Observe My Unshakeable Moral Authority

'As the mother of a murdered child, I demand you give me what I want!'

Esther Ghey, the mother of the murdered teenager Brianna Ghey, and the Oscar-winning actor Kate Winslet are calling on Keir Starmer to legally ban smartphones in schools, warning current guidance against allowing phones has created a “postcode lottery”.

And we are all supposed to acquiesce , because who could deny a bereaved mother anything?

She said a ban would have “solved so many issues” for her daughter, who was “sucked away from society and into the online world where she was at risk of so many harms”.

She didn't have a daughter, though. She had a mentally challenged son, and she allowed him to think he could trsnsition into a girl. So if she cannot be honest about that, why should anyone trust her on this issue?

The government has resisted banning smartphones in schools, insisting headteachers are able to take their own actions. It issued guidance in 2024 that “schools should develop a mobile phone policy that prohibits the use of mobile phones … throughout the school day, including during lessons, the time between lessons, break times and lunchtime”. But subsequent research among 2,467 secondary schools in April by the children’s commissioner, Rachel de Souza, found that while 90% had some restrictions on phone use, only 3.5% banned phones from school grounds and only 7.9% required pupils to hand in their phones for the whole day.

So they were given the freedom to action thisas they saw fit, and because they haven't been as strict as these people would like, that freedom must be stripped from them and central government must step in. 

The new Phone Free Education campaign is calling for ministers to introduce a full legal ban including funding for schools to pay for a lockable pouch or similar alternative.

How about 'No'...? In fact, how about 'Fuck off!'? 

The Peter Principle in all its infamy

There’s an item at our place about the CofE and hierarchies and I wrote:

When churches have hierarchies of control and human “leaders” running things, then it’s like Reform … concept good, policy area good in general with the rank and file, even middle management … from thereon upwards, it’s worse and worse corruption.

At the very top, the decision makers … they’re usually in thrall, constantly being lobbied. The dark side, in all its sickness, is perma-around … from the smoke of satan in the Vatican to the Merc driving tele-evangelists, back to the Templars.

No different in politics or in any large organisation, inc. 

Just look at her … so we start talking Dunning-Kruger and the Peter Principle, do we not?  Remember the USS Fitzgerald?  The UK Cabinet?

Well, Yes, Ahmed, That’s The Point!

Ahmed (not his real name), an Afghan man who worked as a bodyguard for the team of the country’s vice-president under Hamid Karzai, fled to the UK to claim asylum after the Taliban takeover.

So he chose the wrong side and now wants us to provide him with an escape route from the consequences.  

His lawyer has advised that his claim is likely to be accepted by the Home Office because of his direct association with the upper echelons of the previous Afghan government. His wife was a university student when the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan and forced her to abandon her studies. She escaped to neighbouring Pakistan, where she is at risk of deportation back to her home country. She and her husband had been pinning all their hopes on a family reunion application and had been planning a future together in the UK.

Why not in safe Pakistan? Why the UK where you have no ties and don't fit in to the culture? 

“I would rather go back to Afghanistan with my wife so we can die there together than spend my life separated from her.”

Fine by me! 

“I knew that the journey I went on from Afghanistan to the UK had a 99% risk of death. Nobody makes that journey unless they have no other choice. “I’m in shock. I thought this was the country of human rights but the government is not treating us like humans. I have no plan B. This announcement is going to destroy families and destroy hope.”

WEll, given the new Home Secretary is a Muslim, who knows whether this policy will continue? 

Blog birthdays

Apologies to both Julia and Grandpa if I’ve missed some important blogs out but on the first birthday, today, of the new Unherdables, methought it might be interesting to go exploring the opening dates of various blogs (still extant) associated mainly with Julia and me.

Jul 26, 2006 Nourishing Obscurity first official post (blog now stolen)

Apr 29, 2008 Ambush Predator opens (Julia)

Jun 11, 2011 Orphans of Liberty opens (both old Blgr and new WordPress)

Jan 1, 2014 Nourishing Obscurity WordPress opens as my centre of archives

Oct 31, 2019 Julia starts using WP version of Orphans (blog bday?)

Aug 31, 2022 Jstack open for business

Aug 11, 2024: Unherdable Cats WP opens

Sep 7, 2024: Nourishing Unherdables (HQ) opens

Also of note:

The old Orphans on ggl blgr with Longrider etc. we might call 11.06.11 to 31.10.19.

There’s one other blog … NOUK, hosted by Chuckles, which had a brief run until his death some years back now. It was based on the format of the original NO.

All right, let’s now focus on this new Orphans itself (built 2011, became a going blog Oct 31st, 2019. Different people have different opinions on it and for Julia (the boss) and me (keeper of the archives), it is, by definition, our second blog, also noting we both have X and Gab, plus various other meanderings.

What thinkest I (Julia might have an opinion, maybe not)?  We’ve gone through phases for sure but especially of late, until I started on the “moniker biz” anyway, Orphans was getting a modestly ok 300 visitors but what shocked me were a few times we were up in the 1.5K region … it wildly fluctuates.

Most viewed individual posts were:

Let the last words be from The Boss:

Britain's beautiful Friday ... or is it? (part two)

Once the dust settled somewhat though, other considerations kicked in ...

There's the rub ... Two Tier's not exactly his own man here.  Plus it hogs the limelight:

Or as Liz Truss points out:

And:

Inevitably, of course, we must address the question of Jess Phillips:

And to end on something of a dark note, not wishing to ruin your weekend:

Britain's beautiful Friday ... or is it? (part one)

This is Saturday morning's post early as it's going to take a bit of putting up, plus I'd like Julia to be able to cast an eye over it to see it's ok.  So, let's begin ...

Friday in Britain has been extraordinary, joyously so and the mood has been light:

Part two soon.

Sign Of The Times....

Quite reasonably, vampire fans expect a theatre production to have some bite, with plenty of gore and violence. It is horror, after all. But one leading theatre has put a trigger warning on a Dracula show – because it features blood. Bosses at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith, west London, fear audiences may be disturbed – apparently not realising that being disturbed is precisely what the customers are paying for.

We all know why this warning is needed - it's to avoid snowflakes rushing to the nearest ambulance chasing lawyer and suing the theatre. 

Those dusting off their capes to see theatre’s adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula will be warned: ‘Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s Dracula – based on the novel by Bram Stoker – contains themes of gender-based violence, including visual allusions to sexual assault; death, including of children; blood; abduction; depictions of grief and distress following trauma; the use of weapons; and reference to hanging.’ The theatre adds that the production includes ‘language and scenes that may impact some audience members’. The details of a mental health charity are being handed out in case any audience members are particularly unnerved by the show.

This is merely the showbiz equivalent of the warning 'Contains nuts' on the packet of peanuts they hand out on a flight - if they still do that at all, I haven't been on a flight for years. ButI do have streaming services and trigger warnings are on everything these days, and for the most bizarre reason: 'animals hunting' was one the other day. On a nature documentary! 

The trigger warning on Dracula follows one on Hamlet at the National Theatre in London, where audiences were alerted to ‘coercive behaviour’ in the play. Shakespearean actor Brian Blessed, 88, hit out at theatre bosses as ‘ignorant pigs’, saying: ‘It’s f***ing Shakespeare... the greatest writer on the planet.’

And we remember what he wrote about lawyers, don't we Brian? 

In which Jimbo goes gobby

Dontchajusshate people who insist on commenting on all and sundry, thinking they’re so witty?

Maybe People Are Happy With His Design Skills?

A disgraced architect who was struck off for racially abusing and assaulting a taxi driver is still running a company offering building design services, we can reveal. Thomas Ford, 28, who also stole the driver's Toyota Prius car and crashed it, had his name removed from the UK's register of architects last week after he was given a suspended jail sentence.

Maybe he's employed by people who think an architect should only be sanctioned by his professional body if his buildings fall down? And don't care as much about woke concerns of 'appropriate' speech?

Ford appears to have got round any breach of the rules by not describing himself as an architect on the website of his company Tom Ford Architecture Limited.

That could equally have been written ‘appears to have complied with the rules by…’ couldn’t it? Going by the excuses proffered by Three Homes Rayner, whose supporters are always so quick to tell us what she did wasn't really breaking the rules....

Unless the entire purpose of this news item was to imply that he shouldn’t be employed by anyone because he's been declared persona non grata, that is.

His business website, which is still up and running, makes no mention of the judgement against him and his 'erasure' from the UK's list of official architects. Instead, it features glossy computer-generated pictures of home extensions and office buildings which he has apparently designed.

He's not obliged to mention it, is he? 

The power of Gatekeepers and SpAds

We still recall Cummings within n10, the most notorious in the U.S. were Colonel House (see origins of The Fed), Kissinger, Haldemann, Cheney … Fink is the latest within n10.

Now there are Wiles, Pammy and a host of other lesser SpAds.  Laura L seems DJT’s perceived lifeline:

Whose negligence was it (a question also for Hancock over here)?  Was it the boss’s, as with Wilson, Roosevelt, Hoover, LBJ, Clinton, the Bushes and so on?  Or was it their gatekeepers, themselves in thrall to powerful interests (the Dulles Bros spring to mind here)?  How about Nuland?

Is any pollie only his “influencers” when all is said and done? How about Chas 1 in 1642?

And blights and other horrors … how preventable, due to lies, were Polio, AIDS, BSE, Bird Flu, Covid?  Did anyone suffer as a result of those lies?