The danger in depersonalising your online outlet

Paraphrasing the words of the legendary Don McLean:

A long, long time ago 

I can still remember how that lifestyle used to make me smile

And I knew if I had my chance 

That I could let those people dance

And maybe they'd be happy for a while

But February made me shiver

With every blogpost I'd deliver

Bad news on the doorstep

I couldn't take one more step...

Awoke at 0523 this morning and there was, in the inbox, a message from the Gulf of America, a quick look at X saw Amelia following me and I followed back, there was the subject of this post after that ... yet another govt minister resigning but then a Ggl Blgr panel said that I could not load a picture of all that unless I enabled cookies, which I had done.

Censorship is certainly what they'd like to have us accept as "normal" today ... and that leads to my next point, in the words of the legendary blogger Tom Paine ... that I, Jimbo, do tend to blog in a highly personalised manner, don't I?

Yes Tom, I do, because we're dealing with other humans, friendly, hostile or indifferent, coz it's better to keep things human to human, even though we use tech to reach one another.

Interestingly for me at least, a glance at Tom's link shows he very much writes now in a personalised way, I still do too but ... at UHC across the way, our subject matter is very much a news channel, with features thrown in to break the horror, shifting as much worldwide news as possible into as few column inches as possible ... a quite depersonalised way to blog.  Julia and Grandpa have their styles ... so does DAD, which brings me to monikers.

I am not remotely interested in tracking you ... I couldn't anyway with Ggl Blgr's newish comment system ... but I do ask, if you choose Anon or Unknown, that you humanise your comment to the point where we at least have some invented name to respond to in comments, that you are not a bot in other words.

Eventually, we do all come back to humans of good intent, versus spam, bots and trolls. We'd like to think we're dealing with someone adding to the info on the table, whether or not we agree on one particular point or another.

However, Wokery is right out, meaning the brainwashed.  Let me illustrate. There are people on X who are dyed-in-the-wool Reformers, whereas I'm a Restorer now ... what a bunfight before Gorton and Denton ... yet we still follow one another, even if deeply disagreeing over maybe 20% of what's going on.

In other words ... civil discussion, not hostile trollery.  Every site, every platform, needs to sort that question out.  Civil.  Civilised.

Did not read the fine print

Lord Toby's site has a writer reporting on a Telegraph report.

The Telegraph has the story.

The Green Party may be jubilant about its triumph in Gorton and Denton, but some voters are already expressing buyers’ remorse. Waqas Khan, 40, owns Al-Mecca Butchers on Stockport Road, where a “Vote Green” poster hangs in the shop window. He has lived in the constituency for almost 20 years. He and his family had previously been lifelong Labour voters, but all switched to the Greens on Thursday.

Until informed by the Telegraph, however, Khan was unaware of the Greens’ plans to legalise drugs and prostitution and to remove restrictions on pornography. “I checked the manifesto before, but I didn’t see that. It seems they hid those policies,” he says.

That's an interesting sidelight, except The Telegraph is behind a paywall, as are many articles at TDS itself.

Moving on, my dad was a builder and painter, fought in the war, North African shore, my mother was a nurse and eventually housekeeper but every spare penny was spent on a son who'd go on to throw around rugby balls on playing fields, study Latin and be in debating societies, for a bit of fun building in timber ... dwellings, fences, boats etc.

Which class was I?

There was also the little matter of constant travel over the decades, to the point I'm weary wi'it now.  Developed a taste for all-weather sailing and cricket.  Point is, whichever demographic I was with at the time, comfortably, I was never fully accepted by any demographic at all. Iffy accent which was sort of RP with southern hemisphere undertones ... my lineage goes back to either the Danes (Deira), Ethelred or Irish worker ... that side of t'family were southern but apparently went Ulster later and changed the surname to a more anglicised spelling.

So I'm bemused by those claiming to be "English" or "British" but there's no heritage in'em from these isles whatever.  I suspect that that's what did for Advance's "local man" in G&D (Little Pakistan so it now seems).

Also amusing (to me) is a lady from Suffolk and I, friends, mutual followers on X, who agree on maybe 80% of policies ... except she's comfortable, "herbaceous borders" loving, I'm north-eastern, displaced to the north-west for now, she's exactly the dyed-in-the-wool Reform advocate, blissfully unaware of its politburo, whilst as of last evening, I'm dyed-in-the-wool Restore (or johnnycomelately, whatever) ... what confirmed my shift further towards them being that the Electoral Commission, according to Mrs. Suffolk, has supposedly refused Rupert's application to become an official party, nasty "racist" man.

Civil war on the horizon? Devoutly hoped for by globopsychopaedo and they may get their wish, if the issue is not swamped by the one about to kick off in Persia ... I've just quoted our Steve over at UHC on that question.

Whither Britain and Ireland, stalwarts of these sceptr'd aisles (sic)?

Fagin Goes Hi-Tech

Gangs are recruiting children to go out to steal smartphones before they head to school, using Snapchat to offer rewards of up to £380 for the latest Apple iPhones, police have revealed. The Metropolitan police said they were deploying new resources including drones and Surron ebikes to chase suspects as they step up their fight against phone snatching.

‘Gotta pick a pocket or two’ needs upgrading - today’s artful dodgers ride e-bikes and don’t fear the beadle… 

Gangs are using Snapchat to advertise a menu of cash rewards for different models of stolen mobile phones, enticing children as young as 14 on bikes to act as thieves.

Well, of course they do, what did you think would happen when youth offenders were treated leniently? 

Once phones are stolen, child thieves message a “handler” on Snapchat to arrange a drop-off. Bonuses of an extra £100 are offered if 10 or more stolen phones are handed over in one drop. In one recent case, police said a teenager was heading out on a bike early in the morning to attack commuters around a main London transport hub before heading to school.

If only he'd show that much enthusiasm for lessons... 

Rowley said the courts could do more to help by stopping bailing repeat offenders. In one recent case, police said a group of 12 youths were arrested and charged with phone thefts. The next day some were bailed, and within 24 hours of their arrest they were suspected of being back stealing phones.

Which is why no doubtr so many of your officers can't be bothered anymore. 

The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, said his administration was pumping in an extra £4.5m for a new command centre.

Which won't be a success because it'll be infested with the sort of people who have these attitudes:  

An ad for Transport for London’s new ‘Act Like a Friend’ campaign has been banned for reinforcing negative stereotypes about black men.The Facebook ad, part of the campaign that encourages people to intervene safely if they witness sexual harassment or hate crime on the TfL network, showed a black male verbally harassing a young girl accompanied by a white male friend, who sat down close to the victim ‘boxing her in’. A viewer complained that the ad was irresponsible, harmful and offensive for perpetuating negative racial stereotypes about black teenage boys.

Whats that TS Elliot line again? Oh yes. "Humankind cannot bear very much reality"

Quick look at Gorton and Denton by-election today

Friday: My last word for now on the by-election:

This was Thursday's post below:

More Dangerous Than The Advice Human Beings Are Giving Them?

A year-long commission has been launched by Mind to examine AI and mental health after a Guardian investigation exposed how Google’s AI Overviews, which are shown to 2 billion people each month, gave people “very dangerous” mental health advice.

When the 'health professionals' are pushing the 'trans child' concept and telling men 'Of course we can surgically  make you into a realistic woman!' and vice versa, could it really be more dangerous? 

“I set myself and my team of mental health information experts at Mind a task: 20 minutes searching using queries we know people with mental health problems tend to use. None of us needed 20. “Within two minutes, Google had served AI Overviews that assured me starvation was healthy. It told a colleague mental health problems are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain. Another was told that her imagined stalker was real, and a fourth that 60% of benefit claims for mental health conditions are malingering. It should go without saying that none of the above are true.

Well, you'd have to be mental to take as gospel anything you read on the Inter... 

Oh, right! 

“In each of these examples we are seeing how AI Overviews are flattening information about highly sensitive and nuanced areas into neat answers.”

Which is, after all, what the users want. They don't want to be told 'No, you can't have a functioning penis because you were born a girl!'... 

“People need and deserve access to constructive, empathetic, careful and nuanced information at all times.”

Then start giving it to them, and stop lying to them, and they won't need to use AI. 

Statement on last night's events on X

 Late yesterday, this was released on X (this is one retweet among dozens so far, it being 1:38 a.m. GMT):

Certain things immediately need noting and sorting out:

• Why has no MSM, inc. BBC, jumped on it?
• Why has the “shadow home secretary” not condemned it, given it’s been a known blight online for a long time now?
• Why did the Reform leader instead start attacking “ethnonationalism”?
• Why did the Reform top brass, by evening’s end, change their policy to all foreign crims out but not before?
• If they say they did not know … why did they not know? Were they not part of the Rape Gang Inquiry?
• If not, why not?
• Why did none of the events like the screenshot above not come out in the official whitewash?
• What does Jess Phillips have to say for herself?
• Why is this still only on X and other overseas platforms?

There is a by-election coming up for Gorton and Denton this Thursday. There are three main non LibLabConGreen uniparty branches … in chronological order:

• Reform with Yusuf Farage
• Advance with Ben Habib
• Restore with Rupert Lowe

There is, of course, a collection of similarly minded smaller groups, such as the old UKIP, Heritage, Britain First.

Restore are not participating because they’re too late … the other two are in there. Of those two, which one has taken, from its inception, the entire invasion and ethnicity based raping gangs seriously? And which of those two has shifted its position like a blancmange, according to public mood, conceding only what they were forced to?

In this by-election, the two front runners are both also pro mass immigration.

Succumbing to the same old reasons

... given by Them, for not changing course:

Are Our Institutions Run By People With Schizophrenia...?

 Two headlines in Saturday morning's 'Mail':

"You, man, what did you know and when did you know it!"

"NOT YOU, MAN! "

Someone make it maske sense...

The new brutal realities

Around the mid 90s, Brit politics was still recognisably red rosette, blue rosette, occasionally yellow rosette or green ... no one much knew what Heath, Harbag, Hewitt types et al had really been up to ... scandals were more in the Christine Keeler class ... even PMQs were a jolly jape where debating society grads used their oratory to amuse.

It then went purple rosette and teal rosette and became nastier. Until in 2026, there's even sniping and backbiting between fellow "disgruntleds". I have many Reform-devotee mutual followers on X, mainly ladies and have not unfollowed, have not blocked. Why would I? On most issues, we're the same.

What do we differ on?

Just on leadership, on the bleedin' "leadership". 

The real politics of the average person are forever being subordinated to inter-leadership sniping, with devotees falling in line behind one or other "leader".

Not good.  Even the two screenshot quotes from ordinary people below here will dismay hundreds of readers who are still "good Reformers".

But to paraphrase what Zeppelin sang ... the premises lie on the whispering wind. I'm sorry if it hurts but Farage is NOT going to lead a stairway to Brit heaven, he's set up to sell out to the worst bunch imaginable.

As for Lowe and Restore ... what chance ever govt? You see, there's a type of nicy-nicy conservative, e.g. from Sissingdon, from Sussex, from Suffolk ... and everything must still be daintily served in the conservatory. Reform is the "nice" dissidence from a world now gone, whereas Restore is the new brutalism, the new "blood, sweat and tears" and those are the two worlds clashing.

In Canada, plus Ireland ... both are drafting foreigners into the armed forces en masse, inc. Chinese. Does no one see what is happening here?  Has anyone in Britain heard of cross-channel boats and Bibby Stockholm?  Why do you think those people are allowed in here?  For luvverly assimilation and really groovy things?  For tea on the lawn?

These two people below resonate with many ... but not with nearly enough to sweep the danger from the shores. The song "Who do you think you are kidding, Mr. Starmer" presupposes we're viewing an enemy across the ditch ... whereas we're actually viewing them up the road.

'Bare Faced Cheek' Is The New 'Public Shame'

The Met Commissioner has blamed the shoplifting epidemic on storekeepers - insisting they 'don't report anything' and 'need to do better'.

Who is surprised? We thought Dick was the worst Commissioner, well, here's an even bigger dick! 

Sir Mark Rowley was questioned by the Home Affairs Committee today on thieves who regularly 'clear whole shelves' and walk out of shops without paying. It follows a 20 per cent rise in shoplifting last year - with police recording 530,643 offences in England and Wales.However, Sir Mark has now placed the blame on shopkeepers, despite MPs questioning him over a lack over the lack of prosecutions.

'We encourage them all to report it and the good stores have got really good security regimes and report it and help us out in ways that I'll come to in a moment. Some stores don't.' He then added: 'Some of them don't report anything, if we go there they don't give us the CCTV of the crime, they won't give us any statements, they don't give their staff time to give statements and they don't pay their staff to go to court to give evidence.'

Hmm, what sort of stores would they be, I wonder? The smaller independent stores, I'm guessing, the ones that aren't part of a massive conglomerate that can afford to take the loss and the threats from lawyers? Maybe even sole proprietors of ethnicity themselves?  

MP Joani Reid was seen frowning at the response after having informed Sir Mark that staff had told her they 'don't bother' to report thefts anymore. She added: 'They've stopped reporting it because there's no point'. Ms Reid said she had witnessed a man raiding a store just this morning. She said: 'We're not talking about one or two goods but he cleared the whole shelves, put them into a trolley and walked out the shop.' Another MP, Margaret Mullane, later said: 'I represent an outer London borough and shoplifting is prolific. 'The shops are also cleared regularly around my seat.'

And did this direct anecdote give him pause? Reader, it did not: 

But Sir Mark doubled down on claims. He said: 'I have challenged some sectors of the retail section to do better.' The Commissioner admitted some national chains - like 'Boots' - were 'fantastic' and 'very serious about shoplifting normally'.

Well, now you're being challenged to do better!  And we can see what use that is. If you don't want the job, why did you take it?