its me on X - "I fucking hate the Fourth of July. I hate this country. What is there to say? I don’t celebrate even a minute of this country’s existence. To celebrate this day is to celebrate every malign, evil, disgusting thing that this “nation” has done here and abroad since 1620."
Weird. We keep being told that left wingers don't hate their countries. Of course this is just holding your country to a higher standard, and double standards are apparently good
This was the week the BBC truly doomed itself into a death spiral - "a man of whom most had never heard, Dr Krish Kandiah, presented Thought for the Day on the BBC’s Today programme. This item once offered theological observations from a range of creeds, linking them to contemporary issues. Dr Kandiah chose instead to accuse Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, of “xenophobia”, something more in tune with the BBC’s evolving role as a Left-wing front organisation. Valuing free speech as we should, Dr Kandiah is entitled to his opinion, however wrong it may be. Whether it is the role of the publicly funded broadcaster to allow obloquy against a public figure without an immediate right of reply is another matter: there was no reply on air, either from Mr Jenrick or a supporter. The BBC was forced, quite rightly, into an apology, though it stressed it “was apologising for the inclusion of an opinion in a place where it was inappropriate, not passing judgment on the rights or wrongs of the opinion”... Not long ago, those who took editorial decisions about BBC current affairs included many who, whatever their politics privately, had a strict sense of objectivity and balance. They understood the role of a public service broadcaster and, more to the point, they had a grasp of the temper of the British public. That grasp appears now barely to exist. In almost all aspects of the corporation’s programming – from Dr Who to the Today programme – the output adheres to and promotes a world view inimical to much of its audience. Those in positions of authority at the BBC talk mainly to each other, and in an atmosphere of determined virtue-signalling and a culture of obsessive box-ticking. Their often patronising views about the rights of minorities (almost any minority you could name) inform all their decisions. Our universities, which have increasingly produced cadres of self-hating Britons in the past decade or two, are doubtless to blame, and the BBC recruits like-minded people year in, year out, to staff and run their parallel universe. The public increasingly detest being force-fed with wokery. The BBC remains the most popular medium in the country, but now by only a short head from YouTube. There, people can choose from a genuinely diverse range of output, and not need to suffer instruction about the glories of transgenderism, the vibrancy of communities filled with illegal immigrants, and the pretence that all this inevitably makes for a happy and successful society. Even the Labour Government appears to be running out of patience. The unconcealed wrath of Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, at the broadcasting of extremist political propaganda from the Glastonbury festival in June was not her first assault on the BBC. Labour MPs also know that “their” people, who shell out monthly for Sky TV and Netflix because the BBC isn’t worth watching, resent paying a licence fee. Thanks to its increasingly narrow cultural base and its detachment from reality, the BBC appears well into a death spiral. Its charter is due for renewal in 2027. One must hope Ms Nandy will renew it only on a very different basis that limits its role, reforms its funding model, and enforces cultural change to restore its relevance to the people it purports to serve."
BBC’s Thought for the Day shouldn’t sell wokery - "These segments on Today are scripted and screened in advance so how did this get through? It has subsequently been edited; but since no one who read it requested any changes we must infer they thought it contained nothing untoward. There is a set of assumptions that underpins far too much of the BBC’s news output, ranging from welfare and the NHS to climate change and immigration. An in-built bias against anything that challenges lazy Left-of-centre nostrums suffocates broader debate on issues that matter to the great majority of listeners. The Thought for the Day fiasco is on a par with the failure to pull the live anti-Israeli ranting of rap group Bob Vylan during Glastonbury. Will the BBC ever learn, or is it simply incapable of doing so?"
Labour’s appeasement of violent extremists just makes them bolder - "Wes Streeting’s office has been subjected to protests from not one but two of Britain’s most obnoxious groups in recent days. Last Friday evening, the Health Secretary’s constituency base in Ilford North was surrounded by 50 or so pro-Palestinian activists who yelled and chanted incessantly, waving their flags while beating drums or pans, livid that their local MP had not disowned Israel. Police officers inside a van looked on from a side road. It seemed non-violent if typically vainglorious. What I didn’t know as I drove past them that evening was that, at some point in the past 24 hours, his office had also been attacked by a trans-rights group called Bash Back. Windows had been smashed and the words “child killer” were sprayed across the facade in pink paint. For those whose world view encompasses these two movements – often simultaneously – “child killer” is a popular attack line. It’s telling that they use the same expression so casually; one that points to their calculated misinformation and idiotic intransigence. The trans-rights activists plastered the words on Streeting’s office because they believe hormone treatment, which Streeting has halted after years of senior Labour figures either prevaricating or taking the opposite view on the issue, reduces the risk of death by suicide in young people who are questioning their gender. This label has long been misused against gender-critical opponents of medical transition for minors. The prevailing evidence is that this is inaccurate. A 2024 report by gender-critical charity Sex Matters on this subject concludes: “Evidence does not show that social transition, puberty blockers or hormone treatments reduce suicide risk in young people with gender-related distress.” A host of psychiatrists and child welfare specialists, including Dr Hilary Cass, have come to the same conclusion. In the case of the Palestinian activists, the phrase “child killer” (or “baby killer”) serves a double purpose. On the one hand it is used to implicate any politician – such as Streeting – in the deaths of Palestinian children. Those who deploy it argue that, because the Government has not cut all ties with Israel, then all are “complicit in genocide”. It is a ridiculous assertion. As if that wasn’t enough, “child killer” is often used against anyone these people deem to be a “Zionist”, which is now impossible to disguise as a synonym for Jews. Still, the ubiquitous riposte to concerns about the use of such extremist language and action is to say: “I think dying children in Gaza are more important than (insert valid point here)”. It could be anti-Semitic chanting at a music festival. It could be genocidal chants at a march in London. It could be criminal activity, such as breaking into an MoD facility and damaging RAF aircraft. There is nothing that cannot be justified by countering it with “but children are dying”. “Child killer” is – so those who use it believe – the ultimate “whataboutery” trump card for every dispute, online and offline. By extension, literally everyone who does not share the ideology of pro-Palestine extremists is deemed to be complicit in the death of children. Let that sink in. The only way not to be a child killer would be to advocate for the destruction of Israel, which would, ironically, result in an awful lot of dead children. I know most pro-Palestine extremists cannot hold two ideas in their heads at the same time, but suffering in Gaza is not an excuse for racism. Is suffering in Sudan or Syria an excuse for racism? Is suffering in Nigeria or Kashmir an excuse for racism?... As for Streeting, even his opponents should feel sorry for the man Owen Jones once laughably accused of being a “student politician”. He is one of the few decent communicators Labour has, but with a majority of only 538, will almost certainly lose his seat at the next election to a pro-Gaza or Islamist independent candidate. Jess Phillips’s appeasement of some of her most unpleasant constituents in Birmingham Yardley (majority 693) will also probably end in defeat in four years’ time. Her apparent unwillingness to make any link between the conflict in the Middle East and the identity of the men who made her life hell during the run-up to last year’s general election seemed to be aimed at avoiding the alienation of pro-Palestine voters. But as Labour are finding out, appeasement and avoidance on these two big issues pleases nobody. The activists will never, ever be satisfied (because where would the fun be in that?). Labour frontbenchers spent years in denial about the pernicious effects of the trans-rights movement on the rights of women and even now appear to have little appetite to enforce the ruling of the Supreme Court on the primacy of biological sex. Threatening to recognise a Palestinian state (which would be welcome in better circumstances) resulted in Hamas leaders thanking Britain for rewarding their violence on Oct 7, 2023. Many suspect this was done as much to shore up the few pro-Palestine voters Labour has left as it was a matter of principle. But the only way to deal with extremism is to face it down. If only the same zero-tolerance stance taken towards the unlawful actions of the far-Right was extended to those of the far-Left, Islamists and violent trans-rights activists, perhaps our society would be in a healthier place. Labour just can’t cope with confronting these challenges because that goes against the instincts of too many in the party. Accepting that what they thought were progressive causes célèbre have turned out to be anti-liberal nightmares is proving too difficult for them. Un-dynamic and apparently lawless, the country needs radical change. But extremism must not become the norm. That will mean pro-Palestian and trans-rights fundamentalists have won the argument, even if they themselves are eventually defeated. If Streeting can be a “child killer”, anyone can."
See also, Palestine Action
Invoking children is only cynical and dishonest when the right does it
Water pistol attackers who sprayed Jews given ‘slap on wrist’ - "Police have been urged not to turn a blind eye to anti-Semitism after two men who targeted Orthodox Jews with water pistols were let off with a “slap on the wrist”. The pair, who filmed themselves driving around Greater Manchester spraying pedestrians dressed in Orthodox clothing with an unidentified liquid, were arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated assault last week. But Greater Manchester Police (GMP) has now imposed community resolution orders – the most lenient option available – after the pair apologised for their actions. Community resolutions, which carry no criminal record, can only be issued for hate crimes in exceptional circumstances should the offender admit the offence, the victim not wish to press charges and an inspector sign off on disposing the case. But the leniency shown to the men, who sprayed adults and children before posting the footage to Instagram accompanied by the Jewish folk song Hava Nagila, has provoked outrage... A spokesman for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “This was a racially aggravated crime that was filmed explicitly so that it could be widely publicised by the offenders. “Restorative justice should never have been on the table in lieu of criminal proceedings. For years, we have seen anti-Semitic hate crime met with a slap on the wrist. “There is no deterrence, and now hate crime against Jews is spiralling out of control. A crime is a crime, and the authorities should be punishing those who break the law.”... The two men have previously uploaded videos singling out Orthodox Jewish men for “pranks” in airports and supermarkets. The clips, which have attracted comments including rat, pig and nose emojis, have nearly a million likes on Instagram."
Good luck if someone had targeted Muslims
We must speak up for old British values before they are destroyed by our elites - " Rose Docherty is a woman of few words. You’d never have heard of the 75-year-old if it wasn’t for what she didn’t say. She’s the activist who staged a silent protest outside the abortion clinic in Glasgow last February, holding a sign reading: “Coercion is a crime, here to talk, only if you want”. Hers was a simple offer of conversation, made without a sound. You know what happened next. The septuagenarian was arrested under Scotland’s “buffer zone” laws, which prevent anybody engaging in harassment or intimidation in the vicinity of abortion facilities, or influencing a woman’s decision to use them. Are there parallel laws protecting women from being pressured into terminating their unborn babies? Surely that would be a more sinister scenario, one that would fall more obviously under the purview of the police. There are not. Scotland’s police are on the lookout for anybody offering support to women who may be doubting their decision, not those encouraging them to go ahead with it. The message is clear. There is no mistaking where the state, and the culture it grimly cultivates, now stands on the question of ending unborn life. We see it reflected in the legalisation of euthanasia. We see it in the depravity of full-term abortions. Welcome to modern Britain, where convenient death is prized higher than life. This past week, however, Scotland’s Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service changed tack and decided that the case would be dropped. This was announced quietly and without fanfare, presumably in the hope that the matter would slip conveniently under the rug. So much so understandable. After all, the silent woman of Glasgow had drawn Britain’s creeping authoritarianism to the attention of the world when her case caught the eye of Donald Trump. That can’t have been comfortable for Scotland’s Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service... This episode draws together a number of intertwining concerns. Firstly, there is the question of freedom of speech in a Britain where citizens may be visited by the police on suspicion of a “non-crime hate incident”, and 30 arrests are made every day for offensive posts on social media. After she was detained, Ms Docherty was apparently told that she could avoid prosecution on condition that she acknowledged her actions were unlawful, accepted a warning and did not repeat them. She declined, insisting that she had not broken the law and that she was protected by her fundamental rights to free speech. “I simply stood there, available to speak with love and compassion,” she pointed out... The second, deeper concern is the disdain for religious faith and traditional values which is so relentlessly advanced by our rulers. Ms Docherty embodied an older Britain that the elites have sought to tamp down for decades. It is the Britain of faith, flag and family; of a belief in borders, a love of tradition, an affection for our history and pride in our armed forces; of hard work, fair play and modest patriotism. Ever since the end of the Cold War, those at the top of society have smeared such a sensibility as the root of fascism. Whether voting for Brexit, flying the George cross or demonstrating against migrant hotels, ordinary people who refuse to respect the new taboos are immediately defamed as quasi-Nazis. What values have been imposed in their place? Moral relativism; multiculturalism; diversity; secularism; appeasement; sybaritic complacency; Israelophobia. To this we can now add an enthusiasm for death for the elderly and the unborn. This suffocating ideology, which Sir Roger Scruton described as the cult of “down with us”, seems to be imposed upon every corner of society. In some quarters it is no longer permissible, for instance, to say “merry Christmas” or “happy Easter”, but only “happy holidays”. No such restrictions are applied to “Ramadan Kareem” or “Eid Mubarak”. In the United States, so sick had people become of this dogma that they considered the outlandish proposition of Donald Trump – the obnoxiousness, the braggadocio, the allegations of racism and financial irregularities, the misogynistic audio tapes, the claims of Russian collusion, the lack of political experience and total disregard of the norms of professional society – and decided he was worth a go. Anything, they felt, would be better than this."
Muslim youths shut down Barbie screening for ‘promoting homosexuality’ - "Threats from Muslim youths have forced a Paris suburban council to cancel a screening of the film Barbie, prompting an outcry and a criminal complaint by the government. The incident in Noisy-le-Sec, in the heart of the ethnically mixed Seine-Saint-Denis département, has played into widespread anxiety about attempts by activist members of the country’s six million Muslim population to impose their traditions on French life... Olivier Sarrabeyrouse, the mayor, said that he halted the screening on Saturday after about 15 youths objected to the film, threatened council workers, and moved to smash the equipment. “They said the film promoted homosexuality and insulted the image of women,” the mayor said. Sarrabeyrouse, a communist party member, deplored the youths’ action but also accused right-wing politicians of exploiting the row... Aurore Bergé, minister for gender equality, said that the incident was “not insignificant” because it comes in the context of what the government sees as a spreading campaign by hardline Muslims to influence social behaviour in districts with immigrant populations. France must be alert to “these attempts to infiltrate”, Bergé said. “They must be denounced systematically for what they are.” Last month President Macron, a centrist, presented measures to stop radical Muslims undermining French society, two months after he rebuked the government for being too feeble over what he called a serious threat. A report by two senior civil servants concluded that the Muslim Brotherhood and other organisations were setting up “ecosystems at the local level to structure the lives of Muslims from birth till death”. Bruno Retailleau, the interior minister and leader of the conservative Republicans, said that “below-the-radar Islamism is trying to infiltrate institutions, whose ultimate aim is to tip the whole of French society under sharia law”. The left-wing opposition is accusing Macron and the centre-right minority government of pandering to Islamophobia and the electorate of the hard-right National Rally. Sarrabeyrouse voiced anger at the way the Barbie incident had been “hijacked by the right”. “Let’s not be fooled,” he said. “This is a dirty political manoeuvre … An incident at Noisy has been taken over by the far-right fringe to stigmatise a neighbourhood.” The mayor pointed out that he had not mentioned the religion of the youths. Supporters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the radial left Unbowed France party, were vocal on social media condemning what they called exploitation by Islamophobes... Barbie, which has the equivalent of a PG rating in France, was banned by Kuwait, Algeria, Lebanon and Vietnam as offensive to public morals."
Damn far right! It's all their fault. If they hadn't been so evil, the Muslim youth would not have protested
Edinburgh has turned from a cultural paradise into a woke hellscape - "like so many other icons of world-leading British culture, from Glastonbury to the Royal Opera House, the Fringe has palled and grown sick. The parasite of wokeness has eaten away at it from the inside out. It doesn’t help that Scotland has witnessed some of the worst examples of cancel culture in the United Kingdom in recent years. Many have embraced trans madness and eco-lunacy; JK Rowling has become a national figure of hate for standing up for the rights of women. And so, for the past few years, the Fringe has been more of a Black Lives Matter, pro-trans, pro-Greta Thunberg, pro-Palestine activist entity than anything resembling a serious artistic festival. The majority of the Fringe is comedy, but there is now little to laugh about. Venues, staff and some performers have become more like the Soviet moral police than people putting on entertainment for public enjoyment. They ostracise, cancel, bully, vandalise and exclude acts and would-be acts who they deem to represent wrong-think. This year has been the worst yet. Kate Forbes, Deputy First Minister of Scotland, was retrospectively cancelled after being interviewed at an event at the Summerhill venue as part of the Herald newspaper’s Unspun Live series. Summerhill said it was an “oversight” that she was invited at all, and the mistake would not be repeated in future. Forbes’ crime? Not supporting the view that trans women are women. Meanwhile, the literature festival in Edinburgh has been marred by the intellectually blinkered and solipsistic identity politics of some elite guests. The British-Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah, who won the Nobel prize in 2021, made headlines last week for calling his Nobel predecessor, the late novelist VS Naipaul, “racist” and saying he could therefore no longer read his books. Naipaul’s famous novel A House for Mr Biswas is quirky and moving: a fine novel. When I read it I already knew of its author’s appalling treatment of his wife, whom he battered, and his repugnant views of black people. But ultimately we don’t look to artists as moral guides, but as artists. Not that you’d know it these days. Also stealing headlines at the International Book Festival was the Labour peer Thangam Debbonaire, who shared a diatribe about why the statue of Clive of India – a clerk with the East India company who became a governor-general of Bengal – should be removed from his pedestal in front of the foreign office. “I walk past it and the frieze shows happy, smiling people really delighted to see him,” she said. “And that’s just not historically accurate. It’s not helpful for our current relationship with India and it is deeply unhelpful to see India as a country that Britain civilised.” What a dreary speech, but then that’s elite British culture for you in 2025. Where all this gets truly sinister, though, is in the treatment of Jews at the one of the Edinburgh Festival: the Fringe. This has gone from relatively unremarkable for the sort of Corbynite Lefties who dominated the arts prior to the Hamas atrocities of October 7, to what often now seems to be downright anti-Semitism. Naturally, it all goes under headings like “safety” and “humanitarian” but the truth speaks for itself. The Jewish comedians Rachel Creeger and Philip Simon found their shows cancelled for no reason other than, it seems, the fact that they are Jewish; neither had said anything particularly strident about politics and hoped to simply be treated as any other comedian would. In Creeger’s case, after the original venue backed out of hosting her show Ultimate Jewish Mother because of the anti-Israel graffiti, and the general aura of threat that now follows Jewish performers (staff at the venue voiced concern for themselves, not Creeger), she was offered to perform at another venue called Hoots. Posters were duly put up advertising her show, only to have the word “Jewish” literally burned off the posters. “Overnight, vandals burned out the word Jew out of the signage outside my lovely venue,” Creeger posted on Instagram. “I am not going to let this break me, but I am not going to lie, it’s a tough day.” Imagine the Fringe’s outcry if any other minority were to face such racism while trying to perform. Meanwhile, Simon’s social media accounts were scoured for forbidden content by the Banshee Labyrinth pub. They found proof that Simon had attended a vigil for the people murdered on October 7. “We feel it is inappropriate for us to provide a platform for performers whose views and actions align with the rhetoric and symbology of groups associated with humanitarian violations,” intoned the venue. None of this sounds all that much better than the policies which defined the totalitarian states of the 20th century and are found in the fiction of George Orwell: where the crime of “wrong-think” is taken very seriously... Culture in Britain began to fray during the MeToo movement, when it seemed as if any artist’s past could catch up with them, no matter how irrelevant. Things took off in Black Lives Matter, with statue topplings, cancellations, revisionist history and an increasingly homogenous theatre scene. The trans movement added fuel to this combustible fire. And October 7 has turned that fire into an utterly terrifying wildfire. We should be ashamed and motivated to make it stop before we lose the cultural inheritance that is still, just about, the envy of the world"
unR̶A̶D̶A̶C̶K̶ted on X - "“The road to authoritarianism is littered with people telling you you're overreacting.” @GovTimWalz"
The slippery slope is only a fallacy when it pushes the left wing agenda
How Trump killed off woke ads - "The growing reluctance of brands to take a campaigning stance on social justice issues comes as consumers tire of virtue-signalling and empty slogans. “Advertising’s role is not really to lead culture, but to reflect it,” says Richard Pinder, chief executive of creative agency The Hunger. “And so as culture moves, it’s kind of weird if advertising doesn’t.”... Research by Kantar and industry magazine The Drum showed the majority of US consumers would still buy from American Eagle after the saga. Meanwhile, shares in the retailer surged 24pc following Trump’s intervention – their biggest daily gain in 25 years. Whilst the US is leading the backlash against woke ads, there are signs that Britain is starting to follow suit. Many in London’s adland acknowledge that Britons are growing tired of advertising campaigns that put virtue-signalling do-goodery and tokenism ahead of authentic messages. “Audiences don’t respect the companies that are jumping on a ‘brand-wagon’ and are fatigued by superficial virtue-signalling and generic manifestos,” says Ajaz Ahmed, founder of ad agency AKQA. “Consumers want less preaching and a move towards more jokes and less woke, a more original point of view.”... Value-led advertising can take on a more sinister bent, too. In 2022, an advert for Persil was banned for making unsubstantiated claims about the detergent’s environmental benefits as part of a wider crackdown on greenwashing. “Woke” advertising in Britain has at least in part been killed off by the cost of living crisis. A recent YouGov survey found that cost and quality were the most important factors for the vast majority of Britons when choosing what to buy. By contrast, just 5pc said social or ethical considerations were most important"
Dyme on X - "The co-exist people are unable to co-exist with people who disagree with them."
Meme - Wilfred Reilly @wil_da_beast630: ""Maybe leftists are just more serious thinkers?!" My friend, 18% of these academics are literal Communists. Most believe 10,000 unarmed Black people annually are shot by police. About a quarter are still wearing COVID masks. There's a giant and weird "environment problem" here."
Chris Freiman @cafreiman: "I’m not a Republican, but I recognize this is a problem"
*very few Republicans*
Anthropology, Communications: No registered Republicans
"Number of Democratic Faculty Members for Every Republican in 25 Academic Fields"
Meme - i/o @avidseries: "Londoners being reminded of the deep historical debt they owe to butch African women for the construction of their city."
"LONDON'S PRIDE & JOY" "WE BUILT THIS CITY"
