Where Were You Three Years Ago?

Alice Ferguson, of Playing Out, said: “Compared to previous generations, children’s lives have become incredibly restricted, indoors, isolated and inactive, largely due to changes in the outdoor environment. Government could reverse this trend and hugely improve children’s health and wellbeing by making streets safer and neighbourhoods more child-friendly, enabling them to get outside and play every day.”

Until the government forbids them from going outside in the next manufactured panic, you mean?

The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said in a report last year that children’s health in the most disadvantaged communities presented “a terrifying picture”.

“Economic deprivation and racial inequality are both significant additional factors compounding children’s lack of access to outdoor play, physical activity and green space. There is also evidence to suggest girls spend less time outside playing than boys.”

Wow, suddenly, there is a difference between boys and girls after all! 

As If That's A State You Aren't Part Of....

A pub refused to serve a five-year-old girl apple juice in a champagne flute on New Years Eve - with the manager telling her parents it was 'not a good look'.

Celebrity doctor Renée Hoenderkamp made the request to the waiter at the Old Bull & Bush in Hampstead, north London , so that her daughter could join her husband in the celebrations at around 7pm.

However, the NHS doctor says that a manager at the gastropub told her 'it could encourage her to drink alcohol' and served it in a tumbler instead.

And this is suddenly an outrage, as if mumsie hasn't based her entire career around nanny state meddling... 

The TV presenter claimed every other child in the restaurant was 'stuck on a screen while the parents downed their champagne', believing the whole situation felt 'very judgmental and nanny state'.

Well, yes. Good job! Right? 

Dr Hoenderkamp said she would not be surprised if the 'slow virtue signalling and nanny state wokeness' displayed in the pub that night got into other places.

Where have you been, doc? It's already embedded everywhere. Thanks in no small part to, well, people like you.  

Don't Be So Quick To Blame GPs...

I know, I know, but hear me out....

Emergency departments, which are designed for serious injuries and life-threatening emergencies only, are seeing an increase in people attending with sore throats, insomnia, coughs and earache.

Well, why not? You have, after all, spent months, nay, years, convincing people these are signs of a deadly disease, haven't you? 

Cases where sore throat was the chief complaint rose by 77% between 2021-22 and 2022-23, from 191,900 cases to 340,441. Patients going to A&E with coughs rose by 47%, from 219,388 to 322,500, while attendances for nosebleeds rose by a fifth, from 47,285 cases to 56,546.

Of course, the blame must be shifted, so GPs are in the firing line: 

Miriam Deakin, the director of policy and strategy at NHS Providers, said: “The rise in A&E admissions is piling even more pressure on to an already stretched NHS. Persistent strain on primary care services, including GPs and dentists, means patients often resort to A&E when they cannot access timely care elsewhere.

“Minor ailments such as coughs, earache, fever, nausea and hiccups can and should be managed through more appropriate services such as pharmacies and NHS 111 online. This could ease pressure on emergency departments, whose priority is to deliver urgent care for those most in need. Boosting capacity of staff, beds and equipment in these settings would also significantly help. However, this requires proper funding and support from the government.”

The NHS has funding enough - it's how it chooses to spend it that's the issue.  

So, This Is A Step Too Far, Eh..?

School leaders have accused Labour of “window dressing” after Keir Starmer pledged to introduce...

...supervised toothbrushing for young children in England’s primary schools.

While the policy has long been supported by the dentistry profession as a way of curbing decay, headteachers said it was not appropriate for their staff to check whether pupils had cleaned their teeth.

It's not appropriate to check what parents are sending in for a packed lunch either, but that didn't stop them, did it?

Paul Whiteman, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: “We have serious reservations about how such a policy could even work. It is not the role of teachers to be making sure children brush their teeth each day.

“Schools already play a role in teaching children about the importance of looking after their teeth through the curriculum, but there has to be a limit in terms of what we can expect them to do.

“We should demand more than window dressing from all of our politicians.”

Oh, be quiet! You've already meddled in things that were the purview of parents, you can hardly claim it's not your role now... 

The British Dental Association, which represents the profession, said it was encouraged by Labour’s proposal, given ministerial inaction over introducing a similar scheme.

So, have the hapless Labour brains trust decided there's more votes to come from dentists than from  teachers? Because maybe they shouldn't have let Diane Abbott do the maths...  

Let's Spin The Wheel Of Racism Once More...

...where will it land?

Wha..?

In a last intervention before the end of her tenure...

Well, there's a relief, I guess...

...Achiume said meaningful solutions to the ecological crisis were not possible without tackling racism. But in a bleak assessment of the prospects for the future of humanity, she admitted it was “difficult to imagine” how that message could be made to resonate with people holding power.

 Pretty difficult to get it to resonate with me, and I don't hold any...

“You can’t think that you solve the climate crisis and then attend to racial justice or racial discrimination,” Achiume said.

 Can you break for lunch first?

“What you have to realise is that every action that is taken in relation to ecological crisis – environmental, climate and otherwise – has racial justice implications, and so every action becomes a site of undoing racial subordination.”

Sure, sure...say, can I borrow that hammer? I've a nail right here I need to fix. 

Do You Need More Proof That Drag Is Narcissism Writ Large?

I was being mercilessly bullied at school, and it was obvious to even the ants that crawled the pavements that I was gay as hell, which also happened to be my Iraqi parents’ worst nightmare. Home was a cosseted environment where any kind of genuine self-expression was policed.But the rainbow fish were almost defiant in their flamboyance.

I was hypnotised by their ethereal, kaleidoscopic forms that seemed to reject the conformity of the world I was desperately trying to fit into. Strange, undefinable creatures that moved through the sand and the water as if constantly in the process of becoming – I was transfixed.

Understandable. Aquariums have a power to soothe the soul, but they can't work miracles. Of course, most people buy them because they want the challenge and pleasure of keeping alive and happy these exotic pets.  

Instead of feeling solace, irrationally, I felt anger that my marine companions couldn’t understand what I was going through. I scanned the tank and tried to grab the attention of a pair of clownfish. But they were swimming along happily together – just another couple who had found love – and suddenly the tank made me feel lonelier than ever.

Because everything's about you... 

Shortly afterwards, I quit my job at the marine shop and developed a complete aversion to my fish tank, barely able to look at it without the temptation to smash the glass. I couldn’t even bring myself to turn on its lights.

One night, I saw that all my fish and coral were floating rigid on the surface. It was the final confirmation I needed – the tank no longer served me, and couldn’t be the heal-all balm I needed it to be.

So this twisted individual let his expensive pets die and now has a 'Guardian' column to boast about it? It's enough to make you vomit... 

The Only 'Human Error' Here Is In Cowering Before The Karens, Tesco...

Tesco has apologised to shoppers after...

Out of date food? Dirty store? Rude staff?

...'racist' security tags were placed on cosmetics for black skin but not lighter skin tones in one of its stores.

*sighs* Buckle up, we're going in.... 

Mother-of-three Natalie Westgate complained to the chain after she spotted the security measures on the makeup, calling it 'racist' and 'absolutely disgusting'.

'I understand you have to security box items but do you think it is ok to only have the dark range security boxed and not the entire range,' she said to Tesco.

'Please ask your race and ethnicity network and Black Voices Advisory Group what they think to security only boxing the dark range then get back to me.'

The utter arrogance in that demand is breathtaking. But sadly only to be expected of someone who doesn't even pause to consider the absurdity of having a 'race and ethnicity network' in the first place...

The supermarket responded first on Twitter and said 'stores may sometimes use security tags on items which have recently been subject to theft and the decision to do so changes from store to store'.

Brave of the corporate Twitter-wrangler to use facts and logic to bat away the annoying Karen. But futile, because there's never just one. They hunt in packs. And the avalanche of manufactured outrage reached the eyes of a manager trained to be obsequious in the face of anything 'racist':

A spokesperson for Tesco apologised and said that it was an example of human error, and they should not have been tagged.

'It’s really important to us that Tesco is a place where everyone feels welcome, and the tags have now been removed,' they told The Sun.

So there you have it, thieves and shoplifters; Tesco wants you to 'feel welcome'. You know where to go now, don't you? 

"People are telling us that they feel less safe and less welcome in the UK."

Working as intended, then?

The British Red Cross and the Refugee Council, which worked with nearly 44,000 people in the asylum process, warn that they are disappearing from hotels and are reluctant to claim support for fear of deportation, detention and other harsh measures.

Who didn't see this coming? Hopefully the Home Office have read some hunting literature and discovered the term 'flushing from cover'... 

This being the 'Guardian', let's see what sort of sob stories they can find:

Those supported by the Red Cross include:

An Afghan man living in temporary accommodation in the east Midlands who disclosed that he had gone into hiding, fearing that he would be detained and sent to Rwanda. He said that many of his friends were in the same situation and planned to go underground.

So it's not about safety and never was. He and his friends (how is he still in touch with them, I wonder) just target Britain. 

An asylum seeker from Ethiopia based in the West Midlands said that he feels anxious about the passing of the Nationality and Borders Act and disclosed he had left his accommodation out of fear that he will be sent to Rwanda.

What's the 'danger' in Ethiopia? Civil war? Drought? Won't he be at least in his own continent in Rwanda? 

An Afghan asylum seeker also based in the West Midlands who said he feels he is a second-class refugee as he is not eligible for recent schemes designed to support Ukrainians.

Ah. That's because you're not Ukranian. Funny how that works, eh?

Nothing unusual there. Absolutely no-one who anyone with their head screwed on could possibly have any sympathy for. It's amazing how they always manage not to find a genuinely worthwhile 'victim', isn't it?

We Know What You Really Mean By 'The Most Vulnerable', 'Guardian...

The Home Office has placed immigration officers in child social services and dozens of other local authority departments, in an arrangement that has raised concerns​...

That there's not enough?

...about the ability of the most vulnerable to seek support, the Guardian can reveal.

Why would it? Unless, of course, by 'most vulnerable' you mean illegals and overstayers. Still, any new initiative would be welc...

Oh! 

The on-site immigration officer service was reported by the Observer in early 2019.

So it's been running for three years? 

The revelation that the Home Office was “hiring out” immigration officials to enforce the government’s hostile environment policy was met with outrage from critics, leading many local authorities to eject the officers, and the Home Office to remove information about the service from government websites.

Any local authority that did this should have gone straight to the back of the queue for any government funding... 

However, the service has continued to operate. Records released in response to FoI requests reveal that at the end of 2021, 12 local authorities plus HS2 and TfL still had immigration officers working within them on behalf of the Home Office, including five where officers had been placed specifically in children’s services. 

The OUTRAGE! in the article is led by shadow minister for immigration, Stephen Kinnock, Mary Atkinson, campaigns officer at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and Colin Yeo, an immigration law barrister.

Do they bother to ask Mr or Mrs Average in the street whether they think it's a good idea? Reader, they do not. 

They just expect them to pay eye-watering levels of tax to fund every Tomazs, Dhama and Harsimer who comes ashore at Dover...

Selecting Your Scapegoats...

In recent days and weeks more small lost lives have been added to this grim toll: Logan Mwangi, Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, Star Hobson, Kyrell Matthews and Hakeem Hussain. In each case, decisions were taken that led to missed opportunities to protect these children – but we don’t know why these decisions were made. That will be revealed in safeguarding reviews that are under way.

But Polly has an idea why... 

But we do know that lockdown put huge strains on families and made it harder for social workers to see what was going on.

Really? There were plenty of signs, they didn't miss them, they simply failed to do their job.  

But to fix this system, we have to decide what the problem that we’re fixing is – and make sure that the pandemic doesn’t mask the longer-term trends.

And what would those be? 

I spent three years researching the children’s social care system for my book and found a system that is so decimated by austerity, the relationship between communities and the authorities now so corrupted by distrust, that in some parts of the country it is no longer able to identify the children most at risk.

Ah, yes. They don't have enough resources. It couldn't possibly be anything else, could it? 

In the absence of the capacity to make sound judgments, systems have been put in place that reduce nuanced, human judgment to tick-box exercises that devious parents can see straight through and outmanoeuvre.

Do any of the parents in these cases strike you as the sort of cunning high-IQ manipulators who should be able to pull the wool over the eyes of dedicated trained professionals? Because it never seems so to me... 

A good social care system would take faster, more decisive action to protect children: take them away from abusive families and offer better support and services to help other families stay together safely.

I'd settle for one that could reasonably distinguish between those two subsets with any degree of accuracy... 

But Do You Want Them To Learn About Everything, Troy?

The footballer Troy Deeney is launching an impassioned plea for more widespread teaching of black, Asian and minority ethnic experiences by schools in England, to help combat racism and give children “a balanced and inclusive understanding” of Britain.

'Balanced'..? Really? I suspect that that's the last thing he really wants. 

“I have seen more and more how important it is for my children to be able to see themselves represented in what they are being taught, and learn about the contribution and background of people who look like them,” Deeney said.

“The importance of education at an early age to inform identity and combat racist beliefs and stereotypes cannot be understated.”

As I suspected. What 'stereotypes' do you want to combat, I wonder? The stereotypes of black footballers as barely human savages given far too much money but unable to disguise their basic natures? The stereotype of black people as fools who see 'the enemy' even when the police are trying to help them catch the murderer of one of their own?

“As my mum always says to me, you can’t understand where you’re going if you don’t understand where you’ve come from. Whether it’s too late for my generation, we need to lay a pathway for longer-lasting change for our kids as I believe the current system is failing children from ethnic minorities,” Deeney said.

How, exactly, is it failing children? How did you do at school? 

He was excluded from school at the age of 15 and left without any qualifications. Later, as a professional footballer, he studied and passed GCSEs in English, maths and science.

Say no more. Maybe if young black children aspired to do more with their lives than kick a ball (or their cat!) around, it'd be a start, eh? 

Taking Your Work Home With You...

...it seems some take it just that little bit too far!

Despite his PCSO role having been based in Derbyshire, he lives in Wales, according to a statement on the Constabulary's website.

 Well, when your work is virtual, why not?

Bennett also presided over 74 misconduct hearings, involving 90 officers, between June 2010 and February 2012, according to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request lodged in 2021.

Out of these hearings involving Bennett, 56 officers were dismissed - more than 75%.

Which must all now be re-investigated, surely? 

Stick To Dipping A Paintbrush, Not Your Hands In Our Pockets...

A successful artist is seeking £33.6million in damages claiming he now paints too slowly after being run over by a stolen moped in central London - preventing him from creating 14 extra masterpieces per year.

Wow! Isn't he lucky the chap who hit him is a billionaire! That is what happened, right?

...he is now suing Mr Hinds and insurers Aviva ...

Ah. Of course.  

However lawyers for Aviva at the High Court in London today branded the claim 'extraordinary' and 'overstated', and suggested the collision had actually helped Mr Mathieu's career, citing interviews in which the artist discussed the 'positive impact of the accident' which 'influenced his subject matter.'

Whoops! 

They also argued that he often fails to sell a 'sizeable portion' of his work at events, undermining his claim that he could sell more works every year. And while not disputing some liability, they are challenging the amount of the payout demanded, arguing the claim is 'inflated' and 'based on hypothetical guess work'.

It's based on what he - and his lawyers - think he can get away with... 

Mrs Justice Hill is considering arguments at a High Court trial in London due to last about two weeks.

That long? 

"Wait, No, Now It's Affecting People I Like!"

Sonia Sodha is finally beginning to wake up, I think:

A few years ago, when I was still getting to grips with the vagaries of Twitter, I inadvertently took part in a social media pile-on. Someone well known said something stupid and I enjoyed tweeting to that effect.

Of course you did. It's great to be part of a mob, isn't it, whether that's physically, or via the safe medium of social media.

But mobs are fickle things, and suddenly your side is targeted, and it's far too late to say 'Hang on..!' isn't it? 

Some people are desperate to see the world cast in black and white. Clanchy’s worst crime is not to fit this mould. Of course she doesn’t: none of us can rise above the imperfectly human. Look at her in the round and it’s obvious she’s done more good than most. This is why the strand of anti-racist thinking that is obsessed with the blame and shame all white people should bear for structural discrimination is so corrosive to common cause and understanding. White people who do nothing to challenge racism are terrible, but white people who trip up when trying to do something about it are even worse. The societal misogyny that infects this movement means it sees older white women as the very worst of all. Any expression of distress is the weaponisation of “white women’s tears”. The witch is not permitted to have feelings; they distract from her role as lightning rod for anger at all of society’s ills.

That's the thing when you call down lightning, Sonia. It doesn't care who gets scorched. 

What has happened to Clanchy is a sad tale for our ages. No individual is to blame: it is the product of brittle and cowardly institutions, and the collective social media frenzy that prizes heads on a platter over change.

The very 'brittle and cowardly institutions' that you've spent your career at the 'Guardian' railing against? That's like beating a dog for years and then complaining that's it's cowering in the corner... 

She's Clearly Not Chosen Honesty Though...

A Rhodes Scholar who won a coveted scholarship at Oxford after claiming she overcame childhood abuse and grew up in foster care has been accused of lying to officials and is in fact the daughter of a radiologist who went to private school.

Mackenzie Fierceton, 24, describes herself as a 'queer, first generation, low income' student at The University of Pennsylvania. In 2020, she was given a scholarship to go to Oxford after dazzling the Rhodes Trust with her story of how she overcame welfare, an abusive mother and the foster care system.

In other words, she saw the boxes and decided to tick them all. After all, why not? It's not like anyone ever checks, clearly: 

But after a November 2020 Philadelphia Inquirer news article about the scholarship, lauded her as a 'first-generation student' who 'has been low-income throughout her life, and grew up in foster care,' an anonymous tipster contacted the Rhodes Trust and UPenn to report her for being 'blatantly dishonest'.

Ooops! 

Now, she has withdrawn from the Rhodes program and UPenn is withholding her masters degree pending further investigation.

Be sure your sins will find you out...but what does mum - sorry, mom - have to say about this? 

In a statement to The Chronicle in light of the scholarship being revoked, Dr. Morrison said of her daughter: 'Mackenzie is deeply loved by her mom and family.

'Our greatest desire is that Mackenzie chooses to live a happy, healthy, honest, and productive life, using her extraordinary gifts for the highest good.'

She could go into politics or journalism, I guess. She seems eminently qualified.  

Remember When Adults Wrote For This Newspaper?

I have a fantasy and it goes like this: a political party is formed, running on an anti-social-media platform. It campaigns on a pledge to ban social media. (“SWITCH IT OFF” is its straightforward, and elegant, slogan.) The party wins a general election and at midnight, on what comes to be known as Social Media Freedom Day, the prime minister pushes a giant button that blocks all access to social media. Crowds cheer. On the anniversary of Social Media Freedom Day – which becomes a bank holiday, of course – children burn effigies of Mark Zuckerberg and dress up as the Twitter bird.

The ravings of a demented madwoman? Well, yes. It's a 'Guardian' column, after all! What else would you expect?

I write this as someone who owes her career and her partner to social media. I had no journalism qualifications, (Ed: Really...?) connections or experience when I began blogging in the mid-2010s, and through Twitter I was able to get a paid internship that gave me my start in journalism.

But as time has gone on I have become more and more certain that the solution to many of the most pressing issues of our time is simply to switch social media off.

We can all do that, any time we want!

Of course I could delete all my social media accounts. Cancel my season ticket to The Discourse; stop watching as a new villain of the day is crowned on Twitter. You think I don’t want to do that?

What's stopping you? 

I need a responsible adult to do it for me. I’ve had enough of the bad feelings machine. Won’t somebody switch it off? Please? Can we switch it off?

Aren't you one of those? Oh, silly me. Of course you aren't... 

If You Take Your Foot Out Of Your Mouth...

Brook Love, a 63-year-old from Milwaukee, said the outcome was typical of the racial injustice she’s seen throughout her life as a Black woman.

“What happened today is not right,” she said. “Any reasonable person can see that. People call this a judicial system. I call it a non-system, because most systems work. This non-system is not working. It’s a miscarriage of justice.

“If a person of colour would have shot those people, they’d be under the jail. There’s a double standard. How dare anyone call this a judicial system?”

...I'll treat you to a nice cup of Coffee, Brook: 

Case closed.

 

Weakening Justice Even Further...

A mother imprisoned for causing serious harm to her baby has told the court of appeal she lied at her trial because of the control her former boyfriend had over her.

Ah, the modern-day equivalent of 'pleading your belly'. 

The woman, known as Jenny, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the appeal court it was her partner at the time who caused their son’s skull fractures and bleeding on the brain in June 2017.

The landmark hearing has the potential to change the way coercive control is understood in cases where a victim feels that abuse has led them to lie in court.

And of course, if she wins, there'll be a rush to the lawyers from every female incarcerated for killing her child, or standing by while her partner did so... 

At the original trial the woman, Jenny, said she caught her cardigan on a cupboard door while preparing her son’s feed, causing him to fall to a concrete floor. She was given a 10-year extended sentence, later reduced to five.

On Thursday she told judges the baby’s father punched her in the head as she held their son, causing them both to fall.

So she lied. Why do they never do them for perjury when they change their story? 

She claimed she was unable to tell police the truth because her boyfriend was present.

“I did not want to anger him or agitate him as he [was holding] my baby.”

While police were in the room? Pull the other one, love! 

Representing the Crown, John Price QC said the appeal was seeking a “second bite at the cherry”.

Actually, a third. She's already had her sentence reduced, remember... 

He said: “The evidence the applicant gave introduces nothing new about the degree of force with which the child struck the floor – whether that was caused by a cardigan catching or by a punch.”

He focused on the veracity of her reasoning as to why she failed to tell the jury the truth. “We submit there is no credible explanation for that,” he said. Price pointed to witness reports that after the incident the child’s father shouted that she had thrown the baby and she replied: “I was feeding the child, you hit me and that is how the baby dropped.”

Price argued they later changed their accounts and formed “a cynical agreement to further their mutual interests”.

Yup, no doubt. Why not? It's likely to work, these days... 

(Lady Justice) Macur acknowledged that coercive control victims could find themselves isolated. But she added: “I keep coming back to that incident. We have still got to make a decision about whether her evidence is worthy of belief.”

She's a proven liar. If that doesn't help with the decision, what will? 

I Don't Care That I've Won, I Want To Rub Their Noses In It...

In an interview with Rolling Stone last year, music producer Ian Brennan criticised the band’s decision to continue to “play and profit” from the song, which he said glorified slavery, rape, torture and paedophilia.

Blimey, it's going to blow his mind if he ever listens to 'Young Girl' by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap... 

Speaking to the Guardian following Richards’ comments, Brennan urged the Rolling Stones to “seize this moment” to educate their “gigantic platform” on racial equality.

Yup, that's what people go to Rolling Stones concerts for, after all.... 

He said: “That they now retire the song is a victory. But that the band continue to play coy as to the reasons for their decision rather than just making a frank admission of the inappropriateness of the lyrics as the reason why they have chosen to no longer play the song live is an opportunity for healing and leadership missed.”

It seems I'm in agreement with Piers Morgan once again; all they've shown is cowardice in grovelling to this grubby little pipsqueak. And until people grow a spine and tell these single-issue shysters to take a hike, it'll go on and on forever.

Now They Are Worried..?

Sir Lindsay Hoyle spoke to Boris Johnson and Home Secretary Priti Patel following the fatal stabbing of the 69-year-old MP in his Southend West constituency.

He added: 'Those people who do not share our values or share democracy, they will not win and we won't let them win. We will continue to look at security, that is ongoing and it will continue.'

Very Churchillian, Sir Lindsay, but Churchill fought to keep the Nazis from landing at Dover. 

What's Border Farce doing under Priti Patel? Escorting them in by the hundreds... 

Every politician is currently thought to have had a security assessment in the constituency, and they get a 'standard' package such as alarm systems, shutters, CCTV and personal alarms for staff.

However, there are concerns that most of the measures are applied to offices and homes, while surgeries often happen at churches or other buildings that might not be secure.

That sounds like a failing of security assessments then. A gap you can drive a truck through.  

A senior Parliamentary source told MailOnline: 'The Commons will have a complete review again. Police need to be at surgeries. It is the only solution.'

We don't have enough police to keep our streets safe, and you want more of them standing idly by while Mrs Miggins complains about the amount of dog poo on the street outside her house? 

It's not, of course, the only solution at all. And you know it.