Notices by HebrideanHecate (hebrideanhecate@spinster.xyz)

@KeepTakingTheSoma They make me puke.

https://thecritic.co.uk/do-we-still-live-in-a-democracy/

It is clear that our current system is not delivering. There are many reasons for this, but at root the problem is simple: when the electorate vote for a policy — say, reduced immigration, increased economic growth or cheaper energy — they then watch as their government ignores them, pulls the levers, and nothing happens. Their scepticism is therefore entirely justified. So why is this the case? A range of causes, we argue, have cumulatively disarmed UK Ministers and so broken the transmission mechanism from electorate to policy delivery. The dissipation of powers to Quangos, to devolved administrations or international judges; the inability of Ministers to manage their departments — because of limited competence, curtailed authority, and short tenures, all worsened by party and intra-party dysfunction — all play a part.

More controversially the paper looks at the nature of the British electorate. To have a democracy you need a “demos” a people with shared experience able to have a national conversation. However, mass migration, lax rules on who can vote and political atomisation has led to a breakdown in traditional party politics, in some areas producing a turn towards sectarian politics of the kind long associated with Northern Ireland. Secondly, on the “customary or traditional loyalty” of the electorate to the British state. This loyalty — corresponding largely to what Walter Bagehot described as the “dignified” parts of the British Constitution — is less potent than it once was, but it remains highly relevant. The accumulated history of the Monarch, Parliament and other institutions is made visible at the State Opening of Parliament and in numerous other ceremonies and occasions. This matters, yet for decades successive Governments have attempted to define themselves in contradiction to British tradition. We will always need tradition and ceremony, the accumulated wisdom of ages, to underpin our system. It is better that this is provided by the King in Parliament than allow the workings of Parliamentary debates themselves to become ceremonial, while real power is wielded elsewhere.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/01/07/we-must-never-forget-the-treachery-of-stonewall/

In the future, if someone asks me how mad Britain went during the trans hysteria, I’ll tell them the story of Stonewall. I’ll tell them about this charity that was founded to fight for gay rights but which ended up doing the bidding of homophobia. I’ll tell them how these ‘LGBT’ activists became cheerleaders for the brutish medical conversion of young lesbians. I’ll tell them how these bourgeois gays ended up demanding that lesbians let blokes into their clubs and associations. I’ll tell them how truly disastrous the woke era was for gay liberation.

Shorter version: Let men into women’s bathrooms. Let that big bloke who says he’s a lesbian attend your away-day for gay members of staff. Stonewall called for an Orwellian overhaul of language, too. It advised workplaces to replace the word ‘mother’ with gender-neutral alternatives, like ‘parent who has given birth’. Its advice was especially noxious in schools. You must let ‘trans children’ use ‘the toilets and changing rooms that match their gender’, it said. Screw the dignity of teenage girls – they’ll just have to put up with that hulking boy undressing next to them. The idea that lesbians should share their spaces and even their beds with men is insane. It represents the undoing of six decades of gay liberation. Young lesbians report being branded ‘genital fetishists’ and even ‘perverts’ for refusing to sleep with men who claim to be women. Instead of defending these lesbians, Stonewall yapped about the ‘sexual racism’ of ‘demonising transwomen’. The bigots of old said lesbians just needed a good seeing-to. The bigots of today say the same. Just lie down with a man, you perverts.

@BILLSan345 These orgs need to sink without trace.

@Flick What is staggering is it not being until 2006 that the UK finally paid off the USA war loan, six years late. Buggers shafted us right royally after the final whistle.

@Gnomeshatecheese @Flick Himself got this for Christmas, I haven't had a look at it yet.

@sensei @KeepTakingTheSoma A lesson badly needed here.

@KeepTakingTheSoma It's shitty mindset.

@KeepTakingTheSoma Himself blew up at a kid the other week because dirty little sod had emptied a tin of sardines into the classroom bin, when bollocked for it his attitude was it was only a joke and what else are the cleaners for, which earned him a second bollocking re attitude to the cleaners as well as mess, wasting food etc etc.

They are such arrogant entitled shits.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15441575/Teachers-strike-primary-schools-pupils-kick-bite-staff-bring-knives-classroom.html

Teachers from two primary schools have begun strike action after pupils kicked and bit staff and brought knives into the classroom. Staff at Lily Lane Primary School and Ravensfield Primary School in Manchester say they have been physically attacked and some pupils are too scared to attend class.

Teachers also says there have been instances of pupils being hit, kicked and even spat at. Both schools are part of the Changing Lives in Collaboration Trust (CLiC) and following the announcement of strike action, the trust said the safety and wellbeing of pupils and staff was its 'highest priority'.

The trust said teachers were 'suffering high levels of stress and anxiety which are affecting their entire lives.'

@Childfree Same, it's really horrible.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/many-schools-don-t-think-students-can-read-full-novels-anymore-that-s-a-tragedy/ar-AA1TFnRL?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=695d47dcd0ca413981e3dbb1646c423f&ei=7

Reading fiction has been such a joy for me that my heart broke a little to learn recently that many schools no longer assign full books to high school students. Rather, teens are given excerpts of books, and they often read them not in print but on school-issued laptops, according to a survey of 2,000 teachers, students and parents by the New York Times. The reasons are many – including the belief that students have shorter attention spans, and schools’ efforts to teach students to perform well on standardized tests.

One factor is the Common Core, a set of standards adopted by many states in the US more than a decade ago. Given those standards, many schools use curriculum products like StudySync, which uses an anthology approach to introducing students to literature. Books lead to a richer life. They also lead to a more successful life, as a two-decade-long study showed. Kids who lived with books in their home – as few as 20 – benefitted significantly over those who didn’t, in areas like academic success, vocabulary development and job attainment.

There’s something about having the actual physical book in one’s hands that I’m convinced makes a difference. That’s one reason that those measly book excerpts, read on a school-issued laptop, seem so terribly sad to me.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/music/taxpayers-fund-festival-that-won-t-let-white-people-run-it/ar-AA1Twbhg?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=695d6722cd20428298144b1c1ebbb02b&ei=19

Leaders are instead drawn from members who can boast one or two parents descended from the “original inhabitants” of continents outside Europe, or from Roma and Traveller groups. Arts Council cash has supported the London festival, whose “militant” leadership has pledged to “put the threat back into punk” – while also banning any rhetoric that could stray into “fatphobia”.

The festival has in the past hosted acts including Bob Vylan, whose lead singer led chants of “death to the IDF” during a Glastonbury set, a show that was supported by Decolonise Fest with the social media message: “Free Palestine and up the Vylan.” Funding distributed by the Arts Council included £7,793 in Covid emergency funding to keep the Decolonise Fest going through the pandemic, and a grant of £18,808 in National Lottery funding this year.

The festival’s team claims to be “rewriting the rules” and “truly putting the threat back into punk again” and says it will “not tolerate racism, ageism, sexism, transphobia, Islamophobia, classism, ableism, homophobia” or any “anti-immigrant rhetoric”.

@KeepTakingTheSoma Really enraging.

@KeepTakingTheSoma I'm bloody sick if it all.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/01/06/the-maccabi-tel-aviv-ban-was-a-sop-to-islamic-sectarians/

For me, one clip says it all. There sat a clammy-looking Craig Guildford, beleaguered chief constable of West Midlands Police, addressing the camera with all the joie de vivre of a hostage appearing in a proof-of-life video. ‘Salam alaikum’, he said, addressing Birmingham’s Muslim community in August 2024, his nerves – or else his general dimwittery – showing in his mangled pronunciation. ‘Thank you to the leaders and elders [who] have afforded me this opportunity to speak to you personally.’ Wait, what? Who’s in charge here? It shouldn’t be for the chief constable to grovel before ‘leaders and elders’ for allowing him to address the citizens who pay his wages. We are a liberal democracy, not a tribal society. Or at least we used to be. Welcome to the results of Britain’s decades-long experiment with the benighted doctrine of multiculturalism, which has led to the Balkanisation of great swathes of the country along sectarian lines. In the old days, every citizen was equal in the eyes of the law, to be policed even-handedly, without fear or favour. Today, however, especially in parts of the land dominated by Muslim populations, officers must engage with self-appointed ‘leaders and elders’, who tend to show all the hallmarks of insularity and fundamentalism. In fact, they often act remarkably like members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that in Birmingham, Yorkshire and elsewhere, the mullahs now call the shots. Consider, for instance, the municipal Christmas tree that was erected in the centre of Bradford last year. Well, I say Christmas tree: the authorities saw fit to rename it a ‘multicultural tree’, which was supposedly a ‘symbol of the amazing way in which the city of Bradford and district positively embrace diversity’. I think I just did a little sick. The thing felt like one long grovel, seemingly designed to beg the local Muslim population to indulge the presence of a non-Islamic tradition – shorn of all its Christian significance – on their territory. (Ironically, Bradford is 33.4 per cent Christian, according to the last Census, and only 30.5 per cent Muslim, yet the smaller of those groups seems to wear the trousers.) Could you imagine the boys in blue striking such a subservient position towards any other minority in Britain? Sikhs, maybe? Jews? Buddhists? Me neither. Which brings us back to the West Midlands, the dysfunctional societal soup in which bobs the obsequious and flaccid dumpling of Craig Guildford, who surely cannot possibly hang on to his position much longer.

@astarsscreams @Flick The one they called The Beast from the East about 5 or 6 years ago had everyone rolling their eyes and shrugging, because of the media hysterics over weather, but that time it actually did happen too. This country has become very bad at dealing with anything though, utterly bloody useless in fact, sodding local Councils and Govt, they waste money on shit, never put it on infrastructure and sensible stuff these days, doesn't help matters any either. Gritting, for instance, taken a huge hit, in comparison to how much would have been done years ago, keeping culverts clear and things like that, just not done.

@Flick Friend made it up from Glasgow to ferry today, says it was a bit hairy along the way.

https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/scottish-news/snow-scotland-plea-made-military-36503369

Mr Bowie said: "The situation has now become critical. Many people are increasingly cut off, with access to essential food supplies and medical provisions becoming extremely difficult and, in some instances, impossible. There is a real and growing risk that individuals may be left without basic necessities unless urgent action is taken.

@Flick I, out of habit and being a non driver, keep an extra stock of basics in, also, aware we can afford to do that, so during covid thing had lav paper and plenty tins and cereals etc in cupboard, soup making and things like pasta sauce if had to make something out of little kind of thing. Say power down...surprised some places not lost it at moment, although maybe have and not heard...that was last time we had a long term one, a big snow some years back, can do a basic on top of the wood burner. Even a camp type thing on the open fire in other room if really pushed.

These days though it surprises me re the amount of people who have lost ability to home cook much or know how to, too reliant on modern methods or whatever. Not folk say with disabilities or elderly and what is easier for them, but just don't know how to actually make a meal out of little or alternative fuel stuff etc. Bit more difficult if only got the electric of course, but the general don't know how to does seem to be a thing, that's concerning.