media and government spokespersons have already signaled that this is a permanent shift, warning that unrestricted access will not return after 2026.”

Close Enough ForGovernment Work...I Guess

 All the competence you experct from a Labour politician...

They quickly realised they'd become a laughing stock and hastily deleted it.

The ambitious project was announced on Tuesday (January 13), promising significant investment in northern transport infrastructure. Key features include a new Liverpool-Manchester line, major developments for an underground Piccadilly station, and the re-establishment of a Manchester-Birmingham route. Regrettably, the erroneous graphic failed to accurately represent these plans, reports the Manchester Evening News.

That's one way of putting it!  

Writing on social media, Mayor Brabin said: "The government has today committed to upgrade and electrify key rail links across Yorkshire, fix capacity at Leeds, and build a new Bradford station. As Mayors, we worked with Lord Blunkett, to make the case for Yorkshire's Plan for Rail and the government has listened to us."

Did they let Blunkett draw the map, perchance?  

Good, It's About Time!

Penguin breeding has been paused at a London aquarium after animal welfare activists argued the birds were 'trapped in a basement without sunlight or fresh air'.

Merlin Entertainments, which owns Sea Life London Aquarium, held a meeting last month with independent experts and animal welfare groups after a campaign calling for the release of the attraction's 15 gentoo penguins.

Not onto the streets of London, one hopes?  

I took a day off and went to the London Aquarium the year before last, having first visited soon after it opened back in the late 90s. Back then, it didn't have penguins, and was just an aquarium, quite a good one at the time, as I recall. But I found the years had not been kind to it. 

Now, it was clearly targeted heavily at children and school trips, and so full of ‘educational experiences’ with a very definite bent towards eco-mentalism, and the much vaunted ‘largest reef tank in the UK’ was indeed large but very lacking in diversity of fish and corals, being mostly full of the sort of inverts and fish that people just starting out in the reef keeping hobby would be recommended to keep. 

The penguins were a jarring sight - it just seemed wrong, having seen the amazing open air enclosures at London Zoo and Edinburgh Zoo, to see them shut up in such a place.

So on this aspect, I’m inclined to agree with the activists.

Merlin Entertainments has previously said its team of animal welfare specialists and aquarists cared for the penguins in their enclosure every day to make sure they were healthy and thriving, and the enclosure was on the ground floor and not the basement.

Semantics, they still have no natural light and fresh air! 

Laura Walton, co-director at Freedom For Animals, added: 'While we agreed that full release into the wild was, regrettably, not a viable option, concerted efforts will be ongoing to see whether the establishment of a penguin sanctuary for these and other suitable birds could offer lifetime care in a more suitable and naturalistic environment, incorporating natural sunlight and fresh air.'

Maybe London or Edinburgh Zoos should step up and offer them refuge. 

Getting Older....

 

...I don't want to presume, but Matt appears to know it's drawbacks well.