Not 'Misguided' - Call Them What They Were: 'Incompetent'....

...and sack them. We'll all be safer without them.

Security minister Dan Jarvis said ‘there was sufficient risk for the perpetrator to have been managed through Prevent’, adding: ‘There are serious questions about how various agencies failed to identify and collectively act on the warning signs.’ Southport MP Patrick Hurley said: ‘Some of the details in this report, in this review, beggar belief.’ Yesterday the damning insight of the case revealed how Rudakubana, now 18, had admitted carrying a knife at school more than ten times, talked about ‘getting teachers murdered’ and wanted to knife a boy he had attacked with a hockey stick to ‘finish him off’.

Which should, in a sane world, suffice to finish off the careers of the idiots in Prevent who handled his case. But won't, of course. They won't even be named.  

Yet in a rush to close his case ‘prematurely’, experts may have failed to consider all the evidence because his name was misspelt in files, the report said. Prevent also did not complete lines of inquiries and concerns that he posed a risk to staff and students were brushed off as a ‘knee-jerk reaction’.

Misguided officers placed ‘too much focus’... ‘on the absence of a distinct ideology’, and missed signs of his escalating risk, the report concluded.

In short, they were incompetent at the very basics of their job. As is so often the case with those tasked with protecting us. Perhaps understandably so, as those who do a good job and do it well are often punished for it years later.  

Yesterday Mr Jarvis announced that Rudakubana will be considered as a ‘registered terrorist offender’ after he was jailed last month for 52 years for the murders and for producing the poison ricin using a terrorist manual.

Finally, common sense breaks out! 

Head of Counter-Terrorism Policing Matt Jukes said the Prevent system was ‘not equipped’ at the time to deal with ‘emerging risks that were very different to those it had been built to address’.

Or with good spelling and grammar, which would seem to be a good place to start. Who knows how many other threats are lurking in the database with different spellings preventing them from being collated? 

We do not need this Suicide BIll

 

That Voltaire maxim

Ann W quite right with that Voltaire maxim:

The lifeblood of dissident criticism … kill that, you’ve killed that society.

A cautionary tale in cyberland

Generally, I’d prefer not to repeat something here I’ve written elsewhere but in this case, it’s a universal theme so this is what just went up across the way, in response to an issue which has arisen:

Thing is this morning that DAD cannot post his comment … the next step is to look at reasons why … the step after that is circumventing it.

First thing is that we’re up against professional hacker-psyops people who do know what they’re doing, e.g. those helping Musk, except bad people, mixed in with hordes of script kiddies out of university, with varying levels of attitude and moral compass, believing either that they’re doing “good” (zealotry) or else obeying orders to keep their jobs.

Second is that the means of communication are controlled and I myself must needs be oblique. For example, no point DAD sending it via ggl as they are one of the core censors … vast majority of attacks on this site alone come from someone associated with ggl. WP are not far behind and remember that NOWP and UHC are not “free” sites, politically, by virtue of being money free. The other two sites have greater degrees of freedom but still have limits.

Third is that there are many corporate and govt or NGO groups acting to censor … in my case, from ex-BT to Apple to ggl to browser firms such as Firefox, Windows … and do not forget govt censor “teams”, both here and in France, the US etc. … then other providers … all censoring … all with their sets of anathema keywords, their bollox “community stds”, meaning only Woke allowed … multi-headed hydra.

Fourth is that what you write should be what I call “euphemised” if likely to be “sensitive”. You may have noticed key words, esp. starting with M, sliding back in and they’re prime words which will certainly shut out your drops. Simply put … if you breach those bot words, in anger, if you include such words, sooner or later at least one of these entities is going to shut you out. Outrageous? Well of course it is … iniquitous … but that’s the playing field and our purpose is to help change that, ourselves a multiheaded hydra.

Fifth, we may be “based”, as opposed to woke or globo but we’re certainly not in complete agreement on many things … just look at Reform itself, riven, fissures everywhere, unherdable cats. And such disagreements split, fracture, divide … that’s why they were inserted by the baddies behind the scenes in the first place … surefire way to foment division, over either this “hill to die on” or that. For example, the baddies have tried to create an issue out of Scott Pressler across the pond … why? Coz he’s a key demonrat-stymier in a key state which they need to flip, the baddies.

Sixth … your own IP address is a killer for you … it gets warning signs attached as “don’t let through”, your device, all you do has your ID all over it … if you do not vary that, then once they have you, you stay had … that’s the reality.

Seventh … your own cyber-literacy. The game has changed in the past few years … you learn from being stymied … it takes time and humble patience, not blind anger.

Eighth … give it time. From a simple “refresh browser” to a reboot (even switching off at the wall and restarting), you can sometimes find a “getaround” that way now … whereas earlier you could not. It could also be attack or incompetence vis-a-vis your provider at some point in the linked chain. Give it time. Try later. This is where I use this russkie word “nichevo” … it means no matter, friend, try a different way later, not as a bull in a china shop now. Also, downtime is thinking time.

Ninth … age and health, combined with natural impatience when stymied. Whatever we’re attempting, someone is finding ways to stop us the entire time, 24/7. We at our age are at a disadvantage age, health and psychologically speaking. Answer is make notes, follow them, take your time … it might take all day.

So, if you, dear reader-dropper, have been shut out, even of commenting at all … then there are a few “getarounds”, e.g. setting up a different email to email, understanding that even the “getaround” can be tainted. For example, I have an email james at unherdable cats dot com. If you have an email which is not one of the main commercial providers, then send what you have to mine, but do not include core naughty words that are sure to be blocked along the way. I’ll reply and/or use the copy you’ve sent. You could try Jstack too as an alternative.

That’s about it for now, chaps and chapesses.

Ten … try all sorts of different get arounds … patiently … but we’ve said that already.

Enough Is Enough - Knock The Bloody Thing Down!

Angela Rayner has been accused of ignoring the concerns of bereaved Grenfell families over plans to demolish the tower block where 72 people died.

It's still standing? Good grief, the fire was in 2017! Knock the eyesore down and be done with it! 

What should happen to the site of the catastrophic fire has always split opinion, with some bereaved and survivors feeling the tower should remain in place until there are criminal prosecutions over the failings which led to the fire.

You should all know by now that's almost certainly never going to happen.... 

Grenfell United claimed Ms Rayner 'refused to confirm how many bereaved and survivors' had been spoken to about demolishing the tower, saying she was ignoring their voices 'on the future of our loved ones' gravesite.

She does that to everyone, you're not a special case. 

The Government has previously said structural engineering advice remained unchanged 'in that the building (or that part of it that was significantly damaged) should be carefully taken down'. It is expected more details will be set out by the end of the week.

The final report of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, published in September, concluded the disaster was the result of 'decades of failure' by government and the construction industry to act on the dangers of flammable materials on high-rise buildings.

And like every other failure of government and regulation, no-one will lose their job over it.  

A leisurely Sunday read? Watch it, folks!

There are two themes to this post. The first concerns Cummings himself, the power he claims, all of that in the content.  The other is below the screenshot … the process of even getting it to the reader.

Straight to the second theme in this post … the issues in even getting this to you. There was a complaint across the way at our place and I quite sympathise … things were much simpler in IT days of yore. This is partly that platforms have overcomplicated it today for the sake of it … bells and whistles … but some of it is political … to do with censorship, plod at the door in Britain, incarceration.

Have you heard of a lady named Bernie Spofforth?  Maybe another called Allison Pearson? You write a hurty tweet today in this country and they have waited for the pretext.

So, in order to bring you the story, we often have to bury the link, which annoys both readers and us sommit awful.  In the one above, which is an excerpt (allowed for reportage purposes) posted by “Simple” at X, from the Sunday Times interview with Cummings … Simple himself ran a screenshot … therefore the link leads nowhere … but we know it was the ST.

The only recourse for a reader is to find it elsewhere at X, or even on another platform, blogs etc. … or even go to the paywalled ST itself.  Now I did surf a bit to find the url and was going to paste it directly under the screenshot … could not do … not sure it was an issue with plod … more with the ST and copyright/fair usage.

Fine for Ian Hislop to publish and be megafined … he can afford it … we can’t … nor can you the reader. If you’ve read it, you’re guilty of Sunday afternoon reading … a crime in Britain under this communist regime.

Sorry but them’s the times we now live in.

State run media

Consider this one:

Of course, they’ve taken it one step further in Britain … already notorious for lack of protections of citizens, only of “newcomers”, the only media still semi-free are blogs, vlogs and major platforms to varying degrees. Both Julia and I have been suspended multiple times.

Communist govt gets in by playing the system’s faults, plus flat out lying to the public and there it is. The only option is revolution.  Wot?  In Britain?  Maybe in France.

If ‘More Government Propaganda!’ Is The Answer…

...then you're almost certainly asking the wrong question.

On 4 August 2024, the riots and disturbances that followed the killing of three children in Southport, on Merseyside, spread even further. That day, in the midst of a seething mess of far-right misinformation and rumour-mongering, the violence hit Rotherham – where people tried to set fire to a hotel housing asylum-seekers – as well as Middlesbrough and Bolton. Serving notice of his new interest in UK affairs, Elon Musk posted a picture of violence in Liverpool on X with a characteristically measured caption: “Civil war is inevitable.” And 24 hours later, the wave of unrest reached the city of Plymouth.

Where could the city’s 260,000 residents turn for reliable information?

Social media? Yup! 

As ever, as people’s social media feeds brimmed with untruths and provocations, more traditional outlets were an obvious choice. But if you tuned into the local BBC radio station while the riot was happening, you might easily have had no idea about any of it. BBC Radio Devon carried a report about the violence in its 6 o’clock news, but at 7pm and 9pm, Plymouth received no mention at all.

Welp, there you go. If there's a vacuum, something is bound to fill it.  

We now know all this thanks to the BBC’s response to a complaint made by David Lloyd, a radio veteran who has worked for both the corporation and commercial stations. The relevant official document, written by the corporation’s complaints director, is quite a read: it includes an admission that “there was little evidence of the BBC having a presence on the scene”, something partly connected to “several logistical problems” on the day in question, including “the availability of journalists who had the required riot training”, as well as “technical issues with broadcasting kit”.

What does all that mean? 'Journalists' who no longer go out chasing stories, perhaps, who are content to sit in a warm office, and farm social media for their 'scoops'?  

Even online, where the modern corporation insists it must focus a lot of its efforts, there was no dedicated live coverage of the Plymouth riot – nor, the report suggests, enough updates posted on the big social media platforms. On the latter score, “more would have been done, had it not been for staff leave”.

Once, journalists would have come in regardless if there was something interesting happening. It was how they made names for themselves. 

Something happens, but what do people read or hear about it? Either nothing at all, or some awful version of it plucked by a foreign billionaire from the fringes of the internet or algorithmically amplified, to the point that questions of truth or falsehood fall away, and a mendacious story creates its own shockwaves. If that is the kind of future we should all be striving to avoid, local reporting ought to be our first antidote.

And yet, no-one’s doing it. Times have changed.  

The Gaza Riviera

First a leftwing (i.e. pro-Hamas) take (at Gab) on the story:

There are also three regular middle-east and Uke reviewers HERE with vlogs (scroll down).

Ok … what to make of it?  Nethanyahu lost much face during the hostage release (sausages in Starmer-speak) … he crucially lost that with his people, inc. the switching off of the “iron dome” on Oct 6.

My own particular stance is that he has much to answer for, the Khazar, although I’m not anti-Jewish people per se, nor Palestinian people, nor our people, nor French, Germans Americans … the ordinary peoples are my, and I suspect your, primary concern, particularly within our own land.

Right, back to this Gaza Riviera thing … I put a post up at Unherdables about it, how it could be done, ignoring of course the Arabs going ballistic, predictably. There was talk of MAGA horrified that bleedin’ Hamas Palestinians were going to be dumped on Europe … Trump quickly moved to say he means surroubding Arab states … he knows of course they don’t want a bar of those people.

There’s history in this … they are from where the Philistines invaded millennia sgo, not specifically semitic, a mix in other words. Also, as one headline four decades ago put it … where children are fed hate with their breakfast … hatred of the Jew and offshoots of Judaism, e.g. Christianity.

Into this comes the Khazar/Ashkenazi question concerning the population of Israel … there’s Babylonian/Assyrian in that mix too.  It’s a mess.  Diaspora?

Long story short … no way known are Egypt, Jordan, Iran going to brook Gazans being dumped on them, nor are they going to wear a Gaza Riviera … to my mind, Trump was flying kites, watching the fallout globally, seeing how it all sat.

There’s a further worrying factor but it’s not OoL material … too far out there … I’ll run that over st our place.  To my mind, the Arabs will continue to ensure Gaza remains the loo of the middle-east.

I'm Pretty Sure They'll Come Up With An Even More Bonkers Idea....

The government is considering forcing households who only watch streaming services to pay the BBC licence fee.

Yes, the government is going to allow an organisation to charge you for services you aren't using and don't want.  

The idea of expanding the licence to cover viewers of services such as Netflix and Disney+, is among the list of options being talked about by ministers, Bloomberg reported. One critic branded the suggestion of extending the licence to include streamers as 'one of the most bonkers ideas ever concocted'.

Well, that's one way of describing it, I suppose, leaving out the phrase 'the cheeky bastards'... 

The Government is looking at how to replace or change the current licence fee funding model when the current BBC charter ends in December 2027.

Among the alternative options being considered by ministers are letting the BBC use advertising, hitting streaming services with a particular tax or making those who tune in to BBC radio to pay a charge.

Why not 'letting the BBC set up their own subscription model' as Longrider suggests? 

Ministers will also consider calls for a system which sees wealthier households pay more than poorer ones.

Oh, of course. I forgot for a moment what drives this wretched government. Envy.