Silliest argument of the day....

"Even in a parallel universe, where 15 is the age of criminal responsibility... " - Zoe Williams in the Guardian

The age of criminal responsibility is 10.

I'm not a fan of making people stateless but the fate of Ms Begum is not keeping me awake at night

Her larger point is that the decision itself makes people with one or more non-UK parents able to have their citizenship stripped whilst us indigenous people have more rights.  Perhaps... but when you've been living for years in Syria fighting for an Islamic State... I believe the court said one of the reasons Begum was not given prior warning was to stop her returning as it is very hard to make people who live in the UK stateless...

175 people have been deprived of British Citizenship on National Security grounds since 2006 see here

Twitter be like...

Hello

 

After reviewing the available information, we want to let you know Adolf Hitler hasn't broken our safety policies. We know this isn’t the answer you’re looking for but the hate has to go somewhere.  If his account breaks our policies in the future, we’ll send you another vacuous email like this one.

 

You can block the account, which means they won’t be able to follow you, see your Tweets, or message you just like the 10 sex worker bots you also have to block every day.

 

Reports like this inform our policies, and Elon is always reviewing them and investigating how to water them down.  We hope you'll continue to make reports if you see things that might break our policies so that we know who the grasses are.

 

Here’s a summary of what isn’t allowed on Twitter, according to our safety policies.

 

Mutual Respect

Criticism of Elon

Thanks

X

 

It's a hell of a thing to kill a squirrel

Normally I solve this problem with ultrasound, flashing strobes or other methods but this year I was unable to get the squirrel 🐿️ out the loft without getting the man with the Kania trap in.  He has eaten his last Snickers and I feel guilty for having killed him but you can't legally release them once captured as they're classified by the government as "vermin"... I looked on YouTube about how the kill bar dispatches them and apparently there are a lot of survivalists who not only kill but cook and eat them.  I mentioned this to the pest control man who said in the countryside they have more meat on them but London squirrels are a bit skinny.  Later I wondered if he'd had it for dinner...

As Clint Eastwood once said...

It's a hell of a thing to kill a squirrel.

 

How tragic do you have to be to stand next to a cardboard cutout of the Pope?

 

It's not like it's hard to get a photo with the Pope.  He has free photo ops / audiences every week.  I went in St Peter's once , the doors shut, loads of security appeared and the next thing I knew I was shaking hands with John Paul II.

I hadn't even gone there to meet him...

With thanks to...

So Calvin Clown, the creepy crowdfunded cosplay clerical conman is now swanning around in Rome dressed like Indiana Jones. Wonder if his gullible flock of fleeced fools are regretting ponying up over £33,300 to keep his gravy train ‘crusade’ on the tracks? Cheers, suckers! 🥂 pic.twitter.com/laS6c5GC9S

— Brexit Buster (@BrexitBuster) February 23, 2024

Apparently Pope Francis has the flu... See here

Wars!

Today I have been mostly being blocked on twitter by right wing freeze peacher turned GB News gobshite Josh Howie for daring to point out that this must win an award for one the most spiteful mean spirited articles ever.  See here

Gary Linekar : I took it down because people were reading into it that it was my opinion.  They thought that it was my view. I retweeted a news story. I think it was a news story. I took it down because people were you know, they seemed unhappy. It was nothing to do with the BBC. They didn’t contact me. I hadn’t breached the guidelines.

Miserable cow: Even though this man is talking to us trying to understand our POV I'm literally shaking with anger

Josh : She put him in his place

No, Josh, she didn't...

Anyway I just thought I'd mention it here so I can be blocked again on every other platform by a man whose single debating skill seems to be calling other people blind and stupid...

I mean, Mr L goes to the effort of speaking to the Jewish Chronicle to try and understand their concerns and all their reporter can do is seeth anger....

Anyway, I think that's why he blocked me.  Could have been pointing out that Palestine existed before 1948 as it was a League of Nations mandate.  My grandfather was there for a while. He drove all over Europe, Africa and the Middle East during WWII delivering supplies.  See Royal Artillery War Memorial in Hyde Park...

This was erected after WWI... But apparently people actually believe the PLO was started by Stalin these days... 

Along with nonsense like that the Arabs there were all nomadic people... If so it was very careless of them to leave a mosque there in 700AD and then wander off for 1200 years... During which time it hasn't fallen into disrepair...

In 1850, according to the Ottoman census provincial yearbook, Palestine had 63,659 recorded households. Roughly 85% were Muslim, 11% were Christian and 4% Jewish.  The fact lots of people both Arabs & Jews have moved there since doesn't mean there was no indigenous culture.  But the first casualty of war is truth.  Actually it's youth but let's not get pedantic.  When they drone on with their long historical diatribes these people also forget that since 1919 we've been supposed to be using National Self Determination to resolve these issues.  It's living people that matter...

In other news I hear Labour has suspended a candidate for saying that Israel knew about 7 October in advance.  This is not a conspiracy theory.  It's what IDF soldiers told the BBC (SEE HERE).  Now that doesn't mean Israel "let it happen" but they did have intelligence.  They just didn't use it intelligently.

Still, the world keeps turning.  I clicked on the BBC News Website the other day and there was a special tab for the Israel-Gaza War and another for the Ukraine-Russia war.  WWIII is on the way.  Apparently Ukraine is running out of people (see here) to call up now and radio stations are being taken off the air because they keep tipping the public off where the draft men are... Putin meanwhile has almost limitless cannon fodder to throw into graves meaning Ukraine has "shifted to a policy of exhausting it's enemy".  That may take some time but sadly many in America don't get that paying others to die for you is a bargain.

When quisling rapist fraudster gangster and insurrectionist Donald Trump was first elected he stood on the platform of America First ... Which was of course the name of Charles Lindbergh's pro Appeasement WWII lobby group.... It's little surprise then that today he's besties with Vladimir...

War... What is it good for?

How thick do you have to be ...

...to draw a dam without a river on both sides?

Cartoon went by me on twitter today.  Yes, that's really how some people see Europe.  

 

Whenever I think I was no good at comedy...

.... I'm always cheered up by the fact there are people out there who think they are witty but are unaware they are just chronically unfunny

It's wicked to mock the afflicted

If there's a definition of white privilege it must surely be the editor of a bankrupt business telling a white knight investor to get lost just because he's an Arab 

The Spectator was formed in 1828 to lobby for democratic reform so people would be allowed to vote.

Should it now be bought by a dictatorship, where in 2024 no one can vote?

Andrew Neil on the dangers of the UAE/RedBird bid:- https://t.co/XPA3D42yj7 https://t.co/XPA3D42yj7

— Fraser Nelson (@FraserNelson) January 26, 2024

God Save The Prostate

Amid the private hospital’s roster of leading consultants is Satyajit Bhattacharya – the most senior surgeon in the Medical Household – to Elizabeth II from 2016 to 2023. He was unfortunately made redundant from this post when he failed to make Elizabeth II immortal.

Update: It turns out Charles III has cancer ...but not of the prostate...
 

There lived a certain man...

 

There lived a certain man in Germany long ago

He was big in pop.  His acts often sued him so

There was lots of litigation and/or trademarking disputes

But he was real smart cus he always kept the loot

2 grown ups go to the cinema

"Under normal circumstances there would be nothing wrong with them [the Sussexes] going to a film premiere. But at a time when his father is going under the knife and Jamaica is making noises about ditching the monarchy, this is rather insensitive"
 

X rated

Questions.

Elon says I can monetise my twitter feed if I have over 500 followers.

I block 10 sex workers a week.

Should I stop blocking them for pecuniary gain?

If I do does that make me a pimp?

 

The strange story of Yasser Arafat and Po 210

I'm a bit too busy to do this blog at the moment but sometimes a story comes up that is so weird you think ...I've got to make time...

The other day I heard a Zionist say on Twitter that no Palestinian had ever won a Nobel Peace Prize and so I said “Yasser Arafat did”.  Then I remembered why.  He won one for the Oslo Peace accords with Yitzhak Rabin.  Rabin was also rewarded for his peace efforts by being assassinated and Yasser I guessed had long since shuffled off his mortal coil due to old age.  Or did he?

It must have slipped me by at the time as I was on bigger tings but after Arafat died in 2004 of a stroke, Al Jazeera carried out a nine-month investigation in which they concluded that there was a suspicious amount of Polonium on his personal belongings.  Swiss experts studied 38 of Arafat’s clothes/belongings and discovered that the levels of Polonium were rather high.  Polonium is number 210 on the periodic table – there’s not a lot of it about.  Their paper was so plausible it made it into top UK medical journal “The Lancet”?  So was he assassinated?  Or was it contamination from somewhere else?  If so how would he have picked it up?  A further different Swiss team, a French team and a Russian team then all attempted a similar analysis to see if they could simulate the same results as the original team.  The Swiss forensic team did a bone analysis from Yasser’s body which had not been cremated and found levels of polonium in Arafat's ribs and pelvis 18 to 36 times normal.  Keep in mind that the Polonium isotopes are unstable so the level would have been even higher when he was buried – the half-life of Polonium 210 is 138 days.  Al Jazeera produced a forensic scientist to say that this was a “smoking gun” whilst another professor at University College London remarked it was as fishy as an aquarium.  

Okay, what he actually said was “it seems likely what they're doing is putting a very cautious interpretation of strong data”.  

The French and Russian teams claimed however that they could not replicate the analysis and found no Polonium.  Palestinian official Wasel Abu Yousef however remained convinced that “The French report is politicized and is contrary to all the evidence which confirms that the president was killed by poisoning".  

Even if this wasn’t true one might expect more publicity about the case given what happened with the other well known poisoning case …  Mr Litvinenko….  It took only 10 micrograms of 210 Po to kill Alexander.

From a political perspective the most worrying thing about this case is not whether or not Yasser was murdered but the thought that if he was then both* the main Oslo Accord Nobel Peace Prize winners were assassinated… so what hope is there?

The other question is that, if this wasn’t an assassination attempt …where did the Polonium 210 come from?  As a highly unstable element … you can’t mine it … the only place it comes from is from a nuclear reactor …I think you have to bombard bismuth 209 Bi with neutrons?  Was someone trying to build a bomb?  Maybe … but in a hospital?  Then again, the IDF tells us these days that all Palestinian hospitals are actually hiding Hamas soldiers so …er… whatever…

The original paper can be found here (you’ll forgive me if I can’t be arsed with proper Havard Referencing it’s been a long day – please don’t sack me for poor referencing like Dr. Claudine Gay)

And here’s the Abstract…

In 2011, we found abnormal levels of polonium-210 ((210)Po) in some of Arafat's belongings that were worn during his final hospital stay and which were stained with biological fluids. This finding led to the exhumation of Arafat's remains in 2012. Significantly higher (up to 20 times) activities of (210)Po and lead-210 ((210)Pb) were found in the ribs, iliac crest and sternum specimens compared to reference samples from the literature (p-value <1%). In all specimens from the tomb, (210)Po activity was supported by a similar activity of (210)Pb. Biokinetic calculations demonstrated that a (210)Pb impurity, as identified in a commercial source of 3MBq of (210)Po, may be responsible for the activities measured in Arafat's belongings and remains 8 years after his death. The absence of myelosuppression and hair loss in Mr Arafat's case compared to Mr Litvinenko's, the only known case of malicious poisoning with (210)Po, could be explained by differences in the time delivery-scheme of intake. 

In conclusion, statistical Bayesian analysis combining all the evidence gathered in our forensic expert report moderately supports the proposition that Mr Arafat was poisoned by (210)Po.

*the other person to share the prize Shimon Peres fell off his perch naturally in 2016

Not Sleeping only Biden

 

To calculate the probability of dependent events you have to multiply them together.

Someone over 80 has a 10% chance of dying each year but we can't multiply together Biden's chances of dying each year because these are not truly independent events.  He can't die in 2025 and again in 2026.

We can however calculate his chances of still being alive each year by multiplying them together.  If you had a 10 sided dice that's the probability of not rolling a 1 multiplied by itself 4 times so ...

0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 = 0.66

So if elected Biden has ha 66% chance of living to the end of his Presidency and a 34% chance of dying in office.

Donald Trump's is probably only slightly better at ~25%

Tell me if I've done that wrong...

Greenwasher of the day - e.on

Greenwasher of the Day : We haven't actually spent any money on replacing our Diesel vans with Electric ones but we've paid to cover them with adverts telling you we'll do it when we get around to it... 
 

"Papers!"

Was thinking about the ritual of voting the other day and looking forward to walking over the road to the Church Hall to see all the stuffed shirts from the parties who no doubt choose church halls to have their elections in because they think they're less likely to be sworn at on consecrated ground...

...when I remembered that all my votes are postal now because I can't be doing with that being asked for ID thing ...

Not the same...

 

No man is an island

Just been followed on twitter by someone whose biog reads "Don't let others define you. Don't let the past confine you."

So taking his advice I blocked him ...

Belting along...

 

We'll never see the likes of Starskey or Hutch again 

Detectives that never wore seatbelts

Yet never went through the windscreen 

You just can't get the variable inertia anymore

The Spirit of Christmas is Hard Work

 

It remains bizarre to me what people find controversial.  Recently I read on Facebook a story about a family that own a Newsagents who opened on Christmas Day from 12-2pm.  

They claimed to have been doing this for 20 years and to have formed a community hub and offered people “hugs and mince pies… “  To you and me that's a freebie worth 31p each - tax deductible so probably actually 25p if you claim the VAT back...

I wont name their establishment because firstly I don’t think they need any more publicity and secondly I don’t want to attack anyone personally .... they all seem very sincere people but...

Firstly, I asked the obvious question “Is it Legal?”

The Christmas Day (Trading) Act 2004 (c 26) is an Act makes it illegal to open a retail establishment on Christmas Day unless your shop is smaller than 280 m^2 / 3,000 sq ft.  

For those of you who for whom a square meters is hard to visualise, a Tennis Court is ~260m^2 (I would have done a football pitch to sound more working class but apparently they vary in size) ...

...and the floorspace of the average London double decker Routemaster bus is ~40m^2 if you count both decks…

Interestingly the 280 m^2 law only accounts for two dimensions so one could in theory have a shop as high as Nelson’s Column and supply the customers with very long ladders but for some reason no one has yet exploited this loophole but anyway...

I have to say the owners of the shop spun a good yarn about the many lost souls they had encountered on Christmas Day but I found it statistically unlikely for so many interesting events to have happened within what they claimed to only ever be the space of two hours each Christmas Day…

The “be kind” mob however were ever so angry at me suggesting that given the Unions had had to campaign for the right for the workers to knock off Christmas Day opening on it might not be a totally good idea ...?

....even if you don't employ anyone except your own family 

...who I'm sure are thrilled to be working the one day everyone else isn't....  

“They’re giving back to the community,” they said… maybe but then.... aren't there other things you could do to give back that don't involve running a business at the same time?

“They’re not Open", intoned another.

So I asked what part of their sign saying “We’re Open” did he not understand?

The Facebook page suddenly became alive with lots of people who were very angry and told me I was full of anger and asked when did I ever do anything for the rest of society?  

Well, not on Christmas Day.  Unlike these local heroes I do not see everyone as my family.  I have a family and they are not everybody else.  I mean, I'm not a huge fan of Christmas but it is a nice symbolic gesture that once a year there's one day that almost everyone has off... Unless they're providing a vital service ... which retail is not.

Still, the Greek Chorus intoned they were doing something for other people.  

Well, if you really want to do community work on Christmas Day I'm sure there are opportunities that don't involve running a retail business but they wouldn't make the Metro's "12 Acts of Kindness" ... which I struggled through a lot of clickbait to read making me feel a bit better about the intrusive adverts on this page which are comparatively discrete.  By the way, don't let the fact I'm writing this as a community service stop you clicking on the adverts... I'm not in it for the money.  It's a vocation.  I do it all out of kindness.

Other ludicrous arguments advanced included that “these people are pensioners” but at 50 I’m nearly a pensioner myself so what’s that to me?  Well, okay 50's not that old but still ... I'm nearer the end than the beginning anyway...  

There were also passive aggressive sneers posing as arguments such as “U OK Hun?” – something I have not yet been able to decode despite extensive referencing of the Urban Dictionary site.  

“Are you a Union Rep?” asked one person.  

Well, no but I’m in the Union and 97% of people they surveyed said retail workers should not be working Boxing Day and Christmas Day.  I think the Union would take a dim view of this kind of thing now you bring it up ...as for retail to work so do all the distribution chains etc... 

...and if these people open why don't the many Tesco and Sainsburys Metros which are all smaller than 280 m^2 to get round the 6 hours Sunday Trading Laws?  Now, I'm not part of what  the late Victor Lewis Smith used to call the "Keep Sundays Miserable Campaign" but... perhaps one day of the year...?

“Is it too much?” I asked “for people to have one day off capitalism a year?”.  

And then I tried to explain the ridiculous expectations some people have that everything should be Open All Hours… but I suppose if you haven’t experienced it, you don’t understand it.

So then the "Be Kind" mob blocked me …as that's what kindness is...

...so I’ll leave the last word to the great philosopher DICKY07549: