New Year’s Greetings

Well, we are now into 2026, albeit only just, and James and I extend our warmest wishes for a happy New Year to all our readers, and surely, it must be a better one than 2025 turned out? 

Take it away, Carol Ann Duffy: 

I drop the dying year behind me like a shawl
and let it fall. The urgent fireworks fling themselves
against the night, flowers of desire, love’s fervency.
Out of the space around me, standing here, I shape
your absent body against mine. You touch me as the giving air.

Most far, most near, your arms are darkness, holding me,
so I lean back, lip-read the heavens talking on in light,
syllabic stars. I see, at last, they pray at us. Your breath
is midnight’s, living, on my skin, across the miles between us,
fields and motorways and towns, the million lit-up little homes.

This love we have, grief in reverse, full rhyme, wrong place,
wrong time, sweet work for hands, the heart’s vocation, flares
to guide the new year in, the days and nights far out upon the sky’s
dark sea. Your mouth is snow now on my lips, cool, intimate, first kiss,
a vow. Time falls and falls through endless space, to when we are.

Too Little, And Far, Far Too Late...

Two people have been arrested after allegedly shouting slogans calling for “intifada” during a protest by pro-Palestinian demonstrators in London, police said. Five people in total were detained outside the Ministry of Justice in Westminster on Wednesday evening, with further arrests for obstruction and public order offences.

It came after a change in approach from the Met and Greater Manchester police, who announced earlier on Wednesday they would arrest anyone chanting the words “globalise the intifada” or holding a placard with the phrase on it.

And all it took for the police to finally act was the slaughter of innocent Jewish citizens in another country. 

The chiefs of both forces said attacks against Jewish people in Manchester, where two died, and in Sydney, Australia, where 16 died, including one of the alleged killers, meant new rules now applied. In a joint statement, the Met commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, and GMP chief constable, Sir Stephen Watson, said: “The words and chants used, especially in protests, matter and have real-world consequences. 

“We have consistently been advised by the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] that many of the phrases causing fear in Jewish communities don’t meet prosecution thresholds. Now, in the escalating threat context, we will recalibrate to be more assertive. 

Sure, blame the CPS. Despite the fact you're well aware that the process itself can be the punishment, when you want to use it that way.

“We know communities are concerned about placards and chants such as ‘globalise the intifada’ and those using them at future protests or in a targeted way should expect the Met and GMP to take action. 

We'll see if this holds up longer than the headlines it's garnered you... 

The smart money's on 'No!'

“Violent acts have taken place, the context has changed – words have meaning and consequence. We will act decisively and make arrests.”

'Sorry about that, but we're raring to do our job now, just watch us' - I've never been so ashamed of the UK police in my life.

Somaliland

The most visible issue in Britain would be this Egyptian but truly, it's been done to death, while one is developing in Minnesota ... also highly publicised ... but less publicised is Somaliland.  You wot?

And so:

Interesting, eh?

Sounds About Right For This Government..

Crayfish, weevils and fungi are being released into the environment in order to tackle invasive species across Britain.

What? Which idiot is doing this? Didn't they learn what a bad idea it is? 

Scientists working for the government have been breeding species in labs to set them loose into the wild to take on Japanese knotweed, signal crayfish and Himalayan balsam, and other species that choke out native plants and wildlife.

I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised, then, it dseems whrn you are a scientist who works for the government, the paycheck is everything... 

They are doing this, in part, to meet tough targets set by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in its recently announced environmental improvement plan. Ministers have directed the Animal and Plant Health Agency (Apha) to reduce the establishment of invasive species by 50% by 2030.

And they immediately said: 'Cool! Let's import and release some more!' That's the calibre of 'scientist' we are talking about here.

The biosecurity minister and Labour peer Sue Hayman said: “With a changing climate we are constantly assessing for new risks and threats, including from invasive plants and animals, as well as managing the impacts of species already in this country. Invasive non-native species cost Britain’s economy nearly £2bn a year, and our environmental improvement plan sets out plans to reduce their establishment to protect native wildlife and farmers’ livelihoods.”

The idea that this wretched government cares about farmer's livelihoods is the most insane thing about this news item! 

This creep being brought back to the UK

This post is in three parts, in three places on the net ... below is a list of MPs who called for him to be brought back from an Egyptian prison ... over at Unherdables are some comments on it ... X has the creep's utterances many times over.

These signatories were attached to the request to Starmer last year to bring the terrorist back.

Post Christmas, pre New Year

This is our first feeble attempt to reconnect with the Orphans "community", such as you good folk are. Hope Christmas and Boxing were good ... they were with me and I believe so with Julia too.

Orphans is an interesting concept, the admins both having their own main sites and yet Orphans itself has its own history and life, its own readers. There are posts I'd not put up here, the more "out there" type. I'm thinking Julia has some affection for the site as well for which she's numero uno admin.

So, thinking it was time to reopen for business, suddenly there was this by Lucy C:

The "I will never throw these away" bit ... well yes. I've heard and read many a caustic comment about "online friends not being friends" ... yeah?  There are very real friends I have, e.g. in the US, Canada, Russia, the antipodes ... very real, more real than in this area and yet my immediate neighbours and I just exchanged gifts ... so that can be real too.

The obvious difficulty for us online is if Them pull the plug.  There are ways around it but most don't know them ... it involves servers etc. and requires a certain knowledge base.

And it is worth it ... much good can be done.  For example, there is an onliner originally from here, married a NZer who had a medical horror ... people from all over are praying for her ... and him:

It takes not a lot on our part to try to help sustain someone and online is peculiarly suited to such a thing. (By the way, that moniker is a reference to a fine northern ale from this fair land.)

Merry Christmas all you orphans of liberty

 

Julia and I would like to wish all readers a resoundingly good Christmas ... there does seem a resurgence and many who are not particularly religious are joining in this year. We know the issues we all face, the very survival of western nations and this is one of the first rallying cries ... there seems to be some sort of groundswell.

It just remains to wish you all a safe, illness-free Christmas Day, with lots of cheer and bonhomie. There may or may not be a short hiatus in posting ... depends how out of it we get.

The Outlets Aren't There And The Money's Not There Because Trust In Journalism's Not There Anymore

One morning last month, Seymour Hersh set off to buy a newspaper. The reporter walked for 30 minutes, covered six blocks of his neighbourhood, Georgetown in Washington DC, and didn’t see a single sign of life. No newsstands on street corners selling the glossies and the dailies. No self-service kiosk where you can slide in a dollar and pull out a paper. “Finally, I found a drugstore that had two copies of the New York Times in the back,” Hersh recalls. He bought one for himself. He can’t help but wonder whether anybody bought the second.

Probably not, they were all comfortably scrolling through their social media feeds instead.

Hersh has been a staff writer at the New York Times and the New Yorker. He’s broken stories on Vietnam, Watergate, Gaza and Ukraine. But the free press is in crisis, newspapers are in flux and investigative journalism may be facing a deadline of its own. “I don’t think I could do now what I did 30, 40, 50 years ago,” says the now 88-year-old. “The outlets aren’t there. The money’s not there. So I don’t know where we all are right now.”

You're up that well-known creek. And you don't appear to have a paddle... 

Editors and management might claim they want good stories, but in practice they fear them, because scoops tend to cause trouble and involve a big fight. Tellingly, the film includes an archive clip of Hersh speaking on stage in the 1970s. He says: “What we have here in America is not so much censorship as self-censorship by the press.”

That 'self-censorship' - is it in the room with you right now, Seymour?  

If that was true then, Poitras says, it’s doubly so today. She’s alarmed not just by Trump’s authoritarian push to stifle a free press but by the alacrity with which several media giants have already rolled over.

The situation is parlous, Poitras says. “What we’re seeing in the US is the preemptive capitulation of institutions to avoid a legal battle they would have won. That’s shameful. I don’t know how they explain that to themselves. It’s the worst precedent you can possibly set.”

They clearly don't have your certainty that they'd have won. 

“There are no gatekeepers on information any more,” says Obenhaus. “The so-called legacy media is so dispersed. And without that centre – that base – it’s hard for good journalism to break through, which means people are increasingly relying on unreliable sources. It troubles me tremendously that the Sy Hersh of today might be writing on Substack or some other platform – and you’d never even hear of them unless the algorithm connected you to their work.”

Times have changed, maybe you should change with them, because when I want the truth about a story in the headlines, I no longer look to the legacy media for it... 

The greenhouse effect bollox

Peter Clack here is the author ... seems to be expat Brit in Oz ... this is not the AC/DC drummer.

Starmer The Puppy Killer...

The Government has “fired the starting gun” on its pledge to ban trail-hunting as it confirms that a consultation will be launched early next year – and the community is ready to fight. Defra minister Angela Eagle reiterated Labour’s manifesto promise of a ban, in parliament on 30 October, and stated that the consultation will be on “how to deliver a full ban” – not whether or not a ban should be imposed. 

I guess he's figured out nothing he could do will improve his ratings, so he may as well go full 'Cruella DeVille'.

Ed Swales, chair of campaign group Hunting Kind, told H&H the news is “further misguided and prejudiced rhetoric from a Government so out of touch with its rural and farming electorate that it would be laughable if it wasn’t so damaging to people’s lives”.

Not to mention the lives of the unwanted hounds and horses that will be culled as a result of any ban, plus the loss of rural jobs tied to the sport... 

“This is an election loser for Labour when balanced against today’s real-life priorities,” he said. “This latest attack is not about animal welfare nor ever has been. It’s a wilfully ignorant and discriminatory attempt at a human versus human conflict couched around an ill-informed and anthropomorphic view of how we coexist with nature. “To conflate the unquestionably legal equine and canine sport of following trails with the scientific, ethical and cultural basis of wildlife management is to highlight a complete lack of understanding, again. This rides roughshod over the protectable beliefs of a community cultural minority and tramples diversity into the ground.”

It's an unedifying sight, that of unthinking instinctive killers salivating at the prtospect of sinking their teeth inro a long-standing enemy, isn't it?  Especially when they avoid the prey the nation would rather they pursued....