Platinum report: Devon crime capital Torquay

CrimeRate says: 

"Torquay is the most dangerous medium-sized town in Devon, and is the second most dangerous overall out of Devon's 430 towns, villages, and cities.

"The overall crime rate in Torquay in 2020 was 101 crimes per 1,000 people. This compares poorly to Devon's overall crime rate, coming in 49% higher than the Devon rate of 51 per 1,000 residents."

The most common crimes in Torquay are violence and sexual offences, with 2,417 offences during 2020, giving a crime rate of 47. This is 7 per cent lower than 2019's figure of 2,579 offences and a difference of 3.18 from 2019's crime rate of 51. 

Torquay's least common crime is bicycle theft, with 26 offences recorded in 2020, an increase of 23 per cent from 2019's figure of 20 crimes.

Hmmmm, I'd like to see the ethnic stats for Torquay and surrounds. Also from Devon Live:

Torquay is the place where the chav culture originated. The people who are lucky to escape the ghetto often find themselves struggling in the real world outside of Torquay. 15 Dec 2017

Do British seaside resorts attract the dregs of society?

https://unherd.com/2019/04/why-lifes-no-beach-by-the-seaside/

The donkey rides, carousels and pink sticks of rock hide a multitude of problems. In Blackpool, a process of ‘regeneration’ has started, in an attempt to drag the town into the 21stcentury. The plan, according to locals, is to give Blackpool a “dynamic feel”. Hundreds of millions of pounds has been spent jazzing up the promenade along the famous ‘golden mile’.

White light in gaudy surrounds ... right, gotcha.  I also read that Britain's seaside towns will have to "diversify".  Ah, compound the problem, eh?

Aren't Schools Already Little Activist Factories..?

...decolonising the curriculum isn’t about burning copies of Macbeth, or chucking Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations in the bin. It’s not even about only studying writers from marginalised identities.

Says who? Why, says Nadeine Asbali, a secondary school teacher in London. And I guess she should know, eh, Reader?

As a mixed-race English teacher who believes strongly in diversifying the English syllabus, for me, it’s about re-examining the lens through which we view canonical texts in the first place – shifting it to become more critical, more aware of the systemic forces at play both within and around a text.

So much of Shakespeare is about power: who holds it and who doesn’t and why.

I wonder who it is that doesn't, in the gospel according to Nadeine? 

Decolonising the study of Shakespeare is to take these questions one step further, removing them from the text and applying them to the world around us. To teach students, through literature, to challenge the status quo.

What..? 

Call me a biased English teacher, but literature is the perfect medium for this.

I really don't need to call you anything, do I? You're doing a fine job there all by yourself... 

Unless you’ve experienced it, it’s hard to put into words how it feels to meet yourself in a book for the first time.

That's not why people read books, is it, Nadeine? Not ordinary people, anyway. 

I want to read about international spies, buccaneers on the high seas, daring spaceship pilots, FBI agents catching killers... I don't want to read about a middle aged middle class woman going to work in an office every day. 

The first time I did, I was an A-level student faced with Othello, whose contested “Moorish” background was the closest to my north African heritage I’d ever encountered on the page. And who did I meet? A man whose violence was likened to a wild beast and whose race rendered him a savage, a danger to white women.

Did...did you get to the end of the play, Nadeine? Because, ummm, no spoilers, but... 

The Gender Garbage which is haunting many lives

 I would like to discuss with you today a thorny issues. Thorny because, to at least this slightly perplexed old Englishman, it is an arranged and nonsensical argument, proposed and supported by those left-wing individuals who are trying, and in many cases succeeding, to alter the very balance of civilised life in these worrying times.

I talk of course of the Gender argument, and of those attempts to push a drug-sought change to many children, who, as they approach puberty, are given very little help regarding their worries, suppositions and true concerns regarding the progression of their bodies in a sexual manner. 

The Left, which is not normally as united as in this, are pushing for a universal adoption of the belief that a person can either change their gender, or adopt another by just stating so, and expecting everybody else to accept that this is their new ‘Status Quo’. They then extend this to announce that a woman can have a penis, and of course the accompanying genitalia, because a ‘Man’ has suddenly commenced believing that he is a ‘woman’; or is cis-genderl, or any other combination of the absurd.

We see the fruits of this idiocy with the so-called 'Trans' woman who used to call herself a man, because, folks, that was what he (she) is and how he was born. A strapping six-foot odd man with broad shoulders, a muscular body and trained to a peak, suddenly states that he is now 'her', and starts swimming, and of course winning, in female races. The reality is pictured in him (her) standing on the podium, dwarfing the five-foot four females whom he (she) defeated.

There are only two sexes, male and female, man and woman: Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. As we have developed over the tens of millenia, evolution has determined that men are more muscular, broad-shouldered and athletic, sufficient to the age-old task of the Hunter, the provider and the defender, the giver of life: whilst women are slighter, more rounded in physiology, and their secondary sexual signalling, such as rounded breasts and a curvy figure, states that they are ready to make the children which is the true course of that same evolution, in receiving and nurturing that life.

Viewer will note that I make no mention of the abberation which is homosexuality. Despite the massed political ‘bent’ lobby which has long sought for, and proclaimed  ‘acceptance’; to me they are all perversions of the one true act, which can be only for the procreation of children.

Politicians should be wary of pandering to any of the cabals which preach the existence of the numbers of so-call ‘genders’ reaching towards one hundred. More so should they control, absolutely, the practices and indeed the very existence of clinics and the ‘medical practitioners within, which pushes experimental drugs, hormone treatments etc. into prepubescent children, who have no idea of the Frankenstein nature of the treatments so cavalierly employed upon their trusting bodies.

The failures of govt

As Fahrenheit 211 writes:

There has been no proper action against levels of immigration that clearly need, both for economic and social cohesion reasons, to be reduced. There has been no moves to protect or enhance the speech rights of British subjects, the government’s energy policy has been revealed to be a castle built on shifting sands and the public sector is as unreformed and as disgracefully wasteful as ever it was.

But there’s another area where the Government has spoken the words that many of us want to hear but have then proceeded to do little or nothing about the subject they’ve pontificated about. In this area, that of gender identity politics, the Government have quite rightly stood up and acknowledged that the Cult of Trans has gone too far. 

The Government was presented, over the course of years, with comprehensive and irrefutable evidence that young people, in particular young women, suffering from what are mental health conditions that manifest in gender identity issues, were being hastily rushed into embarking on medical and surgical procedures that would mutilate and sterilise them.

The flaw in the stats

This latest Daily Sceptic article is a serious one, approached in a sober and rational manner, charts all over the place ... but there's at least one serious flaw in its first paragraph [I coloured it green below] ... through no fault of the chap himself.

Some people are killed, or die early, due to the Covid vaccines. But how many? In an earlier article I analysed U.K. death data, adjusting them to allow for mortality displacement and the absence of flu to estimate that around 23,000 people may have died due to the vaccines. This was similar to an estimate arrived at separately using fatal Yellow Card reports and assuming an under-reporting factor of 10.

The New Puritanism...

Looks remarkably like the old one, doesn't it?

How the media communicates about climate breakdown reflects and shapes how societies engage with the issue. Behind every picture that makes it into the news is a person mirroring and perpetuating how society thinks about climate breakdown.

That it's not always a terrible, terrible thing that we must expend precious resources on trying to change? 

Our new research, led by the University of Exeter...

Another uttely pointless bit of 'research' that could be axed if only we had a truly conservative government... 

...highlights a distinct problem with how the European media visually represents news of extreme heat.

I hate heatwaves personally. But some people love them. Go figure! 

News media can picture heatwave visuals differently, though. The Dutch outlet Algemeen Dagblad produced visual stories of the reality of living with extreme heat. When they pictured a young family, they weren’t queueing for an ice-cream on a benign sunny day, but at home in front of a fan, looking visibly uncomfortable.

Could be me! 

We want to be clear that this isn’t a call to the media to redact all images of people enjoying the beach on a hot day...

But you would if you thought you could get away with it, wouldn't you? 

You can't tax or spend your way out of crisis, Mr. Govt

Not the most fabulous time we're in, currently.  The TPA report is but one aspect:

"Lower taxes boost the economy, letting people spend where they see fit. You can’t tax your way to higher growth, and you can’t spend your way out of an inflation crisis."

The big taxpayer news this week was a series of support measures announced by the chancellor in an effort to tackle the cost of living crisis. It's fair to say at the TPA we were less than impressed by Rishi's plans.

His energy grant and one-off payment for some households amount to little more than the government taking with one hand and giving with the other. Taxes are the single biggest bill families face and these huge handouts will see politicians hoovering up the incomes of struggling taxpayers.

There is this to note also:

http://www.cityunslicker.co.uk/2022/05/sunaks-package-lots-bad-anything-good.html

Anderson v Bray

Nice little contretemps shaping up:

https://churchmousec.wordpress.com/2022/05/27/red-wall-mps-lee-anderson-part-2/

Beware the Krankenhaus

... oder Hüten Sie sich vor dem Krankenhaus. Was looking at a post by Fahrenheit in which he takes David Kurten to task over this poxy thing. Better to look at it than I try to explain.

There's a certain amount of this suggested about armchair or keyboard 'experts':

Fahrenheit may or may not be wrong, we're also pumping out commentary on it from outside sources, you also are going to your trusted sources.  Thing is, we can only go by what our 'journals' we choose to consult say, just as doctors do when not ordered by the globobureaucrat admins to think a certain way and treat accordingly, those replacing medical ethics as the guiding force in, say, the NHS.

That's the state of the war at the globo-bojo-carrie level above, which witholds treatments on whim, while the outer limits of investigative thought shows evidence that those bstds really are trying to kill us off for Klaus.

Cranking this down to personal health level, there are certain people of an age, let's say, who are suffering the ravages of anno domini, as we all must.

As for me, I'm essentially holding up, give or take some down days and mornings, which I put down to said prayer, general robustness, genes, a health regime high on nutrients, modest exercise and sunlight, plus staying busy and enjoying close friends and blog cameraderie.  Plus a bloodyminded curmudgeonliness which does let off steam.  You have your own methods and well done.

Zeroing in on treatments ... this bloody covid c**p is affecting them bizarrely, with medicos themselves, not just govts, imposing the most stoopid constraints on the undeathjabbed, in real time and in real situations, face to face with doctor clinic staff and the entire krankenhaus set up.  

Hence that subheading above ... beware the krankenhaus.  Not only are they slaves to pharma, they're under duress to kill off the elderly with DNRs, plus they're houses of sickness anyway.  I have the same view of care homes.

My feeling is that, whilst there's no place for hysteria, there's very much a place for trusted sources which should be kept abreast of, but those in themselves are being suppressed online all over the west.  Methinks our only chance is keeping an open mind, neither endorsing Kurten nor Fahrenheit but noting and filing, remembering, always keeping up with developments, sticking to remedies which have served us well so far, including old wives tales which seem to hold up.

Further:

Our correspondent DAD has sent:

The 16 runners who collapsed during the Brooklyn Half Marathon on Saturday, including the man who died, were all fully jabbed for Covid-19. {It was an entry requirement }

https://newspunch.com/all-16-runners-who-collapsed-and-runner-who-died-at-brooklyn-half-marathon-were-fully-jabbed/

The Decline Of Personal Responsibility Accelerates...

In a landmark case that has deep implications for other higher education institutions, the parents of Natasha Abrahart successfully sued the University of Bristol under the Equality Act.

Abrahart, 20, a physics undergraduate who suffered from severe social anxiety, died a day before she was due to give a “terrifying” oral exam in front of teachers and fellow students.

Shouldn't oral exams be expected to be a part of university life? 

Her parents sued the university under the Equality Act for not taking reasonable care of their daughter’s wellbeing, health and safety, arguing it did not do enough to help her despite staff knowing she had a disability and was struggling deeply.

In a judgment issued on Friday at Bristol county court, judge Alex Ralton said: “There can be no doubt that there was direct discrimination, especially once the university knew or should have known that a mental health disability of some sort was preventing Natasha from performing.”

So, the wicked university did nothing to help her? Hmmm, not quite. 

But not enough, according to her parents, who seem to have expected the university to accommodate their daughter, and not their daughter to accommodate the requirements of her chosen subject: 

Abrahart said his daughter struggled to speak to people she did not know, particularly people in positions of authority.

“Expecting Natasha to take part in oral assessments was like expecting a student in a wheelchair to take an exam in a room at the top of a long flight of stairs.”

Except it isn't. The student can be provided with an exam in a ground floor, but still has to take the exam. 

And the university did offer alternatives:

“Our staff’s efforts also included offering alternative options for Natasha’s assessments to alleviate the anxiety she faced about presenting her laboratory findings to her peers.

“Given the significant impact this decision could have on how all higher education providers support their students, we are reviewing the decision carefully, including whether to appeal.”

Maybe on appeal, we'll find out why those offered alternatives weren't deemed suitable, because it's not explicit in this article: 

The university has argued that it had tried to offer Abrahart alternatives to the oral presentation.

But the judge observed that, “whilst a few ideas” regarding possible adjustments were “floated” by the university, “none were implemented”.

Why not? Is it because she turned them down? It would be good to know, wouldn't it?