Deliberately unreachable targets

The whole thing, imho, is deliberately unattainable … they know it full well and are deliberately doing it for that reason.

Or as Neil Oliver puts it:

Another Boris 'Big Idea' Bites The Dust...

Plans for a ban on gay conversion therapy look set to be ditched amid government concerns about the potential unintended consequences.

Boris Johnson pledged to ban the discredited practice during the 2019 election campaign, but the process has been mired in delay.

Gosh, why is yet another Boris promise biting the dust? Well... 

Some ministers are said to be concerned that the ban could have 'unintended consequences' for parents and teachers dealing with trans children. Campaigners have warned that a badly-worded ban could leave teachers open to court action if they tell children not to use opposite-sex toilets or prevent boys competing in girls' sport.

Heh! I do so love unforseen consequences!  

Earlier this week, the Scottish government postponed a ban on conversion therapy amid warnings it could criminalise parents who question their child's wish to change gender.

Holyrood had promised to publish legislation by the end of 2023, but it was dropped from a new programme for government - the Scottish version of the King's Speech.

Listen, if even the bonkers Scottish government is calling a halt, it's time to admit it was never a starter in the first place.  

Please attribute, please also scrutinise your listening, reading and watching

There’s been a bit of to and fro and I’ll include two here today:

1.  Attribution:

We do communicate, you know … which is stating the bleedin’ obvious to fellow bloggers, vloggers, tweeters, gabbers, readers, watchers, listeners.  But honestly … there really is a thing called netiquette … we really do keep an eye on things.

2.  Typical M25 bubble radio with a real bellend:

I really do like that type of feisty lady … I’d love a chance to race in on my charger and rescue her but she’d probably eat any attacker for breakfast first. Some you need to watch, they can Ambush you like a Predator and you’d not know till it was over.

Except There's No Such Rush...

The rush to electric cars will blow a £9billion black hole in the public purse by 2030, ministers were warned yesterday.

What rush? Private buyers aren't convinced! 

Experts said fuel duty receipts would fall by around this much because of the Government's 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars. Electric cars are also currently exempt from road tax, which is projected to cost the public finances hundreds of millions of pounds more.

Did anyone really believe the government would give that up? Really? 

It will pile pressure on ministers to come clean about whether they will introduce new road taxes to plug the hole and about the true cost of going electric.

Why? We know whatever they say will be a lie... 

Peers were also told that the 2030 cliff-edge could be counter-productive in terms of reducing carbon emissions because drivers may buy fossil fuel cars ahead of the deadline and hold onto them.

Incentives matter! They drive behaviour. How many times do we need to learn this lesson? 

If you speak only facts, then mine can never be more than speculative opinion … according to Woke globo psycho

“That’s your opinion,” is the standard retort but our enemies use an august, considered, teaching manner to state annotated “facts” with the stamp of approval by the “factcheckers” such as the exploded Snopes or these days Politico or WaPo or the Guardian or “Independent”.

Anything outside the globo-psycho Woke narrative must, by definition, be at best opinion, probably far right and therefore to be ignored.

https://www.thelibertybeacon.com/how-fact-checking-obliterates-truth/

As an editor once said to me: “Just because someone says something doesn’t mean you have to put it in the paper.” If the media followed this one simple rule, there would be no need for “fact-checking” at all.

But the media does not and will not follow this rule because printing lies – as long as they are said by a government official the media likes or about an official they don’t like – is now an integral part of the industry.

Many of us first saw this in operation, internationally, at the “debate” preceding the 2016 Presidential election, where a clearly biased Anderson Cooper, with the earpiece in the ear, started referring to some external “fact checker” sitting in judgement. Hang on … a died in the wool Demrat sits in judgement about “truth” with one of the participants the Clinton crime family?

One of the rules was the two candidates were not to go outside the hall to confer at the break … Clinton was filmed out in the corridor … one of so many abuses which are far easier for an unsuspecting audience to see in 2023 than back in 2016.

Another … and the last one in this post, lest it become intolerably long, is the way the lexicon, the terms used, are always forced on the normies by one side, never the naive other. Why?

How many of you use the term “gay” these days instead of sodomite? Both are loaded, one though is hard and offensive, the other lying by diminution offensive. That whole scene is anything but gay and happy. 

But worse is that the language is hijacked and it takes great vigilance not to engage with the manic prejudice implicitly embedded in their projections. Even making fun of their idiotic terminology legitimises it.

The Audi Connection...

A father whose disabled son was hit and killed as he attempted to cross a motorway in the aftermath of a crash has admitted to his manslaughter.

Matthew Rycroft had been drinking with family throughout the day before driving off in his Audi Q5, with his 12-year-old son, Callum, as a passenger. While driving, the 36-year-old crashed off an M62 slip exit road for the Hartshead Moor Services, in West Yorkshire.

Moments later, Callum and his father attempted to cross the motorway, in what prosecutors described as "reckless folly".

Why is it always an Audi lately..? 

The son of former Rangers boss Ally McCoist should be the only person to settle a £244,000 claim over his dangerous driving, a judge has ruled.

Lord Menzies said Mr McCoist should not be required to pay any of the settlement sought by insurer Aviva following the incident involving his son Argyll seven years ago.The firm had claimed Mr McCoist, 60, was also liable because he failed to do enough to stop uninsured Argyll from driving an Audi A1.

See?! 

And more to the point, where does responsibility for what your child does end?

Novaxx the Joker

Affinity … that thing we feel with someone who has had similar experiences … except I didn’t, exactly … but I well could have, had I been put upon, as Novaxx had:

https://dailysceptic.org/2023/09/13/novak-djokovic-stuck-it-to-the-two-countries-who-locked-him-out/

I’m referring here to his determination to do it his way, not cheating, yet never, ever drawing the crowds like pretty boys Nadal and Federer.  (You detect some stick in there … you’d better believe it.)

“Why, Novak, why?” asked Amol Rajan in a BBC interview, struggling to comprehend how the man in front of him could place a decision to remain unvaccinated above a tilt at tennis immortality. For Djokovic, it was not an either/or equation. 

He was already an all-time great by the time it became fashionable to pillory him as a dastardly anti-vaxxer. He could afford to wait out the moral panic of the pandemic and see how the pieces fell. It was, to judge by the renewed clarity of purpose with which he has returned, a shrewd calculation.

For Djokovic derives strength from knowing that he has not given an inch to his detractors.

I understand the Joker very well, as my path has also seen obstacles strewn in the path, obstacles with not the slightest doubt created specifically so someone else would go through and in fact, I can put a date on mine … where I was passed over for officer training school and turned into a parade ground NCO … some readers will know what I mean. Fine, perhaps it suited my character, manner, better to be barking at some squaddy: “You ’orrible li’l man!”

But someone had then put a spanner in the works they’d had planned and I got the cursory nod, miracles do occur, no explanation for the higher-ups’ passing-over in the first place. If I told you my path since then, a grind all the way … well one day I was sent for evaluation and the lady and I had a long talk, after which she reported that I was perfectly normal. 

Sorry to say but (cough) she wasn’t (er) completely right on that … like groucho, I’d not join a club which accepted me … see, meeting those kind of experiences all the way where you’re the wrong side of the tracks, m’lad, with a manner which is far from gruntled, with this nasty habit of seeing bollox spoken and done and calling it out, maybe a bit too intense for most people … well I can feel great sympathy, empathy with Novaxx.

“I wouldn’t say that it was easy,” he smiled. “But people love comeback stories. They motivate me.”

Right, Novaxx, right, all power to you, sir, Mr. Unfashionable.

One supervisor in one workplace was struggling to find something positive to write in my appraisal and he said he admired my determination. Yeah right. But then I thought … that’s not a bad thing to be remembered for. And here’s my fave tennis player doing just that … inspirational.

Here’s something I’ve run a few times and here it is again … it was written about OoL by the way:

“How many people are actually still reading this post and for that matter, how many saw my name and immediately turned away?”  Superb levels of self awareness.  Just to add, I generally find your posts on here to be amongst my least favourite and amongst those I agree with least, however, that shouldn’t stop one reading them.

This post, however, was absolutely excellent and had I been amongst those who just ignore posts by those with whom I disagree I would be diminished by that wilful ignorance.  Keep it up James, like I said, even though I largely disagree, that in no way diminishes the value you get from writing or I get from reading your posts.  [Reader Steve W] 

It hurt me to see the treatment the Joker got at Wimbledon this year. I’m currently on a training course dominated by women, as so often happens and one lady was enthused by the final coming up … she hoped the “right” person would win, the one they could all get behind.

“Ah, the Joker,” said I. “A great player indeed.”

Utter silence at the other end. She changed the subject … we spoke about food but it was clear I’d committed the unpardonable sin.

So be it. If antivaxx is a sin, if supporting the unfashionable guy is a sin, if refusing to play the game their way, if calling them out is a sin, if holding a pariah position on certain topics is a sin … then I’m delighted to be a miserable sinner.

The Donald is too, in the eyes of the great and good … let the game proceed. 🍿🍿🍿

"Siri, Why Do People Shun Public Transport?"

"Here's something I found online..."

A row has broken out after a rail passenger was allegedly threatened with being reported to police due to the smell of his feet.

Ugh! 

Joe Mason said he had been 'victimised, humiliated and made to feel like a second class citizen' by a member of Southern Rail staff after taking his shoes off on a train. Southern Rail said it was investigating the incident but denied these claims.

The picture of him in the paper is somewhat telling, I feel... 

"I attempted to explain that I had a medical condition that results in my feet blistering and that removing my shoe helped to ease my pain.

"The Southern Railway staff member then told me I was lying and even threatened to get the transport police if I did not put on my shoe."

Quite right too! 

Dogs

Julia does a fair bit on dogs (less on cyclists of late) and I confess I don’t know a lot about the topic … what we’re meant to be against, whether they’re on leads etc.

Anyway, here’s Laura Perrins on the issue:

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/ban-the-owners-not-just-the-danger-dogs/

But the critical question is just why do people feel the need to own dogs that pose a risk to others? My guess is that the threat, the risk, is the point. This unspoken yet obvious threat is exactly the reason many people choose to own these and other menacing-looking dogs.

These owners are always the ones to tell you that their dogs are lovable furry creatures who ‘are always around their own children’ (poor kids). But we all know why you own them: it’s the implicit threat that gives you the thrill. Unfortunately for the rest of us, these people walk amongst us.

And their dogs are walking or running right beside them, often not even on leads.

My first thought is the same for other species which pose a significant threat - deathculters, illegals, those ones we’re not amount to mention but they’re in every bloody advert today … violent, to be avoided at all costs.

As for the dad avenging his daughter … article of faith, innit? Dad’s can exact whatever they wish from the perps. So what’s with this “pardon” bullsh?

Oh, Canada...Again!

The country has set aside billions of dollars in compensation and declared a 'cultural genocide' in the treatment of indigenous children who were taken away from their families and placed at the schools for much of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Teams using ground-penetrating radar claim to have found mass graves in the last two years containing the remains of more than 1,000 children who were buried in secret.

Haven't we been here before, a bit closer to home? 

Reader, yes we have:  

Doubts are growing about the scale of historic abuse at Canada's notorious residential schools for indigenous children after a dig at one of the country's most high-profile sites uncovered no bodies.

Will it change minds now, then? Why, no. No, of course not! 

'People believe things that are not true or improbable and they continue to believe it even when no evidence turns up,' said Tom Flanagan, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Calgary.

'People seem to double down on their conviction that something happened.'

And many people are now owed an apology they won't, of course, get: 

James McCrae, Manitoba's former attorney general, resigned from a government panel in May after his skepticism infuriated some indigenous groups.

'The evidence does not support the overall gruesome narrative put forward around the world for several years, a narrative for which verifiable evidence has been scarce, or non-existent,' he wrote.

The (profitable) bandwagon must roll on, even when the wheels come off...