Why Can’t We Do This?

The three Gardai - Irish police officers - walk down the rows of passengers on the bus, a few kilometres south of the border with Northern Ireland. Observing this is the head of the Garda National Immigration Bureau, Det Ch Supt Aidan Minnock. “If they don't have status to be in Ireland, we bring them to Dublin,” he explains. “They're removed on a ferry back to the UK on the same day.”

And why is Ireland doing this now, when they've long been a welcoming country to Third World trash? 

Asylum applications in Ireland have risen by nearly 300% so far this year compared to the same period five years ago. A spike in arrivals from the UK has been driven by various factors, among these the UK’s tougher stance post-Brexit, including the fear of deportations to Rwanda, as well as Ireland’s relatively healthy economy. Most asylum seekers coming from the UK to the Republic of Ireland enter the country from Northern Ireland, as - unlike the airport or ferry routes - there is no passport control. The Garda checks along the 500km-long (310 miles) border are the only means of stopping illegal entry.

Heh! Sooner or later, the taxpaying population has had enough of what progressive policies are turning their country into...

In the village of Dundrum, County Tipperary - population 221 - a group of locals attempted to block the arrival of asylum seekers at the gates of a former hotel in August. The proposal to house up to 277 people at Dundrum House, which hasn’t operated as a hotel since 2015, would double the local population. Locals worry that it will be a permanent fixture.

“How can our government not engage properly with us?” asks Andrea Crowe, a local teacher and protester who has frequently spoken in public. She cites concerns over housing, health and education provision for the community.

None of which will be made any easier by importing the 'new Irish' in huge quantities.  

Everyone Else Is A Realist, Love...

Someone struggles with reality...

I have spent most of the last week on Zoom calls with accountants in New York, trying to figure out the personal finance implications of moving to the UK – lugging dual citizenship behind me. (Short version: they’re not good.) Since these conversations deal with economic outcomes it has felt, as a matter of form, necessary to mention that given the US just elected a maniac, at some level – don’t we think? – all bets are off. Joking not-joking: we can talk about pensions or college savings until the cows come home but really, why aren’t we screaming? A remark that has elicited, to a man, either blank looks or cheerful entreaties not to be so alarmist.

I'd entreat you to get psychiatric help, personally... 

The spectacle of Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, co-hosts of the fiercely anti-Trump MSNBC show Morning Joe, beetling down to Mar-a-Lago to meet with the president-elect as fast as their little legs could carry them, was presented by the pair as a necessary piece of journalistic engagement.

It's their job, of course they will want to do that. Not everyone has the luxury of acting like a spoiled child and refusing to do something they find distateful. 

Under the auspices of pragmatic engagement, or “holding Trump to account”, or the reasonable accommodation of a new American reality, there is the usual sucking up to money and power. Despite Trump’s conviction that the entire mainstream media is against him, it seems unlikely that he will be sitting alone in a ballroom at the White House Correspondents’ dinner next April while the US news media takes a stand.

And it’s true: sulking or ranting does nothing.

I wouldn't say that. It clearly gets you a column in the 'Guardian'...

Parhaps A Name Change Is In Order?

Heaven nightclub has been shut down immediately after a bouncer was charged with raping a drunk woman who had been turned away from the venue. The world famous gay club had its licence suspended for 28 days following an emergency hearing at Westminster council on Friday.

Sound a lot like the Other Place. 

The woman said she was attacked by a bouncer on November 1 and was then “ignored” when she tried to report the assault to other club security staff, the meeting was told.

The expedited licensing review heard that detectives arrested the suspect at Heaven on November 11.

Subsequent enquiries showed that the arrested man was not permitted to work in the UK and may have “provided a false name to his employer in order to gain work”.

Morenikeji Adewole, 47, of Dunlop Close, Dartford – also known as Olu Julius or Olusolu Alabi – was charged with rape on Wednesday, the Met Police said.

Is there anyone in the security industry who can do a good job and appropriate due diligence, because it doesn't seem like it... 

Amy Lame, who was Sadiq Khan's night tsar until last month, appeared to disagree with the decision to revoke Heaven's licence. She wrote on Instagram: "Our community is being held to double standards, targeted by institutional homophobia and is the victim of legally questionable interpretation of licensing regulations. Let the battle commence."

They aren't shutting the place because it's full of irons, Amy, but because it's full of dodgy security staff and unsafe! I'd tell you to wind your neck in, but from photos, it appeard you don't have one. 

'Unfortunately, corruption is rooted in our culture in Kenya...'

It seems to be taking hold here too, it's just expressed rather differently.

The allegations against Dame Ann were made in 2020 shortly after she caught a self-employed cleaner stealing cash from her handbag. She told the woman, who was from the same Kenyan ethnic group as most of the six other complainants, to leave the castle immediately, but didn't report her to police.

'I made a massive mistake,' Dame Ann says. 'If I'd called the police, things might have been very different.'

Oh, sadly, I rather doubt it. You're making a big assumption there that the police only concentrate on determining whether a law has been broken. 

The first Dame Ann knew she was being investigated was in 2020 when one of her former students, who is now an aviation engineer, told her she had received a call from a detective. 'He was asking strange questions about me: Was I bad to her? Did I feed her? Did I allow her to leave the house? She told him he was being ridiculous and that I had only ever taken care of her.

'The detective didn't want to talk to her after that.'

Of course he didn't. The police no longer investigate all the facts and then determine which line to follow - that's the realm of tv shows. These day, and especially in Scotland, they start from a conclusion (slavery!)  and seek evidence to prove it. 

Many of the young men and women who were helped by the Gloag Foundation were keen to vouch for the woman who made such a difference to their lives.

'I know some of these people and believe they colluded to either get citizenship in the UK or money from Ann.

'Unfortunately, corruption is rooted in our culture in Kenya. I think the accusers probably thought she would want to settle because of the damage to her reputation, but Ann is strong.'

And it's a good thing that she is. Most people wouldn't have held out under such pressure. 

But the investigation continued with officers from the human trafficking unit interviewing students past and present, as well as Peter's carers, her secretary and staff.

'If someone makes an accusation like that, I understand it's their duty to investigate. I'm totally comfortable with that but, what I struggle with, is they completely disregarded the evidence of anybody who was positive about me.'

That's because you have a view of how the police used to act that is out of whack with the way they now act.  

Dame Ann was getting in her car to go on holiday last month when the Crown Office made public its decision, a year-and-half after she was charged.

It probably took a day, if that, to read the 'evidence' put to the Procurator Fiscal and realise this wasn't going anywhere! The other 546 days were no doubt spent trying to find someone to take responsibility for the decision. 

'It's not for me to tell the Home Office what to do but the law needs to be looked at or, at least, some of the wording on their website should be changed. This could be an epidemic coming down the line.'

No doubt. No doubt at all.  

Since the allegations were made Dame Ann has not returned to Kenya and the scholarship program has been suspended. She says she will take 'at least six months' to review what she does for charity in the future.

It should be 'nothing'.  

What A Hero You Are, Adam!

“Civilisation is going to pieces … if we don’t look out the white race will be – will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.” Sentiments like this will be familiar to those who lurk in the less wholesome corners of the internet, where racism and other bigotries flourish. As a geneticist who specialises in racism and eugenics, I lurk so that you don’t have to.

Oh Adam, truly, you exemplify the saying 'Not all heroes wear capes'! In your own mind, that is.

What we are witnessing is a coordinated renaissance in eugenics and race science. One of these new race scientists, Emil Kirkegaard, leads a group that claims to have access to the sensitive health information of half a million British volunteers. Kirkegaard wrote on his blog in July that “Africans are prone to violence everywhere”.

And you find that remarkable, Adam? Do you live in a cave? 

It can feel strange to discuss something as anachronistic and outdated as race science. Most right-minded people occupy a world in which the idea of genetic superiority between races is disproven and disturbing.

'Most right minded people' = 'everyone who agrees with me' I suppose? 

Does that mean race is a biologically meaningful definition? It does not. Race as we currently use it is a socially constructed idea, but one with biologically meaningful consequences, such as in healthcare where many disease outcomes are significantly worse for racial minorities.The impact of disease correlates significantly with socioeconomic factors, primarily poverty, and in our society racial minorities are mostly in lower social strata. Black and brown people endure worse medical outcomes not because they are black or brown, but because of this fact.

Tim Worstall easily refutes this nonsense.  

In The Great Gatsby, Tom Buchanan ends his racist rant with a call to arms, one that echoes in our present: “It’s up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have control of things.” Just as it was then, the current renaissance of eugenics and race science is nothing more than bigotry dressed up as biology.

Take a look around you, Adam. And note which races are doing things with impunity and recalculate your balance of power. 

A True Deterrent Would Include Deportation

A former PhD student has been sentenced to four and a half years in prison for arranging to send a young girl to Iraq for female genital mutilation (FGM), in the first conviction of its kind in England and Wales. Emad Kaky, 47, was found guilty of conspiring to commit FGM last month, the first time a person had been convicted of a conspiracy charge in relation to FGM.

Strangely, we aren't told what his relationship to the victim was, or how he seemingly had custody of the child in order to do it. No doubt to protect her identity, but there's a mother involved somewhere here, surely... 

A two-week trial at Nottingham crown court heard how Kaky had arranged for a child to travel from the UK to Iraq where he had organised for her to be subjected to FGM and forced into marriage. Emad Kaky described FGM as ‘normal’ in messages found on his phone. The plans were uncovered, before the crimes could be carried out, by a witness who arranged for the girl to travel back to the UK and reported Kaky to the police.

A foreign custom, planned to be carried out by a foreigner in a foreign land, caught by good old British justice? 

Sentencing Kaky, Judge Nirmal Shant KC said his plans were barbaric. “You made concerted efforts to make sure this happened. I make, nonetheless, some adjustment for the fact that no FGM took place, and importantly, thankfully, [the girl] was unaware of any of these plans,” she said.

“This offence calls for a deterrent sentence. What you did, what you had planned, was barbaric.”

Not that much of a deterrant, is it? Four and a half years being sheltered and fed at the taxpayer's expense? 

Janine McKinney, chief crown prosecutor for CPS East Midlands, said: “This has been a landmark prosecution, not just because it is the first conviction of its kind, but for the message it sends to people who may be vulnerable to this horrific form of abuse.”

It'd be a far stronger message if he was kicked out of the country at the end of it. 

The defence barrister Geraldine Kelly told the court Kaky’s academic accomplishments as a PhD student at the University of Nottingham were “respected” and “impressive”, and that losing his job was “in itself a form of punishment”.

No sweetie, those are consequences. Why in a case with three women involved - judge, prosecutor and defence - is the outcome so bloody weak? 

Man With A Hammer Sees Nails Everywhere...

The Oscar-winning British film director, Sir Steve McQueen, who is most famous for bringing the horror of the slave trade to cinema screens, has turned his lens on the forgotten, and even officially censored, terrors that London underwent during the second world war.

His starry new film, Blitz, which opens the London film festival (LFF) next month, is a powerful ­evocation of the perils of life during the German Blitzkrieg – a bombing campaign that aimed to batter Britain into submission in the early 1940s.

And he's chosen to include the Bethnal Green Tube disaster, when a crush killed 173 Londoners. 

The film is told through the eyes of what I assume is considered to be a typical mother & child from the East End of London in 1943. Let's take a look at a still:

Is it me, or...?

Ahead of the premiere, McQueen said: “Blitz is a movie about Lon­doners. It honours the spirit of what and how Londoners endured during the blitz, but also explores the true representation of people in London.”

Are you sure about that? 

Oh, Now You Want Proper Journalism?

I am going to go out on a limb and say that most Guardian readers who watch a BBC documentary called America’s New Female Right are unlikely to be in accord with the views espoused therein. We are not going to empathise with statements such as: “Women getting the right to vote has led to every form of degeneracy,” “Feminism was absolutely created to destabilise the family [and] western civilisation,” and: “Feminism is a thousand times more toxic than the ‘toxic masculinity’ we hear so much about.” We are unlikely to agree that “Satan’s agenda” is to destroy the nuclear family structure in order to control society.

But since you're the 'Guardian's TV critic, watch it you will, despite your reflexive cringing at the attitudes therein.

It’s a fascinating subject that deserves attention and rigorous interrogation of all the factors at play, especially with subjects as bright, articulate and confident as these (again, especially Faulkner). What we get instead is a cheap, shoddy programme apparently thrown together in 10 minutes, presumably on the grounds that everything and everyone is so obviously awful and evil and bad-bad-bad that it is enough just to film them, show Wright’s pained face occasionally and have her lob in a few wet questions to show that she is still listening and still on the side of right (which is, of course, left, not right).

Well that sounds like most of the ‘Guardian’s’ output, so it should be familiar!  

Sinister music is played in certain scenes, in case we are in danger of forgetting which side “we” are on – all of us, without doubt, without question, without occasionally wondering if the “other side” might have half a point buried in there that might be worth pulling out and examining in the light.

Only a Sith (and a ‘Guardian’ columnist, it seems) deals in absolutes. There’s never any chance of conceding a point from the other side. 

If you are going to interview people such as McMichael, Hutcherson and Faulkner, you need a presenter who is capable and unafraid of going toe to toe with them. These are people with sincerely held beliefs. You need someone with the intellectual and temperamental firepower to challenge them – someone who is not afraid to, in British terms at least, be “rude” to their subjects and see if they can really defend assertions that are otherwise allowed to stand as truth.

Why do you want to challenge them, when any attempt to challenge a left-wing viewpoint is treated as if heresey against truth come down from the mountain on tablets of stone? 

Go Woke, Get Broke!

Yes, Disney, that applies even to you.

Disney’s $300m-plus reboot of Snow White has generated a slew of headlines for all the wrong reasons. First, given the original relied on the outdated social mores of the 1930s, it rapidly became engulfed in a row over sexism, a debate over whether or not to keep the original seven dwarves and was plunged into the center of America’s bitter culture wars over race. Its lead star, Rachel Zegler, said she “hated” the original 1937 film and branded its story “weird” with a stalker-like Prince Charming character who steals a kiss from a girl in a coma who could not give consent. Then a row broke out over whether Disney should have seven dwarves as characters. Then America’s right wing piled on because of Zegler’s Latina background; the original Snow White was conceived as having very pale skin.

It is, in fact, the very reason for her name.  

All in all, it showed how the temptation of instant brand recognition could be trumped by the problem that many 1930s movies contain racial and other stereotypes that are simply better left alone.

But Hollywood is in a 'remake' fix, because there seems to be a lack of talent to do anything else. And so it will always run up against today's snowflake audiences. And as if that wasn't enough of a kiss of death, there's the casting....

But last week, just to add to the movie’s woes, Snow White also found itself embroiled in a fight between its two biggest stars over Middle Eastern politics. Zegler is an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights and Gal Gadot, who plays the Evil Queen, is a high-profile Israeli actor. Not surprisingly the two have very different takes on the bloody conflict in Gaza.

"Let's throw this snake and mongoose together, what could possibly go wrong?" 

Alia Malak, of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, wrote in an email to the Guardian that people should boycott Snow White because of Gadot.

Save your ink, Alia, I don't think anyone's rushing to see it anyway!  

You're Employed To Drop Bombs And Shoot Down The Enemy...

...so giving a bit of 'offence' should be like water off a duck's back:

The RAF has also launched a wider review of historical assets and terminology in a bid to prevent offence being taken, the MoS has learned.

Sources said 'further changes' could be ordered, pending its findings. The RAF said last night: 'As a modern and diverse Service, our focus must be on not giving prominence to any offensive term that goes against the values of the Royal Air Force. Therefore, 14 Squadron have ceased using their historic unofficial nickname.

'The traditions and informal nicknames used by the RAF in the earlier days have a place in our history. However, some are no longer appropriate in the 21st Century.'

*sighs* 

14 Squadron has connections to the region dating back to both world wars. The squadron's motto 'I spread my wings and keep my promise' is taken from the Koran and even appears in Arabic on its royal crest.

Awkward!  

Oh No, People Are Noticing!

After the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge last month, it fell to Baltimore’s mayor, Brandon Scott, to explain the disaster and outline the next steps. But as online clips of the 39-year-old Democrat in his city of Baltimore varsity jacket began circulating, the conversation around the bridge collapse shifted from Scott’s emergency management strategy to his skin color. “This is Baltimore’s DEI mayor,” read one viral X post panning Scott, who is Black. “It’s going to get so, so much worse. Prepare accordingly.” Before long the Maryland governor, Wes Moore, and port commissioner, Karenthia Barber, were also attacked as DEI agents and blamed for what maritime authorities have repeatedly described as a shipping accident.

Despite the fact the FBI is now investigating this 'simple accident'. Who know what they'll find? I'm sure the truth is out there; big ships are very hard to control at times, after all..  

“The far right has really taken these ideas to an extreme and are not really worried about seeming racist,” says Natasha Warikoo, a sociologist at Tufts University and researcher of racial and ethnic inequality in education. “They are loud and proud of their views.”

No-one's that worried about it any more, the word has been so debased by progressive ovverreaction that it's now almost entirely meaningless.  

DEI – short for diversity, equity and inclusion (or as has been said on Twitter: "Didn't Earn It") – has become the latest dog-whistle term in the conservative war of words to frame basic egalitarianism as a net negative.

Or to usher in a world of race hustling.  

The word DEI follows in the ignominious tradition of progressive vocabulary that has been weaponized against the left, with its original ideas and context replaced with a familiar theme – white replacement theory.

Progressive vocabulary doesn't really have a tradition to traduce, does it? Since it seems to be one long whine about 'unfairness'. And the effect it's having on those who gained their position through merit is undeniable:

“Ben Carson was one of the all-time great surgeons,” crowed Floyd Brown, Senate campaign chair for the Republican firebrand Kari Lake. “Yet now, because of DEI, when you see a Black surgeon, you get a question in your mind. What you want, is you want the Blacks that are on top, that do succeed, to be there on their merit.”

That's indeed what you should want. So why try to muddy the waters?  

How Dare You Like It Here!

Emma Beddington takes issue with US celebrities having the temerity to ... enjoy a visit to the UK. Yes. Really.

What do they see that we don’t in this island where ecologically dead rivers run with sewage, three in 10 children live in poverty and 1 million experience destitution? A Ukrainian woman returned to her “very dangerous” war-torn home town to access adequate dental treatment. It’s not like our problems are well-hidden. Surely Parker read the New Yorker’s depressingly comprehensive recent piece about 2024 Britain: the “worst period for wage growth since the Napoleonic wars”; stalled life expectancy; the return of rickets. How can you be “deeply in love” with that?

Because it's my country right or wrong, Emma. 

It’s easy to be charmed by difference, I suppose. When my American friend visited, she got the full baptism of British fire: LNER trains, weather, heart-in-mouth driving on rough, single-lane roads, a bizarre encounter with some Richard III, erm, eccentrics and unwelcoming pubs peopled with ominously silent men. She loved it (except our road collision with a “garbage can”).

What a pity you can't. Or won't. 

Crucially, too, A-list anglophiles can live in a perfect British bubble they have the means to maintain: Ted Lasso’s London of charming stuccoed houses and chirpy pub-goers; country idylls in Cornwall or the Cotswolds. Their 1% experience has little – basically nothing – in common with life for households on the UK’s average income of £32,500.

We are truly in the pit of national despair, understandably, and I wonder if it’s helpful to see through their eyes that there are good bits of Britain: Rob Delaney calling the NHS “the pinnacle of human achievement”, say, or Parker being thrilled by London’s diversity.

I think personally I'd choose very different 'good bits' to those.  

It’s hard not to fixate on how awful everything is, so I appreciate being reminded that there are still things worth fighting for, if only because that is a more productive feeling than hopelessness.

It seems you like to wallow in hopelessness, though.  

Remember When Music Belonged To Everyone?

The beauty of writing a song that revolves around a universal idea is that people feel like it could be theirs: it voices the way they’re feeling.The first time I heard my band Chumbawamba’s hit Tubthumping played at the ground of my local football club, I was standing at the urinal in the toilet underneath the stands, pissing the afternoon away with scores of other blokes, ready for the match. I walked up to my seat and watched people singing along to what had instantly become, in that moment at least, their song.

How nice. A pleasant enough ditty with a repetitive beat. But hardly a great tune that will live forever. Why are we hearing about it now? 

Tubthumping belongs to the guests at the wedding who sing it in celebration. It belongs to the Italian anti-fascists who sing it in defiance on a demonstration. It belongs to cancer patients going through chemotherapy, seeing every successful bout of treatment as a personal victory. I know that all these people have taken the song as theirs, because they write to tell us.

OK, so what are you complaining about? I mean, since this is the 'Guardian' you must be complaining about something.  

But there’s a problem with these universal songs – they can be hijacked by people who clearly don’t understand the spirit in which they were written, and want to use them to aggrandise themselves, or to sell ideas that aren’t universal at all.

Ah. Right.  

Because that’s the thing with songs, with literature, with art, theatre, cinema, with most of the beautiful, creative, cultural things we love – they are very rarely created by those on the political right. The bigots don’t have any good songs of their own.

Are you sure? I mean, in the very same pages we are always reading about how some classic works of the past are really evil right-wing tracts or monuments or institutions produced by blood-soaked right wing demagogues. Even former darlings of the left aren't immune.  

Let me be clear: the song Tubthumping was written to celebrate the resilience and tenacity of working-class folk who keep fighting when the chips are down.

But only if they aren't fighting against having their neighbourhoods and workplaces filled with immigrants, eh, Boff old chum? If that were to happen, you'd be back in the pages of the 'Guardian', squaling that it wasn't written for these working class folk after all.

It has nothing whatsoever in common with wealthy politicians with extremist anti-liberal agendas.

So what? I recall things didn't get better under Blair, in fact, they got worse, so the choice of music reaveals nothing.  

Former Tory prime minister David Cameron listed one of his favourite songs as the Jam’s Eton Rifles which prompted the Jam’s Paul Weller to retort “Which bit didn’t you get? … It wasn’t intended as a fucking jolly drinking song for the cadet corps.” When Cameron also admitted to liking the Smiths, guitarist Johnny Marr said simply: “Stop saying that you like The Smiths, no you don’t. I forbid you to like it.”

Boff thinks this is exposing something about politicians. It's not. It's exposing something about progressive songwriters.  

Giving Them An Inch...

...and they are taking a mile:

Businesses seeking contracts from a London council are being vetted on their commitments to 'LGBT values'.

Camden Council will scrutinise companies and their employees to ensure they hold the appropriate beliefs about issues such as gender and sexuality.

Internal documents from the council sourced through Freedom of Information requests say: 'We are beginning to ask businesses to demonstrate their commitment to LGBTQ+ equality before we procure them.'

That's going to throw a few spanners in the works with Muslim companies, isn't it? Assuming that it applies to all, of course... 

It's No Such Thing...

...and we should frankly welcome it:

Merely to state that biological sex matters could be enough to confer this disgrace.

You might call it a disgrace, we should look on it as a badge on honour. 

Yesterday it was reported that Britain might soon be expelled from the UN's 'Human Rights Council' because our own Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has previously recommended that single-sex spaces should be protected according to a person's physical sex rather than their more nebulous 'gender identity'.

Wait a minute, what value does it hold anyway?

Following complaints against the EHRC from trans-rights groups — including Stonewall — a process has begun that could see the EHRC's ranking by the UN slip below that of comparable organisations in such bastions of liberty as Palestine and Zimbabwe, leaving us on a par with Libya and Venezuela. We would be, in short, a pariah.

*shrugs*

Its 'Human Rights Council', so ready to censure Britain over whether trans women should enter female changing rooms, has members from the notably liberal regimes of China, Cuba and Pakistan. Only a few weeks ago, it appointed Iranian diplomat Ali Bahreini to chair its 'Social Forum' in Geneva. Bahreini is the representative of a savage theocracy that hangs gay people, executes protesters and deploys its squads of moral guardians to beat up women who refuse to wear the burka.

Exactly! Why should we want to belong to a club that has such members anyway? 

'...but I don't think we should change something because one person doesn't agree.'

'There are still some things we need to learn about Danish humour working in the UK.'

Blimey, Morten, it's not just that you need to learn about, it's how the wokies work as well! One person is more than enough, now, I'm afraid.

I don't understand the obsession some diners have with free water in restaurants - you're going out for (probably) a vastly more expensive meal than staying in and cooking, and that's what you choose to quibble about? I hardly bother drinking it anyway, unless it's a scorching hot day. Waiter! The wine list, please...

Bending The Language To Breaking Point...

A former Metropolitan Police officer has been found guilty of sending an offensive racist message following a BBC Newsnight investigation.The court heard that he shared an image in the WhatsApp group in September 2022 that the prosecution described as "grossly offensive".

Was it? Reader, you decide:  

The image showed parrots of different colours and children of different ethnicities. It read: "Why do we cherish the variety of colour in every species except our own?"

And underneath, said: "Because I've never had a bike stolen out of my front yard by a parrot."

Chadwell then sent the message "oops, not too woke", the court heard.

It's not only funny, it's accurate! 

On finding Chadwell guilty, deputy magistrate Tanweer Ikram told the court: "He thought it was funny, but it was grossly offensive, and he was aware of it at the time."

*shakes head sadly* How did we come to this?

So, You're Liars?

The 'Guardian' prints another sob-story by illegal immigrants:

There were 39 of us on the barge, from different countries. We are people escaping torture, persecution and imprisonment.

What, in France? Oh, please! 

We were forced to leave our homes, our jobs and our families, and we hoped to find safety in the UK.

You had safety in France. You left it.  

When we were told we would be moved to the Bibby Stockholm, we became worried, not least because we were warned it was dangerous. However, we are law-abiding and wanted to respect the decision of the authorities.

If you were law abiding, you'd have followed our immigration laws. But you didn't, did you? 

On board, although none of us are criminals, we were constrained by the tight security, and we felt far removed from normal life.

You are all criminal. That's the reason for your removal from normal life.  

The government is putting us against the public, by saying this is your taxpayers’ money being wasted on asylum seekers.

I think you'll find that the public is fully in agreement with the government, for once. 

We feel as if we are being hunted by the Home Office, when all we want now is a system that treats us fairly, a swift interview, a stable future and a voice.

And if that 'swift interview' doesn't grant you the future you want? What then? You'll give up trying to enter the UK illegally? 

Yeah, sure.

Imagine Feeling The Need To Say This..?

The boss of retailer Co-op Food has warned people to not defend shoplifters and that the majority are drug gangsters.

Who on earth is 'defending' shoplifting..? 

Matt Hood, Co-op Food managing director, made the remarks after denying that an uptick in thefts at the retailer's stores was a response to the alleged profiteering by supermarkets during tough times.

Oh, right. Of course! I should have known...

In comments made to the Telegraph, he said that the reason for the slew of thefts was mainly because shoplifters use baby formula 'to cut drugs'. The grocer has recorded its highest levels of crime in the six months to June, seeing almost 1,000 incidents a day. This marks a 35 per cent increase year-on-year.

And it helps if the government has a handy scapegoat to deflect attention from their own lack of competence to deal with such issues as rampant crime caused by lazy cops, doesn't it? 

Many, including the Government, have accused the grocery sector of 'greedflation' over the past 12 months as consumers tighten their belts amid the cost-of-living pressures.

Any, errr, evidence of this so-called 'greedflation'..? 

Despite some supermarkets being accused of ripping their shoppers off, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has said it has not found any evidence of profiteering in the industry.

Didn't think so... 

Mair Godley, Useful Idiot...

Mair Godley is distressed for both the asylum seekers and residents about the situation all have found themselves in without having any choice in the matter.

Actually, Mair, they did have a choice. They could have stayed in France... 

She said: “We are all dumbfounded by the speed with which this has happened. The Home Office don’t seem to understand that this is not just about us, it’s about two communities of human beings, both as important as each other.

But only one community which has the right to be here, Mair... 

“We have asked the guards on the base if we can talk to the asylum seekers but they just say no, we have to ask the Home Office. We want to find a way to bring the two communities together. The Home Office has made this place look like a stalag.”

Rather approprite, then, Mair. Since stalags were used to house prisoners of war. And a war is undoubtedly what we're in. And every war, it seems, has to have its Quislings...