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[Starver]

I'm not quite sure what the focus of your post is. I am a bit of a rambler around the point, myself, so perhaps used to sometimes being a bit tangential in my own scribblings, but I'm not quite sure which of your tangents is your actually intended baseline, and which are demonstrating perpendiculars. I've tried overthinking it and underthinking it. Very likely I'm probably just misthinking it, gone off down a different garden path from what I should have and skipped the actual main bit...

(From the timing, was wondering if it was a Radio 4 Woman's Hour piece with "the lady on the radio", but as you're .comming the bbc website page, and having a rough idea that you're beyond the FM broadcast range, maybe it was a World Service report. Unless it pops up as Pick Of The Week, is repackaged for File On 4 or finds its way into regular news reporting slots, I don't tend to get WS. Though the post-Shipping Forecast late-night/early-morning R4 'fills in' with it, and it might get a repeat, I'm more highly likely to tune into R4Extra during those hours, for my "comedy, drama and documentaries", mostly of an archive nature.)

((Oh look, I went rambling!! How surprising.))

[Great Order]

I... Yeah I'm a little confused myself. Especially with how it relates to the UK, aside from it being the BBC that did the first article.

[Great Order]

Well, Tahir Ali, a Labour MP, just made a call for blasphemy laws. Specifically Abrahamic blasphemy laws, but given the guy was talking about it in the broader context of Islamophobia there's no points for guessing which particular Abrahamic religion he's probably thinking of.

Specifically: "Will the prime minister commit to introducing measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions"

Now, granted, it's dickheaded, but if that's to be the measure of what is and isn't legal then I'm pretty sure a good case could be made for his idea here being made illegal too.

We need to do something to promote tolerance and suppress the regressive side of Islam (Not by shoving them all in prison for being like that mind, might as well put the jackboots on by that point), but the government's response has time and again been cowardice. Take the teacher who's in hiding after Muslim protestors started threatening violence against them - The protestors were left alone in spite of literally illegal behaviours.

I would like to emphasise, my issue is with them being regressive rather than Muslim. It's just that in the UK the regressive-Muslim cohort's one of the big issues that's just being... ignored, really. At least on the political level. Which then leads to other less-than-savoury groups getting power and the political establishment questioning why everyone's voting for far-right parties (Who are gleefully assisted by countries like Russia and wealthy people like the Muskrat).

Ah, I dunno. Maybe it's just especially scary to me, seeing as being transgender I can't exactly hide my existence from the people who'll take umbrage against it, up to and including rape, assault and murder. It's hard to remain positive about my long-term future when progressives seem to be having rings ran around them by regressive elements on all sides and the response is to point fingers at one another or yell at the bystanders that they're all bastards instead of trying to do something productive.

[hector13]

Nah nah, you just hate the Mussies mate.

I jest.

We don’t need more blasphemy laws. Religion should be open to criticism as much as anything else is, and if it steps over the mark, that’s what hate speech laws are for.

[Starver]

Forget all that trivial stuff, above, there is a much more important issue for us Brits to discuss!

[Funk]

Tea...

[Loud Whispers]

[continuing this from WTF thread]

It looks very much like the perspectives being echoed on Xwitter are (as well as possibly at least edging up against Xwitter moderation guidelines, free-speech or not) based upon older and easily disputed/updated misunderstandings/non-understandings (if not downright partisan shit-stirring).

I think one of the problems is that basically loads of the councillors and police leadership were sacked, but faced no consequences whatsoever for perverting justice. The police are probably one of the biggest problems - still acting the exact same way. I can attest personally that police are still not just useless, but actively make things worse. E.g. one of my friends working at a sexual health clinic had a girl who'd clearly been trafficked and pimped come in with the pimp. They have no ward space, they have no shelter space, but they have clear reason to believe her life is in danger if she stays with the guy. They convince her to go to the police, police interrogate her for hours as a suspect, asking really heartless questions portraying her as a criminal prostitute. Not only did they crush all hope and will she had, but because she had been gone for so long, she began to get afraid that the pimp might think she was going to the police. After all was said and done, police said they would not be investigating the pimp for anything, sent her off, and she was found dead the next day. Police said it was just a death by drug overdose and exposure to the elements, a terrible accident. My boss advised them to escalate with the coroners, since coroners are independent from the police. Sure enough, the coroner checks the body and concludes she'd been murdered. Gods, I do not like the state of police in our country. This shit where victims come to the police and get told to fuck off for being a slut, is still happening. David Cameron for all his many sins at the very least told the police to sort their shit out, but they didn't. Just 4 years ago a police officer raped and murdered a lady called Sarah Everard, when people protested, the police just beat people up and arrested them. So it's not like there's no reason not to be angry, but I also feel like you can't get much of a good opinion in with a 140 character limit tweet. It's gonna get distilled to the most ragebait Daily Mail headline

[Starver]

There are many things wrong with 'the system'[1]. People prosecuted who probably shouldn't have been (the Birmingham Six, close relatives of Dignitas clients, the postmasters), others who clearly should have who weren't (too many to name, but also with very heavy caveats[2]).

But with often no attempt to even try to fill the 140 characters[3] with nuance and reasoning, and never establishing any realistic grounds why such arbitrary and hyperbolic attacks could be justified, it can only be read as attempted interference by a foreign government. (And, I highly suspect, that it does not even originate from within the US government.)


The case study you mention is tragic, and lessons should be learnt (by the authorities, lest it's instead the kind of people that the authorities didn't help this time that learn that there's never a legal and just recourse for them). The post-Everard situation was probably complicated by the times it was happening in (there were anti-gathering rules in place, exemptions/permissions were sought by the potential organisers (but refused) and the 'gathering of individuals' that still happened didn't deserve heavy-handedness but those mobilised to deal with it had a number of enforcement orders from above that were clearly on the heavy-handed side), that it was police having to deal with a situation that one of their own had provoked was bad optics but likely was not actually any significant reason for the result.


Note that the people who had actually conducted enquiries into these various grooming scandals have themselves repeatedly said that further enquiries are not needed. What should be done (and what should have been done years ago) is to act upon the enquiries' recommendations. Whether Starmer, et al, are getting around to doing so is barely relevent (though it'd be good to see such movement!) when prime amongst those complaining that Starmer hasn't been acting (whether in his previous job, before the true extent was known, or in his new one, when it's just one of many things that needs doing) are those that clearly never acted when they were in a good position to do so.

Who knew that doing politics was so hard? Well, not some self-obsessed personality who's probably been led to watch too many edgy influencer videos, themselves probably ultimately sponsored (when you unconvolute the convoluted trails) in roubles or renminbi.


[1] Actually a number of interlinked but deliberately separate systems. Probably as many points of contention where there should be better coordination as there are where there should be a better firewall/independence of thought to ensure a proper persoective.

[2] Those who never did have to defend themselves in court therefore never got the opportunity to defend themselves in court and prevail. The posthumous reassessment of the likes of Saville and Fayed also lacks something, insofar as closure and the ability to rectify the very probable mistakes made.

[3] Isn't it more, these days? Especially for someone who has bought a Blue Tick (in his case, for $33billion).

[Loud Whispers]

One of the things as well is public defence lawyers are struggling, the Courts are filled with a backlog of cases, the prisons are overfilled, people who shouldn't be are let out early, people who should be prison like child molestors are let off with warnings, people who shouldn't be in prison like eco protestors are given 7 years sentences, the probation services have completely collapsed after the government privatised the service (and the private companies went bankrupt) e.t.c. the list of structural flaws go on and on. Surprise surprise, the brilliant Tory logic of "if we cut the budget here we'll save £500,000,000!" And then cause £500,000,000,000 of damage with the cuts. Government logic is paying for firemen is a waste of time because fires are not that bad. But the fires were not that bad because we pay for firemen.

Can't stand the bloody Thatcherite logic that bled the country dry. Rishi saying "I don't believe for one second people are more sick than they were 20 years ago" yes, they are. You can't fake child mortality statistics. Defund the healthcare, people become too sick to work, economic productivity lowers. The previous government was seriously going on the logic that private healthcare was cheaper and safer than public healthcare, not understanding or deliberately lying about how private healthcare does not deal with life threatening emergency cases, the most expensive and dangerous ones. If they get one, they send them to an NHS hospital. Probation services got really fucked. Probation officers used to deal with a wide range of former inmates - you know the spectrum between someone who did fraud or drug possession, all the way up to someone who violently bludgeoned someone to death.
When they got privatised probation officers got split between low risk and high risk peoples, so that they had serious burnout, because they went form having one serious case interspersed with more optimistic cases to being tasked with dealing with back to back darkness. Prisons themselves are still rife with overcrowding and corruption; the prison recruitment services are straight up run by family friends of Dame Sally Hurst, Michael Gove and David Cameron, including a former libdem cabinet member of the coalition who was one of the UK's shortest serving cabinet ministers on account of resigning over corruption.

The ruling few's obsession with turning over industries that do not have a predictable "market demand" (e.g. prisons, health service) a captive market with few/no competitors (law courts, police, health, water, rail and energy) over to private interests that conduct the same service, but worse, with taxpayer funds siphoned off for profits - it's just so brazen. And Keir Starmer's set to continue with it. The health trust I work for is in talks about being put into administration because we're still bleeding from Blair era PFIs. Privatised profits, but misery belongs to everyone -_-

[Starver]

Don't particularly disagree with any of that.

Government logic is paying for firemen is a waste of time because fires are not that bad. But the fires were not that bad because we pay for firemen.

...add to that "we have the safest motorways around" (or words to that effect) leading to the decision to remove the hard shoulder, the thing that helped make them safe, to add capacity. At least as long as things didn't go wrong, like someone stranding themselves in a live lane (at best, forcing at least one lane to close, at worst, not being closed and then an incident happening).

And, because of this, they have to narrow down the motorway again, to add back in far more emergency refuges[1], so what was three lanes is then made two lanes for fifty or more miles at a time while they try to make the four lanes work better. (And, apparently, it would cost too much more to reconvert back to 3+1; which I don't really doubt, but still can't quite work out why.)


[1] The joke I made about this, the last time I drove along such a being-re-reworked stretch, was along the lines of them perhaps they needed to put even more refuges between the new refuges, and refuges in those smaller gaps. Continue until there's just a continuous run of refuge, basically going down the whole shoulder of the motorway verge and making it hard-standing to cater for almost every emergency. (Apparently I didn't tell it right, or my passenger wasn't really listening, but I thought it worthvl at least a mildly morbid chuckle...)

[Loud Whispers]

...add to that "we have the safest motorways around" (or words to that effect) leading to the decision to remove the hard shoulder, the thing that helped make them safe, to add capacity. At least as long as things didn't go wrong, like someone stranding themselves in a live lane (at best, forcing at least one lane to close, at worst, not being closed and then an incident happening).

Also "no tank wars in Europe, let's scrap our tanks" right before Russia invades Ukraine

The corruption as well does my head in. We sold a lot of our intelligence services cloud computing to an Israeli national who employed Boris Johnson's dad as a non-executive director with a £600k salary, and throw a dart at a top company, you'll find people who are relatives of politicians - either placed there as a reward, or from more entrepeneurial politicians entrenching themselves through backscratching exercises

And, because of this, they have to narrow down the motorway again, to add back in far more emergency refuges[1], so what was three lanes is then made two lanes for fifty or more miles at a time while they try to make the four lanes work better. (And, apparently, it would cost too much more to reconvert back to 3+1; which I don't really doubt, but still can't quite work out why.)

At least it isn't peak "just one more lane bro" mentality

[1] The joke I made about this, the last time I drove along such a being-re-reworked stretch, was along the lines of them perhaps they needed to put even more refuges between the new refuges, and refuges in those smaller gaps. Continue until there's just a continuous run of refuge, basically going down the whole shoulder of the motorway verge and making it hard-standing to cater for almost every emergency. (Apparently I didn't tell it right, or my passenger wasn't really listening, but I thought it worthvl at least a mildly morbid chuckle...)

Around my area there used to be this car crash factory. It was on a hill so guys going up the road couldn't see cars coming down it, there was a large tree making visibility even worse, and an area where due to private land parking, both the ongoing and outgoing traffic lanes had a merging point. Cars would come speeding down the hill whilst a car was going up past the tree, both would OH SHIT and swerve out of the way, crashing into one of the nearby walls. They ripped up the roads to install 8 speedbumps, then a week after ripped up the roads due to a burst pipe leaking, then 2 days after that ripped up the roads again because the roads were scheduled to be replaced

[Flying Teasets]

Is Toady officially a British game dev now?

[Starver]

Those two probably-illegally-released lynx that were spotted in the Highlands the other day have been captured...

But another pair have since been reported. Probably they came from the same source, still not identified, but there's also the possibility that it's due to a copycat!

[Funk]

If i was out of rewild the uk i'd pick lynx, there common in europe.

[Loud Whispers]

Those two probably-illegally-released lynx that were spotted in the Highlands the other day have been captured...

But another pair have since been reported. Probably they came from the same source, still not identified, but there's also the possibility that it's due to a copycat!

Sounds like the case is more complicated than first thought. Hope the detectives can figure out and find the missing lynx