Flatulent tosspottery

In the heart of Glasgow city centre, nestled between shops, bars, offices and hotels, sits the Mackintosh Tearooms, the last surviving tearoom designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and one of the city’s most treasured heritage sites.

But last week passersby noticed a shiny new shopfront next door to the 1903 category A-listed building: hot-pink capital letters on a white plastic sign, advertising a vape and mobile phone repair shop.

Six months on from a vape shop fire that destroyed the B-listed Union Corner, and almost a decade after the second of two blazes devastated the Mackintosh-designed Glasgow School of Art building in 2018, the decision to allow the shop to open in such a location has drawn ire and opposition from local people and campaigners.

Why would a vape shop be any more dangerous than any other type of shop?

Unless we’ve a gang war going on or something?

The Scottish fire and rescue service confirmed in the days after the Union Corner fire that it had started in a vape shop. A subsequent audit of other vape shops found a range of fire safety issues, including a lack of awareness about legislation and fire safety duties.

Nope, that’s it, that’s the justification. Well, other than that vape shops are dirty and nasty and prole and we don’t want to allow any of them. Which is the true reasoning here.

Until it’s time to celebrate it, obviously:

Twenty-five years after 9/11, two pieces of journalism, describing two different phenomena in contemporary New York, tell us a great deal about a city, and indeed a world, caught between two eras. In one, New York Magazine dives into “Habibi City”, a New York where a “cultural shift is underway, led by a generation of New Yorkers coming into its own”. This new generation is labelled as originating in “SWANA” – south-west Asia and north Africa, a region that “includes countries from Palestine to Iran to Sudan”. In the other, Vanity Fair describes calls for Zohran Mamdani to not attend the 9/11 memorial ceremony as partly founded in “inchoate, emotional” impulses, that see “the city’s first Muslim mayor as a stand-in for the 19 Muslims who hijacked four planes and turned them into deadly weapons, part of the ‘them’ who attacked ‘us’.”

Together they capture what has changed over a generation, and what remains stubbornly the same. Members of a diaspora of Muslim background are indeed breaking through and accumulating, as New York Magazine says, “clout”. They are no longer simply a fixture of bodegas and halal carts, but of Saturday Night Live, upmarket dining, entertainment and politics too. Mamdani is both the expression of that cohort and the catalyst of its recognition as an emerging force. They care deeply for their local communities but also for those in Gaza and beyond.

This ode to the motorcar has gradually been dismantled over the past couple of decades, with the removal of roads turning the city centre into a far more pedestrian-friendly environment. The tram system is being expanded and soon – well actually, not that soon, thanks to endless delays – there will be a new station to accommodate high-speed rail services. Birmingham has been changing, but this latest move will accelerate the process. The imposition of a 20mph zone throughout the city seals the deal. No longer will the needs of cars dominate. Instead, walking, cycling and public transport will be the modes of choice, as car travel becomes slower and more of a hassle.

Christian Wolamr always poses as the reasonable, rational, engineering type who will, with heavy heart, tell you that yes, trains are the solution. In reality he’s as choo choo onsessed as Spud. Everyone dwawdling at 20 mph is good because that means more trains. Huzzah, etc. Whether 20 mph is good or not isn’t considered, only the effect upon trains.

And think of how weak the case for non-cars must be if you’re actively plotting to make using cars more hassle, eh?

Stand Up to Racism, which organised the vigil, estimated that 30,000 mourners had gathered in the square to listen to emotional speeches from MPs, friends and campaigners on Arday’s life and legacy and join in a minute’s silence.

OK. The BBC:

Many in the crowd of 2,000 or more

Who to believe, eh? Who to believe?

But the Volksbühne advertised an event scheduled for Friday in which the pool would be open “exclusively to black communities”
….
Elif Eralp, the Left Party’s candidate for mayor and the current front-runner in September’s election, defended the exclusion of white swimmers, saying: “On Friday, an association has booked the pool for its members legally. In doing so, the People’s Swimming Pool provides access for people who are frequently affected by exclusion and racism. Labelling this as a form of discrimination is very revealing.”

It is discrimination. Just flat out is.

The SPD parliamentary group cited survey data from a patients’ rights lobbying group showing that 77% of medically declared cancer survivors face what it called discrimination when taking out private insurance policies.

Well, yes, OK. So there are increased risks, insurance is pricing risks and?

The reality is that these colonies will sooner or later inevitably become part of their continents. They cannot indefinitely be protected by a European patron, and Argentina’s claims are not going away.

Doesn’t matter what the locals think. Which is odd, when the whole decolonisation thing was driven by ew must do what the locals think, eh?

Because what is taking place is not an aberration, not a deviation, but a norm that is enacted and blessed explicitly by successive generations of Israeli politicians and, it seems, by Israeli society. Until that fact is confronted, Palestinians will continue to be detained, disappeared, tortured and sexually abused, and the abusers asked politely, concernedly, occasionally, to please investigate themselves.

We actually have film of Hamas doing all of these things to Israelis. To kids at a music festival. Nesrine’s been most vocal about investigating that, right?

When Labour won its landslide in July 2024, it did so on the promise of a new kind of governance: five national missions to tackle the UK’s deepest structural challenges, from clean energy to child poverty, inspired by my book, Mission Economy. That was the right answer to a real question: what is the economy for, and why should it matter to people’s daily lives? Mission-oriented government is not just a political slogan, but a proven approach to solving society’s biggest challenges, generating good jobs and resilient growth in the process.

Ho Hum. The people who have a vision for society are the very last we should allow to try to run society.

The UK can also learn from innovative projects at home, from creating healthy and sustainable estates for London’s Camden council, to placing clean growth at the centre of Manchester’s economic strategy, which I advised Andy Burnham and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority on from 2018.

Well, yes. The grand success of Mazzo in Camden was that she managed to reinvent SPAR a century after someone else first did so.

It’s not hugely impressive, y’know?

It also addresses climate justice, which the document asserts is “inextricably linked” to slavery reparations.

Slavery reparations is sputtering as a general interest. If we link it to climate change then we get every lefty, right?

On compensation, the document makes it clear that in addition to other forms of repair, Caricom is demanding “monetary compensation as reparations from enslaving nations, monarchies, churches, institutions, corporations and families, for loss of life and uncompensated labour, loss of liberty, personal injury, mental pain and anguish and gender-based violence, for the victims of Indigenous genocide, the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement of Africans, which constitute grave crimes against humanity”.

See, it is about money.

Because the light fantastic trip from “society” to “capitalism” is a tiny step for these people. So, once it is agreed that it’s society then abolish capitalism becomes the cure.

It’s another excuse that is.

Children are being taught that black people cannot be racist towards white people as part of an education initiative aimed at countering racism.

Teenage pupils are told that black people can be racially prejudiced towards white people but that this is not racism because that can be exhibited only by those who hold cultural power, such as white people over black people.

Children as young as seven are also being taught that white people are likely to be privileged because of the colour of their skin.

Of course we must root out the people doing this. The only interesting question is whether we use the Tyburn Tree – common criminals – or Tower Hill – actual traitors.

Urban areas host 80% of England’s homes at high risk of flooding, study finds

Umm, OK. but is this good or bad? Compared to what?

From AI:

Approximately 83% of the UK population lives in urban areas

So, I’d guess that around 80% – mebbe 83% – of Britain’s houses are in urban areas. Which means that the headline claim is, erm, normal, right?

“The US’s energy dominance strategy seeks to entrench dependence on fossil fuels, stall the green transition and strengthen US power,” said Kevin Cashman, a researcher with TSP, who wrote the analysis. But increasingly cheap and scalable solar power and battery storage weaken such a strategy.

“For countries like Cuba – with enormous renewable potential, but suffering blackouts and widespread suffering under a cruel and illegal US-imposed energy blockade – a transition to green electricity would reduce US leverage and provide a shining example to the world.”

Typicl lefty nonsense. Cuba must be a shining beacon to the world etc etc etc, boo hiss to the US etc.

So, it should go renewables, at a cost of only $8 billion. OK, I guess:

Which leaves the question: who would pay? “Financing this transition should … be understood as reparative climate finance,” the report argues. Not only would Cubans be able to pay back investments through savings on cheaper energy, but the transformation “would set an important example of a rapid energy transition under conditions of external constraint”.

You’ve got to pay for it, you you little British taxpayer you. Because socialism in Cuba has been so successful that they cannot possibly pay for it themselves.

‘Ithink I’ve had at least seven books that have been banned in the United States,” says Ibram X Kendi, in a tone that carries no bitterness but stops just short of pride. It’s proof, he says, that his works on racism, which extend from deep, scholarly histories to a biography of Malcolm X for children, are getting through to the right people – and annoying the right people.

The US does not ban books. Therefore this is not true.

According to the writers’ advocacy group PEN America, his books have been banned at least 50 times by multiple US school districts during the tumultuous “anti-woke” backlash of the past five years.

Some school districts have declined to purchase his books. This is not a ban.

This before we get to the loon inside the books:

By extension, he argued that all racial disparities in outcome for Black people were the result of racist policies – not just some, all.

Insane. There’s a difference in the incidence of sickle cell for genetic reasons. This is not a result of racist policies. QED.

Discussing his latest book, Chain of Ideas, 43-year-old Kendi presents another uncompromising binary. “We, as human beings, have two choices in the 21st century: antiracist democracy or racist dictatorship,” he tells me over a video call from his book-lined study at Howard University in Washington DC.

Piffle but grifters gonna grift. Even if that’s from Howard now, not Boston.

“There is almost certainly a likelihood that in 20 years, the better part of Europe, and frankly the world, could be led by racist dictatorships,” he continues. “We’ve gone from monarchy to democracy to dictatorship. We’re literally going backwards. Why? Because we fear people we don’t know.”

Dr. Heinz Kiosk was a satire of course, not a career guide.

He’s also an idiot because of course he is:

But the primary route to enabling antiracist democracy to flourish, he says, is simply improving conditions for people. “Because it is those conditions, and it is people’s own struggles, that are being capitalised on to blame those immigrants, Muslims, Black people, for why those conditions exist. By giving people more, it makes it harder for you to say: ‘You don’t have because others are taking.’” The great replacement theory is a smokescreen for the real causes of poverty and deprivation: neoliberal capitalism and the huge inequalities it has created.

Neoliberal capitalism is the way to have more to spread around, of course.

The health official behind the pause of the NHS’s puberty blocker trial has been blocked from any further involvement amid accusations of bias.
Prof Jacob George is said to have raised concerns over the trial after taking up his role as the chief medical and scientific officer at the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) earlier this year.
The regulator’s subsequent intervention in the debate led to the Department of Health announcing that the experiment would be paused.
But Prof George has now been recused from any further involvement after social media posts emerged of him praising JK Rowling and criticising people for the denial of “basic biological fact”.

So no one who knows anything may be involved in a medical trial?

One story I’ve heard is of a laddie having 30 birdshot plucked out of his legs while lying on mother’s sofa. Can’t go to hospital, d’ye see, not with wounds from having been a protestor?

So, the Progressive International peeps, they c’n fuck off ‘n’all. Which includes that James Schneider laddie.

Ah, yes:

The bosses of FTSE 100 companies will have made more money in 2026 before midday on Tuesday than the average worker will all year, according to figures laying bare the yawning income gap.

Median annual pay for FTSE 100 chief executives is £4.4m, the High Pay Centre thinktank calculated, 113 times higher than the £39,039 earned by the median full-time worker.

That means UK bosses will exceed the average annual pay of staff in less than 29 hours of work, or by about 11.30am on Tuesday if they started work on Friday 2 January.

The median salary for FTSE 100 chief executives equates to £1,353.23 an hour, or nearly £23 a minute.

So, how are these people actually paid?

mostly thanks to long-term incentive plans.

So the payu is not for the 62.5 hours work a week this year, is it?

Frustration is growing in Papua New Guinea weeks after the government ordered Starlink to shut down operations in the country as businesses, health providers and communities struggle without access to internet services.

Starlink, owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is a satellite internet company that provides internet to remote places. In mid-December, the National Information and Communications Technology Authority (Nicta) ordered the company to halt operations because it was not licensed in PNG.

“Starlink is currently not licensed to operate in Papua New Guinea, and until the legal process is completed, services cannot be allowed,” Nicta’s acting chief executive,Lume Polume, said.

Nicta is now waiting on the ombudsman or the courts in PNG to issue a directive over whether it will be granted a licence. No timing has been provided on when a directive will be issued.

Absolutely, vastly more important that the bureaucracy issue a licence than that people are allowed to use the internet.

Alternatively, time for a long pig BBQ with the bureaucracy invited, no?

Italian police have arrested nine people on suspicion of financing Hamas through aid charities.

Cash allegedly intended for the terror group was found among medical supplies destined for Gaza.

The detained individuals are accused of diverting around €7m (£6.1m), raised over the last two years for ostensibly humanitarian purposes, to Hamas-linked entities, prosecutors said.

Police seized assets worth more than €8m, according to law enforcement.

Among those arrested was Mohammad Hannoun, the president of the Palestinian Association of Italy, who was recently photographed at a rally alongside Greta Thunberg.

A plot, a set up, obviously. All designed simply to provide a reason for The Joooos to inspect aid shipments into Gaza. No other explanation possible, eh?

Why, yes, I do expect that to appear as an explanation if it hasn’t already…..