Tuesday, 24 June 2025
Whom to believe?
Sunday, 22 June 2025
The difficulty in Iran “rising up”
Saturday, 21 June 2025
Sarah Pochin v Reform
Friday, 20 June 2025
Celebrity Witterings
Presenter and campaigner Katie Piper has told an audience at the Hay Festival in Wales that "ageing can be compared to a bereavement."
why would anyone say anything so daft?
Piper's latest book, which is published on Friday, is titled Still Beautiful: On Age, Beauty and Owning Your Space.
oh, say no more!
The 41-year-old said: "Women age out of the male gaze. I was ripped from the male gaze at 24. I didn't just become invisible. I became a target for people saying derogatory things."
Derogatory things like ‘You’re talking bollocks, love’ perhaps?
Piper, who is also a presenter on the BBC programme Songs of Praise and ITV's Loose Women. said she had recently been asked if writers minded if they mentioned her age. "It was shocking, but not surprising. This was because I had been reminded at such a young age the currency and the power a woman holds when she is considered either beautiful or young, and now here I was going through the second phase of youth slipping away and feeling, once again, society's judgement and the label that they were going to put on to me."
It’s a familiar refrain. Because we are all getting older - some of us with dignity and acceptance, some of us...clearly not!
She said she felt positive about getting older. "I'm going to be 42 in October. I'm still incredibly young to many, and old and past it to some. You realise, 'I know who I am.' I have a strong sense of self and identity. This is the heyday. This is the time of my life. So I can only imagine what's on [for the] 50s and 60s and the decades beyond. I feel excited by that second chapter."
She said if she had to give one message to her younger self, it would be: "If you've ever felt less than... you've hated yourself or felt ashamed, it was never you. It was society, consumerism and capitalism. It was beneficial to someone, somewhere, to hold you down.
Oh, boy, capitalism is forever the big bogeyman in some people’s eyes, even as they earn a nice living from it, isn’t it?
Thursday, 19 June 2025
“Blowtorch” and the art of hyperbole
Wednesday, 18 June 2025
Can They Claim Back Their Council Tax Precept?
A couple whose Jaguar was stolen were forced to steal it back after police took too long to investigate. Mia Forbes Pirie and Mark Simpson discovered their car had gone missing from near their west London home in Brook Green on Wednesday morning. The pair had it fitted with an AirTag locator meaning they were able to track the vehicle to an updated location in Chiswick at 10.30am.
So, an open and shut case, one even today's modern coppers couldn't possibly screw up?
But police informed them after dialling 999 that they did not know when they would be able to investigate and so could not offer immediate assistance.
What 'investigation' really needed doing? It was handed to you on a plate!
The couple took matters into their own hands when Ms Pirie, 48, discovered the AirTag had last pinged on the road outside their home at around 3.20am.Mr Simpson, 62, was nervous as he made the four-mile journey with his wife to the car's new location. The pair discovered the vehicle on a quiet back street with its interior and carpets ripped apart by thieves who had attempted to access its wiring.
In a post to LinkedIn, Ms Forbes Pirie admitted it was 'kind of fun' stealing back the car but questioned 'why we should have had to do that'.
You shouldn't. You have done everything the police tell you to do to safeguard your property, after all. Now it's their turn to hold up their end of the bargain.
She added: '[Is] it right that the police seem to have no interest in investigating what is likely to have been a reasonably sophisticated operation involving a flat bed truck… if there are no consequences, what is the incentive for people not to do more of this?'
None, which no doubt helps the Met to demand more from the Treasury to 'stem the crime wave' that's ever present in London. due to things like this.
Last year, the Met Police allegedly told a Londoner who had his car stolen to recover the vehicle himself as they didn't have the manpower. George Nicolas had his Maserati Levante stolen from outside his home in May after the thieves removed his steering lock with an angle grinder. Luckily the classic car fan had installed a tracking device in the car - which costs more than £93,000 when new - and he rang up the Met to inform them of the motor's location. But Mr Nicolas claimed he was subsequently told that the force 'didn't have anyone available' and instead recommended that he recover the vehicle himself since he knew where it was.
Perhaps if he'd phoned them again when he got to the car and threatened to shoot the thieves they'd have sufdenly found some manpower after all?
Tuesday, 17 June 2025
The main threat(s)
Reports say US military "assets" are on their way but that might be DJT bluffing, it might not. Remember ... Gateway, Memri and Laura are from the same Nethan stable. Russia took in top Iranian nutter brass? Well, those are long time treaties ... I saw reports saying Russia is getting the hell out of Iran.
Monday, 16 June 2025
Hey BBC Verify, Never Mind That Plane Crash...Look A Little Closer To Home!
"I spent all of half-term looking for somewhere to live," says mother-of-three Shanice Aird. The 29-year-old from west London rejected her council's most recent temporary accommodation offer "an hour away" from her children's school.
No, Reader, of course there’s no mention of a father…
The Shared Health Foundation is urging the government to put in measures to stop children in temporary accommodation going "missing" from schools and GPs after widespread displacement of families across the country. The charity's new report calls for a notification system so that all authorities are aware when a child moves into temporary accommodation.
Getting departments of government (both local and national) to talk to each other and keep each other in the loop is surely the Holy Grail, and far harder to achieve than stopping undesirables breeding.
Ms Aird was living in a secure tenancy flat in Ealing with her three children, aged three, five and seven, but was moved to temporary accommodation in Hounslow in 2021 after witnessing a stabbing. She is now being evicted from the two-bedroom property by the landlord, but says Ealing Council has only offered her unsuitable alternative accommodation, including one flat an hour away from her children's school. Ms Aird says she will soon be homeless and will have to "sofa surf with friends" after the council discharged her from their housing duty.
Being a witness gets you rehoused!?
She admits her children's attendance at school is "awful" as they do not have a permanent home. "It's really horrible because as a mum you want to try and provide as much safety and happiness as you can."
Clearly, not by ensuring they are borne into a stable two parent family, though!Im only surprised My mental ‘elf’ isn’t coming into play here.
Ms Aird says she needs to be close to family and friends to help with her mental health."I have bipolar type 2 and tend to go into depressive episodes, if it's a really bad episode it leads to me not being aware of what I'm doing," she says.
Right on cue!
Ealing Council said Ms Aird was recently made offers of "suitable properties both in and out of the borough within easy reach of her support networks", which she refused. "Because of her refusal of these property offers, the council have discharged her main housing duty, and we have made a referral to children services at Hounslow Council who may be able to support her under the Children's Act," it added.
If only the country could wash its hands of these parasites as easily as the councils do…
Felicity Afriyie has lived in temporary accommodation for 21 years with her three children aged 16, 19, and 20. In that time they have lived in more than 10 houses. Currently, they are living in a one-bedroom hostel in Lambeth, south London.
By choice, clearly! What’s up with these people who stunt their children’s lives by continually outbreeding their environment?
Her daughter Grace, 20, says: "One of our school journeys was two hours. "Doing that distance to school every day was awful. It's had a massive impact on our education. "You can't expect a 16 year old... that's moved houses more times than they can count to sit a set of exams that will change their life and expect them to perform as well as their more stable affluent counterparts. "It's not fair and it's not a level playing field."
Well, blame mummy for that. Daddy clearly never got a look in!
Lambeth Council says it had made a direct offer of suitable permanent accommodation to Ms Afriyie but she turned it down and requested a review. The review found that the permanent property proposed was suitable.
The government says the forthcoming Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill aims to introduce better protections for all children and better join-up between children's social care, schools and other local services.
It'd be better off trying to combat the effects of this sort of lifestyle on young impressionable children who will surely grow up with the attitude that this is a normal way to behave.
Saturday, 14 June 2025
Ideological naivety of the world leads to atrocities
On 17 December 2018, the bodies of Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, a 24-year-old Danish woman, and Maren Ueland, a 28-year-old Norwegian woman, were found ...
On January 3, 1980, Adamson was found murdered near her camp in the Shaba Game Reserve. Her killer was a young Kenyan she had fired. As she had requested, her ashes were buried in the graves of Elsa and Pippa.