I guess we can tick "liberating the Iranian people" off the list of possible war aims at this point ?
The US/Israel just bombed Sharif University in Tehran. This is not only Iran's best university, but also a top 100 global university in the field of Civil Engineering.
It has also been a center of student opposition to the Iranian gov
To be fair, sacking a long-service employee under those circumstances comes across, case as stated, as a very silly way of dealing with what appears to be a breach of policy. A rebuke and, if possible, transfer, for a while anyway, to a non-customer-facing role, would surly have been better.
Anyone who, unhappily, had had to deal with demented relative or friend will recognise the startling loss of inhibitions about profanities as a symptom
Fake news. My father, with very advanced dementia, retained pretty good manners until then end.
It would be surprising if people who never much used profanities throughout their life suddenly started using them when they got dementia. Just a theory.
Likely the case.
I don't think dementia reveals the inner person - way too much is lost for that to be true - but I got the strong impression (from many hours in the care home) that it does reveal stuff that was always there, buried or not.
A lot of those I watched over the course of a few years had their own essential characters, which tended to remain as they deteriorated, even if they might bear little resemblance to what they were before the disease.
My parents had a good friend who had come to Scotland from Vienna on the kindertransport. She was a lovely, friendly and warm woman but after she got dementia became deeply fearful and suspicious of everybody. She lost almost her whole family (apart from her sister who had moved to Israel, who she didn't get on with) in the Holocaust and I think a lot of the feelings of fear from that time that she had been able to bury while she had a happy and thriving life in Scotland were revealed as dementia took its toll. It was very sad.
Dementia is tragic. Really an earlier death is often better for all concerned, heartless though that sounds.
My grandmother experienced terrible dementia for about a decade before dying. Classic Alzheimer's - memory deterioration, combined with unpredictable moments of suprising recall.
The strange thing was, even when she was leaving the gas on and couldn't remember the names of her own children, she could still do crossword puzzles amazingly well.
But the brain is a very strange thing.
Disturbingly, dementia very much runs in my family. Two grandparents, and an uncle, succumbed.
All my grandparents died before they started exhibiting any symptoms as far as I can recall, and I think that's a blessing.
As my erstwhile boss who had a background in theatre once said to me, "Better a DBO than a slow fade to black..."
The shoplifting thing is nuts. Supposedly one of the reasons there is CCTV everywhere, and normal people have to put up with having their every move monitored, is to control petty crime such as shoplifting, yet we now find that, in 2026, a mature democracy, the country that invented modern policing, is unable to prevent shoplifting?
A first step might be to make store security guards into special constables, so that they had the protection of the state behind them if shoplifters made malicious complaints against them, and to encourage stores to employ more security guards and to empower them to act against shoplifters.
I also suspect his story is missing a very important detail. In any event you would hope that the Shadow Home Secretary would in these troubled times have something of more pressing import to get his teeth into
To be fair, sacking a long-service employee under those circumstances comes across, case as stated, as a very silly way of dealing with what appears to be a breach of policy. A rebuke and, if possible, transfer, for a while anyway, to a non-customer-facing role, would surly have been better.
I'm sure I read that there were previous incidents.
I also suspect his story is missing a very important detail. In any event you would hope that the Shadow Home Secretary would in these troubled times have something of more pressing import to get his teeth into
I do not see a commitment from the Shadow Home Secretary that if his party gets into power it will organise the justice system to prioritise putting a stop to widespread shoplifting. Shoplifting is a symptom of a failure to manage the resources of the system.
"Waitrose employee sacked after stopping shoplifter from taking Easter eggs Walker Smith, 54, who worked for retailer for 17 years, says he grabbed bag from thief before they escaped"
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The US/Israel just bombed Sharif University in Tehran. This is not only Iran's best university, but also a top 100 global university in the field of Civil Engineering.
It has also been a center of student opposition to the Iranian gov
And Trump just bombed it...
https://x.com/tparsi/status/2041000496916222129
A rebuke and, if possible, transfer, for a while anyway, to a non-customer-facing role, would surly have been better.
As my erstwhile boss who had a background in theatre once said to me, "Better a DBO than a slow fade to black..."
A first step might be to make store security guards into special constables, so that they had the protection of the state behind them if shoplifters made malicious complaints against them, and to encourage stores to employ more security guards and to empower them to act against shoplifters.
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