- “Israeli minister threatens to topple Netanyahu if he does not invade Rafah” – Israel’s National Security Minister has threatened to topple Benjamin Netanyahu if he fails to order a ground invasion of the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, reports the Telegraph.
- “Police face furious backlash in row over swastika hate crime” – Police Scotland are embroiled in an extraordinary hate crime row amid claims a woman who reported an antisemitic Facebook post was told no charges would be brought because she was not Jewish, according to the Mail.
- “Hate Crime Act has united Scots against the SNP” – Humza Yousaf’s ill-conceived legislation seems to have fomented a generalised revolt against laws that penalise free speech, writes Iain Macwhirter in the Times.
- “Holyrood’s hate crime law puts devolution in the dock, charged with ignorance and incompetence” – The enforcement of the Hate Crime Act is demonstrating just how ignorant and incompetent too many of our politicians are in Holyrood, says Brian Monteith in the Scotsman.
- “Number of ‘honour-based’ crimes surges by more than 60%” – The number of honour-based crimes happening in Britain has surged by more than 60% in just two years, possibly because of the lockdown-caused backlog in Sharia courts reports the Mail.
- “How widespread is NHS qualifications fraud?” – A viral Twitter post raises uncomfortable questions about the level of training in British institutions, says Parliament Square in the Critic.
- “Who is afraid of Helen McArdle and James Jones?” – On Substack, Prof. Carl Heneghan and Dr. Tom Jefferson discuss the increase of Bell’s Palsy cases post-Covid vaccination.
- “Arch-Covidian Christina Berndt admits that press discussion of vaccines has been too one-sided, school closures ill-advised, but insists Germany should’ve locked down even harder” – On Substack, Eugyppius casts a critical ear over a recent podcast interview with Christina Berndt, everyone’s favourite German virus schoolmarm, discussing pandemic missteps after massive public uproar over the RKI protocols.
- “Avian flu and the experts who cried wolf” – If there’s another, more deadly pandemic and Americans don’t line up for jabs, the public-health establishment will only have itself to blame, writes Allysia Finley in the WSJ.
- “Heresy” – The excellent film Climate: The Movie is exactly what we have been waiting for, says Dr. Roger Watson in Country Squire.
- “Judy Murray backs J.K. Rowling after 709-word social media post” – Judy Murray, the mother of tennis star Andy Murray, has backed J.K. Rowling in an ongoing row over Scotland’s hate crime laws, reports the Mail.
- “Vatican declares sex-change surgery grave violations of human dignity” – The Vatican has repeated its rejection of the idea that one’s gender can be changed, says the Mail.
- “The trans fad” – Spiked’s Jo Bartosch on a new study showing that most gender-confused kids grow out of it.
- “Why are Foreign Office mandarins so ashamed of their own country?” – In the Spectator, Jawad Iqbal takes aim at a new report that suggests the Foreign Office should be abolished and replaced by a new Department for International Affairs with “fewer colonial era pictures on the wall”.
- “Paintings are not a threat to black students” – Oxford University’s transformation from iconic educational institution to adult crèche is well underway, writes Lauren Smith in Spiked.
- “BLM fraudster who used £70,000 of donations is ordered to pay just £1” – A fraudster who organised the Black Lives Matter protests that toppled the Colston statue stole £70,000 – but has been ordered to pay back just £1, reports the Mail.
- “Cancel culture breeds cowardice” – We must be braver to overcome the tyranny of self-censorship, says Patrick West in Spiked.
- “Ian Hislop’s elite blindspot” – Fundamentally, Ian Hislop is far more entangled with, and sympathetic to, our true elites than Nigel Farage, argues Niall Gooch in the Spectator.
- “Too much disinformation” – Mariana Spring is back, with another BBC series called Why Do You Hate Me? She might more profitably use her forensic skills to investigate the ‘disinformation’ in the building she calls home, writes Michael Henderson the Critic.
- “Elon Musk is all that stands in the way of totalitarianism” – Brazil has taken another step toward dictatorship, says Michael Shellenberger on the Public Substack.
- “Trumped-up charges” – In Taki’s Magazine, Theodore Dalrymple weighs in on Donald Trump’s latest politically motivated legal travails in New York City.
- “‘Is that a loophole?’” – In the Scottish Parliament, Humza Yousaf, as Justice Secretary, finds himself jumping through ‘loopholes’, explaining that the only way a woman is protected under the Hate Crime Act is if someone thinks she’s a transwoman.
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I suspect in some places this is just an excuse for councils to do less work and spend the money on vanity projects and other rubbish
And all those 6 figure salaries the bosses award themselves, with taxpayer funded final salary pensions, for doing a job which is a monopoly, without any risk of being sacked for incompetence.
The weak-minded thinking that says if it’s natural then it must be good.
Take all these fools and tie them to posts in the Congolese jungle to be “rewilded”.
They are just saving on manpower costs, nothing else. Weeds are easily got rid of by other means, like manually removing them or using heat via a weed burning flame gun. Personally I don’t like to use glyphosate or pesticides in my garden, but it certainly isn’t full of weeds.
Have they never heard the old adage, “one year’s seeding equals seven years weeding”?
Incidentally, our local council tried this last year. It was sadly ironic to see they had left a ‘wild strip’ of unmown grass around the rec to ‘encourage wildlife’, but then put in dozens of mole traps because they didn’t like the mole hills! Obviously some forms of wildlife are less acceptable. (I went and kicked all the traps out of the ground. They’ve never used them again.)
It’s a personal choice what you use in your garden, but I’ve looked into the science on glyphosate and claims about it being harmful to micro organisms in the soil or other forms of life are junk science. Almost anything can cause cancer with repeated exposure to very large amounts. You’d probably have to be drinking glyphosate on a weekly basis for years before it increased the chances of you getting cancer.
If I lived in Brighton I would happily weed my bit of pavement using Glyphosate. The risks are tiny unless you are an agricultural or horticultural person regularly using it whilst ignoring all safety precautions.
I am watching this happening on the highways and pavements in my area.
Has it not occurred to any of the people in charge just what damage this will do as the weeds push out kerbstones, slabs, concrete and tarmac? And the cost to repair.
Suggest a few Brighton people start suing the council as you can do for trips on uneven pavements and potholes.
Mind you, with “global warming” the problem may soon be solved by urban bush fires.
I also love their complaint that immigration rules have meant they can’t import cheap staff. Bl××dy hypocrites.
But it’s not “your bit of pavement” to be doing anything with.
Maybe the council would like to change the definition of ownership so that everyone can own everything and therefore nobody own anything, but I for one would prefer to care for what’s mine and no more. Otherwise, the council might take it the wrong way and decide they should be “caring” for my property, too!
Principles are important.
Having lived all my life in small rural communities which our councils rarely remember exist, we are used to just “getting on with things”.
This was what communities did until the 70s and 80s when the government started to interfere in everyone’s lives, charge more tax, take over community groups and say “we can do this better” and destroy community cohesion.
People stepped back because it was easier that trying to stop councils getting involved and f@@@@king things up.
Of course they couldn’t/wouldn’t deliver what people wanted it didn’t fit their agenda. The “woke”, diversity issues mean they have charged us more and more for less and less of what we really need.
Cottage hospitals? Keeping an eye out for you neighbour? Sweeping the snow off your elderly neighbours path? Better not, because if they then slip and fall you will get sued.
Can you imagine what would happen if a community did take it into their own hands and use glyphosate to stop their elderly neighbours falling and ending up in hospital?
Now they have destroyed community cohesion they can isolate us and instead of us helping each other they now get us to spy on each other.
So we end up saying “not MY pavement”.
I wouldn’t mind doing all that community thing but I don’t want to pay the council at the same time. Just try choosing to do only the former! So we’re agreed: The New World is needed!
Peter Hitchins puts in the first part of his post, more eloquently than I can, what I have been trying to say.
I worked in Local Government from 1976 to 2004 and witnessed this first hand. It was heartbreaking as far as I was concerned which was why, in the end I resigned.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12499743/PETER-HITCHENS-Militants-turned-town-halls-concrete-corridors-mediocrity.html
If we had a government that was even slightly “conservative”, they would insist that every local authority reduced their staffing levels to what they were in 2000, unless they could demonstrate that additional statutory duties needed more “human resources”.
Not that things were good in 2000, but at least we could avoid paying for all the “diversity” officers, “climate change” officers and the rest, which are almost certainly ultra vires anyway.
Then we could wind it back to, say 1990 and get rid of the ‘nuclear free zone’ officers.
Might start getting a bit of value for money and deflating some swelling Empires.
Obviously, some changes in Local Authority remits would assist.
How about insisting that the ONLY things that were “recycled” were those very few for which there was any use and value of the things “recycled”?
Yes, Peter Hitchens nails this. Looking back now it is impossible not to see how the radical destabilisation and undermining of societies was deliberate. The eradication of centuries old counties, destroying the grammar schools etc were all intended to break us apart and destroy communities.
It worked.
Don’t forget though, with ownership comes liability.
In my home city, the council has mowed a portion of the grass in public areas once this year. They haven’t touched any trees since before the lockdowns. I’ve been mowing a portion of the council land to the side of our house, because it runs up to our side wall and weeds were getting everywhere. Grass and other weeds were five feet high and we ivy going up the wall. After the one cut that was done, I’ve kept the side of the house mowed. However, at the bottom of our garden is another open area and the council didn’t bother to cut it. The weeds were growing through our fence. There’s a wild patch, overrun with weed that’s about 15 feet tall. I weeded all along our fence and tackled the worst of it with a chainsaw to create an eight foot buffer zone. But I have to be careful, because it’s not our land and the council uses eco-bollocks as an excuse for their negligence.
When you drive around the city, it’s noticeable that everywhere is overgrown and unkempt. Weeds are growing out of the pavements, out of drains and walls. Roundabouts are overgrown and diminishing visibility of other vehicles. Trees are dangerously oversized and their branches are often down to pavement level. There are patches where you have to step into the road because the pavement has been made impassable by trees or bushes. It looks like some post-apocalypse scene in a film, where most of the human race has died.
Worse, it’s led to many people not tending to their own gardens, so everywhere has a feel of neglect. I’d have cleared the weeds on the edge of our garden and in cracks of the pavement and road immediately beyond with a pressure washer, but the council instigated a hosepipe ban at the end of April, before it even got warm. I’ve done some of it by hand.
When I was growing up, all the way up until within the last decade, the council did the trees and undergrowth once a year, the grass once a month from about April to October. Since the lockdown, it’s like the country died. Councils chuck a ton of money at Pride Month, but spend barely a penny on civic pride.
I would certainly agree with you about the trees. We live by a beautiful, but massive, plane tree, which is so enthusiastic about its growth that anything higher than your average car is brushing the branches. It needs a severe haircut, but I can’t see that happening until there is an accident or claim for damage.
We pay the council a bloomin’ fortune in council tax, where does it all go? I know…don’t ask
It’s the same here too. The only bit they seem to be passionate about mowing is the one tiny patch in our godforsaken city where Bee Orchids grow. As soon as you see the flower spikes you know the mower will be round next day.
“It looks like some post-apocalypse scene in a film, where most of the human race has died.”
That is the intention. Another way to undermine moral. Or maybe it is just simply preparation for a coming post apocalyptic World.
I don’t rule anything out these days.
Cannabis is a known carcinogen yet the Greens almost want consumption to be mandatory. Glyphosate is fine if used according to instructions.
I am in California just now and at tge first hotel we stayed there was a State mandated plaque warning about chemicals from everyday plastics which might cause cancer.
I wonder what is the risk from tripping over weeds or being scratched by weeds or stung by the insects that live among them.
daft.
A metaphor for the rot that’s set in everywhere we look. A shabby disgrace.
Brighton’s awful: dirty, run-down and car-parking charges are outrageous.
Do yourself a favour and stay well away.
Now there is a job that illegal migrants could do to help pay for their accommodation.
“[people] who are all as passionate as you about looking after our beautiful city.”. So the Council are not then, they don’t care? Yet the Council’s one and only duty is to ‘look after the city’ and it’s people.
Isn’t it just the ‘new way’…..get rid of what worked in the past with absolutely no notion of having an alternative?
Do the drongo’s we have in charge at every level of Government go to some sort of classes or on courses to learn how to do this??
The snobbish elites are ‘presentists’ who believe that they are the most sophisticated human beings who have ever lived. In their mind, the accumulated wisdom of thousands of years is ‘savagery’ and should be destroyed. Net Zero is essentially a corporate rebranding of Pol Pot’s ‘Year Zero’. Currently, cancelling educated people is being used instead of murder, but when you look at what ‘teachers’ are telling a generation of children, you can see there will be murder in a generation’s time.