ICTChris

I occasionally dip into Zero Covid Twitter still. There’s one account, claming to be an anonymous neurosurgeon who repeatedly posts that Covid causes dementia and that there is widespread brain damage in the population. Evidence given includes the Boeing safety crisis, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, higher levels of “sociopathy in society” (usually defined as people not following the same Covid restrictions now as in April 2020). The thing that I found interesting is that the person usually comes out with this tweet, or variations of it This is extremely similar to what mad anti-vaxxers say - “you’ll be sorry! When you all start dying suddenly, getting myocarditis etc you’ll all come crawling back to us!”. I believe Joe Rogan made comments like this on a recent podcast. I think among neurotic, obsessive people the feeling that you are in a redemptive arc and are the hero is very common.

The club is fucked tbh. There’s nothing to be done. If we go into administration maybe something can be salvaged but it’s been decades of mismanagement. We were in a roughly similar position in 2002 but the effective takeover by Tullochs/David Sutherland allowed us to get past it. Something similar would need to happen now but there’s no Tullochs right now.

If massive thumping DDs aren’t woke I may have to rethink my commitment to pronouns in bio, blue hair and calling out micro-aggressions.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-68568313 Michael Matheson breached MSPs code of conduct in relation to his iPad bill. I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.

Getting it back relatively on topic, I bet there’s been an increase in the demand for these jobs post-Covid due to the widely reported increase in poor behaviour, mental health problems and pupil absence. Emma in Nottingham will have her work cut out.

Refused, 30-23. Unsurprising.

Here is a job description for inclusion mentor in Nottinghamshire, where the quoted person lives. https://nottinghamshire.tal.net/vx/mobile-0/appcentre-ext/brand-3/candidate/so/pm/4/pl/1/opp/21101-Inclusion-Mentor/en-GB#:~:text=The role of the Inclusion,create opportunities for the future. From reading other job adverts it's about stopping pupils from being excluded, working with children who have behavioural difficulties, as opposed to inclusion in the sense of "the wokes having special classes for Somali crack babies" type of thing. Appalling salaries for these jobs, which must be very hard work. One advert has the following responsibilities Salary is £16,586 - who the hell wants to do that job for that pay?

There's no way it will be approved. Local councillors complaining about lobbying and intimidation in the meeting.

I watched an episode of 'The Way', political drama created by Martin Charlie Michael Sheen, with contributions from Adam Curtis and James Graham. I only watched the first episode because my wife thought it might be good - it was not good. It was pretty terrible. The plot is that a strike breaks out at the steelworks in Port Talbot, which escalates into a civil conflict, riots etc. The whole thing is full of cliches and really clunky plotting and characterisation. There's a heated meeting in a community hall! There's a seemingly mad man running about naked but is he actually the only one who knows what's coming? There's a family who have been fractured by industrial decline but will they be reunited by the suddenly massive strike, that seems to have been called over, er, nothing? I'm not sure if we are supposed to think that rioting is great but one scene sees the drug addict son of a local shop steward sees the demo and is motivated to start attacking the police and throws an iron bar into the police lines (which include his sister incidentally). Are we supposed to think "great, finally he's found something to motivate himself - mob violence!". There is one scene that I actually laughed at, typing it out it doesn't sound real. The jaded shop steward runs into the Port Talbot steelworks (which he can totally do even though there's a huge civil conflict and strike affecting the plant and the army and private military contractors are on the streets fighting the locals, seems legit), he retrieves the ancient sword of Port Talbot prophesised to save the town in it's darkest hour (seriously) and then carries it into the riot, so he can behead the police commander or the owner of the steelworks I presume? When he gets there he finds cars and shops on fire and his estranged wife (a housewife in her fifties who went viral giving a speech about the strike) fighting off three riot police with a fence post while their drug addict son is dragged off by more riot police. Meanwhile people just kind of run about the scene like it's the aftermath of a rave rather than a huge violent event. It's just ludicrious but the way it's filmed is also so cheap, they've clearly not got the budget for it so there are only a few people on screen at any one time. it also really reminded me of this meme but with a sword instead of pizzas. I'm not going to bother with the next two epsides but from what I can ascertain they involve the UK turning into a huge anti-Welsh concentration camp. I don't watch many British television series like this but every time I do I just find that they are so overwrought, so over the top and nonsensical that you just laugh. Anytime someone tries to do a political drama it becomes so on-the-nose and simplified it's like it was written by a load of sixth formers who've just joined the Socialist Workers Party.

I fully expect the vote to go against the battery farm and for us to go into administration. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the club went out of business and this is our last season.

I've got a framed, signed shirt from the 2009/10 season, fantastic manager. I do think you can trace some of the problems we have now back to his tenure, although they aren't really things that he did wrong. By all accounts Butcher ran the club, he was in charge of everything. He left and Hughes developed the squad Butcher put together but as soon as it came time to renew and rebuild, things started going South. The fact that Butcher was such a big figure at the club allowed the board at the time to abdicate responsibility for developing proper structures at the club and that came back to bite us.

If I was a billionaire I'd donate money to political parties and then just see how much I'd have to do to get them to give it back. How far is too far?

There was a period in recent history where lots of people thought that Satanic Ritual Abuse was a huge problem and that around the country there were covens of satanist paedophiles drinking blood etc. It started in the US and evangelical Christianity reaction to modern society was a big factor in it spreading but unusually in the UK the idea was picked up by social workers and academics. There were cases in Scotland, in Ayrshire, the Western Isles and South Ronaldsay in Orkney - much of the evidence came from senior social workers who carried out horrendously leading interviews of vulnerable children. There were real harms, families broken up, children taken into care. There has never been any evidence of the sort of abuse alleged in these cases but there are still people who believe it. There is an academic at Edinburgh University who has written about it and clearly still believes that the Orkney abuse case was real, despite the children who were involved denying it and saying they were lead by social workers. Indeed, a Scottish national newspaper published an article asserting that the allegations were all true a few years ago (only published online I think).

Documentary on Channel 4 last night about the Hampstead Hoax, false allegations made against parents in the area by a number of extremely disturbed people. https://www.channel4.com/programmes/accused-the-hampstead-paedophile-hoax?cntsrc=social_share_ios_accused_the_hampstead_paedophile_hoax

An agreement has been reached for the acting President/PM to step down, transitional council to take control and set a timeframe for elections. Whether any of it makes a difference remains to be seen.

Jordan Peterson was an associate Harvard professor and was one of the most cited academic psychologists in his era, cited 10,000 times. I think his speciality was the psychology of alcohol abuse. Now he's arguing with Elmo on Twitter and, if you read any of his content, is clearly massively neurotic, borderline insane. What a life.

I saw someone point out that when the late Queen Mother had medical procedures the press officers were quite open about it and it probably made her more popular. This seems to have been a massive PR own goal for very odd reasons. A few strange people on the internet speculated that Kate was 'missing', despite her having had an operation and stated that she would take until after Easter to recover, so they release a photograph that appears touched up in ways that are fairly standard for modern pictures. Now it's the main story on the BBC news website and everyone will have heard about all this weird stuff.

Lee Anderson has joined Reform UK.

While the gangs are anarchic and committing extreme violence, they are also political. Political parties use them as muscle or to get the vote out, and in the vacuum caused by the assassination and the paralysis of the political process they've become their own entities. There are also what get called vigilante gangs, who form to protect their neighbourhoods. Last year a movement formed to combat the gangs and several hundred gang members were killed, often burned alive. One of the faciliites attacked by the gangs is the central prison and a number of people associated with the assassination of the last elected President were freed, although the Colombians who carried out the shooting are apparently still there.

I think some cruise ships used to dock in Haiti but nobody would go ashore unless it was to some fenced off area. They don’t even have that now. Haiti in the 1970s was a popular destination for gay sex tourism and one of the theories about the introduction of the AIDS virus to the USA is via contacts between Americans who travelled there for that purpose and Haitians who had travelled to Africa and been infected with HIV. For a while in the US, HIV/AIDS eas known as the disease of four H’s - Homosexuals, Heroin addicts, Haemophiliacs and Haitians.

Haiti used to have a thriving tourist industry. Bill and Hillary Clinton went on honeymoon there.

The crisis in Haiti appears to be approaching its peak. The Caribbean island, long plagued by instability and poor security is currently experiencing a wave of crime, rioting and looting that has sunk large parts of the country into anarchy. There is no effective government, no police and no control over criminal gangs who currently occupy large parts of the capital and are consolidating their position. One key figure is ‘Barbeque’, an ex-Haitian policeman who controls a large gang and has emerged as the leading figure in the capital. The acting Prime Minister and President Ariel Henry is out of the country and was denied permission by his he Dominican Republic to fly into their airspace earlier this week. Henry took power after the assassination of the previously elected President in 2021 but has failed to hold elections and is clearly unable to control the situation in the country. There have been talks suggesting an international force be deployed to the island to restore order - Kenyan troops were apparently earmarked for this but nothing has come of it. The US has previously occupied Haiti on a couple of occasions but there seems little appetite for a repeat in Washington. What do P&Bers think should be done to help Haiti and the Haitians?

You could probably make a 50 part documentary on the Second World War and have material left over. Late to the party but really enjoyed Gladiators reboot, watch it every week with my six year old, properly good family show. Only downside is the presenters, should have had someone who was an athlete doing it.