Best Of

It's happened again. See social media for video footage of the incident.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gypqp0rp9o

Girl, 17, stabbed in the neck in street attack

The homicide rate in the UK is at its lowest since 1977.

Were we getting many stabbings in the neck and attempted public beheadings in 1977?

Nah, the Teddy boys were a bit before then and the football casuals a bit after.

Casual violence has declined, which is a good thing.

Terrorism has probably declined too, tbh, which is also a good thing.

That doesn't mean we should brush aside horrific attacks like Belfast because we want to hold on to cherished beliefs about the enrichment immigration offers us, which is all @bondegezou cares about.

The pogrom that happened afterwards is more horrific in my opinion. There will always be a few nutters carrying out random acts of violence, unfortunately. But organised gangs of "normal" people burning children out of their homes is a much more dangerous thing. We shouldn't brush that aside because we want to hold onto cherished beliefs about the British being fundamentally decent people who don't do that sort of thing.

No 10 was braced for Reeves or Miliband to quit. Then Healey jumped ship
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/keir-starmer-defence-strategy-john-healey-bsncps22n (£££)

Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.

No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.

On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.

Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.

Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.

We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.

Good morning

I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy

Utilities were publicly owned

Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.

Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum

Power to the People

Bringing accountability back

Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.

Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.

ICYMI: yesterday was a very dark day for the UK justice system.

Four people sentenced for a crime they were not convicted of, after a trial where the judge deliberately concealed that possibility from the jury and prevented the media from reporting on it.

I’ve not doubt they would have been acquitted had the jury been made aware of what crime they were convicting them off, so in effect trial by jury has ended in the UK.

The only logical response for jurors is to always acquit in the future.

How’s the WPC one of them bludgeoned and accused of being complicit in a Genocide ?

The man who did that was rightly convicted of grievous bodily harm. He was not convicted of a terrorism offence, and has been sentenced for that anyway, along with those only (rightly) convicted of criminal damage.

Future such convictions have been put in jeopardy by this. There is zero chance I would now convict any political protestor of any crime because I would be afraid I would be inadvertently convicting them of terrorism, having been duped by the State.

We haven't had WPC's for 27 years btw. Keep up.

It's happened again. See social media for video footage of the incident.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gypqp0rp9o

Girl, 17, stabbed in the neck in street attack

The homicide rate in the UK is at its lowest since 1977.

Were we getting many stabbings in the neck and attempted public beheadings in 1977?

Who knows, because back in 1977 we didn't have phones and CCTV to film all this stuff and make it as 'newsworthy'. That's what's different now - the amount captured on film and distributed on social media.

However, data shows that the rate of violent crime was higher in 1977 than it is now.

I think we knew on public murders, because cameras and newspapers still existed even if they didn't capture in "real time".

FWIW, this is @bondegezou usual one-man-rebuttal-unit bullshit again. The graph he's referring to is here and the murder rate was higher than in 1977 less than 2 years ago:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/homicideinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2025

There's a big spike in 2003. Initially my mind jumped to the 7/7 terror attacks, but they were in 2005 and those are probably captured differently.

How does that rebut what I said? The most recent figures (2025) show the lowest homicide rate since 1977. The figures have been coming down. So, yes, they were higher two years ago. I wasn’t claiming the figures two years ago were the lowest since 1977.

ICYMI: yesterday was a very dark day for the UK justice system.

Four people sentenced for a crime they were not convicted of, after a trial where the judge deliberately concealed that possibility from the jury and prevented the media from reporting on it.

I’ve not doubt they would have been acquitted had the jury been made aware of what crime they were convicting them off, so in effect trial by jury has ended in the UK.

The only logical response for jurors is to always acquit in the future.

The "terrorism" was only brought into it because the Zionist Entity was involved. That much is obvious.

Only a matter of time until the English judiciary introduces committing a blood libel onto the statute sheet.

ICYMI: yesterday was a very dark day for the UK justice system.

Four people sentenced for a crime they were not convicted of, after a trial where the judge deliberately concealed that possibility from the jury and prevented the media from reporting on it.

I’ve not doubt they would have been acquitted had the jury been made aware of what crime they were convicting them off, so in effect trial by jury has ended in the UK.

The only logical response for jurors is to always acquit in the future.

Acquited of the terrorism charge or ALL the charges?

I do think this is a challenging case on I don't think the approach taken here is the right one. If you think someone is a terrorist, use the laws that exist already to establish this and give the appropriate punishment.

In Scotland you often get a choice between, say, careless and dangerous driving or full acquittal. If that were the case for this I think most people would have certainly convicted the sledgehammer guy of greivous bodily harm and possibly terrorism too. if it was just plain terrorism for criminal damage then it would have been full acquittals 90% of the time.

But this is rather beside the point. If juries want to convict on terrorism charges then fair enough - but they should be given the choice rather than have it deliberately concealed from them.

Not really. If someone is charged and taken to trial for dangerous driving the jury are told that they have the option of convicting of careless driving in the alternative and the difference is explained.

I think the problem with the English case, and I have not read it thoroughly, is that the motive for the offence is not relevant to the question of guilt. You either did it or you didn't and that is what the jury decides. But it is relevant to sentence and to any risk assessment that arises on conviction. It does seem odd though that having chosen not to put terrorism charges on the indictment they are then treated as if they were terrorists.

I think we are in agreement on the driving analogy, and I obviously can't do as good a job as explaining it as you did.

I think it's obvious why they didn't charge on that basis - they know juries don't think this stuff is terrorism (particularly the criminal damage) but want to get that result anyway. This mechanism allows it, and it's particularly attractive because the CPS can pick and choose which political motivations they don't like. I don't say that lightly - I just can't dismiss the blatant inconsistency in the sentencing approach.

It's happened again. See social media for video footage of the incident.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gypqp0rp9o

Girl, 17, stabbed in the neck in street attack

The homicide rate in the UK is at its lowest since 1977.

Were we getting many stabbings in the neck and attempted public beheadings in 1977?

Who knows, because back in 1977 we didn't have phones and CCTV to film all this stuff and make it as 'newsworthy'. That's what's different now - the amount captured on film and distributed on social media.

However, data shows that the rate of violent crime was higher in 1977 than it is now.

Here are the numbers for reported homicide rates;

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/homicideinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2024

Going up in the Good Old Days of the 70s to 90s, going down slightly since then.

And it's grimly sort-of reassuring that single horrible events/individuals (Shipman, Ryan, migrants in a lorry) show up as visible spikes.

None of which is any consolation to those who mourn, because every individual is important. But it's relevant for understanding if society is going to the dogs or not. And there is a perception/reality gap there, because the owners of our windows on the world have installed distorting windows.

It's happened again. See social media for video footage of the incident.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gypqp0rp9o

Girl, 17, stabbed in the neck in street attack

The homicide rate in the UK is at its lowest since 1977.

Were we getting many stabbings in the neck and attempted public beheadings in 1977?

Who knows, because back in 1977 we didn't have phones and CCTV to film all this stuff and make it as 'newsworthy'. That's what's different now - the amount captured on film and distributed on social media.

However, data shows that the rate of violent crime was higher in 1977 than it is now.

I think we knew on public murders, because cameras and newspapers still existed even if they didn't capture in "real time".

FWIW, this is @bondegezou usual one-man-rebuttal-unit bullshit again. The graph he's referring to is here and the murder rate was higher than in 1977 less than 2 years ago:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/homicideinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2025

There's a big spike in 2003. Initially my mind jumped to the 7/7 terror attacks, but they were in 2005 and those are probably captured differently.