Medicine Giving Way To Groupthink Is Indeed A Tragedy, George…

...funny how I never heard a peep out of you when all the psychiatrists decided that if you felt like a memnber of the opposite sex. you were right, and this was a mistake to be corrected. Or when all those doctors who'd previously said masks were ineffective for covid suddenly about-faced and swore blind they were our only hope.

...the story spread so widely by the media – that ME/CFS patients were irrationally refusing treatment and abusing those who offered it – stuck, in the NHS and beyond. Medicine gave way to groupthink.

Here are some things that should not need stating. Scientists and those who champion them should never close ranks against empirical challenge and criticism. They should not deny requests for data, should not shore up disproven claims, should not circle the wagons against legitimate public challenge. Above all, those who suffer the most should be listened to the most.

I also seem to recall you're rather keen on climatologists closing ranks against empirical challenge and critiscism. 

The Villain Of The Piece Isn’t Who You Think….

Hundreds of homeless families were permanently forced out of London by councils last year after many were given 24-hour ultimatums to either accept a private tenancy far away from the capital or be kicked out of temporary accommodation and left on the streets. The campaign group Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth (HASL) found that 319 households in 2023 accepted offers of a private tenancy outside London. They were often given 24 hours by council officials to accept homes out of the capital or risk making themselves “intentionally homeless” by refusing an offer.

Booo! Wicked Tories demanding value for money for the taxpayer! 

Well, no, actually... 

Five councils in the capital, which are all Labour-run, accounted for 74% of all out-of-London private discharges. Waltham Forest sent the most families outside London, relocating 67 out of 130 households outside the capital.Enfield was identified as the council sending families the furthest from their jobs, schools and support networks.

What a turn up for the books!  

One mother the Guardian spoke to in Enfield was given 24 hours to accept an offer of a private tenancy in Hartlepool in December, which she said she felt “forced and pressured” into accepting. The home the family were sent to was doors away from where a man was murdered last October.

And does no-one ever get murdered in Enfield?  

Don't You Believe In The Rule Of Law, Then, Rachel..?

Rachel Riley, the co-presenter of Countdown, has said she will stop supporting Manchester United if the club allows Mason Greenwood to return.

Oh? Who on earth is he? I'm not very up to date on my footballers...

She told her 684,000 Twitter followers: “I’m with Em, I won’t be able to support United if Greenwood remains at the club. We’ve all seen and heard enough. Pretending this is OK would be a huge part of the problem.

“It would be devastating for my club to contribute to a culture that brushes this under the carpet … I really hope they do the right thing.”

Gosh! What was he convicted of, then? As I said, I'm not really up to date on my footballers.

Well, Reader....nothing:

Greenwood was arrested in January 2022 and in October of that year was charged with attempted rape, controlling and coercive behaviour, and assault occasioning actual bodily harm. Greenwood denied all the charges and they were dropped in February.

Well, that's awkward. Why did they drop it? 

In February, the Crown Prosecution Service said it had dropped the charges against him because there was “no longer a realistic prospect of conviction” after key witnesses withdrew their cooperation from the investigation.

Rachel needs to be careful. It's easy to say things in the heat of the moment and then have to expensively face consequences, as she should be well aware...  

We've Seen How Other Economies 'Succeed', Julia And Winsome...

The cost of living crisis affects all of us, but it doesn’t affect us equally. One of us struggles to afford the spiralling price of the weekly shop, while the other can shop as before, unaffected by rising food prices. One of us fears turning on the heating to keep her house warm, while the other can heat her home and travel for some winter sun without a second thought.

This isn’t how an economy succeeds.

...and while it might be good for the wall-building trade, I don't much fancy it in my country.

Instead of squeezing low earners, the chancellor should have matched his actions to his rhetoric and taxed wealth at the top.

Here you go, Julia! If you don't think you're taxed enough, the nice people at the Treasury will gladly accept your voluntary payment at that link.

Do be a dear, though, and come back to the 'Guardian' and tell us all when you've done it, eh?

What Happened To Scathing Reviews?

Martin Kettle in 'The Guardian':

There is nothing wrong in principle with protesting at the opera. I’ve very occasionally booed shows I hated, and I want to be free to do so again if I choose.

Why..? You've a column in the 'Guardian' to rip it to shreds the next morning, why ruin everyone else's enjoyment? 

Booing and whistling at the opera or theatre can sometimes be healthy and necessary protest.

Really? I'm not an opera goer, so it never even crossed my mind that this might be a thing. I've been to theatre performances I thought were rubbish, but I just left before the end... 

What happened at Covent Garden on Tuesday evening, however, wasn’t booing but heckling.

Oh, really? Trust a 'Guardian' writer to be able to draw a distinction... 

The target was Malakai M Bayoh, a 12-year-old boy soprano...

That's not the most stand-out thing, though, is it, Martin? 

I’d add for the record that, as far as I could tell, the heckling was not racist (Bayoh is a black boy from south London), although it may have been.

Maybe the chap should be given his own column in the paper to tell us why he did it? 

But there is a wider issue to consider here. Expressing one’s dissent against a production or a performance is often unattractive and sometimes (as here) unmerited. But it can have its place. Not always, but sometimes. It’s a tricky line to draw and to police. But I hope theatres do not start making it a requirement of attendance not to boo or protest, let alone make booing punishable by a lifetime ban.

"If I do it, it's necessary and needful. If you do it, it's wrong!" That ought to be the 'Guardian's' new strapline. 

All You Should Care About Is That It Is Within The Law, Mark...

Sussex Police licensing officer Mark Thorogood shared his concerns at a council licensing.

He told the panel of councillors the venue only just complied with its cafe licence.

That's all it needs to do, after all... 

This required substantial food to be available at all times. It had been, he said, “pushing the limits” of what was substantial after the previous owner refitted the venue as a bar.

So..? Did you get upset when venues were 'pushing these limits' when ridiculous covid restrictions were imposed, Mark?  

Mr Theed had since refitted the premises again and police were concerned it now appeared to be branded as a wine and cocktail bar. Given its current cafe-style licence, alcohol should be secondary to providing food, he said.

But the seven-page menu initially had five pages devoted to alcohol, with no hot drinks and just seven food items. Two of those were nuts and olives.

Which are definitely food, though I can't stand olives myself. 

The food offering had since been expanded but, the panel heard, there was still no kitchen.

The regulations you're paid to enforce don't state there has to be a kitchen, do they? So move on. There must be real cases to progress. This isn't one. 

I Thought This Would Be Bigger News...

The former Labour MP Jim Devine has become the third parliamentarian to be jailed over the expenses scandal after being sentenced to 16 months' imprisonment.

The 56-year-old former trade union convenor made false claims totalling £8,385, "knowing full well just how wrong it was and the effect that false claims were having on the public's belief and confidence in parliament", Mr Justice Saunders, passing sentence at the Old Bailey, said.

I guess he's lucky there's a war on, eh?

Devine's offences were "less serious" than those committed by the former Labour MP David Chaytor, who received 18 months in January, and were committed over a shorter period of time, Sanders said.

His defence tried his best:

The offences were "entirely out of character" as he was a "man of integrity and honesty", though Millar accepted that might sound like a paradox.

Well, no, 'paradox' wasn't the first word that came to mind, actually...

If The 'Culture Of Misogyny' Is So Bad...

...why do you have to import more of it?

According to reports in Ireland the man arrested has links with Offaly and south Dublin but has also lived abroad.

Which is the coy progressive press way of saying he's an immigrant from Slovakia.  

Between 1996 and 2020, at least 236 women died violently in the Republic of Ireland.

Why don't we get a figure for men? Is it because it outstrips the figure for women (like this one year) two to one?

We know it is, don't we, Reader..? 

Their names have been written out and remembered individually in recent days. A majority of these women were killed in their own homes, by a man they knew, by men they loved, men they had children with. How do we protect against that?

Well, you could start pointing out to women that 'I love him, I can change him!' isn't a strategy for survival. And you could start campaigning against open borders on the basis that Ireland doesn't need to import more misogynists.

But you don't do any of that, do you? I wonder why... 

I Think You Have A Different Idea Of What 'Botched' Means, 'Guardian'...

'Worse'..? They are executing people twice, then?

More than half of the states in the US have either abolished the death penalty or have formal suspensions in place, as the country’s use of the brutal punishment continues to wither on the vine.

For the 'Guardian', it's the judicially applied sentence that is 'brutal', ignoring the crimes that got them that sentence... 

Oklahoma botched its first execution in six years, that of John Grant who was observed convulsing and vomiting on the gurney.

Didn't 'botch it' at all. He's dead, isn't he? I don't suppose the cafeteria worker he stabbed to death while in prison went quietly and peacefully...

Reflecting a centuries-old distortion, more than three out of every four of the victims of this year’s murders ending in new death sentences were white. No non-white victim was involved in any case leading to a white person being condemned to death.

*shrugs* So? Maybe that tells you more about the nature of black on white murder than it does about 'racism'.. 

Those who died in 2021 at the hands of the Trump administration were Lisa Montgomery, a profoundly mentally-ill woman who had suffered a lifetime of abuse tantamount to torture; Corey Johnson who was severely intellectually disabled; and Dustin Higgs who indisputably did not kill anybody.

Interesting that the 'Guardian chooses to take out an onion for a woman who strangled a 23 year old pregnant mother-to-be before cutting the baby out of her womb and kidnapping it, a drug dealer whose 'intellectual shortcomings' didn't prevent him being responsible for killing seven people and the getaway driver for a serial killer who murdered three women while he waited in the car... 

I mean, there must be some people whose execution seems like it was wrong or unjust to normal-thinking people. But the left-wing media never seems to be able to find any.

Bringing Back The One Drop Rule...

One of Britain’s greatest painters has fallen victim to woke culture, as art-lovers are being warned not to ‘idolise’ J. M. W. Turner because he once held a single share in a Jamaican business that used slave labour.

One share. One... 

During his lifetime, the artist was a liberal and an abolitionist, and his iconic painting The Slave Ship captured the horror of the trade in human lives. But a new exhibition of his work at Tate Britain comes with a warning that some of his pieces could be considered problematic.

To whom? To the real 'general public', or to the tiny but loud minority of woke activists? And if tenuous  slavery links weren't enough... 

The gallery’s director, Alex Farquharson, even warns that Turner’s depictions of steam power are linked to climate change.

*sighs* 

Mr Farquharson says: ‘We should not idolise Turner. His investment in 1805 in a Jamaican cattle ranch worked by enslaved labour suggests he had reset his own moral compass by 1840 when he painted Slave Ship as an indictment of the slave trade.’

The painting was inspired by the Zong massacre of 1781, in which a captain of a British ship ordered 133 slaves to be thrown overboard when drinking water ran low so he could claim insurance money.

Mr Farquharson describes The Slave Ship as salient today because ‘Black Lives Matter demands we confront histories of enslavement, exploitation and genocide whose legacies live on’, but says some critics ‘see its visual splendour as mitigating the horror of its subject’.

Probably the sort of 'experts' who fawn over modern 'art' like this... 

Michael Daley, the director of ArtWatch UK, said it was wrong to impose modern values on historical figures, adding: ‘The trouble is that everybody in the arts wants to play politics and not talk about art.’

Spot on, Mr Daley, and it suffers as a result. 

The episode could expose the Tate to allegations of hypocrisy – ancestors of founder Sir Henry Tate made their fortune from a sugar empire built on the slave trade.

Good. Let them be hoist by their own petard. 

And Would You Open Up Your Surgery For Them To Have It?

Covid vaccines have been a remarkable success, but if we are to enhance public safety and return to normality, we must build on that achievement.

Interesting you talk about 'coverage', because Janet Street Porter points out:

...the real scandal is happening at GP's surgeries all over the country. And I don't think money is the problem.

Waiting rooms lie empty, lines of freshly sanitised chairs sit without any occupants. Signs on external doors say 'do not enter without an appointment' - so the sick stay at home and potentially shorten their lives, forced to hang on to the phone waiting for ages or try and log on, remember their NHS number, password and navigate a complicated website.

It's easier for Michael Gove to enter a nightclub mask-less and make a complete tit of himself, than it is to meet your local GP face-to-face.

Seems they are only willing to do this now if they are weilding a needle like an eager Spanish DEFRA vet. 

GPs are holding 3.4million fewer face-to-face appointments a month compared with before the pandemic. The shocking figures reveal the scale of the shift towards consultations held remotely.

The Alzheimer’s Society said virtual appointments do not work for people with dementia, while Labour, which analysed the NHS England data, said the shift increased the risk of serious illness being misdiagnosed.

But who cares about serious illness when we have a version of the flu to worry about? 

How Are You Enjoying Reaping That Whirlwind, Universities..?

An academic who was sacked after calling a Right-wing commentator a 'house n***o' is suing the university which cut ties with her for...

Breach of contract? Unfair dismissal?

...discrimination against her belief in critical race theory and black radicalism.

Hahahahahaha! 

The case could see black radicalism - an academic movement which argues race is a social construct used to oppress minorities - made into a protected belief system, like religious belief.

Well, they can't say they never saw this coming, can they?  

Ms Khanom is being supported by Professor Kehinde Andrews, who branded Churchill a 'white supremacist', arguing the term 'house n***o' is not a 'racial slur' but a 'concept that come out (sic) of struggles for racial justice'.

Is there some grift involved, because there usually is? 

On an online fundraising page created to raise £5,000 to cover her legal costs, Ms Khanom claimed she was the victim of a 'network of alt-Right activists'.

Ah. There it is! 

She wrote: 'LBU's conduct towards me suggests that academics should be looking over their shoulder before they make statements about Israel and Palestine, or about critical race theory. That is why this case and LBU's role in it is not just about me and my reputation as an anti-racist.

'Fundamentally, this is an important issue of freedom of speech.'

Oh, you're not wrong there. But not the way you think.... 

Ms Khanom said the tweets were not sent by her, adding: 'No academic should find their contract terminated so publicly in the absence of a fair and thorough investigation.'

I don't recall you being so supportive of Maya Forstater or Dr Binoy Sobnack or Bo Winegard...maybe I missed the press releases? 

And The Answer Is....

..."Yes, she's the reason you're behaving like this and expecting to get away with it.":

Matthew Mawhinney, 29, became rowdy on the flight home from filming the second series of Netflix dating show Too Hot to Handle in the Caribbean on February 7.

The defendants became abusive after being repeatedly told to put facemasks on and being informed that the captain had decided they should not be served any more alcohol.

In a hearing at Uxbridge Magistrates' Court on Friday, prosecutor Christelle McCracken told the court that stewardesses Heather Wenn and Sophie Griffiths had been the target of most of the abuse.

When Ms Wenn told Mawhinney he would not be getting any more drinks, he told her: 'Go and f****** look up who my mum is – Baroness Scotland, I'm a gold card holder – go and get me a drink.'

Lovely!  

District Judge Deborah Wright said the three defendants behaved with a 'profound sense of entitlement without any regard for the crew or any of the other passengers on the flight'.

I wonder where they could possibly have got that from? 

Mohamed Reza Ally, for Johnson and Greenslade, said: 'They are aware that things are not going to be easy in relation to the publicity.

'This behaviour on any view is wholly out of character, and in my submission that should be born in mind.'

I guess you didn't learn any Latin in law school, then? Like 'In vino veritas'..?

Each defendant was fined £1,500, ordered to pay £500 each to Ms Wenn and Ms Griffiths, and ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £150 and £85 costs for their abusive behaviour.

They were ordered to pay a further £100 for refusing to put on their masks when told to by the captain.

It's chickenfeed, to people like this.  

Sheffield Hallam's Gain Is Surrey Police's Loss...

As students and staff contemplate returning to campus after a long time away, I am moving in the opposite direction. After 13 years as an academic, in love with my subject and with teaching, and in the midst of a pandemic, I’m leaving – to join the police and contribute to society in a different way.

So declares Eddie Tembo. But ... why?

As a black academic in a UK university, I became accustomed to defending myself to students and sometimes to staff. “Yes, I really do have a doctorate.” “No, it was not awarded to me to fill a quota.” At early career conferences I encountered disbelief that I could have published a book.

Well, yes, and how much of this is fallout from the sort of affirmative action projects and schemes that the progressives have demanded? 

I’ve had painful experiences at the hands of former colleagues, including the use of racist language and the overt propagation of racist stereotypes.

Such as? We get no examples in the article. We never do, do we, Reader..? 

More subtle racism was harder to deal with, such as sidelining (always hard to prove) or the use of strategic appointments – a modern variant of the old boys’ club – to fill vacancies.

Ah, yes, the old 'I can't prove it's racism but that's what it must be' gambit. But ... why didn't you say anything at the time?

What I perhaps should have done was to report every incident to my line managers. Instead, I remained largely silent, confiding only in colleagues, friends and family. It is hard to say why it was difficult to speak up. Concern about being asked to provide tangible evidence of racism, not being supported, or simply being labelled a troublemaker by a management body that was far from ethnically diverse were all factors.

So you'd have fely better complaining to others of your own race? But we're the racists, not you? 

There has been some recognition of my work. I gained fellowship status of the Higher Education Academy. I was nominated for or won student-led awards: best dissertation supervisor; inspirational teaching; most inspiring lecturer; outstanding personal academic tutor. In 2019 I was shortlisted for a Nottinghamshire Black Achiever’s award.

And that wasn't enough to convince you? 

Despite this I had grown increasingly disillusioned by the lack of diversity and felt more needed to be done – an effort with which I had indicated I was willing to assist.

By leaving? For a 'company' that clearly hasn't done any due diligence into the sort of person they are hiring?

You Don't Say, Judge...

District Judge Joanna Dickens at Swindon Magistrates Court lays into the bugling Wiltshire Police and CPS:

'This case does worry me, and trouble me, that there could be a situation where other ten thousand pound fines have been bandied about by police in circumstances where they shouldn't have been.'

'Could be'..? There almost certainly is, and likely more than one! 

But let the Blame Shifting begin! 

A spokesman for Wiltshire Police said it was 'surprised' by the dismissal and will seek a review with the CPS.

Why? They didn't threaten the fine, you did... 

'Our policing response to the ongoing public health pandemic will continue to be robust, proportionate and consistent.'

But not accurate? 

'It remains vital that everyone takes personal responsibility for their actions and adheres to the restrictions which are in place.'

What personal responsibility are you taking for your officer's ignorance of the law he or she was laying down? 

A CPS spokesperson said: "We note the judge's comments and are examining what happened in this case before deciding next steps.

"The CPS also conducts a monthly review of all finalised coronavirus cases to ensure that the right person is charged with the right offence."

I wonder what you find in most cases? No, it's OK. I already know. 

Steering The Ship Away From The Rocks...

The alleged murderer of eight people, six of whom were Asian American women, reportedly said that he was trying to “eliminate temptation”. It’s as if he thought others were responsible for his inner life, as though the horrific act of taking others’ lives rather than learning some form of self-control was appropriate. This aspect of a crime that was also horrifically racist reflects a culture in which men and the society at large blame women for men’s behavior and the things men do to women.

Oh oh! I see where this could be going... 

The idea of women as temptresses goes back to the Old Testament and is heavily stressed in white evangelical Christianity...

Whew! Avoided disaster in the nick of time!