|
|||||
|
The UK’s energy crisis results from years of neglect, unrealistic ambitions, and misplaced priorities. MPs are more interested in their public profiles. Industry lobbyists push profitable yet impractical solutions. And the media constantly prioritises speed over substance. As we edge closer to inevitable blackouts—if we indeed continue to follow the aggressive push toward “carbon neutrality”— the question isn’t if the wheels will come off but when. December 17th, 2024 | 36 comments - (Comments are closed)
 “Jeremy Corbyn egging: Brexiteer jailed for 28 days”, the BBC reported on 25th March 2019. “Woman sentenced for hurling milkshake at Farage”, the BBC reports today. Notice that the BBC report about Jeremy Corbyn’s attacker specified in the headline exactly how long John Murphy was sent to jail for. In contrast, today’s BBC report about Nigel Farage’s attacker, Victoria Thomas Bowen, just says she was “sentenced”. Most people read only the headlines of news stories, and therefore are probably left with the impression that she was sentenced to jail time, as John Murphy was for a similar crime. She wasn’t. Victoria Thomas Bowen was given a suspended sentence. Oh, and one mustn’t forget that she must complete 15 “rehabilitation activity requirement days”, which usually means something like an anger management course, and pay Farage a massive victim surcharge of £154. Two British MPs, Jo Cox and Sir David Amess, have been assassinated in recent years. After both murders we heard fervent declarations that attacks on politicians were utterly unacceptable in Our Democracy. Of course we now know that neither Murphy or Thomas-Bowen intended to kill or seriously injure their victims. But when a person is struck by something thrown at them, they do not know at the moment of impact that the missile is harmless. UPDATE: When I first saw people on Twitter pointing out the judge’s South Asian name, I dismissed the comments as the sort of snide racism that bedevils right wing Twitter. However Toby Young has assembled a list of six judgements by Senior District Judge Tan Ikram that are more than enough to give a rational person cause to doubt his impartiality. He was last in the news six months ago:
(While I was making this update, commenter John independently brought up the topic of Judge Ikram’s record.) December 16th, 2024 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
“But there is a limit to how much we can gain from a combination of long-term reforms and controlled disruption. The deeper problem with the public sector is not the people who run it but the people who use it. The combination of an ageing population and a stagnant economy means that a growing number of countries can no longer afford the largesse of the post-war era. And the only viable long-term solution to this problem (barring a productivity miracle) is to cut big entitlements rather than to pretend that we can force the public sector to produce miracles. What really needs to be disrupted is not so much the workings of government as the public’s expectations.” December 12th, 2024 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
The BLM lobby is still dominated by Afro-Caribbeans. More Africans have sympathies with the Conservative Party than Afro-Caribbeans (even if they don’t necessarily vote for them) — just look at Kemi Badenoch. Now, like most Pimlico Journal readers, I have no time at all for her. However, she does have the potential to help obliterate any future prospect of reparations. All she would need to do is ask that Nigeria, Benin, Ghana, Somalia, and Saudi Arabia foot half the bill for reparations, and black solidarity would immediately dissipate. Very suddenly, the Fulani will see themselves as tanned Tuaregs; the Somali as Cushitic; and Leroy from Montego Bay will forgo his chicken shop Shahada because Moroccan poon tang just isn’t worth that sort of money. Once you distract them from the easy punching bag that is the white man, they can start fighting each other; meritocracy sorts the rest out. December 11th, 2024 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
“I honestly don’t understand how it can be so hard to cut immigration. The government has and has long had all the tools it needs at hand to actually do it – if it actually wants to. Especially as only around 25% of visas are actually work visas. I wonder if the way forward is just to give responsibility for incoming workers to companies. If they need workers [that they] can’t find in the U.K. they can hire abroad, sponsor, house and finance them within a 3-5 year circular visa system. [This] Takes stress of public services especially the NHS and housing; it allows workers to make money to take home and reduces long-term numbers. Japan has a system much like this.” – Merryn Somerset Webb, columnist. These comments appeared on her Linkedin page. While many on the free market side of the fence can be at odds on the immigration issue, what seems plain to me is that controlling legal immigration ought to be pretty straightforward if that is the policy. So why is this so hard to do in practice? I cannot help but think that it is a lack of political will, and an element of resistance to enforce democratically-enacted policy at the level of the Civil Service. In which case, it is no wonder that the Conservatives got crushed in July and that, on current trends, the current shower in government will go the same way.
November 29th, 2024 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
Progressives and Left-wingers in the UK have gone right off “Vox populi, vox Dei”. The Brexit vote was the last straw. Every time I try to think of a first straw – Essex Man voting for Thatcher? – an earlier one pops into my head. Maybe, as we discussed last week, the British Left’s long turn away from reverence for the views of the populace goes right back to the popular conservatism of the Primrose League. In itself, this cessation of reverence is probably a good thing. Whatsoever, for any cause, (Relax, delatores, it’s only a poem.) The sort of progressives who have reluctantly had to say, “The people have spoken, the bastards” do fewer terrible things than the sort of progressives who still think their will and the will of the people are one and the same. But although the voice of the people-in-general is no longer sacred to British progressives, the voices of some people still are. Which people? Being from an ethnic minority certainly helps to gain entrance into the category of persons who must be listened to with reverence, even if enough black and brown-skinned British people have followed in the footsteps of Essex Man (including the Essex MP who leads the Conservative Party) that skin colour no longer works on its own. However, being an ethnic minority and a socialist is a qualification, and being a Muslim Labour MP lets you say practically anything without fear of contradiction. Why, you can cheerfully propose to reverse one of the proudest achievements of the previous Labour government, and the leader of the present Labour government will spray out deliberately-ambiguous words in response that pointedly do not include the word “No.” Yesterday’s Hansard records that Tahir Ali, the Labour MP for Birmingham Hall Green and Mosely, put the following Parliamentary Question to the Prime Minister and received the following reply:
A video of the exchange can be seen here. Wikipedia claims that “The common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel were formally abolished in England and Wales in 2008 and Scotland in 2024.” The laws concerned had been dead-letter laws for some time before that, but their final extinction in England and Wales under Gordon Brown’s premiership was actually accomplished by means of an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill 2008 put forward by the Liberal Democrat MP Dr Evan Harris. There was little serious opposition, even from the Established Church. For instance, the Bishop of Oxford said,
That, and more importantly the fact that such laws directly contradict the teaching and example of Jesus, was why I and many other Christians welcomed the end of the offence of blasphemy. I must admit that when the new age of toleration dawned in 2008, I was expecting a gap before it dusked, if that is a word, of longer than fourteen years in England and Wales and, er, zero years in Scotland. Because dusked it has. Blasphemy against the Muslim religion is already effectively illegal in the UK, and has been for some time. As reported by the BBC, “A religious studies teacher at Batley Grammar School was forced into hiding in 2021 after showing a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad during a class.” He is still in hiding. There are other similar cases. Defenders of Sir Keir argue that his two-faced waffle in response to Tahir Ali’s question was just him trying to keep two factions of his own party on side – in other words they celebrate his evasiveness as a clever move. But when the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has to resort to deception in order to avoid saying “No, we will not reintroduce a law against blasphemy”, darkness has already fallen. November 28th, 2024 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
“We are seen, bluntly, as a country run by student union activists, a place where violent criminals are released from prison to free up space for people who have posted nasty comments online. If you’re British, you might protest that things are more complicated than that, but you must also concede that our critics have the big picture right.” November 24th, 2024 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Daily Mirror has an exclusive: “EXCLUSIVE: Farmer protest organiser was behind racist and homophobic posts online”
“It can be revealed” – this looks like it’s going to be spicy.
I’m waiting for the part where Mr Bailye actually says that being a disabled, unemployed, black, LGBT, transgender, non tax paying, homeless, vegan immigrant in immediate need of NHS help is bad. Unless the Mirror thinks that voting Labour is bad?
Again, that is an assertion about how claiming to be any of those things gets more favourable treatment, not an actual insult to the groups concerned.
Well, would it? The question is not unreasonable. The official guidelines of the Sentencing Council for England and Wales on sentencing offenders with mental disorders, developmental disorders, or neurological impairments state that the fact that an offender has such a condition should always be considered by the court, although it will not necessarily have an impact on sentencing. It is certainly commonplace for people in the dock to put forward their autism as a mitigating factor.
If belief in the existence of “two-tier law” in the UK is a conspiracy theory, it is one that half the country shares. November 22nd, 2024 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
Will Hutton: “Farmers have hoarded land for too long. Inheritance tax will bring new life to rural Britain”.
It is not universal.
It is confiscation.
It is not asking. November 19th, 2024 | 39 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have not watched this yet. But I am certain it is worth watching. Steve Baker on Why Government is Failing you Debt & Inflation Peter McCormack Podcast
November 14th, 2024 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
Sometimes the journalist really is the story: “Telegraph journalist faces ‘Kafkaesque’ investigation over alleged hate crime”, reports the Telegraph.
An accused person is not told what crime they are alleged to have committed nor who is accusing them, but the police speak as if the crime is already proven. There was a time when Britain defined itself as a place where this could not happen. Here is another account of the same events from GB News: November 13th, 2024 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
I wish I were only talking about this: “Essex Police Issue Update After WWII Bomb Safely Detonated in East Tilbury” (This Twitter thread by Tony Brown @agbdrilling shows detailed pictures of how the bomb was found and safely exploded under sand.) But the thing uppermost in my mind was actually this: “Amsterdam rioters ‘planned Jew hunt on Telegram’ before they attacked Israeli football fans” November 10th, 2024 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
|
   |
||||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||