Whenever we lose one, the "sphere" loses far more than a vlogger or tweeter/gabber ... it loses that man or woman's personal space, his/her home and please wipe your feet before entering.
The last one is still this side of the Styx, as we are ... for how much longer will any of us be about, to be maudlin about it? Personally, I avoid funerals and weddings like the plague, I might not even send anything ... probably won't. It's truly not disrespect ... it's just too close for comfort.
I knew Mark from his own site and briefly at OoL, plus he's a Scriblerus ... that's in present tense as no one passing over leaves Scriblerus, you have to get out before. 😎
Politically, he and I did not see eye to eye on many things but as Mr. Hall says below, he was quite a guy, as a person. He'll be badly missed, sadly missed, by many. RIP Mark.
Suella Braverman has made her first trip to Rwanda as home secretary amid criticism that the Guardian, other liberal newspapers and the BBC have been shut out from the publicly funded visit.
Charity Freedom from Torture labelled it a “showboat trip” after it emerged that the Guardian, the BBC, the Daily Mirror, the Independent and the i newspaper were not invited.
Sonya Sceats, chief executive at Freedom from Torture, described the policy as a “cash-for-humans” scheme.“Following the outpouring of support for Gary Lineker and his compassionate stand on behalf of refugees, this government knows it is on the back foot and is once again ramping up the cruelty to distract from their own failures.”
I'm sure that's what you'd like to think. I bet you haven't asked anyone outside your own circle what they think though, have you?
But then again, there is one way the public is certainly served by this spectacle. He did draw up these laws; he did needlessly send the police after tens of thousands of people. So it’s not just right but important that politicians end up ensnared in the traps they set for others. So next time a Prime Minister intends to abridge the liberty of millions, they may remember the scenes of the Boris trial and pause.
Listening to the ridiculous wrangling over the minutiae of the rules almost provokes sympathy for Boris Johnson – until you remember those caught up in just-as-ridiculous laws which he imposed and decided to criminalise.
The woman handcuffed for queuing for a coffee shop.
The young woman from Pontypool fined £2,000 after visiting a home to support a friend who had fled an abusive relationship.
The man fined for having driven too far to go fishing.
Parents in Broxborne fined for letting their child have a sleepover with a friend.
The Horncastle pensioners fined for eating a bag of chips in a laundrette.
The Spectator was arguing for some time that the Covid rules should be decriminalised and reduced to guidance. No. 10 had very little to lose by calling off the cops. I wonder if, by now, Johnson is starting to wish that he had done so.
I could personally add scenes of hysteria at ASDA and Morrisons … the former where I’d taken three loo roll packs of nine when there was no sign saying I could not (they put the sign up during this dispute and a customer defended me, I gave her one of the packs, they said that that was illegal and I was acting criminally, colluding with my “accomplice” I’d never met before) … the latter where staff management were called because I’d stood 5’6” away from the person ahead in the checkout queue and had given management a piece of my mind as standing at 6 feet would have put my trolley halfway across the walkway, blocking other customers.
Look, I’d said … I’d had a personal discussion with the virus itself which had agreed to waive the 6 inches just this once, as long as I’d not do it again.
“No,” they’d wailed, “that’s the rule!”
“And rulez iss rulez, ja, und vill be obeyed at all times!”
Or more vitally … May and Boris both colluding to not bring in Brexit at all but instead this criminal Withdrawal “Agreement” connivance with the EU who should no longer have had any say in UK matters.
...nobody knows where ENO will be in a year’s time. In November, Arts Council England (ACE) announced it was axing ENO’s £12.6m annual grant unless the company moved wholesale out of London, throwing in the idea of Manchester as a possible destination, but without backing this up with any sort of plan or research. January brought a temporary reprieve, but a move out of London by 2026 is still demanded.
So..?
“There is fear in the whole UK opera world when you look at that 30% loss of funding and the effect on talent, innovation, accessibility and the future of the art form.
They've suggested Manchester, not Mars.
“It’s bigger than ENO. The reason why you have internationally renowned UK talent is because they have come through an ecosystem that supports artists at every stage. Taking ENO out of that ecosystem is devastating. I fear we are losing a whole generation of talent who cannot be sustained in this country.”
If they are really talented, they'll go to you. You don't need to go to them. Isn't that what talent does?
Started by Microdave, further torn apart by Ripper:
Lithium is highly reactive when exposed to the atmosphere and has to be stored in a vacuum, or an inert liquid/atmosphere. It contains all the ingredients to self sustain fire, and will continue to reignite as long as it is exposed. The only way to properly extinguish a lithium fire is to completely submerge it in water. The most common cause of battery fire is thermal runaway - when one cell goes it heats the others around it and causes a chain reaction.
Lithium EV batteries will not accept charge below freezing, the battery has to be heated before charging can begin. The range is significantly reduced in low ambient temperatures, and they become dangerous if over charged.
Rock said he has spent two months in prison over similar protests, and felt “traumatised” by it, adding that he was worried he would “have a complete mental breakdown” if he were jailed again.
The defendants also mentioned the impact the campaign had had on their friend Xavier Gonzalez-Trimmer, who killed himself after spending time in prison over an Insulate Britain protest.
Pritchard said: “He was a brave, gentle and caring human being who could see the future we were facing and was desperate to do something about it, and now he’s dead.”
… which is (the second one), mine host taking down that post for violating little creatures from Alpha Centauri or whatever. And what was it about? It was about the NHS, something flooding the net right now, from Grandpa’s posts to hundreds from across Britain and around the world, about all sorts of malpractice, spike proteins etc.
This constant censorship across all platforms is one aspect of it … the other being the medical question itself. I wrote, at our place, on this censorship:
Our onus is that … within a time period of some weeks around the breaking of an issue, we have to stack up evidence we can find from sources most of us accept in order to form a view on it, we go through that process, then some new issues take over, end of that topic.
This blog runs 6 or 7 posts per page, a bit under one day’s worth. It’s quite reasonable that we should back up an opinion formed during this time frame of a couple of weeks, say. But the onus stops there.
Blogs are not archives in the light of the attrition rate … blogs themselves are lost, the platform sneakily removes posts and links, vlog urls etc. Two or three weeks is a fair time frame, not much longer. Yes, there exist search and wayback but even they can’t deal with lost posts … removed posts I’m talking about.
This latter point, of attrition, need not be weeks … it can be days, usually after the item has dropped off the front page. For example, I wrote a fair bit, yesterday, about some woke charity banning the words mother, youth and headquarters … though why the last one I’m still trying to work out.
It was definitely blogged on … can I find it now? No way.
Minor thing but they all add up. Then there’s the vocabulary:
Which comes back to the globo-Woke indoctrination in schools, which crosses into medicine, which crosses into Andrew Bridgen in parlmt, which crosses into silly Mr. Cooke and Leggy.
Which crosses into all of us caught in the ordure from a small number who see themselves as elite above.
I have always been a Sceptic when it comes to predictions, even when the people making those predictions say that their words are backed by Science. I mean, when a politician climbs on to the Climate Bandwagon, and claims that we’re all going to die because of our way of life, because we’re producing lots of Carbon Dioxide; through things like heating our homes, driving efficient and safe petrol and diesel cars, getting our weekly shop from supermarkets, who of course use petrol and diesel trucks to get stocked up with those same shopping items. Not forgetting the most efficient methods of generating electricity are either coal, gas fired turbines generation, combined cycle comprising gas turbines plus (waste heat powered) steam turbine to alternator.
So, the ‘Greenies’ determine that the ice is going to melt in the Arctic, and the Antarctic, all because of that nasty Carbon Dioxide warming the planet, and piling up the melted water. So we all have to pay huge amounts of cash to subsidise hundreds of gigantic windmills turning electric generators, all of which are supposed to replace all those nasty CO2-generating power stations which are supposed to be hastening the end of the world. Along, of course, with covering ever-expanding millions of acres of arable land with solar cells, all of which are then connected to substations and then on into the grid. Not many of the people who glorify and push both wind and solar cells are truthful enough to admit that both systems have major drawbacks: namely if the wind doesn’t blow, or the sun doesn’t shine, like at night, it would take a first class miracle to make them generate electricity.
Not many people outside of the world of ships and cargo transportation know of the huge costs being imposed upon ALL major shipping lines, in order to appease the great Gods of Climate Change. Because the lobbying from the various crazed Global Warming clowns has been successful, all major shipbuilding companies, in places like Japan, South Korea and China have bowed to the pressure, and fitted CO2 scrubbing equipment, at a huge cost, to ships flagged all over the world. The big shipbuilders have also required their engine builders to make both new and existing ship engines to accept ‘Dual Fuel’, accommodating such diverse fuels such as methanol, bio-diesel, ammonia and hydrogen.
The ship-builders and shipping companies, acting as one, have said they have absorbed the costs, but in actual fact, the costs have been retrieved by placing or charging extra for delivery of a tanker, or a huge container ship, and then by the shipping companies charging extra to move that eighty-five percent of the world’s traded goods to their destination. So when you look at a supermarket shelf, and compare prices to those of even five-odd years ago, that substantial price rise isn’t only because of the nation’s inflation, its because of the higher charges due to shipping those goods, whatever they may be: because the shipping companies have seen the costs THEY have been landed with, and have passed on those same charges and costs to the companies who import those goods which are now displayed on those supermarket shelves.
So, I would state that I am proud to be a Climate Denier, proud that I have not been taken in by the lies, by the pseudo-science, by the John Kerrys and the Obama’s; and by the autistic blurtings of Greta bloody Thunberg!
I do so wish that there were more commentators such as the truly estimable Tucker Carlson.
A widower who lost his wife after she was knocked down by an e-scooter has been left 'furious' after the teenager driver was spared jail.
As anyone would be...
The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty to causing death by driving a vehicle otherwise than in accordance with a licence, and to causing death by driving a vehicle while uninsured.
He was handed down a 12-month referral order and banned from driving for five years at Nottingham youth court.
But for Mr Davis, the sentence was not enough.
It could be said that no sentence would ever be enough, but...
Since 2019, there have been 31 deaths involving e-scooters in the UK, according to the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS).
Mostly of the idiots choosing to ride them. Mostly...
Detective Constable Emma Temple, of Nottinghamshire Police, said: 'This tragic case shows how vitally important it is for people to fully understand the laws and implications of riding e-scooters and where they can be used.
'This was a completely avoidable collision. This boy now has to live with the knowledge that his actions that day resulted in the death of a much-loved woman.'
He's a teenager irresponsible enough to get on it in the first place, so I'm betting he's had few sleepless nights, Emma.
… and he can shirley be allowed to claim that the Farage factor was immense … nevertheless, using a pratty slogan associated with him as Chief Marshall was always going to invite this:
… especially as his personal acolytes Annabelle Fuller and Lizzy Vaid were so visible to the UK and beyond. Make no mistake … I voted for them and probably might again if they can first get rid of the Hamilton cabal, also people such as Evans (Carswell walked).
Nige was certainly THE factor, make no mistake, but a series of errors did for him. One was not latching onto the Tories knowing, by 11 p.m. in the GE in South Thanet, almost exactly the final margin of defeat for Nige, when the ballot boxes were not due to be opened until around 2 a.m.
I’m not saying Nige has a Messiah complex, nor James O’Keefe but both show signs of reacting to martyrdom and resurrection in a dismaying way. It’s never just you, chaps, it’s your gatekeepers and image makers … just observe the Donald and McCarthy/Ryan/Pence.
Anyone of any note, any talent, in any field, gets the admiration and sycophancy … the question is when does one become the other? In music … remember John Fogerty and the litigation? I’m with JF there but it still happened.
In the 60s was also Crispian St Peters (note the surname):
I disagree with Tina Turner about needing another hero … we do need one … and imho, it’s better that it be a self-effacing but determined (and maybe even a Godly) man of talent who listens and heeds, rather than one who has succumbed to the adulation and is on a personal crusade, letting everyone know, over and over, just how much he, personally, has done.
At least Crispian St Peters was not leading those kids to a kiddies’ drag show where he displays his unremarkable phallus.
