Elsewhere (267)

Douglas Murray on crime, migration and modern dishonesties: 

In Germany, friends and readers describe to me how they are learning anew how to read their daily newspapers. When the news says that ‘A person was killed by another person’ for instance, and no names or other identifying characteristics are given, people guess – correctly – that the culprit is probably of migrant background. For the time-being serious crimes are still reported, but the decision has been taken that the public should not really be informed about them.

Related: “Vibrant and diverse.” And of course these items here. 

Heather Mac Donald on “diversity” versus merit: 

Sometimes meritocracy will yield diversity; sometimes it won’t. The point is that it doesn’t matter. Diversity should not be an end in itself; excellence is the goal. Rejecting the primacy of diversity constitutes a head-on assault on the received wisdom of Washington and elite American culture. Gender and racial quotas have been the order of business for the last three decades… The result: wasted resources, the side-lining of merit, and ever more virulent and irrational identity politics. The rule of the diversity regime is that you’re required to be fanatically obsessed with race and gender until you aren’t — because at that unpredictable moment, whenever it comes, noticing race and sex becomes racist and sexist.

And Roger Kimball on being outraged by the obvious-but-unmentionable: 

Professors Amy Wax and Larry Alexander were roundly condemned by their university colleagues. Thirty-three of Wax’s fellow law professors at Penn signed an “Open Letter” condemning her op-ed. “We categorically reject Wax’s claims,” they thundered. What they found especially egregious was Wax and Alexander’s observation that “All cultures are not equal.” […] As William Henry argued back in the 1990s… “Every corner of the human race may have something to contribute. That does not mean that all contributions are equal… It is scarcely the same thing to put a man on the moon as to put a bone in your nose.” True, too true. But in a pusillanimous society terrified by its own shadow, it is one thing to know the truth, quite another to utter it in public.

And then Professor Wax mentioned other obvious things, much to the agitation of people who like to pretend.

As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

Comments

[Jonathan]

O/T, but Easter is now officially Hateful you bigots!

https://twitter.com/splchatetracker/status/980573043180429314

[Alice]

Solomon Michalski loved going to his new school on a leafy Berlin street because it was vibrant and diverse, with most students from migrant families. But when the teenage grandson of Holocaust survivors let it slip that he was Jewish, former friends started hissing insults at him in class, he says. Last year some of them brandishing what looked like a gun took him aside and said they would execute him.

So enriched.

[David]

Correction of note.

[Jonathan]

Douglas Murray on crime, migration and modern dishonesties:

It's the same in the UK.

[David]

It’s the same in the UK.

The Met Commissioner, Cressida Dick, has vowed to tackle the epidemic of knife crime across the capital and has suggested that social media could be responsible for street violence.

At risk of sounding unkind, it occurs to me that the alarming levels of violent crime may have more to do with the fact that a creature like Cressida Dick was given a job she cannot do. See also Sadiq Khan. If you appoint people who are habitually, instinctively evasive and schooled in modern dishonesties, what follows should not be surprising.

[Jonathan]

.. Cressida Dick was given a job she cannot do.

The promotion of the ideologically 'on-message' is certainly a contributing factor across all police forces in Britain, but one can't be honest and ignore changing demographics, of England in particular, as Scotland and Wales haven't experienced a similar uptick.

[David]

but one can’t be honest and ignore changing demographics,

Well, quite.

[[+]]

"Related"

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/chinese-airline-in-racism-storm-over-article-warning-tourists-to-avoid-parts-of-london-populated-by-a3338501.html

[Hector Drummond, Vile Novelist]

Leftists clearly don't think that all cultures are equal: they think Western culture is inferior.

[[+]]

“Vibrant and diverse.”

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/938824/Germany-news-duisburg-state-of-emergency-fight-riot-machetes

[Jonathan]

Meanwhile in France:

https://twitter.com/Arch_Revival_/status/980397014696390658

[JuliaM]

"When the news says that ‘A person was killed by another person’ for instance, and no names or other identifying characteristics are given, people guess – correctly – that the culprit is probably of migrant background. "

Jonathan is correct, hence the 'MONA' meme ('Men of no Appearance').

[Adam]

Heather McDonald is wrong about diversity. It is not a desirable, but occasional, outcome of meritocracy. It is pushed as the alternative to meritocracy.

[David]

And in health news:

“I am the secret to a better sex life,” says pelvic therapist Isa Herrera. “People in New York, their vaginas are too tight,” she said. “Everyone is so stressed out in this town.”

No laughing at the back.

[Tim Newman]

In Germany, friends and readers describe to me how they are learning anew how to read their daily newspapers.

He’s a bit late to the party, isn’t he?

http://www.desertsun.co.uk/blog/3372/

[David]

He’s a bit late to the party, isn’t he?

I’m pretty sure Mr Murray has mentioned this phenomenon before. And given the ongoing creep of coded news and pretending-not-to-notice, it bears repeating.

[David]

Regarding the alleged equality of cultures, another one of Tim’s seems broadly relevant.

[Tim Newman]

And given the ongoing creep of coded news and pretending-not-to-notice, it bears repeating.

Indeed it does, and often.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

And in health news:

Welcome to the 1800's.

[David]

Welcome to the 1800’s.

I’m being exposed to kinds of beastliness I shouldn’t know about.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

I’m being exposed to kinds of beastliness I shouldn’t know about.

My apologies, I never cease to be amazed at the recycled quackery people fall for.

[David]

Also somewhat relevant.

[Franca Valeri]

Let's play "Count the Paragraphs" until the NYT finally lets slip the ethnicity of the murderer

Samuel Cohen, 74, who was at the march with his wife, Léa, 70, was one of several who carried a sign that read, “In France, we kill grandmothers because they’re Jewish.”

Who exactly is the “we” in that sign? Seven paragraphs and not a hint (other than the negative hint that they would have told us if they had wanted to tell us).

[PiperPaul]

The whole 'MONA' concept is ostensibly to avoid provoking retaliation or revenge on innocents, I take it. But eventually it will probably invoke what it claims to want to avoid. Then the Progs can say, "See? I told you so!"

[sH2]

And so it is that anyone interested in anything other than just feeling sad about the latest cache of rape-victims, and who, for instance, wonders about the characteristics of the latest Oxford gang (whether it is, for instance, an average Inspector Morse don-on-don style mystery) must work it out for themselves. They might be lucky and see the photo accompanying the BBC’s report of the story here. Or they may not. And more and more one gets the sense – in France, the UK and elsewhere – that there is a hope that we don’t work it out.

That.

[David]

That.

A sense of contempt and… betrayal is, I think, hard to avoid. And among the Sadiq Khans, Simon Schamas and Cressida Dicks, maybe there’s an inkling that the damage that’s been done may be irretrievable. And so, instead, we’re expected to pretend.

[Trevor]

Sports lovers everywhere will be saddened to learn that the former proprietrix/muse of the Mandela United Football Club, Winnie of that ilk, has left the field for the last time.

[Jonathan]

And among the Sadiq Khans, Simon Schamas and Cressida Dicks, maybe there’s an inkling that the damage that’s been done may be irretrievable.

What if they know exactly what they're doing?

[Jonathan]

On second thoughts: sleep well, everything is fine. Our leaders are keeping us safe.

[Wolfgang von Trips]

https://kakistocracyblog.wordpress.com/2017/03/23/the-virtue-inferno/

The logic isn’t entirely unsound. The news is for things that are actually news. And Europeans being slaughtered in their own capital cities by foreign infantry is not at all novel, in this age or those prior. The fact that this time they’ve voluntarily imported (and resolutely continue to import) their antagonists is the noteworthy aspect. Though not so much as to warrant the public’s input.

It’s all analogous to building bonfires in your own living room. Why keep reporting on the resulting ash heaps? It’s a given. Not that we’d reconsider the practice. Because lighting domestic demographic fires is a religious form of noblesse oblige every Western leader keeps striking the match while making sure it’s some other poor fuck who ends up in a hearse. And that’s not cheap. A massive security apparatus must be erected and maintained as a prophylactic to prevent important people from being burned and unimportant people from complaining about it.

[Nemo]

it occurs to me that the alarming levels of violent crime may have more to do with the fact that a creature like Cressida Dick was given a job she cannot do.

Jean Charles de Menezes is unavailable for comment

[Sam Duncan]

Lindsay Shepherd dissociates from the Left:

What I want to get across is that I no way want to be associated with what the left has become. I am not a leftist any more, I would not call myself that. ... Sometimes I see myself brought up as an example of leftists who advocate for free speech. I just want to clear the air. That does not describe me anymore.

[Jonathan]

@Wolfgang.

https://kakistocracyblog.wordpress.com is obviously crimethink because my ISP blocks it. Must. Use. VPN.

[David]

Not entirely unrelated.

[Spiny Norman]

When the news says that ‘A person was killed by another person’ for instance, and no names or other identifying characteristics are given, people guess – correctly – that the culprit is probably of migrant background.

Jonathan is correct, hence the 'MONA' meme ('Men of no Appearance').

A decade ago, when this exquisitely politically-correct phenomenon was also occurring in Sydney, Melbourne and other larger Australian cities, Tim Blair began referring to the (nearly always Lebanese Muslim) perpetrators as "the men of no appearance" aka MONA.

The whole 'MONA' concept is ostensibly to avoid provoking retaliation or revenge on innocents, I take it.

There's an old satirical NYT headline meme: "Muslim Leaders Fear Backlash from Tomorrow's Terror Attack".

[Governor Squid]

But eventually it will probably invoke what it claims to want to avoid. Then the Progs can say, "See? I told you so!"

It's weird -- if four murderers and child molesters were freed from prison and moved into a halfway house in a working-class neighborhood, the neighbors would raise hell as soon as they heard about it, and do everything they could to chase the undesirables out of the parish.

But when four hundred murderers and child molesters move into a neighborhood, the neighbors are expected to hush up and look away, lest they cause the murderers and child molesters to have hurt feelings (or worse yet, to make the importers look foolish for bringing them in).

I don't even begin to understand how such a state of affairs comes to be. I do, however, get the feeling that I should spend more time at the range, poking little holes in pieces of paper from several yards away. For stress relief, dontcha know.

[Captain Nemo]

A sense of contempt and… betrayal is, I think, hard to avoid. And among the Sadiq Khans, Simon Schamas and Cressida Dicks, maybe there’s an inkling that the damage that’s been done may be irretrievable. And so, instead, we’re expected to pretend.

What if they know exactly what they're doing?

Why do you think our political class encourages us, after what happened in Manchester, London, etc., to go around saying "Don't Look Back in Anger"? The most obvious, understandable, (and I think perfectly valid) reason is to avoid provoking retaliatory attacks on innocent minorities, like the awful London Mosque attack last year. One suspects a tad more cynically, however, that those politicians currently ruling the country encouraging us not to look back, don't want us to look back at what happened. Because if we do "look back in anger", we might realise that it's their policies and their actions that are ultimately responsible for the mess in which we find ourselves, and who would want to be on the other end of the retribution they imagine is coming for them?

[Spiny Norman]

Alice,

So enriched.

There's an internet image meme of what appears to be a gang of Hutus from the Rwandan civil war / genocide, running towards the camera and carrying machetes, and captioned,

Here comes the diversity / You're about to be culturally enriched

[Spiny Norman]

Welcome to the 1800's.

I’m being exposed to kinds of beastliness I shouldn’t know about.

You haven't seen "The Road to Wellville"?

[Horace Dunn]

Jean Charles de Menezes is unavailable for comment

Quite. A perfect illustration of the establishment's contempt for the populace. Dick was in charge of an operation that saw an innocent man slaughtered in front of dozens of terrified commuters. A horrific mistake for which Dick, had she an ounce of decency, would have apologised and resigned. Instead, her establishment mates rule that she is in no way responsible. So Dick continues to rise up the ladder, and enrich herself from the public purse. She gains more power and influence (and just wait for her elevation to the legislature and the VAST pension that we’ll all have to pay for).

Meanwhile, the Guardian and BBC etc etc etc all continue to scratch their heads and wonder about the rise in populist, anti-establishment sentiments among the lower classes.

[David]

You haven’t seen “The Road to Wellville”?

[ Faints. ]

[David]

I can’t help thinking some kind of weapon might have been useful.

[pst314]

I can’t help thinking some kind of weapon might have been useful.

God forbid that the people be allowed to defend themselves. They might get crazy ideas, such as that they are not serfs but citizens, and we cannot have that!

[Criticas]

ESR (http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6286) comments on "youth" crime:

Journalistic silence has become a kind of black privilege. The gravamen of the Hot Air article is that gangs of black teenagers and twentysomethings can racially taunt whites and assault both whites and nonwhites confident in the knowledge that media coverage will describe them as neutrally as “youths” (ah, what an anodyne term that is!).

I’m here to say what that article could have but did not: suppressio veri, when performed systematically enough, itself becomes a code that can be read. What the press is teaching Americans to assume, story after story, is that if “youths” commit public violence and they are not specified to be white, or hispanic, or asian — then it’s yet another black street gang on a wilding.

[pst314]

What the press is teaching Americans...

Indeed. Reading the news now somewhat resembles what Soviet citizens had to do.

[pst314]

The press is also teaching Americans that it is on the side of the criminals. This is a lesson that can be dangerous to the teacher.

[Boatswain's Mate]

Captain Nemo --

One suspects a tad more cynically, however, that those politicians currently ruling the country encouraging us not to look back, don't want us to look back at what happened. Because if we do "look back in anger", we might realise that it's their policies and their actions that are ultimately responsible for the mess in which we find ourselves....

"Forget Pearl Harbor!"
"The Imperial Japanese are a peaceful people!"
"'Bushido' means 'The Way of Peace,' and not 'The Way of the Warrior' as the bigots say."
"If we'd not been in The Philippines in the first place, the Bataan death march wouldn't have happened, so in a way it's really our own fault."
"Nothing we can do about Japanese expansion; who are we to judge their culture?"

[billdehaan]

Why keep reporting on the resulting ash heaps?

When I was in Chicago in the early 1990s, shootings were front page news on the Chicago Sun-Times.

In the mid to late 1990s, they moved to page two, and then page three.

By the early 2000s, they were just "day in the life" articles, in the mid-section of the paper.

Today, the paper publishes a separate paper solely dedicated to the shootings, because they can't fit them all in the paper any more.

Chicago and Detroit have some of the highest murder rates in the USA, but if you read the local newspapers, you'd barely be aware of it. They aren't suppressing the news; they're simply accepting it as the way things are.

In Germany and the EU, they aren't accepting it. Yet. They're preparing the population to become accepting of it. They are fully aware of the implications of their policies, and they accept them. They know that the public at large would not, so they simply don't report it.

[David]

If anyone has trouble with comments not appearing, email me and I’ll cajole the spam filter.

[Spiny Norman]

Cajoling now? Dealing with the spam filter is like minding a recalcitrant child, eh?

[David]

Cajoling now?

She’s a creature of many moods.

[Sam]

It's a head scratcher.

https://twitter.com/TheSafestSpace/status/980830779268878337

[Flubber]

And so, instead, we’re expected to pretend.

As the great Steve Sailer said many years ago, "political correctness is a war on noticing things.

[Geezer]

I can’t help thinking some kind of weapon might have been useful.

Here in the Southland, such a scenario would be unlikely. If such a stunt had been tried, there is a substantial possibility that there would be four carcasses on the concrete with bullets in their hearts.

[David]

there is a substantial possibility that there would be four carcasses on the concrete

That would, I think, be a more satisfactory outcome. A more just one, certainly. That the law-abiding should feel resigned to being preyed on by sociopathic vermin, repeatedly and with little hope of comeuppance, is a moral outrage.

[pst314]

I can’t help thinking some kind of weapon might have been useful.

Re: the long war against self defense: First we were told that it was immoral (and should be illegal) to use violence to defend one's property. Then we were told it was immoral to use violence to defend oneself from assault. And now we are told that it is immoral to use violence to defend against deadly assault. At every stage in this war against civilization the criminals were further emboldened.

[Hopp Singg]

Secure Beneath The Watchful Eyes.

[Tim Newman]

Who exactly is the “we” in that sign? Seven paragraphs and not a hint (other than the negative hint that they would have told us if they had wanted to tell us).

Similarly: https://twitter.com/whitesundesert/status/980897583374700544?s=21

[Governor Squid]

there is a substantial possibility that there would be four carcasses on the concrete

You're a much quicker/better shot than I. I'd probably only get one or two before they hightailed it out of there.

[R. Sherman]

Related.

[lotocoti]

A decade ago, when this exquisitely politically-correct phenomenon was also occurring ...

The MONA have reappeared in Melbourne this passed year, after the narod became unsettled by the rise of car jackings and home invasions perpetrated by Sudanese yoot.

[Jen]

Maps are racist.

https://twitter.com/BasedMonitored/status/980851370969374720

[David]

Last month I organised a small conference of historians who I knew shared my interest in trying to apply historical knowledge to contemporary policy problems. Five of the people I invited to give papers were women, but none was able to attend. I should have tried harder to find other female speakers, no doubt. But my failure to do so elicited a disproportionately vitriolic response. Under a headline that included the words “Too white and too male,” the New York Times published photographs of all the speakers, as if to shame them for having participated. Around a dozen academics — male as well as female — took to social media to call the conference a “StanfordSausageFest.” […]

Never mind the facts and reason, so the argument runs, all we need to know — if we don’t like what we hear — are the sex and race of the author.

Niall Ferguson, here.

[Captain Nemo]

Boatswain's Mate, I'm not sure if you think I believe that America was responsible for what happened at Pearl Harbour, (I don't) or if you're agreeing with me and using it as an example. If you could clarify just what it is, then I'd be able to respond with a proper answer.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Maps are racist.

Great googly moogly - "Critical Cartography".

Historically, maps have been used to colonize and conquer - and are primarily created by white men...

Attila, Gengis Kahn, and all the other "non-white" conquerors of history could not be reached for comment, but in general, throughout history, I think the maps are not used to colonize, but that they come after the fact, because the dastardly white men generally were going to unmapped areas. The whole chicken and egg thing.

My favorite slide from her presentation that proves "oppression" - where black kids got hit by cars. Oddly enough, where black kids live, but that is supposed to prove white oppression, because they were being run over on purpose or something. Also the quote from the slide:

Geography does not belong to geographers alone, anymore than medicine belongs to doctors.

Right-O. Miss Robinson of SU last seen wandering lost in the wilderness using a "radical map" looking for some herbs to cure her appendicitis.

[Scott]

@Govnor Squid

For stress relief, dontcha know.

It's amaxing how soul-satisfying it can be to toss a bit of brass downrange.

[Tom]

God forbid that the people be allowed to defend themselves. They might get crazy ideas, such as that they are not serfs but citizens, and we cannot have that!

As an ex-pat American living in the land of leprechauns and lunatics I've had people honestly tell me that no one needs a weapon to defend their property because human life is more important than any property you may have. I have to say that the urge to burgle their homes has only ever reached the "it's not worth it for the lols" stage but I'm keeping my options open. ;)

[PiperPaul]

"toss a bit of brass downrange"

My experience has been that the brass stays in the cylinder or is ejected to somewhere within a 10 foot radius of my firing position.

[David]

I’ve had people honestly tell me that no one needs a weapon to defend their property

Let’s not forget that the Guardian has for decades made excuses for criminality, urging us to fret about the poor quality of toothbrushes available in prison, while disdaining those who wish to see career thugs and sociopaths suitably punished.

A telling example, one of many, was Decca Aitkenhead’s interview with leftist lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who airily dismissed burglary - the violation of someone’s home - as “really quite inconsequential,” thereby implying that the wellbeing of burglars is of at least equal importance to the wellbeing of their numerous victims. And so any anger at being burgled is waved aside as somehow plebeian and unsophisticated.

Aitkenhead and Stafford Smith are, of course, unlikely to have their pieties tested in the real world, as burglary and theft are much more likely to affect working class people in poorer neighbourhoods. And so our Guardianistas pretend to feel sympathy with working class criminals, usually habitual criminals who prey on their neighbours for years, while dismissing the criminals’ equally working class victims, whose expectations of lawfulness are not considered important.

[Boatswain's Mate]

Captain Nemo --

No, my response was (clearly) an ill-conceived attempt at humor, imagining what the early 1940s might have been like had today's soyboy and cultural-relativist cadre of politicians and "reporters" (and I only use that term because it always fetches a good laugh) been in charge. Y'know, like a Sadiq Khan of the day suggesting that repeated nightly aerial bombings are just something one has to get used to living in a major metropolis.

Now, where'd I lay my Godzilla facepalm meme?

[Clam]

leftist lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who airily dismissed burglary - the violation of someone’s home - as “really quite inconsequential,”

That interview actually made me angry. When my mum got burgled it was definitely *not* "inconsequential" and she couldn't sleep properly for weeks. What world do these people live in?

[Captain Nemo]

Thanks for the clarification. Yes, I can't imagine it would have gone down too well among the public if the government of the time had taken that particular line of thought. And the meme isn't necessary, as I did the action on reading the post.

[David]

When my mum got burgled it was definitely *not* “inconsequential”

Well, quite. And yet both Ms Aitkenhead and Mr Stafford Smith insist that being burgled has “zero” emotional impact and no real material repercussions, and is therefore trivial and unworthy of serious punishment. Especially, we’re told, if the burglar is a “young black person.”

Neither Guardianista pauses to consider the impact of burglary, even repeatedly burglary, on someone who is, say, elderly and isolated, and perhaps uninsured, and who has no means of replacing whatever possessions were stolen. The victim’s violation, and the subsequent anxiety, and the sense of injustice, are to be dismissed as trivial. Merely, and I quote, an “idiotic attitude.”

And this is the man that Ms Aitkenhead, who “didn’t much mind being burgled,” regards as her “hero.”

[Governor Squid]

I consider it a particular failing of society that Aitkenhead and Stafford Smith still have personal possessions to their names. In a just world, they'd be burgled six days a week (one must preserve some sense of unpredictability, after all), until there was nothing portable remaining in their homes.

Throw in the occasional hammering of their car windows, and I think I'd sleep soundly at night, knowing that all was well with the world.

[Daniel Ream]

When my mum got burgled it was definitely *not* "inconsequential" and she couldn't sleep properly for weeks.

One of the things that gets missed when these utilitarian analyses of the economic cost of petty theft get tossed around is the trauma of having one's sense of safety and security in one's own home shattered, sometimes permanently. There's a reason for that old chestnut that "a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged".

[David]

the trauma of having one’s sense of safety and security in one’s own home shattered, sometimes permanently

And yet it’s unlikely that either of these creatures will ever register their own vanities as corrosive and malign.

[MC]

That interview actually made me angry.

I'd not read it. Now I have. Now I'm angry.

[Watchman]

Spiny Norman: “There's an old satirical NYT headline meme: ‘Muslim Leaders Fear Backlash from Tomorrow's Terror Attack’.”

Apparently it was another Tim Blair-related innovation in 2006, in addition to his more recent MONA thing: “Angus Jung sent the Aussie pundit Tim Blair a note-perfect parody of the typical newspaper headline: British Muslims Fear Repercussions Over Tomorrow’s Train Bombing.
Maclean’s, June 19th” – http://www.steynstore.com/page28.html

Tim Blair related stuff infuses and influences your postings Spiny!

[David]

I’d not read it. Now I have. Now I’m angry.

It does, I think, reveal a kind of contrived, narcissistic calculation, in which notional categories (e.g., “young black person”) trump actual behaviour and who did what to whom. And we’ve seen variations of the same many times. For instance, when the Observer’s Barbara Ellen told us that unprovoked aggression against people deemed “posh” - including the bullying of children - is “part of an instinctive protest against inequality” and all about “socio-political emancipation.” Apparently, it’s not just routine thuggery or driven by petty malice, it’s “protest” and therefore righteous.

Likewise, in 2011, following the London riots, when the middle-class Marxist China Miéville claimed to be “horrified” that members of the press and public had used the word feral when describing the career predators and assorted thugs who, seeking excitement and a sense of power, had beaten pensioners unconscious and burned random women out of their homes. And who, on the arrival of firefighters, had dragged them from their vehicles and punched them insensible. According to Mr Miéville, the people doing these things, often while laughing, they were the real victims.

But I suppose if your moral calculus is driven by a kind of narcissism, in which status is accrued by identifying the most exciting and improbable victim group and pretending to care about them, then perversity will follow. And so we arrive at a shift of empathy (or pretend empathy) from the working class victim of crime to the working class thug or criminal, on grounds that the criminal is in some way being oppressed and, unlike their neighbours, being made to misbehave.

[Jonathan]

Our efficient forces of law and order are making us safer here in good old England:

https://twitter.com/MPSBarnet/status/976007945094909952

via Ian Miles Cheong

[WTP]

I’d not read it. Now I have. Now I’m angry.

Yeah, I had similar feelings back in 3rd/4th grade after standing up to a bully and being punished for "fighting" and then being told how it wasn't his fault, how I should have tried to "understand" him, feel sorry for him. I know this is cold, and yes quite petty, but as the WWII generation passes on, as they have moved out of influence at least, it is only those elderly whom I have felt protective of. I no longer feel quite that way with these elderly now in their 60's and 70's who were part of creating this idiocy. And women were the worst perpetrators of such. And I say this as someone approaching that age myself. Hell, if such a thing were to happen to my wife I'd be furious and out for revenge. Perhaps I'll be hoisted on my own petard one day. I'll probably deserve it. O-blah-dee-o-blah-dah...

[Spiny Norman]

Tim Blair related stuff infuses and influences your postings Spiny!

As well it might. I've been a fan of his clever and often impish satire for years, and was a daily reader/commenter of his late and very much lamented timblair.net blog.

(To be honest, David's "internet pub" here is the closest I've found to Tim's old blog, and has also become a daily read.)

[David]

To be honest, David’s “internet pub” here is the closest I've found to Tim’s old blog,

The massage parlour next door is going out of business, so I may knock through and upgrade this place to a wine bar and brasserie.

This may affect the prices.

[Spiny Norman]

This may affect the prices.

Will we have to tip the piano player?

[Joan]

The massage parlour next door is going out of business, so I may knock through

No need to redecorate then.

[WTP]

The massage parlour next door is going out of business

Have you considered taking on their existing staff? Just Veronica perhaps? Asking for a friend.

[David]

No need to redecorate then.

They had the same classy velour and flocked burgundy wallpaper. What are the odds?

[pst314]

No comments in the last hour or two. Is everybody next door?

[David]

Is everybody next door?

It’s the flocked wallpaper. Theirs has fewer stains.

[Sporkatus]

As a matter of note to those not following Twitter or Ace, it seems Kurt "I don't like child porn or hentai, seriously" Eichenwald is stepping up his total meltdown.

[R. Sherman]

No need to redecorate then.

So, then, I assume the next fundraiser will have a different payee?

[Darleen]

and are primarily created by white men

Oh my... all the wasted years I bought multiple Thomas Bros. Maps without being woke to the oppression. I even enjoyed just looking through them!

I'm SO ashamed.

[Trilby]

@ Spiny Norman

Tim's blog can still be found here, although I am not sure if it is the same as the old one.

[Black Ball]

Fun and games at Monash University. This is to woo potential students.
http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/04/mad-rad-dangerous-knowledge/

[MC]

Personal anecdotes on the subject of burglary.

About 30 years ago the family home was burgled while we were in bed, nothing taken but my mother's handbag. However my little sister didn't sleep properly for months after and moved bedrooms so she wasn't at the top of the stairs. Then around 15 years ago my flat in London was burgled. I was insured and did not lose a moment's sleep. However I did lose several sets of cufflinks - not valuable but rather cool 60s gear - that used to belong to my father, now deceased. I am still angry about the loss of this link with him and would relish the chance to pound whatever worthless smackhead took them.

Two minor incidents, but don't fucking tell me that burglary should be just laughed off or that our sympathies ought to be with the criminal. My sympathies are with firstly the victims, but also the many people - the majority in fact - from tough backgrounds who work their arses off and do their best to get along without fucking over anyone else.

On a cheerier note, quite a while after the first burglary, we had a knock at the door and a copper was there. He asked if we had been burgled, as he had a guy in the car who was being driven round identifying homes he had burgled, for 'taking into consideration' purposes. My stepfather, a robustly built former rugby league player, shot out of the house, opened the police car door and gave the lag in the back a erm... stern warning, I think we'll say. The police gave him a minute of intimidatory ranting and then suggested that would probably be enough as they didn't want the lad to soil himself and make a mess of the car.

Made us feel a lot better. Today it could land you in trouble, depends on what type of copper you get I suppose.

[Spiny Norman]

Trilby,

Tim's blog can still be found here, although I am not sure if it is the same as the old one.

His heavily-moderated corporate media blog is NOTHING like his old one , which was, if anything even more "free-wheeling" than this cozy joint.

By "heavily-moderated", I mean, comments can take up to 24 hours to appear, especially if you're on the other side of the planet, and then sometimes not at all if the moderators don't feel like posting it.

(BTW, that link goes to an archive site. The bookmark I had saved for the site itself now redirects there.)

[Spiny Norman]

Oh, for what it's worth, I still read Tim Blair's Daily Telegraph blog, but I haven't tried to post a comment there in a couple of years.

[Spiny Norman]

it seems Kurt "I don't like child porn or hentai, seriously" Eichenwald is stepping up his total meltdown.

That utterly bizarre "psychoanalysis" of 17 year old Kyle Kashuv was a thing to behold, and I mean that in the most confused, disturbing and perverse way possible.

This showed up on Twitter, Kurt's incredible shrinking resume:

After Twitter users contacted MSNBC and Vanity Fair, they disavowed any current connection to him.

[David]

Fun and games at Monash University. This is to woo potential students.

Seems they’ve played their hand a little early. But yes, it’s quite revealing. Sort of, “Be a sexy, ill-informed agitator. Have strident opinions on things you don’t understand. And above all, flatter yourself.”

[David]

By “heavily-moderated”, I mean, comments can take up to 24 hours to appear,

I’ve always thought that what makes blogging fun is the interaction. So the glacial moderation does rather bugger things up.