Current Affairs

More than half of women are childless by the age of 30, according to official figures which show later motherhood, or choosing not to have any children, has now become the norm.

The statistics show that for the first time, the majority of women enter their 30s without having started a family.

The Office for National Statistics data paint a stark picture of changes in fertility over the decades.

Current day liberals start shouting that we’ve got to have more free childcare, or better maternity leave, or summat.

The problem being that this starts from the wrong end. They’ve got some idea of what society should be – all the wimmins entirely free, economically liberated, yet also fecund and a rising population. Which is;t liberal.

Liberal – real liberalism – is to set the people free and then see what they do. And accept what they do too. If free people have fewer children then, well, that’s what free people do. There is no result to be aimed at, the process of being free is itself the point and purpose.

It’s also rather self solving. We are, clearly, all the descendants of those who had kids. Those who didn’t want them breed themselves out of subsequent generations. Now that we’ve more choice about such matters this effect will snowball. The next generations will be the offspring of those who desire kids and so it will go on.

Bloke on Twitter insisted he’d seen Mark Drakeford – First Minister of Wales – in Bristol on NY Eve.

No idea whether that’s true of course. But would be fun if it were. Escaping his own lockdown and all that.

But just think what the deeper message would be. Wales is so terrible that Bristol – Bristol! – is a step up……

Don’t think it happens very often. Neither look like they regularly miss meals….

Rape survivors who arrive in the UK on small boats across the Channel are being neglected by the authorities while others are being inadequately treated for life-changing injuries, a damning report has disclosed.

Inspectors found that suicidal women who had been repeatedly raped by people smugglers were not adequately supported after arriving on UK soil.

Crimes committed upon foreigners, by foreigners, in foreign, are somehow our fault. The Monty Python one where we should tax foreigners living in foreign countries was at least a joke, although Murphy has since picked it up as an actual proposal.

So, new gig means having to read the Mail financial pages. Sigh.

At which point, properties for £3.25 million:

3 bed flat in St John’s Wood, 3 bed flat in Victoria (they call it Westminster) and 9 bed Georgian on 32 acre estate on Lansdown in Bath (OK, Battlefields, up by Beckford’s Tower maybe?)?

In what rational world are these all valued the same?

Yes, yes, I know, markets, what folks will pay and all that. But still. Really.

A popular French environmentalist and former government minister faces new allegations of rape and sexual abuse after several woman came forward in a TV documentary to testify that he had assaulted them.

The claims come four years after Nicolas Hulot, 66, was first accused of rape by the granddaughter of the late Socialist president François Mitterrand.

‘E mi’ be ‘avin’ une soon.

Northern Cyprus is some sorta Turkish ministate. Does it use the Turkish lira?

Have houses just got 15% cheaper there?

And what’s the ministate like?

The man arrested on suspicion of murdering David Amess had considered killing other MPs, the Telegraph understands.

The investigation into the tragic death of Amess suggests he was not specifically targeted, but picked at random as part of a plot to kill any national politician.

Imagine the annoyance of dying on the basis of eenie, meenie, miney, mo.

Of course, we all do in the end, whether random chance or weighted that this bug or that cancer takes hold. But still.

Most interesting:

The bill includes a plan for Medicare to negotiate prices with drug companies that would set a ceiling for what Medicare would pay for certain medications: no higher than 120 percent of what several other wealthy countries pay. Pharmaceutical companies that did not participate in the negotiations would be subject to a severe excise tax.

I can see negotiate meaning “would you like to give us a nice price?” I can see negotiate meaning as the NHS does, we’re a big customer, give us a discount or we won’t buy it.

But negotiate as in cut your price or we tax you? Bit Lucky Luciano there, isn’t it?

Biden Calls Withdrawal ‘Messy,’

NYT headline.

Vaccine passports are less a threat to liberty than a mark of solidarity
David Robert Grimes

1) Solidarity with you, Matey?

2) We must check your papers for the Jew stamp to ensure solidarity with the Aryan Nation!

Actually, on that second one, I knew a whole bunch of guys who fell afoul of that. Soviet passports contained a “nationality” line of which “Jew” was one possible answer. When they graduated from programming school/university in Moscow all those with “Jew” on that line got offered jobs in godforsaken factories hundreds and hundreds of mile from anything like civilisation. Because, you know, can’t have such racial distinctions in passports without making use of them, right?

This autumn she also plays one of the leads in the eagerly awaited reboot of the Ghostbusters franchise.

Eagerly might be a bit much. As to reboot, that means they’re agreeing that the last one was, as many said, shite? And franchise? A movie and a squib is a franchise now?

Briton suspected of spying for Russia ‘kept himself to himself’

The allegation is that he was pretty open in the one direction….

Roman Abramovich is not Vladimir Putin’s “willing tool” or “cashier” and did not buy Chelsea FC to help Russia corrupt the West, his lawyers have told the High Court.

One muttering going around was that by buying a non-Russia trophy asset he was signalling that he wasn’t interested in – or worried about – internal to Russia power struggles. “Look Boss, I’m out of that game”.

Central London will never return to normal, says NatWest chairman

Not really. What London ends up doing will be normal……

When the 78-year-old widow of a Swiss baron

The Swiss don’t have titles of nobility. Well, other than “Managing Director of private bank” at least.

The Wiki page is fun:

Hans Henrik Ágost Gábor, Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon et Impérfalva (13 April 1921 – 27 April 2002), an industrialist and art collector, was a Dutch-born Swiss citizen with a Hungarian title and heir to a German fortune, a legal resident of Monaco for tax purposes, with a declared second residency in the United Kingdom, but in actuality a long-time resident of Spain, and son of a German father and a Hungarian and English American mother (related to Daniel M. Frost and John Kerry).[1] His fifth and last wife, Carmen “Tita” Cervera, is a former Miss Spain titleholder.

A European then……

But still, Greer makes two fundamental errors. The first is in believing that the left’s victory for the young arises from a determined manipulation of academia, media, and cultural spaces, rather than a mostly organic reaction to the horrific conservative policy and politics.

So what was that long march through the institutions all about then?

The Queen has awarded the George Cross to the entire NHS, making public a handwritten note in which she praises the “courage, compassion and dedication” of health workers over more than 70 years.

It’s a political award and not a directly Royal one. Boris and mates, not Brenda. She signs, not decides here.

It diminishes all other awards of the GC. As always happens with titles and medals of course. Precisely the value and honour accruing to some really especial gong means that the politicians will, over time demean it.

Duke used to mean war leader, war leader in a real top dog way, the bloke who directed ‘fousands to protect the homeland against Johnny Foreigner. It became the go to title for spare royal bastards requiring a name. A knighthood meant actual prowess in battle, prowess at something at least. Now it goes to whichever civil servant greets Brenda on an overseas trip.

There was hope that GC and VC could avoid that, stay above that fray. And sadly politics doesn’t work that way, does it?

Veterinary college to neuter its courses of colonial bias … if it can find any
The Royal Veterinary College plans to tackle racism in its curriculum, despite staff saying they cannot think of any examples

The task is to operate as race mongers. To identify what is indeed racist and colonialist in vetting. Clearly it is because society as a whole is and that’s all the proof that’s needed. It’s just the examples needed now.

For example, they use the Latin language. That’s racist and colonialist. Equus equus is racist because it doesn’t use the Hausa word which it should instead. No, really, imagining that there is just the one correct phrase to use across all the dark folks languages – without even reference to them? Colonialist bastards. This is not a joke: “Addressing the difficulty of decolonising, an academic on the diversity committee advised that it would include tackling “a colonial legacy” which presents “the white, global North intellectual tradition as superior and universal”.”

They refer to knees. Which sounds like nee as the first part of gro. That’s racist, obviously. Calling something a mandible is clearly sexist, it’s a personible.

See how this game works?

Apparently Jamaicans don’t think much of African Americans – so it is said.

So, err, here – or there – in the UK there is rather a lot of thought about the Jamaican and other Afro Caribbean breakdown of the family and all that.

And these are the people who look down upon the African Americans? Jeebus, how screwed up does that make them?