Predictable

... plus there are lessons here for readers to see for themselves. For that reason, this is a good cautionary tale.

There are two admins at OoL ... Julia and myself.  She takes care of the overall, plus comment moderation, I look after the tech side.

As part of that, I expressly agreed with the host that there can be nothing misleading allowed to stay up ... fully agree with that. Sometimes we might run something, or a reader might, which turns out not to be initially, factually, completely so ... this happens on X a fair bit, resulting in a "community note".  However, I've seen a "community note" to a "community note", disagreeing with the first "community note".

To my mind, that's fine, however ludicrous it seems, as it enables readers to see different angles. The one exception is that if something has been thoroughly debunked over a long period, e.g. Net Zero, then it gets short shrift at sane sites such as OoL, Julia's or ours across the way ... sites where we do deep dives, do our homework before mouthing off.

Uh huh.  So what's the issue?  This is:

Now, there's zero point arguing with them as it's a bit like someone trying to get justice for DJT.  So Letitia James flags it, on the phone to Obama, the case is heard in NYC by Jack Smith, with a handpicked anti Trump jury.  Hardly justice, is it?  Zero percentage for the defamed and that's the case with all issues today, e.g. the raped girls seeking justice or the vaxx injured and dead.

So, moving past that ... that post has clearly gone forever ... the more important issue is the toerag or toerags who "flagged" it to a known-known unjust committee and once again, truth bites the dust.

Now, moving even further along, Julia is a libertarian, I am a "classical liberal" in the sense of freedom afap but if there is a clear enemy trying to harm us or in blig terms, a hostile troll ... well it's insanity to allow them. Yes, so there are two readers only on permamoderation, put there by me, plus I request you use a moniker, not Anon by itself, or Unknown. Occasionally the Blgr comments mechanism plays up with that, so it's a fluid situation.

The libertarians and classical liberals can argue this point until the cows come home. It still doesn't alter the situation that some toerag flagged the post and I was given no say, except by kangaroo court or star chamber.

On the other hand, this is a known-known, par for the course ... we makes our choices, we takes our chances.  And we can never be free of trolling.  Just one more thing ... if by some chance anything happened to OoL, you know where Julia blogs from, you know where I do. Keep your eyes open, dear sane reader.

If the people themselves are ecstatic, does that count for nothing?

Seems good reading tactics for any of us to firstly note who's saying it and give a score as to their bias ... just because it's Woke establishment Uniparty MSM ... there might be the occasional snippet which escaped others but by and large ... avoid that lot.

With unknowns, also beware of empire building "new media" types, faux "right" trying to get you to buy them a coffee. They're not involved in truth except as a commodity as part of their burgeoning media empire, as they see it unfolding on your money.

At the same time, out and out trolls abound ... they speak of "Democracy", "The People", taxing "wealth" ... dead giveaway. They want rancour, slanging matches online, bggr up any understanding by us, have us at each other's throats.

So keep eyes open for snippets, almost never delivered in organised fashion in "journo pieces" ... avoid slick "journo pieces" like the plague.

Take this one for example, via NOWP, our Steve:

Is Nick Shirley’s Somali Exposé an Astroturfed Diversion For Special Interests? | https://armageddonprose.substack.com/p/is-nick-shirleys-somali-expose-an

All right, apply all the caveats you've learnt, do due diligence on the writer(s) but by the same token ... interesting viewpoint when combined with this from X:

There's certainly a major game going on and players are keeping cards close to the chest, whilst engaged in subterfuge behind and beneath it.  Maduro?  Sure there are major questions ... bemusing when establishment types suddenly come out about "international law" ... utter bollox.

Yet what are Donny's true motives?  Oil?  Precious minerals?  I can't help thinking it might be all of those, plus his mania to make the US militarily fearsome again, economically too. Crowds of Venezuelans worldwide are an added bonus.

What should we think of the unbridled delight of Venezuelan people?  Well ... first question is ... is the footage real or like all the faux footage of Them?  Paid actors bussed in etc.?

Let's say the Venezuelans in general are delighted, let's say it does bggr up the drug trade a bit, or at least puts it under US letter agency control ... well I for one am forced to go with the Venezuelan people on this one.  Sure it's not cut and dry, sure the people have been fooled before ... look at Reform voters ... but the thing we cannot get past is that they really are the people of the land, the sovereign "owners" of the land.

I don't mean in tricky dicky laws ... yes, we know that Them run it all. I mean in terms of right and wrong.

Ripping Off The UK Taxpayer For Africa!

Almost £1 million of taxpayer cash is being spent on compiling an archive of African films in a ‘reparatory justice’ project. The UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) is paying £850,000 for scholars to explore Africa’s ‘audiovisual heritage’.

Shouldn't take long!  

A further £250,000 is being provided by Oxford, King’s College and Liverpool universities, which are leading the work.

All the virtuesignallers are there with their hands out... 

Scholars also aim to ‘repatriate’ footage currently kept in the ‘Global North’ so that it can be more easily seen by people in Africa. They will take the archives on tour in Africa to ‘sites of encounter with young African creatives’.

I hope when they get to Nigeria they opt to travel by train rather than road. 

AHRC, which hands out £70 million a year in grants, is a subsidiary of UK Research Innovation (UKRI) which is funded by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.

No, it's funded by the poor bloody longsuffering taxpayer, actually. 

William Yarwood at the TaxPayers' Alliance added: ‘At a time when families are being squeezed from every angle, pouring almost £1 million into an academic project involving “decolonisation film archives” is staggeringly out of touch.

Which isn't a shock to anyone, but how to stop this drain of our taxes...? 

The dilemma for those Reform/Advance/Rupert inclined at the ballot box

First a bit of housekeeping. Both Julia and I, though close, are still independent to the point we run separate full-on blogs, which do take work, plus we both have a daily presence on X, exchanging banter all day. Grandpa I was in touch with recently and he's more or less retired, the moreso after what the NHS did to his late wife.

I'm not happy that comments of yours can be hours before approving and a few times I've been caught out myself, being tied up in Unherdables biz. I do come into Orphans a few times over the day as it has its own regular reader/commenter base but of course there's also overlap. We try.

...

And so to this thorny topic ... whom to vote for, assuming we'll still be voting next time, given the Fabian, WEFer, EU notion that we're now post-democracy and the blackshirts and white robes are gathering in every town and village to go door to door to slaughter, while the weaponised constabulary go door to door, even through upstairs windows, to arrest and incarcerate.

Having said that, we antiWoke, antiUniparty folk who still pay taxes do have dilemmas regarding voting, should there still be this thing called voting.

In my case, within walking distance of the polling station, there is now extant danger ... gangs of marauding cultists gathered to attack "whites" or "infidels".  They are real, I've seen them, they are marauding, we hear the horror stories as well. Govt answer? Postal vote, after doing the digital ID bit. No way for me ... never have, never will.

Let's imagine I do get to the polling station on an uncancelled polling day and have a ballot paper in my hand, knowing that whatever box I put an X in, this is is/was a solidly red rosette area. To whom should be given the single, solitary X (leaving aside all the fraud, inc. the Electoral Commission?

Well, it depends, does it not, on just who the candidates are. After skipping over any Uniparty LibLabConGreenSocialist names, we're left with the others. One or two are independent, sometimes regulars on the paper but largely unknown to me.  Then come the crucial names ... Reform, Advance, whatever Rupert's one is called. Were there a Jess Gill Women's Safety Initiative lady there, by chance, I'd certainly look at that name to vote for.

Why even turn up?  Well I feel I should, esp. given Starmer in power with 20% of the vote, everything a lie.  The dilemma is summed up by this lady, a very middle middle class taxpayer, in middle England:

Against that is that chap:

Trying to put Rupert in prison by lying and us not liking that, not trusting the cabal at the head of Reform is "smallmindedness", is it?  Just that?  Given this:

Then we need to consider other aspects, inc. Tice and bird in Qatar.

We really do have a dilemma ... and that's before the Tommy factor.

If Someone Doesn't Record A Song Called 'Pink Platypus' To The Tune Of 'Pink Pony Club'

....then I've lost my faith in humanity.

Cody Stylianou thought he saw a huge trout. But, skimming just below the surface, it was moving differently than a fish would. The creature surfaced and, amazed, the Victorian fisher reached for his phone. Swimming in front of him was a pink platypus.

Here come the scientists to cast cold water on a charming concept, though: 

After Stylinaou shared footage of the monotreme, commenters online speculated that it could have been a rare albino platypus. But the biologist Jeff Williams says it is just lighter in colour than what most would expect. “Platypus do vary a lot in colour,” the director of the Australian Platypus Conservancy says. “And this one’s at the extreme end of the light ones. It’s not one that we consider should be added to the list of albino and leucistic ones.”

Oh Jeff, where's your soul...? 

Street scenes in different countries

Greetings on New Year, readers ... Julia spoke for both of us last evening.

We tend at Orphans to run mainly Britcentric fayre but do mention events in other places. Thinking what to put up this morning, what crystallised in the blurry NYD brain was why not post just a few street scenes, including those in Iran, which is the main news coming out at 7:30 a.m. GMT.

Going to post some Brit, one Amsterdam and one Tehran scene below. At Unherdables, I'll expand the Iran situation as a separate post.

Our isles over the past few days

Amsterdam overnight:

Tehran last few days:

Have a wonderful New Year, dear readers ... you are much appreciated.

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!