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Will someone please ask the Swedish Doom Goblin if I have time for another Armagnac?
I thought they only did that when they were literally digging for dead bodies. Come now, Police Scotland, just because you have arrested the husband of the recently resigned First Minister of Scotland, no need for all the drama. It’s only a few hundred thousand quid.
That link goes to the Wings Over Scotland blog. Stuart Campbell owns this story and has every right to say, “I told you so” to every professional journalist in Scotland, whether Nationalist or Unionist.
By the way, when commenting on this story, remember that “arrested” does not mean “charged” and “charged” does not mean “guilty”. The presumption of innocence is never more important than when a public figure you do not like has his collar felt. A lot of people in the States could do with that reminder following the arrest of Donald Trump.
Dear all,
As we wind down for Christmas, it is important to ensure that we keep ourselves safe, and I have found this wonderful but short instructional video, purportedly from Finland c. 1979, helpfully showing how to open a door correctly. I would recommend turning on the English subtitles for most of us, but other subtitles are available for those of us unable to understand the wonderful Finnish language.
I have a nagging feeling that this might have been a parody of ‘health and safety’ instructional videos, but if that was its aim, it has failed miserably to stem the tide.
“Boris Johnson pulls out of Conservative leadership race”, the BBC reported a few minutes ago. Yes, there has been time for several thousand people to make the joke about this being the first time Boris has pulled out of anything.
Turning to media news, “David Tennant returns to Doctor Who after 12 years as Jodie Whittaker regenerates”.
I watched a bit of the show. It was certainly full of dramatic twists and turns, but it was all so loud and fast-moving that I lost the will to try and keep up. Dr Who was also rather confusing.
I think Rishi Sunak will be the Master tomorrow.
Of course, he has experience in the job.
HM The Queen today presented the George Cross, the UK’s highest award for bravery not in the face of the enemy, to the National Health Service, (for the response to the covid pandemic etc.), surely making the NHS Eisenstein’s ‘mass hero’ of our age. This is the third ‘collective’ award (one not to a real person – living or dead) in the history of this medal, founded by her father in 1940; the other recipients being the island of Malta for the bravery of the populace in what seems to me to have been ‘ in the face of the enemy‘ as being bombed for years by the Regia Aeronautica and Luftwaffe wasn’t just that, what was it?; and the other was the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which was scrapped and given the George Cross as a consolation.
However, one of the Palace bureaucrats celebrating the award is quoted as below:
Lt Col Michael Vernon, comptroller of the Lord Chamberlain’s office with responsibility for organising ceremonial events, said: “This award recognises all NHS staff, past and present, across all disciplines and all four nations.
So being snarky, that includes perhaps the most prolific individual murderer in British history, Dr Harold Shipman, a GP fond of polishing off his elderly patients, for free.
And of course, this gushing tribute necessarily covers former nurse and convicted murderer Beverley Allitt, who also did not charge her victims.
But of course, there have been systemic issues, like the Mid-Staffordshire Hospital scandal.
But looking at it in the balance, it seems that the NHS deserves its honour, despite being a bureaucratic abstraction, and an expensive and ineffective one at that. I seem to recall the Army being drafted in during the coronavirus pandemic to (give the impression that the government could) do something about the appalling logistics in the NHS.
And now the token medal is going on tour, a holy relic, as if a modern-day equivalent to the bones of a saint:
NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard paid tribute to those who worked on the front line and said the vaccine programme saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
She told the Queen that the medal will go on a tour of the NHS before a permanent home is found.
Is it heresy to say that honours don’t really exist? That an honour is just a piece of cloth and metal, with a document relating to it? That veneration of medals is simply absurd, it is simply reflective of the opinion of a committee, the absurdity of it made evident here for all to see.
And, if you are to think of honours, not deeds, as somehow noteworthy, let us not forget that the first time that the Queen awarded a George Cross, it was to the widow of Flight-Lieutenant John Quinton, who gave away his only parachute after a mid-air collision. If you wish to measure the decline of this nation under (but not, I say, due to) Elizabeth II of England, I of Scotland, compare the two awards and all that happened in-between. Can we please stop pretending that the State can make things not what they really are?
“Protect women from chilling effect of misogyny, Ofcom urges tech firms”, the Times reports:
Ofcom has told social media companies to stamp out misogyny, arguing that it is having a “chilling effect” on women’s freedom of expression online.
Emphasis added.
The media regulator, which is preparing to police tech firms under powers granted by the Online Safety Bill, said that companies have a duty to protect women from harmful content.
Ofcom spoke to 6,000 people for its Online Nation study, and found that over the past month women were more likely than men to have seen content that “objectifies, demeans or otherwise negatively portrays” their gender.
Of the women surveyed, 43 per cent said they were likely to be distressed by harmful content, compared with 33 per cent of men. Some 60 per cent of women highlighted trolling as being particularly concerning, whereas only 25 per cent of men were anxious about online abuse.
Ofcom said that women spent more time online than men, but felt less able to express an opinion or be themselves on social media platforms.
All you chaps with impeccably British names like Stephen Brown, John Smith (seriously?), Jane Austin (lol), Jim Williams, Paul Strong, Sarah Evans… explaining why the Bucha atrocity is dubious/faked/black ops… pro-tip… I can see your Russian IP addresses and you ain’t getting past the moderation page 😀
Hey “Mike Jackson”, are you guys still based at 55 Savushkina Street, St. Petersburg or has your employer moved to bigger premises to accommodate all the new hires? I suppose its a safer job than getting burned alive in your BMP in Ukraine, right?
Йдіть в пизду, йобані рашисти!
“UK supermarkets accused of ‘bombarding’ shoppers with cheap meat”, whispers the Guardian’s Denis Campbell in shock:
Britain’s biggest supermarkets stand accused of “bombarding” shoppers with offers of cheap meat, despite pledging to promote more meat-free diets to improve health and tackle global heating.
They are using money-saving promotions, such as two for the price of one, as a way of “pushing” meat, at odds with moves in the UK and globally for consumers to eat less of it, research found.
Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons are each offering scores of deals every week on meat products such as burgers and sausages to drive sales and boost their profits, according to a report from the
Marketing directors of Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons? Apparently not. This disturbing news comes from the…
charity Eating Better. It is an umbrella group representing more than 60 organisations including WWF UK, Greenpeace, public health bodies, dietitians, the RSPCA and food charities.
… simultaneously we have achieved peak insanity in the west with this:
I fear some sort of criticality is imminent.
Perhaps we need a “What the actual fuck?” category.
As we all know, Twitter is a wretched hive of scum and villainy. I go there so you won’t have to, and so I can see the funny videos. This tweet by Ashley St Clair has reminded me that the category “funny video” includes more than just cats. It is a 32-second clip from the Capitol riot of exactly a year ago. I disapprove of riots, but it is impossible not to admire the comic timing of every single person in this clip.
Followed by an embarrassed-looking police officer, Shaman Guy walks confidently into the chamber in his fur headdress and very little else: “Heeeeey. Fucking hey, man” (addressed to Capitol police) “Glad to see you guys! You guys are fucking patriots.” (Sees man sitting on carpet nursing his face) “Look at this guy, he’s got covered in blood. God bless you.”
Staff member: “You good sir? Do you need medical attention?”
Man on floor: “I’m good, thank you.”
Staff member: “All right.”
Man on floor, sounding slightly aggrieved at his implied “don’t mention it” being taken literally: “I got shot in the face. I got shot in the face with some kind of plastic bullet”.
Camera pans to the throne or whatever you people call that fancy desk with the flags. Shaman Guy scratches the small of his back and makes to sit down and take the weight off his feet.
Plaintive voice from off screen: “Any chance I could get you guys to leave the Senate wing?”
Man on floor: “We will, I been making sure they ain’t disrespectin’ the place.”
A police officer, presumably the person who spoke earlier, comes into view: “OK, just wanna let you guys know this is like the sacredest place”
Man on floor: “I know, I know”.
Today, however…
Though I did kind of like the contemplative thief at 08:16.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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