Best Of

FWIW, I thought at the time that Obama's interference in the Brexit vote was wrong -- and may have been counter-productive, having the opposite effect he intended.

(What should he have done? Stayed silent unless asked, and then said he hoped that the EU and Britain would work through this to be better friends, however the vote went. And then changed the subject.)

I wasn't bothered by Obama's intervention because I'm a global free speech advocate, but the interesting point is how the left in the UK is fine with interventions from abroad as long as they agree with them, but they don't like it when they don't agree with them. So hypocrisy, in other words.

I suppose there is a thread. The US, then, felt they had an interest in the UK remaining part of the European Union. Now they seem to feel they have an interest in the UK succumbing to racial division and turning to far-right ethno-nationalism.

I think Andy's point isn't that Obama shouldn't have an opinion, nor even that he had no right to express an opinion, but that his 'back of the queue' comment was counterproductive: voters are seldom persuaded by threats from foreign leaders (see: Trump) and it also was unhelpful for the cause of UK:US relationships.

In general, this is a difficult line for a foreign leader to take - but not that difficult. The correct approach is "I value x and I believe the voters ot country y do too, but this is a matter purely for the voters of country y and our friendship with country y will.continue regardless."

Andy's point was that he is cool about people anywhere saying anything, since he's a global free speech advocate, but it seems (to him) that the left (the left in particular) are happy enough when they agree with what's said but hypocritically make a big fuss when they aren't.

The Right being notoriously thick skinned in that regard.

I guess you could argue that Starmer taking the knee was where his PMship started to unravel (about four years before it began). I remember @isam being particularly scathing about it at the time, and so it possibly prepared the ground that made the accusation of "two-tier Keir" one that resonated among a significant minority after the Southport attacks. Which seemed to set the tone for Starmer's time as PM to go off the tracks from the very beginning.

The Nowak case wouldn’t have had nearly as much traction without the reaction to the Floyd murder. That’s what gets people angry. They know how different Starmer would be behaving had Nowak been black.

Because if he had been black it would have reflected a well documented pattern of discrimination based on ethnicity, whereas there is no evidence of systematic police brutality against white people and so this case is either the start of a shocking new trend or just an unfortunate example of the police getting things wrong.
As a white person I am genuinely perplexed at how other white people are being so weird about this. No doubt the extremely online will have some sort of explanation which will all make perfect sense.

The police have a policy of always believing compllaints of racism against white people. It's in writing. It's baked into their culture, and it's resulted in an innocent man's death.
I don't think that's in question.

More broadly, my view is that it reflects the state's hierarchy of identity. There are laws that the state must consider its impact on ethnic minorities. There are rules that ethnic minorities must be prioritised for interviews for jobs. My own place of work has an apprenticeship scheme which is only open to non-whites. There are, it turns out, special laws that certain ethnic minorities are allowed to carry offensive weapons. There are laws against insulting tbe religion of a particular minority. There are very deliberate attempts not to treat everyone equally. It perplexes me that you cannot see how this sort of thing might rankle.

The laws grant exceptions to carrying knives on the grounds of work or religious grounds or national dress, ie anyone who has a reasonable grounds for carrying them. This applies to eg Scots as well, I am intrigued to discover that I am now an ethnic minority! There are no laws against insulting anybody's religion. There is however a history of discrimination that certain efforts have been made to overcome, and I as a heterosexual middle class white man support these efforts. It's incredible to me that at the first sight of any efforts to equalize things there is the cry of unfair from people who have historically been the beneficiaries of this kind of inequality.
Of course people may feel like life is loaded against them. But I would respectfully argue that minorities are not the reason. We might want to look at eg the wholesale assault on the working class starting from 1979 onwards to understand what is going on there. Of course spivvy city Boys like Farage want us to find alternative scapegoats.

The problem comes from trying to achieve statistically equal outcomes from statistically unequal populations. We have a very clear example of this leading to a tragic outcome in the case of Valdo Calocane:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/feb/23/nottingham-killer-valdo-calocane-race-mental-health-inquiry

Nottingham killer was not sectioned because of his race, inquiry told

er, but he was sectioned Mr Glenn. Read the whole article.

I guess you could argue that Starmer taking the knee was where his PMship started to unravel (about four years before it began). I remember @isam being particularly scathing about it at the time, and so it possibly prepared the ground that made the accusation of "two-tier Keir" one that resonated among a significant minority after the Southport attacks. Which seemed to set the tone for Starmer's time as PM to go off the tracks from the very beginning.

The Nowak case wouldn’t have had nearly as much traction without the reaction to the Floyd murder. That’s what gets people angry. They know how different Starmer would be behaving had Nowak been black.

Because if he had been black it would have reflected a well documented pattern of discrimination based on ethnicity, whereas there is no evidence of systematic police brutality against white people and so this case is either the start of a shocking new trend or just an unfortunate example of the police getting things wrong.
As a white person I am genuinely perplexed at how other white people are being so weird about this. No doubt the extremely online will have some sort of explanation which will all make perfect sense.

The police have a policy of always believing compllaints of racism against white people. It's in writing. It's baked into their culture, and it's resulted in an innocent man's death.
I don't think that's in question.

More broadly, my view is that it reflects the state's hierarchy of identity. There are laws that the state must consider its impact on ethnic minorities. There are rules that ethnic minorities must be prioritised for interviews for jobs. My own place of work has an apprenticeship scheme which is only open to non-whites. There are, it turns out, special laws that certain ethnic minorities are allowed to carry offensive weapons. There are laws against insulting tbe religion of a particular minority. There are very deliberate attempts not to treat everyone equally. It perplexes me that you cannot see how this sort of thing might rankle.

The laws grant exceptions to carrying knives on the grounds of work or religious grounds or national dress, ie anyone who has a reasonable grounds for carrying them. This applies to eg Scots as well, I am intrigued to discover that I am now an ethnic minority! There are no laws against insulting anybody's religion. There is however a history of discrimination that certain efforts have been made to overcome, and I as a heterosexual middle class white man support these efforts. It's incredible to me that at the first sight of any efforts to equalize things there is the cry of unfair from people who have historically been the beneficiaries of this kind of inequality.
Of course people may feel like life is loaded against them. But I would respectfully argue that minorities are not the reason. We might want to look at eg the wholesale assault on the working class starting from 1979 onwards to understand what is going on there. Of course spivvy city Boys like Farage want us to find alternative scapegoats.

The problem comes from trying to achieve statistically equal outcomes from statistically unequal populations. We have a very clear example of this leading to a tragic outcome in the case of Valdo Calocane:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/feb/23/nottingham-killer-valdo-calocane-race-mental-health-inquiry

Nottingham killer was not sectioned because of his race, inquiry told

Reading that report in the Guardian it appears the decision you refer to was in 2020 but that he was subsequently readmitted and indeed sectioned and it wasn’t until two years afterwards that he was free. The actual attack took place in 2023 so it’s at best tenuous to suggest that taking ethnicity into account as part of a wider discussion three years before was much of a factor.

They asked the question are we biased because of race but it was one of many factors they would have considered in a case like that.

One of the issues psychologists have to consider is if the more of our culture or upbringing or even background are directly applicable to Thor patient so they can be sure they are making the right decision for them. It’s not about Statistically Equal Outcomes it’s about Patient Centred Care.

Peter.

It's the official policy of this government that statistically unequal rates of detention under the mental health act are evidence of discrimination and need to be corrected.

In the case of the police, their race action plan says that they aim to achieve equity, defined as equality of outcome rather than equality of treatment.

Equity of Treatment is the route to Equity of Outcomes; treat everyone the fairly and everyone gets the same result. But in order to treat everyone fairly you need to accept that everyone is different and one size doesn’t fit all.

So treating minorities differently needs to be addressed somehow. The issue is in practice it’s damned near impossible to do.

I know someone who works in the Club scene in Glasgow and who regularly meets people dealing with drugs; usual a bad batch, or taking too much. The most common taking more before the first one has kicked in.

There experience is that when the Police get involved the quality of their response varies wildly from incident to incident depending on the officers and they reckon that in about a quarter of cases they make a hash of it (no pun intended!)

For me some good officers made a basic error that they would never have made if they had attended that incident a dozen times. It will haunt them for the rest of their lives and they will forever wish they could do it again.

I know one serving officer who hates body cams. He knows why they are a good idea in theory but in practice he thinks they are becoming like VAR; there every decision is going to be scrutinised and criticised by an army of amateur armchair pundits.

Watching the last week I am starting to agree with them.

Peter.

I guess you could argue that Starmer taking the knee was where his PMship started to unravel (about four years before it began). I remember @isam being particularly scathing about it at the time, and so it possibly prepared the ground that made the accusation of "two-tier Keir" one that resonated among a significant minority after the Southport attacks. Which seemed to set the tone for Starmer's time as PM to go off the tracks from the very beginning.

The Nowak case wouldn’t have had nearly as much traction without the reaction to the Floyd murder. That’s what gets people angry. They know how different Starmer would be behaving had Nowak been black.

Because if he had been black it would have reflected a well documented pattern of discrimination based on ethnicity, whereas there is no evidence of systematic police brutality against white people and so this case is either the start of a shocking new trend or just an unfortunate example of the police getting things wrong.
As a white person I am genuinely perplexed at how other white people are being so weird about this. No doubt the extremely online will have some sort of explanation which will all make perfect sense.

The police have a policy of always believing compllaints of racism against white people. It's in writing. It's baked into their culture, and it's resulted in an innocent man's death.
I don't think that's in question.

More broadly, my view is that it reflects the state's hierarchy of identity. There are laws that the state must consider its impact on ethnic minorities. There are rules that ethnic minorities must be prioritised for interviews for jobs. My own place of work has an apprenticeship scheme which is only open to non-whites. There are, it turns out, special laws that certain ethnic minorities are allowed to carry offensive weapons. There are laws against insulting tbe religion of a particular minority. There are very deliberate attempts not to treat everyone equally. It perplexes me that you cannot see how this sort of thing might rankle.

The laws grant exceptions to carrying knives on the grounds of work or religious grounds or national dress, ie anyone who has a reasonable grounds for carrying them. This applies to eg Scots as well, I am intrigued to discover that I am now an ethnic minority! There are no laws against insulting anybody's religion. There is however a history of discrimination that certain efforts have been made to overcome, and I as a heterosexual middle class white man support these efforts. It's incredible to me that at the first sight of any efforts to equalize things there is the cry of unfair from people who have historically been the beneficiaries of this kind of inequality.
Of course people may feel like life is loaded against them. But I would respectfully argue that minorities are not the reason. We might want to look at eg the wholesale assault on the working class starting from 1979 onwards to understand what is going on there. Of course spivvy city Boys like Farage want us to find alternative scapegoats.

The problem comes from trying to achieve statistically equal outcomes from statistically unequal populations. We have a very clear example of this leading to a tragic outcome in the case of Valdo Calocane:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/feb/23/nottingham-killer-valdo-calocane-race-mental-health-inquiry

Nottingham killer was not sectioned because of his race, inquiry told

"Bank of England axed Churchill, Turing, and Austen from notes after being told they were 'not representative of the UK's cultural and natural diversity'"

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15878403/Bank-England-axed-Churchill-Turing-Austen-notes-told-not-representative-UKs-cultural-natural-diversity.html

Totally circular logic. Young people who've become largely ignorant of our history and where knowledge is shared, told that it is shameful and wicked, strangely don't like or appreciate representations of it. Therefore we take it off bank notes so even fewer people are aware of our history and the idea that it is shameful is further reinforced. The only thing that should change on the banknotes is they should add text in plain English explaining why these people are there.

I guess you could argue that Starmer taking the knee was where his PMship started to unravel (about four years before it began). I remember @isam being particularly scathing about it at the time, and so it possibly prepared the ground that made the accusation of "two-tier Keir" one that resonated among a significant minority after the Southport attacks. Which seemed to set the tone for Starmer's time as PM to go off the tracks from the very beginning.

The Nowak case wouldn’t have had nearly as much traction without the reaction to the Floyd murder. That’s what gets people angry. They know how different Starmer would be behaving had Nowak been black.

Because if he had been black it would have reflected a well documented pattern of discrimination based on ethnicity, whereas there is no evidence of systematic police brutality against white people and so this case is either the start of a shocking new trend or just an unfortunate example of the police getting things wrong.
As a white person I am genuinely perplexed at how other white people are being so weird about this. No doubt the extremely online will have some sort of explanation which will all make perfect sense.

The police have a policy of always believing compllaints of racism against white people. It's in writing. It's baked into their culture, and it's resulted in an innocent man's death.
I don't think that's in question.

More broadly, my view is that it reflects the state's hierarchy of identity. There are laws that the state must consider its impact on ethnic minorities. There are rules that ethnic minorities must be prioritised for interviews for jobs. My own place of work has an apprenticeship scheme which is only open to non-whites. There are, it turns out, special laws that certain ethnic minorities are allowed to carry offensive weapons. There are laws against insulting tbe religion of a particular minority. There are very deliberate attempts not to treat everyone equally. It perplexes me that you cannot see how this sort of thing might rankle.

I guess you could argue that Starmer taking the knee was where his PMship started to unravel (about four years before it began). I remember @isam being particularly scathing about it at the time, and so it possibly prepared the ground that made the accusation of "two-tier Keir" one that resonated among a significant minority after the Southport attacks. Which seemed to set the tone for Starmer's time as PM to go off the tracks from the very beginning.

The Nowak case wouldn’t have had nearly as much traction without the reaction to the Floyd murder. That’s what gets people angry. They know how different Starmer would be behaving had Nowak been black.

Because if he had been black it would have reflected a well documented pattern of discrimination based on ethnicity, whereas there is no evidence of systematic police brutality against white people and so this case is either the start of a shocking new trend or just an unfortunate example of the police getting things wrong.
As a white person I am genuinely perplexed at how other white people are being so weird about this. No doubt the extremely online will have some sort of explanation which will all make perfect sense.

The police have a policy of always believing compllaints of racism against white people. It's in writing. It's baked into their culture, and it's resulted in an innocent man's death.
I don't think that's in question.

More broadly, my view is that it reflects the state's hierarchy of identity. There are laws that the state must consider its impact on ethnic minorities. There are rules that ethnic minorities must be prioritised for interviews for jobs. My own place of work has an apprenticeship scheme which is only open to non-whites. There are, it turns out, special laws that certain ethnic minorities are allowed to carry offensive weapons. There are laws against insulting tbe religion of a particular minority. There are very deliberate attempts not to treat everyone equally. It perplexes me that you cannot see how this sort of thing might rankle.

I just need to pull you up on “…and it’s resulted in…”. The evidence is that the injuries he suffered were unsurvivable however quickly he was treated. It’s important we are scrupulously accurate here are the atmosphere is febrile enough. The police (as a whole) behaved appallingly but the only person responsible for this death has already been convicted of it.

Again, I don’t want to minimise anything, but we all have a responsibility to be as accurate as possible given the court of digital opinion has already convicted without all the facts.

If that is the case I'm happy to withdraw "resulted in" - as you say, accuracy is important in this sort of thing.

I guess you could argue that Starmer taking the knee was where his PMship started to unravel (about four years before it began). I remember @isam being particularly scathing about it at the time, and so it possibly prepared the ground that made the accusation of "two-tier Keir" one that resonated among a significant minority after the Southport attacks. Which seemed to set the tone for Starmer's time as PM to go off the tracks from the very beginning.

The Nowak case wouldn’t have had nearly as much traction without the reaction to the Floyd murder. That’s what gets people angry. They know how different Starmer would be behaving had Nowak been black.

Because if he had been black it would have reflected a well documented pattern of discrimination based on ethnicity, whereas there is no evidence of systematic police brutality against white people and so this case is either the start of a shocking new trend or just an unfortunate example of the police getting things wrong.
As a white person I am genuinely perplexed at how other white people are being so weird about this. No doubt the extremely online will have some sort of explanation which will all make perfect sense.

The police have a policy of always believing compllaints of racism against white people. It's in writing. It's baked into their culture, and it's resulted in an innocent man's death.
I don't think that's in question.

More broadly, my view is that it reflects the state's hierarchy of identity. There are laws that the state must consider its impact on ethnic minorities. There are rules that ethnic minorities must be prioritised for interviews for jobs. My own place of work has an apprenticeship scheme which is only open to non-whites. There are, it turns out, special laws that certain ethnic minorities are allowed to carry offensive weapons. There are laws against insulting tbe religion of a particular minority. There are very deliberate attempts not to treat everyone equally. It perplexes me that you cannot see how this sort of thing might rankle.

I just need to pull you up on “…and it’s resulted in…”. The evidence is that the injuries he suffered were unsurvivable however quickly he was treated. It’s important we are scrupulously accurate here are the atmosphere is febrile enough. The police (as a whole) behaved appallingly but the only person responsible for this death has already been convicted of it.

Again, I don’t want to minimise anything, but we all have a responsibility to be as accurate as possible given the court of digital opinion has already convicted without all the facts.

Whether the injuries were unsurvivable is a matter of opinion, but there was around an hour between the stabbing and his eventual death, so with quicker medical attention he might have stood a chance.

That isn't what the Pathologist said at the trial.

The police officer who handcuffed Novak took the handcuffs off 1 minute later and commenced CPR, so there was not a delay to treatment of more than a couple of minutes.

Death is only pronounced when CPR and other attempts at resicitation cease. In a young man that may well be an hour, but it does not mean that more could have been done in that hour.