Best Of

More reactions:

• Tachyon Pulse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR5n_iH7Hsw
  
• Mr Tardis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhymlkPEr5s
  
• CouncilOfGeeks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnzxtvmWeIM
  
• WhoCulture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9RXRvV9j2k
  
• JoshSnares: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfMtw-LHEYk
  

My thoughts

• I think Mr Tardis's point is good: the show has been dying on its arse for some time, RTD/BadWolf's departure is good not bad, and the future lies with things like BigFinish not televised drama, and a break of three-four years will not hurt and maybe help. So I can live with that.
  
• Poor Ellie Littlechild (one of the hosts of WhoCulture) who was lied to on an industrial basis.
  
• RTD has banked a lot of goodwill from me from QAF and RTD1, but it is difficult to forgive him for lying about the (now obviously never-existent) Xmas special. What was he thinking?
  

I see Ian Levine has reacted in his usual measured and balanced way.

I wondered what the echoing farting explosion over the horizon was...

😄

Hello from Belfast, where either some people are playing whack a mole, or more likely, there is evidence of 'community engagement' . This is where the cops go to some 'community leaders' directly or indirectly and suggest it might be worth turning the heat down a bit. The approach is fairly simple, Box the scenes of trouble off, let them have a good night out, keep the public away, evacuate where necessary and otherwise just keep it at range and wait it out with a bit of dispersal work later on. After a night or two when its lost some energy, start the chats with the public local reps.

You can if you know your way around certain parts of Belfast know who the community reps may be and therefore can identify who is keeping out of it and who isn't.

There are still incidents tonight, particularly near to a hotel that is now an illegal migrant facility but its dampened down plenty so far.

Few points:
The claims by some about right wing influences outside of NI stoking up people is nonsense and out of the mouths of those who haven't got a notion of wit to look beyond their nose. Those out of the street couldn't give a fiddlers about some US commentator or indeed Nigel Farage. Its not how we work, we are remarkably self-driven when it comes to grievance. We have our own industry

As I mentioned posting last night, the cops knew this issue was likely to come up and had contingency for mutual aid from other UK forces. Story is they have called it already which says a lot about how stretched they are to start. That the anti migrant issue is up there in contingency planning as prominent as our own traditional scrapping, is an indication of where things really are.

There is a notable absence of terror group direction overall in what occurred. Local players in some areas (hello to a certain group in Newtownabbey) but no big sign of co-ordination/ leadership. This may be evidenced in how relatively quiet it is, at least tonight.

https://x.com/LOS_Fisher/status/2064768443430125723

NEW: Andy Burnham has hinted at a new multibillion-pound spending commitment if he becomes PM, saying that more than 3.5mn women “deserve” compensation over what he regards as a pension scandal

Oh FFS, it is not a scandal! I cannot believe the success of that nonsensical PR campaign which has turned them into victims.

I was broadly positive on Burnham perhaps being able to turn a corner in some ways at least, but if this is his reasoning then I really do hope he loses and Labour stick with Starmer.

I think he will win and become PM, but I hope that he doesn't after jumping on that silly bandwagon.

If there is anyone from Labour here - give that bunch of chances a penny and if Reform is the party I need to vote for to get you kicked out I will vote for Reform...

More reactions:

• Tachyon Pulse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR5n_iH7Hsw
  
• Mr Tardis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhymlkPEr5s
  
• CouncilOfGeeks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnzxtvmWeIM
  
• WhoCulture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9RXRvV9j2k
  
• JoshSnares: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfMtw-LHEYk
  

My thoughts

• I think Mr Tardis's point is good: the show has been dying on its arse for some time, RTD/BadWolf's departure is good not bad, and the future lies with things like BigFinish not televised drama, and a break of three-four years will not hurt and maybe help. So I can live with that.
  
• Poor Ellie Littlechild (one of the hosts of WhoCulture) who was lied to on an industrial basis.
  
• RTD has banked a lot of goodwill from me from QAF and RTD1, but it is difficult to forgive him for lying about the (now obviously never-existent) Xmas special. What was he thinking?
  

I see Ian Levine has reacted in his usual measured and balanced way.

My Google isn't working properly, can somebody post me some links to the riots this murder in Northern Ireland sparked?

This was from court last week.

A YouTuber who murdered his pregnant girlfriend and falsely claimed he was live-streaming a video game as an alibi has been jailed for life with a minimum of 31 years.

Stephen McCullagh, 36, was convicted by a jury at Belfast Crown Court in March of killing Natalie McNally, 32, who was 15 weeks pregnant with their child.

During the attack, at her home in Lurgan on 18 December 2022, she suffered stab wounds, strangulation and blows to the hand.

McCullagh concocted an alibi that he had been live-streaming himself playing computer games on his channel when Ms McNally was murdered.

https://news.sky.com/story/youtuber-jailed-for-murdering-pregnant-girlfriend-13544222

People are more exercised about random public attacks than attacks involving people who know each other. Not surprising.

Also not justified.

The former are a much lower risk than the latter.

I think this is a bit like the contrast between foreign and native criminals.

Unless you live a life of monastic solitude at some level you have to choose someone to trust to let inside your life, and there's always a risk of that person betraying that trust. Whereas the threat from a someone you have not let inside your life feels like one that it should be possible to stop.

In the same way that there will always be people within the native population who do evil things, but it feels like it ought to be possible to deport foreigners at the first sign of trouble.

People fixate on the small fraction of the problem, then allow others to get away with much bigger problems.

Jason Gideon: You know what program did the most harm to this country, in terms of crimes like this? Child abduction?
Det. Charlotte Russet: No.
Dr. Spencer Reid: Stranger danger.
Jason Gideon: Flooded the schools with it.
Dr. Spencer Reid: I remember them coming to my classroom. It was Officer Friendly with stranger danger coloring books.
Jason Gideon: Taught a whole generation about a scary man in a trench coat, hiding behind a tree. Then we learned that strangers are only a... fraction of the offenders out there. Most are people you see every day - your family, your neighbors, schoolteachers. You know the rest. Prepared our children for 1% of the danger, made them more vulnerable to 99%. So we've been wrong before. All we can do is learn from it, and hopefully be better next time.
Criminal Minds, episode "What Fresh Hell", season 2.

That is so true: the creepy uncle is 10x more likely to be a child molester than some random stranger.

Like Keith moon in Tommy.

But to go back to Eagles' original question - why was there a riot about the murderer from Sudan but not the murderer from NI: the riots tend not to be about the crime itself, but about the political culture which appears so relaxed about letting individuals like these into the country.

Labour would scream blue murder if the Tories did this

https://x.com/joe_mayes/status/2064771964540010935

Exclusive: Rachel Reeves is planning to cut the tax burden faced by wealthy US expats, as she seeks to encourage more of them to relocate to Britain

Maybe. But it’s a positive step for once and to be commended.

They are coming to the UK to escape Trump not because of UK tax rates which will still likely be higher than in the USA

Don't US citizens have to pay US tax wherever they are in the world?

Yes but for most it is lower than UK tax whereever paid