Notices by Flick ?? (flick@spinster.xyz)

@HebrideanHecate This sounds like they’ve gone “Michaela is strict and gets good results, we should copy it” without actually understanding how Michaela works.

This story is just getting funnier.

https://spectator.com/article/its-the-ideology-stupid/

It must be hard being an Islamist. Imagine, you’ve gone to a great deal of planning and effort to commit an atrocity and make clear to the world that your motivations for doing so are your murderous religio-political creed. Then, just as the malaikah are introducing you to the 72 virgins, you notice that Chris Bryant has posted on social media, attributing your actions to all-purpose, gender non-specific ‘hatred’. You are, then, according to Bryant and co, the same as a Christian who holds to the Church’s historic view of marriage. You are the same as someone who doesn’t believe a woman can have a penis. You are the same as a person who mocked Stella Creasy online for not knowing the difference between a parrot and a parakeet. Were Bryant not one of the most obnoxiously pompous people in Westminster, you would almost respect him for this level of trolling.

Interesting look at the work of RICU (the “Nudge Unit”) in influencing statements from families of victims of attacks by asylum seekers and similar.

Drawing all this together, I think we can begin to discern the shape of how liaison officers — trained and briefed with RICU-approved and supplied materials — operate. In the immediate aftermath of a deeply traumatic event they make themselves indispensable to the families. Liaison officers will answer every question, explain every process, keep others away, and as a result become an object of security and safety which those families inevitably come to rely on. Other families sharing the same pain and trauma are kept away, so there is no threat to the liaison officer’s primacy. And as a result, the families will generally happily and willingly comply with the suggestions, help and guidance which the officers provide, particularly over their public statements. The veiled threat of a trial collapsing due to reckless statements is also held in reserve, should families become non-compliant. Similarities to both cults and abusive relationships are, I think, obvious.

It is, as I said, far more subtle than threats, far more effective (indeed, most families seem to pass through the experience feeling grateful to their liaison officers), and, in truth, far more wicked. To use the tools of manipulation and coercive control like this, in the service of the state’s goals, and to sustain the state’s failing myths, is a particularly modern evil.

https://spectator.com/article/professor-arday-is-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving/

Are congratulations in order for Sacha Baron Cohen? The more I read about Jason Arday, the Cambridge sociology professor and DEI poster boy caught up in a plagiarism row, the more convinced I am he’s the comedian’s greatest creation.

First, there’s the over-the-top back story. He claimed to have been totally mute until the age of 11 – having been diagnosed with autism – and unable to read or write until he was 18. Yet in spite of these disadvantages, he earned a PhD by the time he was 30 – which he managed to complete while suffering from a brain tumour!

On the face of it, utterly incredible. But it begins to make sense if you think of Arday as an Ali G-like character designed to test the limits of how unwilling white do-gooders are to challenge the claims of black people suffering from ‘intersectional oppression’, however implausible.

Oh good god: apparently there is a TikTok “challenge” doing the rounds that involves setting fire to hay bales.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/07/29/ofcoms-quest-to-censor-the-world/

Ofcom’s climbdown is understandable. However sad and nasty the forum is, a British regulator doesn’t have a cat in hell’s chance of closing it down, since it is protected by the First Amendment in the US. Nor will it be able to extract any money from it, because US courts don’t enforce foreign fines against US companies that engage in what are perfectly legal activities there.

Did Ofcom grow up and realise there were limits to what it could do? Unfortunately not. Ofcom is now going back to parliament for yet more powers to throw its weight around internationally. Currently, Ofcom can ask a court in London to impose ‘business disruption’ on a site – that is, order every UK internet service provider (ISP) to block it or risk swingeing penalties. But to use the power, it has to prove ongoing non-compliance. Non-payment of a fine is not enough to meet the threshold.

This is not good enough, says Ofcom. It wants, it seems, pre-emptive powers to block access to sites operating anywhere in the world, should they be deemed harmful to people in the UK.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/07/29/the-berlin-pride-attack-shows-why-gays-are-flocking-to-the-right/

Progressives have spent years trying to build one giant coalition of the ‘oppressed’. They decided that gays, women, Muslims, migrants and every other minority belong on the same team. But religions with illiberal views on women’s rights, free speech and homosexuality eventually collide with Western, European values. And when they do, someone has to lose.

When those contradictions become impossible to ignore, activists rarely confront them. They prefer to redefine the problem, change the subject or blame somebody more politically convenient.

@ninapaley I found a website that did hexagonal pixels and uploaded a photo!

I’m tweaking it a bit in places, and some of the similarly-coloured areas mean I’m having to draw the hexis onto a print-out, but it seems to work.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/bcf537da-8153-41be-8c3b-94cc284de538?shareToken=45486fd3f983c938c84d7ef3a2a9629c

Once again, it really is not complicated. If and when and where single-sex spaces are permissible and appropriate they must be just that: single-sex. A lot of hard learning is going to be required, however. The NHS is discovering this and so is the Scottish Prison Service. So, too, countless employers and public sector bodies. Gender-slop has held sway for more than a decade and, like asbestos, removing it takes time.

“Follow the law” ought not to be such a complicated business but here we are. Those organisations still in denial are liable to discover that the law is a righteously stern and unforgiving mistress. So be it.

@BowsacNoodle @eee Shuttle was the precursor to round bottom bobbins.

Thread shredding and needle breaking to me is a tension issue. NB that you should be able to adjust both top and bottom tension: the obvious dial is top, bottom may involve a screw.

Given the age, it may also need oiling.

@BowsacNoodle @eee Thought this was some exceptionally weird sexual innuendo at first.

Shuttle or round?

Tension is more likely imo, but I can’t see the thread.

https://spectator.com/article/burnhams-coronation-speech-was-sub-disney-schmaltz

There was a Partridgian interlude too as he declared that ‘I draw my strength from people. I hear things, pick up straws in the wind.’ It’s worth dwelling on that final phrase: ‘I hear things, pick up straws in the wind.’ He presumably thinks this makes him sound folksy and relatable when actually on closer inspection it’s the sort of thing an ominous hollow-eyed farm worker in a Stephen King novel might say when asked about the whereabouts of an old Indian graveyard. I suspect that, as with Starmer, there is as yet unplumbed weirdness to Burnham which will come to the fore now he’s in the spotlight.

https://spectator.com/article/the-gazan-family-ruling-makes-a-mockery-of-human-rights/

The need to think seriously about our membership of the ECHR gets more glaring daily. Some time ago, a Gazan woman was given refuge here with her three children. She then asked the Home Office to bring in 18 more people from Gaza: her parents, three siblings, two of their spouses and their children. They do not have any other connection with this country, and many speak no English whatsoever. Met with an understandable refusal, the relatives sued. This week they won in an immigration appeal tribunal. Why? The right to family life, as enshrined in Article 8 of the ECHR.

https://archive.ph/vcJXU

I think there is actually more going on in this case (specifically, Tena Men), but it’s a nicely done piece of Spiked-ese from the new Spiked intern.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/07/14/no-waitrose-men-dont-have-periods/

We often hear this refrain about the importance of language from trans activists. Of course, anyone paying attention to the debate would have noticed that all of the changes demanded from activists are only in one direction. No one has proposed renaming the men’s grooming aisle. No one has suggested ‘men’s health’ implies an exclusivity that needs correcting. Nor does the definition of ‘man’ seem to attract anywhere near the controversy of the definition of woman.

This is the inherent misogyny that lingers at the heart of the trans movement. Repeatedly, women are expected to simply accept the erasure of their rights and their bodies because a small minority of activists demands that they do so. And corporations keep bowing to it.

Love being able to just pop outside and get veggies!

Been over to see my mum: two fires by the road on the way there (now out) and I was greeted by this as I drove over the brow of the last hill:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgmdkw7wmkgo

A monk draped in burnt-orange robes faces a row of young men and women and tells them they're here on a mission to save their country. By finding a partner and one day having babies.

The participants giggle, nervously stealing glances from their prospective matches.

This isn't the start of a new hit reality show. It's a real-life dating retreat held at an 8th Century Buddhist temple nestled in the lush greenery of South Korea's Palgongsan mountain.

It's a 30-hour affair which will feature back-to-back activities and a steady stream of awkward moments, all in the pursuit of breaking the ice and finding love.

https://order-order.com/2026/07/09/met-gives-graham-linehan-25000-and-another-apology/

The Met has paid Graham Linehan £25,000 in compensation after arresting him for posts that were gender-critical. They said there were “shortcomings in the investigation, the arrest and the imposition of bail conditions”. He got a letter:

“Whilst there can be no doubt that all officers acted in good faith throughout and were seeking to do their best in the circumstances, the investigation identified shortcomings in both the investigation, arrest and imposition of bail conditions. We apologise to you for those shortcomings and for the distress and inconvenience which he suffered as a result.”

Linehan got an apology in May. Now he gets another and the cash. Taxpayer-funded payouts are a common occurrence for police forces aggressively overstepping the mark…

https://spectator.com/article/labours-tinpot-free-speech-crackdown/

The nerve of the Labour party trying to muzzle its political opponents – under an obviously spurious claim of public safety – is disorienting. Nobody can quite believe their audacity, the absence of a scintilla of self-awareness. Even a child knows that facts are often contested and open to interpretation. This is the very stuff of politics in a democracy.

A propagandist of communism or fascism at least states openly that they are manufacturing a narrative for ideological control. The truly terrifying thought about Labour is that Nandy and Powell genuinely think that their world view, such as it is, is the only correct one.

We are, then, to have our public square adjudicated by the very same people who thought that rapists should be housed in women’s prisons (Nandy), and that mere mention of the unshiftable moral stain of the Pakistani rape gangs was ‘getting a little dog whistle out’ (Powell). People who couldn’t bring themselves to say that there are two sexes are criticising others for ‘abuse’ and ‘misinformation’. Are we really going to place the power to control information into those hands? It is a sick joke.

https://archive.ph/EYL77