the brilliantly leaping gazelle

January 3, 2026

33:64 presents ” Victor Frankenstein.”

2026 hadn’t even been halfway through its first day before ‘The Guardian’ went time travelling into the past. It published an article that whilst ostensibly referring to an event that happened in 2025, could just as easily be referring to the general election of 2024.

First off, the article.

“‘They misjudged Caerphilly’: how the Reform juggernaut backfired in Welsh byelection.” Its not really much of a shock anymore that ‘The Guardian’ is implacably opposed to all things Farrago. After all, they’ve flogged the dead horse that are allegations about his schooldays so much so that resultant glue has lost any stick. So why should Reform be treated any less differently?

‘It was assumed that Reform would sweep all before it – but locals rejected the party’s campaign of ‘lies and hate’’

Did they though? The numbers suggest otherwise. And according to the numbers, what the locals rejected more than anything was being expected to take part. Despite widespread media coverage, endless political punditry and the fevered conjecture that it engendered, the actual turnout was 50.43% It gets better. Or worse.

The winning candidate, the Plaid Cymru one, got 47.4%. Which meant that only half of the electorate bothered to vote, and of those that did, less than half of those bothered to vote for him. It gets better. Or worse.

Because as far as I can make out, the winner won not because there was a sudden surge in Welsh nationalism, but because of tactical voting. Whilst this is aggressively discouraged by the national leaderships of all the main political parties, the voters in Caerphilly thought otherwise. Well, half of a half of all of them did anyway.

The Conservative share of the vote collapsed, but nowhere near as badly as it did for Labour. This explains not only why Plaid’s vote share increased so that it won, but also why Reform came from nowhere to come second. A resounding victory it most certainly was not,

It isn’t hard to work out. The numbers don’t lie. They’re not confusing. And if I can do it, then why can’t ‘The Guardian.’?

I think they can, are all too aware that Caerphilly result was far from the comprehensive repudiation of Reform they’d been hoping for. That far from delivering a electoral defeat for Reform, it proved the very opposite. That only tactical voting, which is very unlikely to happen in the general election, avoided a Reform win.

No, I think ‘The Guardian knew all this and because it didn’t booster their prevailing narrative, they simply ignored it and hoped their readers would too. Well I write readers, but they could more accurately be described as cash cows. And boy, are they milked! I’ve written about this mutually beneficial relationship before.

The more that ‘The Guardian’ promotes narrative in which Farrago is basically fascist in a double breasted jacket, that Reform is far-right party and that therefore anyone who supports it is morally questionable, the more money it is that they hand over. It’s certainly lucrative and getting even moreso. Up from £88m in 2023/2024 to £107m in the year to the end of March 2025.

Why on earth would they stop doing what they’re doing in 2026?

Additionally, ’The Guardians’ cynical support of democracy reminds me of the middle-class attitude towards cocaine. Its fine when the right sort of people are doing it. But when the wrong sort of people do it, then it becomes a problem. The Guardian, more than any other newspaper, makes a great show of its principles. Had it had any, it would’ve accepted the Brexit vote, making the point repeatedly that whilst it didn’t like the result, nonetheless it was the democratic will of the people, That had Brexit been properly implemented and had not the government been beset with constant legal, judicial and parliamentary attempts to thwart them doing so, then Farrago would’ve quietly faded into the background.

If anything, ‘The Guardian’ are partly responsible for Reform. After all, they helped create the conditions whereby a anger felt by the millions voted for, and then get what they get, Brexit. They enthusiastically promoted the idea that that it was as a result of foreign interference, manipulation of bigoted views into deeply xenophobic and racist ones and other bogeymen that explained the ‘Leave’ vote. They weren’t alone in this, most of the UK media did the same.

And there we have it. Create a monster. Induce the fear and the panic. Stoke the dread. Ramp up the anxiety. Then sell the pitchforks. Brilliant.

The best kind of capitalism. The kind that doesn’t look like it.

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December 31, 2025

33:64 presents, “Blue Peter.”

So. That was 2025. Will 2026 be any better? Probably not. The things which were already bad will undoubtedly get worse and the things that were already worse will get even worse. Some of the things that were bad or worse, may appear to be improving, but alas, this will be false. They will simply not deteriorating, that’s all. And some new things will appear out of nowhere, much as they do every year, to add yet more drama, frustration and concern to 2026.

And much like New Years Eve 2024, I’ll be seeing in the New Year watching the fireworks here in Southwold. It’s a remarkably civilised way to do it. People gather all along the coast path while on the beach below others set off fireworks. Loads of them. It’s not one display; it’s loads of smaller ones. Three things make it charmingly civilised.

Firstly, there are no hi-vis jackets anywhere, no sign of anything official, just adults being adults and not being treated as 8year olds. Secondly, no music. One of my hates, is when music is added to fireworks, and it always seems to be the kind of pop music that is bass and not much else. Which means I don’t get the full value from all the bangs. Thirdly people will be drinking but not in a messy way; no technicolour yawns, no shouty arguments and no fisticuffs.

Just adults being adults, doing adult things without other adults supervising them, banging on about safe drinking levels or some other fun sponge piffle.

And just like last year, I’ll be a bit champagne-tastic. The last thing I’ll want do first thing in 2026 is post a blog. So, with a nod to Valerie, John and Peter, this is one I wrote earlier.

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December 29, 2025

33:64 presents “Vladimir Lenin.”

The thing that to me is the most shocking thing about the mass shooting at Bondi Beach that killed 16 people, injured many more and traumatised countless others, was that anyone considered it shocking. The other shocking thing was that something on this scale hadn’t happened before. It was entirely inevitable, How could it not have been?

Of course ultimate responsibility for the deaths rests with the gunmen. They pulled the triggers. But when one pulls the focus back from the immediate, and considers all the factors that led to the immediate happening, then one can only conclude that there are all manner of causative factors. Some less causative than others, some participated in by people with less hatred in their hearts than others and some actions less likely to result in a mass shooting than others, granted.

But all sharing some of the blame for creating the mindset necessary to create the conditions whereby a father and his son thought it a perfectly reasonable thing to murder a bunch of strangers.

A mindset that has infected so many people, in so many ways and in so many supposedly impartial organisations precisely because it wasn’t seen as a mindset at all. Rather, it seemed to have been arrived independently by all, and not as part of a long planned and gradually increasing strategy. One that calculated – worryingly correct as it turned out – that emotion, intellectual vanity and groupthink mattered more than fact, evidence or consistency.

The protest marches in in London, other cities in the UK and around the world, attended by the kinds of useful idiots who saw no contradiction whatsoever in accusing Israel of committing genocide and chanting ‘From the river to the sea/ Palestine will be free.” The travesty of Turkey actively supporting South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), when Turkey committed genocide against the Armenian people in 1916. The fact that the case was even heard by the ICJ in the fist place was all kinds of wrong not least because Ireland joined in by petitioning for a broader interpretation of the meaning of genocide to be used by the ICJ. Which in essence was anything Israel did.

No matter that every country on earth would retaliate after a massacre of over 1200 of its citizens. Or indeed that the populations of those countries would demand it. Who would ignore calls for restraint, asking instead what restraint was shown to the 1200 dead? Imagine America’s reaction if 42,000 Americans had been killed simply for being Americans in America? That’s the same proportion. Or Turkey if over 10,000 of their own people had been murdered? How long do I think that Irelands grandstanding on the worlds stage would last if over 400 of its people had been taken hostage? I’d better check with a leprechaun.

The fact that numbers of murdered and kidnapped were not presented in these terms is itself indicative of the mindset existing. Of both how universal it has become and tacitly endorsed by by the media it is. How by not critically evaluating any ‘news’ coming out of Gaza, ‘new’s’ that was ruthlessly controlled by Hamas, the global media were effectively amplifying propaganda.

This then lead to all manner of political charlatans seeing an opportunity and exploiting it for their own ends. We saw the results of it after the 2024 general election, when newly elected 5 MP’s and Corblimey formed ‘Independent Alliance’, which with Raisin became ‘Jaw-jaw Party’ and which ultimately ended in independence from each other. The UK and five other governments recognised Palestine as a being in a right state was an attempt was appeasement by another name; effectively a reward for murder, rape, kidnapping and torture.

We were told that assault and criminal damage sometimes had a moral justification, if the assaults and criminal damage were carried out by members of Palestine Action (PA) against a UK based Israeli defence firm. And that when these PA activists were remanded in custody, imagined that going on a hunger strike would demonstrate the sincerity of their beliefs. It did that alright. I’ve just finished watching “Say Nothing’ and Dolours Price, one of the main characters was an actual IRA terrorist, who after her conviction for bombing the Old Bailey in 1973, went on an actual hunger strike that lasted 208 days. ( She was force fed to prevent her from dying in prison.)

However the same mindset that allows people to shout ‘globalise the intifada’ or ‘from the river to the sea’ as part of performative protests on the streets of London, Bristol and Glasgow, also allows people to actually globalise the intifada on the beach at Bondi. And, as we learned earlier last week, to plan for what would’ve been the worst terrorist attack in British history.

Two men – I use that word in a biological sense only – were found guilty at Preston Crown Court of preparing acts of terrorism, with their main targets being the Jewish community in the north-west of England, members of law enforcement and the military. They bought assault rifles, handguns and over a thousand rounds of rounds of ammunition in preparation for a marauding suicide gun attack. One of them scouted out synagogues, Jewish schools and a Kosher supermarket. He also considered carrying out an attack during protests against anti-Semitism. They also planned on having friends to make hoax calls to emergency services to divert resources and create even more chaos.

This was going to happen in the Britain of 2025, but the Britain of 2025 was a Britain where feelings trumped fact. Where the manipulation by the media isn’t quite so naked. One where political opportunism, performative virtue signalling and an inverted morality have now convinced some people that some ends justify some means.

The Britain of 2026 is going to be one of when’s and not ifs.

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December 26, 2025

33:64 presents “Ebeneezer Scrooge.”

I’m presently in Southwold and there was here, as there is in many UK coastal towns, the annual Christmas Day swim for charity. Indeed, calling it a ‘swim’ is the most charitable thing about it. Most of the ‘swimmers’ certainly look the part. The women wearing dry robes, the men pretending that they have no need for such frivolities as warmth. The teenage boys styling it out for the benefit of teenage girls, as teenage boys have always done and will always do. Even if their bravado doesn’t quite fill out their budgie smugglers. And the teenage girls will pretend not to notice this, just as teenage girls have always done and will always do.

They’ll all make a great show of running down to the waters edge, giving every indication that they’ll plunge headfirst into the freezing water and do some swimming. But these are the last few days of Britain 2025, where the giving the indication that you might do something is far more important than actually doing it. As far as I can tell, and there’s an abundant amount of evidence on YouTube to support this, most of the ‘swimmers’ never go much further than waist height. More intermediate paddling than swimming.

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And along with the swim that never is, there’s the ‘this old thing?, that never is. Yes, the Christmas Day catwalk, where people wear they’ve presents they’ve just opened, parading their finery for all to see. But all the while, maintaining the air of someone who got dressed in a hurry, pulled on the first thing that came to hand, and didn’t even have time to stop and look in the mirror before they dashed out of the door.

The irony is that because it is Christmas Day and all the shops are closed, there’s not enough people on the streets to behold the full extent of their bounty. So for now at least, its only coats and jackets, hats or scarves.

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Now its Boxing Day and it’s like the age old question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”, has been updated. Given not so much a festive makeover, but capitalism disguised as a welcome opportunity to do the Christmas catwalk properly. Coffee shops are a good example of this.

Firstly, are they open because there are people about, or are there people about because the shops are open? Secondly, it gives people the opportunity to take off the new cats, jackets, hats and scarves they got yesterday, and reveal just how much a walking advert they are. And to prove how the people that they know are the sort of people willing and able to pay full price.

Because the Boxing Day sales have always baffled me. Back in the olden days, long before the internet and bubble tea, one of the staples of Christmas TV news programmes was to interview people in the queue for the Harrods Boxing Day sales. There were always loads of them. Some would’ve been there since Christmas Eve to be first through the doors when it opened. It always seemed to be fur coats they were after. Olden times indeed.

The thing that struck me then was that Boxing Day sales were the very antithesis of the Christmas spirit. The very fact of makes a mockery of the notion of goodwill to all men; that in order to achieve a happy Christmas, one also needed to ruin it for other people. That’s what the Boxing Day sales are. Or indeed any shop that’s is open on Boxing Day. Think about it, think of the staff who have to work in them. No eating, drinking or making merry for them on Christmas Day. They can’t get drunk, wake up late the next day and start caning it anew. No, they’ve got be up and early because people haven’t figured out what online shopping is.

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December 23, 2025

33:64 presents “David Copperfield”

There appeared a news item in ‘The Telegraph’ a few days ago which perfectly illustrated not just the incredibly arrogant attitude shared by some transgender activists and the cowardice businesses display when forced to choose between profit or principles. But also the way in which language has become weaponised in pursuit of promoting a narrative which casts transgendered people as heroic refuseniks, constantly fighting for the basic human rights everyone else in society takes for granted.

‘ ‘Transphobic’ Christmas card pulled from Sainsbury’s

The card was deemed offensive for featuring a cartoon of Dr Seuss’s Grinch character alongside the caption: “This Christmas, I’m identifying as a Grinch.”

The Telegraph understands that the card will be pulled from Sainsbury’s stores across the UK in the coming days amid a backlash from the trans community.’

That ‘backlash from the trans community’ consisted of one person seeing it in they’re local store, taking a photo of the card and then tweeting about it. Thats it. But judging by the responses from the card publisher, its illustrator and Sainsbury’s themselves, you’d think some grievous wrong had been committed and the that only remedy was abject contrition. All the cards were taken off the shelves and the entire stock destroyed.

Because of one person who imagined it was offensive claiming, “Trans people don’t choose to identify as their gender – it’s part of who they are. Being trans is not a choice. Cis people saying they identify as something like a tomato, attack helicopter or a Grinch invalidates the lived experience of trans people. It tells the world that they think it’s a choice to be trans, something you can switch in and out of, like playing dress up. This is not true. Being trans or non-binary is not something you can switch off, in the same way a cis person can’t switch off being cis. When you consider the current UK climate of trans hostility, I feel that it’s a worrying sight.”

If that’s what they believe, then good luck to them. But just because because someone believes in something, it doesn’t make that something right. And it also doesn’t mean that their belief takes precedence over fact. Especially not when that something depends on a foundational principle which is a nonsense, which in turn creates a ripple effect of other nonsenses. Allow me to elaborate.

Firstly, the very idea of ‘transphobia’ being a phobia is difficult for me to accept. . According to the NHS, ‘a phobia is an overwhelming and debilitating fear of an object, place, situation, feeling or animal.’ Dislike of, annoyance towards or being irritated by people isn’t a phobia; its a normal emotional response. Its one shared by everyone because of being forced to share there existence with everyone else.

By all means hate someone for characteristics that are unique to them not something that is common within a group; sexual orientation, skin colour or religion, etc. That makes as about as much sense for hating someone for their blood group, their eye colour or for being tall. Hate someone for the way they express their opinions, not because they have that opinion. Hate someone for for deciding that their freedoms negate the freedoms of others, and therefore justify all kinds of wrongs to achieve them.

The transgendered people I really feel sympathy for are the ones quietly getting with living their lives, who are not activists but whose lives are made immeasurably harder by their carryings on.

Secondly, ‘cis people’. When I first encountered the term of ‘cis people’ I was perplexed. Then I googled it, and it all made sense. ‘Cis people’ are everyone basically. Pretty much the entire population of this country, the world and every human who has ever lived. Heterosexuals, in other words. The only people who imagine that ‘cis’ people exist are trans people themselves.

They created the self-serving nonsense of ‘cis people’ because it helps them reinforce their delusion that ‘gender identity’ exists, and this in turn allows them to imagine that ‘cis’ people, in stubbornly refusing to accept this, compensate by treating transgender people in all kinds of wrong. Thus they can imagine themselves to be the hero in the fiction they have created.

Thirdly, having a choice and exercising that choice is a core belief of transgenderism, unquestionably so for trans-women. The overwhelming majority of trans-women still have their penises yet still demand to use female only spaces, like toilets and changing rooms. They expect everyone to respect their right to privacy, to be treated with dignity and are not shy about complaining when they feel they haven’t been, but seem unwilling to extend this courtesy to actual women.

If anything, the Supreme Court ruling back in April that confirmed that legally, women meant biological women, once again, allowed trans-women to imagine themselves to be the heroes in their fiction. Bravely fighting for their right to to break the law by taking the piss out of it.

IAdditionally, the notion of someone being ‘non-binary’ is a nonsense. Every human who has ever lived was non-binary. It was just so fucking obvious that no-one ever thought it worthy of mention. That it was somehow a defining characteristic or that to deny this was ‘marginalising their lived reality’ was logically incoherent.

Some men have always exhibited more traditionally male characteristics than others, others more feminine ones. Same with women. Some less traditionally feminine than others, some more so. It’s always been this way and its all perfectly normal. What it isn’t, is special.

Finally, even to describe ‘the current UK climate of trans hostility’ as ‘worrying’ is fatally undermined not just by the fact that all the cards have been destroyed or by the craven apologies this whole farrago had generated. The people who made the card, the people who printed it and the people who sold it, all said different versions of the same thing. Which basically amounted to,”If we say we’re really sorry and beg forgiveness, will you leave us alone?’

No, what really creates ‘worrying’ ‘climate of trans hostility is precisely this kind of opportunistic grandstanding so blatantly performative as to be ridiculously predictable. The transgendered people I really feel sympathy for are the ones quietly getting with living their lives, who are not activists but whose lives are made immeasurably harder by this piffle. And which also proves the point that it isn’t only the Grinch who wants to steal Christmas.

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December 20, 2025

33:64 presents “Fatboy Slim.”

If there is more compelling evidence that proves that fake news exists better than the ongoing Jeffrey Wrongun brouhaha, then I can’t think of it. None of his victims were British. He broke no British laws and he committed no crimes whilst on British soil. So where’s the British angle? The Prince formerly known as Prince? Please! He has long since ceased to be anything other than a pantomime villain of the press’s creation.

So why then is the British press so obsessed with reporting on a story which has no possible relevance to their readers? Worse, stories on which the press are now reporting on with forensic relish are based on just released documents relating to events that took place years, sometime decades ago. Big deal. They are news only in the technical sense of the word; as in new information. They aren’t news in the sense of something having just happened.

By endlessly keeping the spotlight on the Wrongun scandal, which was happened both far away and was historical, it means that a scandal that is happening right here, right now, the press largely ignores. The rape gang scandal involves predominantly working class girls being horrifically abused by gangs predominantly Asian men. The ‘wrong’ kind of victims, of the ‘wrong’ sort of perpetrators. As I pointed out in an earlier post, the ‘wrong’ sort of scandal entirely.

Rape/torture gangs have been predominantly operating the North of England. At least 1,400 girls were abused in Rotherham and more than 1,000 children in Telford. The gangs were also active in Newcastle, Bristol, Derby, Oxford and Halifax. That’s what I mean by scale. The crimes involved so many perpetrators and in so many locations, that it beggars belief that rumours didn’t begin circulating in these locations, and that these rumours didn’t reach the press.

The Metropolitan Police bears this out. In October it announced it was re-investigating about 9,000 alleged offences, some of which dated back 15 years. First of all, why the need to re-investigate? What was wrong with all the original ones? How many potential abusers have since died and have therefore evaded justice? Secondly, this was the first time I was made aware that the original investigations had ever taken place. Had the press properly done their job, such widespread actual and alleged criminality would have been exposed, and all of the gross failings that facilitated them revealed.

Because this was and still is a story one would’ve thought ideal for the press to get well involved. To begin with, how it was that such evil could flourish in different parts of the country, but with usually with the same victim/perpetrator profile and often with a similar modus operandi. They might also consider whether the fact that most of the towns where these gangs operated were run by Labour councils and that if this played any part in the abject lack of action. If a desire not to be seen as racist, to prioritise ‘community relations above all else, was only extended to one part of the community. And how, if such a desire did exist, did it inform not only the polices and various local government reactions to it.

And when the press do cover it, they choose the wrong thing to focus on. Not anything to do with the abuse itself, but the inquiry into the abuse or more accurately, the various troubles it faces before it can even start. It has become the latest in a long line of political gaffes of which this government is so prone to. Because thats’ the story. Why hasn’t the inquiry happened yet? Who is causing the delay? Why are they doing it? When it happens will its scope be so wide as to be meaningless? Why was finding a person to lead it so difficult? Why are people so unwilling to take part in it? How committed to it is the government? What will blah blah fucking blah…

Wrongun, however is the gift that just keeps on giving. He’s dead and he can’t sue. Therefore the press are free to speculate, conjecture and theorise all they want. Its been like this for years.The exact cause of his death was questioned. Elaborate theories involving a shadowy elite were advanced. An elite that had the power, the resources and the ability to orchestrate a murder in a federal prison and make it look like a suicide. To leave no forensic or CCTV evidence. And who exactly were the members of these shadowy elite was itself the source of endless rumour.

It really is Christmas for the press. The release of thousands of documents and photos provides them with with yet more ways to distract their readers from happening now, in much the same way that waving something shiny and noisy will distract a small child. If we had the fearless press the press loves to tell everyone it is, we’d know all about the rape gang victims ruined lives. Of the unimaginable degradations they suffered and their ongoing traumas.

Or is it easier to focus on the abuse suffered by children thousands of miles away, when their main abuser is dead and the abuse happened years ago?

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December 11, 2025

33:64 presents “Paul McKenna”

One of the main problems about writing about transgenderism is having to take seriously something which is so fundamentally absurd. Because it is. Its foundational principle, from which all manner of lunacies, ridiculousnesses and insanities then follow, is so utterly bizarre that one wonders how it ever came to be taken so seriously by so many.

Because if it were only the usual assortment of deliberately contrarian poseurs who took this absurdity seriously, then no-one would be any the worse off for it. Yet incredibly the idea that gender – which is imagined – is somehow more important than sex – which is fact – has created a ripple effect of nonsense in the Britain of 2025.

That isn’t to suggest that some people don’t feel as if they born in the wrong body. They may well feel that. But society shouldn’t collude with them, to legitimise and affirm their beliefs, or afford them a prism of oppression through which to view their every interaction. And few news items of the recent past have summed up more perfectly the various nonsenses and abominations inherent in all of this, than the case of Ryan Haley.

He is the transgender woman who was accused of the sexual assault of a 13 year old girl at Newcastle Crown Court. His defence to the charge was unique. The judge summed it up thusly. Haley had imagined himself to be ‘the victim of a conspiracy involving the courts, prison service, the barristers in the case, your solicitor, the police, your family and a number of other people,”

That wasn’t the end of Haley’s persecution complex. Not only had the victim hypnotised the police, but the jury had also been hypnotised into finding him guilty. It wasn’t anything to do with evidence, the victim being a more credible witness or the fact that he represented himself in court. No. In his own demented reality he was the one who had been wronged, not least by the victim who continually referred to him as he/him when she gave evidence.

Because that ludicrous assertion – that hypnosis was at the reason for the guilty verdict, – may not be quite ludicrous after as it first seems. I mean, what other explanation could there be to make sense of how it is that otherwise sensible people could believe that a woman could have a penis, unless they’d been hypnotised?

Or to imagine that having such a belief didn’t mark you out as an extremely extreme extremist but instead a ‘progressive’. That you were part of the vanguard fighting for equality for an oppressed minority. And hand-in-hand with that way of thinking is the belief that anyone who is opposed to that oppression is somehow bigoted, fascistic and an enabler of that oppression. How other than by being hypnotised could so many people, politicians and institutions be unaware of the logical incoherence of this thinking. That by fighting for equality for a minority they are seeking to entrench inequality for the majority.

Its an outrageous notion of equality that negatively impacts the majority of the UK population at the expense of a minority of a minority. According to the 2021 census, women – the ones who menstruate, that is – made up 51% of the UK population, whereas all transgender people – both trans-men and trans-women – and people who identify as non-binary made up 0.5% of it.

Only hypnotism provides a satisfactory explanation as to why it is that some people imagine that the rights of women are little more than social conventions that exist only to be negotiated away. This past week has reminded me of just how pervasive this thinking is and of just how mainstream institutional infection of it has become. Both Girlguiding and the Women’s Institute (WI) reluctantly acknowledged that the ruling of the Supreme Court – that women means biological women – and that by allowing men or boys to continue participating in their activities they were breaking the law. Therefore, no more woggles, jam or Jerusalem for them.

One might think that having clearly identified who they’d been set up specifically to cater to – the clues being in their names – that adhering to the law would be something they’d only be too happy to do. But no. Announcing belated compliance with a law that had been clarified back in April, Girlguiding wanted to assure everyone that it still ‘believed strongly in inclusion’ and remained committed to ‘treating everyone with dignity and respect, particularly those from marginalised groups that have felt the biggest impact of this decision’.

WI was almost pleading with angry trans activists not to blame, call for a boycott or somehow disrupt or discredit them because of this. ’Incredibly sadly, we will have to restrict our membership on the basis of biological sex from April next year. But the message we really want to get across is that it remains our firm belief that transgender women are women, and that doesn’t change.’

And thats the problem right there. It’s not so much to do with how some people feel as it is with how it makes other people feel when they validate those feelings. No matter how the WI and Girlguiding wish it were otherwise, their actions are profoundly misogynistic. They prioritise the needs of men and boys, who despite no longer wanting to be treated like men or boys by society, nonetheless pick and choose exactly when, where and how that applies.

The bosses of both the WI and Girlguiding are the latest in a long line of frustrated wannabees. How they wish they spearheading a crucially important movement, one that agitates for social change and which history will judge worthy. Alas, they find themselves leading venerable institutions yes, but not cutting edge, or even close to edge. Bono they are not! They have to jump on the bandwagon of nonsense and make sure everyone knows they’re aboard.

Hypnotism. Got to be.

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December 8, 2025

33:64 presents “Jackie London”

So the budget happened and depending upon who you were, you were either one a winner or a loser. The biggest losers were of course, the taxpayers. Not the taxpayers of 2026, but the taxpayers of 2045 and beyond. Because whilst I’m no economics expert – rather like Protean if if her CV is anything to go by – I do know enough to recognise an act of short-term political expediency so craven it should be called John when I see one.

And thats exactly what abolishing the two child benefit cap (TCBC) is. The only other similarity blatantly act of a government bribing the public with no regard for any longer term consequences I can think of was when Milk Snatcher allowed people to buy their own council homes.

But as with letting people buy their own council homes, the problems that abolishing the TCBC will create – and it’s guaranteed to – will be be someone else’s problem. Or more accurately problems, because that one problem will create many more. But before I get in to all of that, permit me to quickly refresh your memory as to what the TCBC actually was.

Basically, introduced in April 2017 the cap prevented parents who were already claiming benefits for two children, from claiming benefits for any subsequent children born after that date. It wasn’t suddenly announced in the March of that year, but instead as part of the 2015 budget, with the implications made abundantly clear and with advance warning given. So as I see it, it wasn’t really the government that was pushing children into poverty. If parents on benefits conceived a third child after July 2016 and chose not to abort it or put it up for adoption, then they were causing not just that child, but all three of the children to be pushed into poverty.

I’m not sure what makes me madder, the fact that they’ve abolished it, or the fact that no-one else seems bothered by it. In the short term, abolishing the TCBC is estimated to cost about £3.5 billions annually. However, the interest we pay on our national debt – not the debt, the interest – was about £9.7 billions in September. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) had estimated that in 2025-26, the interest would be £112 billions. Not really a shock when you realise that the government has borrowed £99.8 billions since April.

Bad as the short term is, the longer term is going to be much, much worse. In an interview on BBC 5 Live earlier this year, Protean said ‘And, in the end, a child should not be penalised because their parents don’t have very much money. Now in many cases you might have a mum and dad who were both in work, but perhaps one of them has developed a chronic illness. Perhaps one of them has passed away.”

Really? Is that what we’re going with? Economic policy informed by Julie London and a giant onion? Doubtless there are genuine cases of tragedy, suffering and hardships that unfortunately happen, but to all of the ‘1.6 million children – equivalent to one in nine of all UK children – were affected by the policy last year.’?That was one of the favourite statistics the media loved to use when advocating scrapping the TCBC. Because poverty is only caused by the government, not by a combination of the various forms of capitalism we both bemoan and benefit from. Zero-hour contracts and the gig economy allow Amazon deliveries, Deliveroo and Uber to happen.

She went on, “There are plenty of reasons why people make decisions to have three, four children, but then find themselves in difficult times … lots and lots of different reasons why families change shape and size over time. And I don’t think that it’s right that a child is penalised because they are in a bigger family through no fault of their own.”

Which is true, right up until the point that you realise that if the child is not to be penalised, then someone has to be. Protean has effectively sown the seeds of our economic ruination, seeds that will be fertilised, born, and from that moment on, place unsustainable burdens on the state.

There’s the birth. The health visitors, the check-ups and the vaccinations. That costs the NHS. Then nursery, and school. Oh the state’ll pay for that. On a low income or no income? There’s a state benefit for that. Housing costs a bit steep? There’s a state benefit for that. Unable, unwilling or uninterested in working? There’s a state benefit for that. And they will have children have children, because whoever not; the state has always paid for them, so where’s the harm?

The harm comes when working people realise their tax is being spent on paying for others not to work.The harm is that we have an ageing population and according to the OBR, whereas today 18% of the population is over the age of 65, by 2065 they predict it will be 26%. It gets worse, because whilst 26% of people will be over 65, an additional 15% of them will be under 16.

All of which means that nearly half of all the UK’s population will not paying tax, but will still expecting the state to provide for them. And the half that are paying tax, some of them will be working in the kind of low-wage job that requires government bailouts – working tax credits, housing benefit and the like – to avoid even more government help.

Which in turn creates an even bigger problem. We can only borrow if people are willing to lend to us. So if the big three global credit ratings agencies – Moody’s, S+P and Fitch downgrade our ratings even further, the interest on those loans will be even higher. And the national debt will increase.

The truly worrying thing in all of this was that this is that all known now but that narrow self-interest, political expediency and electoral success mattered more than any long term implications. But by then it won’t matter to Stymied or to Protean. There’ll be as dead as some of our public services.

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I’ve decided to call the Chancellor Protean because she never seems to look the same in photo’s. Sometimes the similarities or the differences are more noticeable than others. It’s nothing to do with her being a woman, although that is what a misogynist would claim, and everything to do with her never looking the same in photo’s. Just so you know.

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December 6, 2025

33:64 presents “Terry Wogan.”

In news that has generated far more coverage than it warranted, four countries have pulled out of next years Eurovision Song Contest (ESC). Something to do with Israel’s continued participation in it, because of course!

A few things leap to mind.

Who seriously thinks that the ESC has any deeper cultural meaning other to than to remind us why we voted to leave Europe in the first place. The only reason I used to watch it was for Terry Wogan’s brilliant commentary. He took it as seriously as it demanded – which was not at all – and thoroughly took the piss.

It also reminds us why Europe has never churned out many musical megastars. Possibly it has to with language, because nothing indicates a desire for global success more than singing in a way that most people can’t understand. But even if they did, there’s a more fundamental problem that explains why there aren’t, indeed have never been and probably never ever will be any Greek, Norwegian or Polish international musical behemoths.

European pop music is shit. All of it is. Always has and always will be. ABBA? ABBA is the exception that proves the rule. Yes, ‘Waterloo’ was undeniably pure pop. But that was back in 1974. And they sang in English. And the world is unquestionably a much better place because of them. But aside from them? Celine Dion? In what universe is she anything other than a better than average karaoke singer who got lucky? Can anyone who isn’t a fan of hers name more than one that isn’t the ‘Titanic’ caterwauling abomination?

Because no matter how much Europe wishes it were otherwise, English is the language of pop. ‘Classical’ music proves this. It had no lyrics and therefore was thought of as good. By the very tiny minority of the rich who were able to judge these things, on account of them and living the sort of lives the rich have always lived.

And the movie ‘Spy’ provides more evidence to back this up. Aside from it being one of Jason Stathams greatest cinematic triumphs – his parody of himself is excellent – it also proved that to those not in on a joke, that the joke can be unintentionally hilarious.

There’s a bit in it where Verka Serduchka is doing something that the charitable might call singing, while looking like a homemade Christmas decoration made out of tin foil. When I saw it I thought the film had nailed it, had perfectly captured the same trite cheesy music, the same knowingly overblown campness and same the sheer awfulness of the kind of thing only ever seen at the ESC.

Only later did I realise the truth. That he had in fact came 2nd in the 2007 ESC, performing the same song, and in an even more laughably absurd way, that I had assumed was a grotesque invention by the filmmakers. (I had tried to embed the YouTube clip of it here so you could experience it for yourselves, but YouTube spared you that.)

There’s also the irony. Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands and Slovenia – the four to pull out so far – have all issued grand pronouncements each saying different versions of the same thing. Israel, war, genocide…the usual nonsense that gives politicians an excuse to engage in the kind of international virtue signalling grand-standing of the kind that focusing on more important domestic political concerns, like lowering taxes, improving public services or cutting unemployment simply doesn’t do.

More serious is the fact that the country they are so opposed to, which doesn’t share the values that they deem to be crucially important, is is the only country in the the Middle East where the ESC could take place. Technically it could take place, but in a largely empty area. The ESC has a very loyal LGBT+ following and pretty much anywhere other than Israel, would face either imprisonment or death. So why would anyone risk that?

In what can only be described as a performative hissy fit dressed up as a principled stand, these four countries have perfectly illustrated everything wrong with the ESC. A deluded sense of self-importance – disturbingly myopic, totally obsessed with its own image and wanting everyone to know just how important it it is – and thus implacably opposed to anything that contradicts its invented reality.

Which is its a song contest. Nothing more. And not even a very good one.

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In my last post I predicted that the fixation with smearing Farrago, as spearheaded by ‘The Guardian’ and enthusiastically supported by most of the ‘print’ and broadcast the media, would continue unabated until polling day in 2029.

‘The Guardian’ managed to cobble together four articles out of one comment by Reforms Deputy Leader on Thursday, one of which had a link to an earlier story. Plus a cartoon and a video podcast. Yesterday’s top story detailed another pupils memories of nearly 50 years ago. They stretched that one out into two articles, an ‘exclusive’ and an opinion piece, which were still there today, just as prominent and just as embarrassingly pathetic.

It seems that proper investigative journalism, the tenacious and expensive unearthing of a scandal, the kind that the press were eager to convince the Leveson Inquiry they were tirelessly committed to, doesn’t actually exist and hasn’t for at least two, possibly three decades. Exposes concerning members of House of Inbreds, footballers sexual misconduct or other ‘celebrity’ nonsense, aren’t journalism.

Do we have the press we deserve because we don’t demand more or do do we have the press we deserve because we demand so little? Whatever the causes may be, they’re probably contested, likely contradictory, and no doubt better discussed by those more qualified to do so.

Back then to Farrago. His travails perfectly illustrate what I mean when I bemoan journalistic standards. Rumour, allegations and conjecture that pretend to be news while hearsay, gossip and innuendo masquerade as evidence.

How it is possible for grown-ups – let alone responsible journalists – to take seriously a story predicated upon what boys of 13 allege another boy of 13 said nearly 50 years ago. Unless they all allege that he said ABBA deserved to win the ESC and that he really fancied the blonde woman.

Now that I’d believe!

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November 30, 2025

33:64 presents “Francis Rossi.”

For a long time now, it has seemed to me as if what I thought of as universal principles that applied equally to everyone, have instead become increasingly conditional. And within those conditions, there exist hierarchies, determining to whom exactly such principles should apply.

This all sounds terribly confusing, yet to me it is anything but. So with a little help from ‘The Guardian’, I’ll try and convince you as to why this indeed so. Which is apt, given as how it is ‘The Guardian’ that helps determine the conditions and who the hierarchies are. Obviously not just them alone, but them as part of a broader media consensus that constantly references and validates itself. ’The Guardian’ is in my opinion the most egregious offender, the moreso because it presumes to be pursuing a righteous and noble objective.

The problem with this occurs when the righteous and noble objective they’re pursing escapes them. A case in point is Farrago. Over the last couple of weeks, he has been subjected to the kind of personal attacks by ‘The Guardian’ which, if they were being orchestrated by another paper against another politician, ‘The Guardian’ would be all manner of indignant over.

They’d be aghast that someone was trying to smear a politician based upon what he is alleged to have said as a 13 year old schoolboy. They’d probably speculate that this was little more an a desperate attempt to discredit Farrago on account of his increasing popularity as reflected in one opinion poll after another. And that because of this, an unelected media elite were doing everything they could to thwart this threat to their cosy world.

And, judging by the way they’ve treated Tangoed’s denials of various allegations, also question the memories of witnesses who claim the claims against a 13 year old Farrago are true. Both their reliability but also why now, and again, speculate upon the possibility of an unelected media being in cahoots his political rivals. More of an unspoken yet tacitly understood, everybody-wins-but him kind of way. Making this case would be easy.

‘The Guardian’ first reported the allegations and initially, it was only them who thought it had any merit. The rest of the media treated it as the the twaddle it was. But then they decided to report on what ‘The Guardian’ was reporting. This insulated them, twice over.

Firstly, ’The Independent’, ‘The Daily Mirror’ and the BBC were covering this nonsense for days. ‘Channel Four’, ‘The Huffington Post’ and ‘Sky News’ piled on. ‘The Times’, ‘The Daily Telegraph’ and even ‘The Daily Express were all running with it, not I’d guess because they thought there was genuine story there, but because everyone else was and they didn’t want to get left behind.

Then politicians joined in. ‘He had questions to answer’ pronounced Stymied. Better yet, he should be asking himself why he thought a man of 61 needed to account for what he did or did not say when he was 13. Beanstalk offered a slightly more nuanced position, and no doubt the Cunning Stunt zip-lined or paddle bordered towards his anger.

Their insulated because they’re not making any claims about the claims themselves, they’re simply reporting on the fact that the claims have been made. See? And all Stymied was doing was suggesting that these claims needed answering.

Because thats all this is. One big stunt. A manufactured outrage upon which all the usual suspects can vent their various spleen’s over. They’re not really bothered either way what a boy of 13 may or may not have said. At 13 we all said things that would cause offence if repeated back nearly 50 years later, and if we didn’t then we weren’t doing a good job of being a child. But whatever, it doesn’t matter. What does matters is that there’s another stick to beat Farrago with, another non-issue to plague every press conference, every public appearance and everything he does right up until polling day in 2029.

Because here’s where the conditional principles and those hierarchies I mentioned earlier come in. The principle part- democracy is a good thing. – is great. The conditional part, less so. This favours the democracy we have staying exactly the way it is and this is where the hierarchies come in. Only when the right sort of people participate in democracy, and by the right sort I mean not too extreme, not too demanding and not too expecting their not too extreme demands to be met. Because the status-quo works fine for them. Why would they want to change it?

But then Brexit happened, or to be more accurate, Brexit only happened because enough of the wrong people gave the wrong answer to a question that was asked for the wrong reason. Very quickly, the democracy everyone thought they lived under proved illusory and the same institutions one would’ve hoped might robustly defend the peoples will, actively worked against it.

Remember how both main opposition political parties angrily demanded another vote, invoking all manner of spurious arguments which, had the vote gone their way, they would have denounced as pathetic attempts to subvert democracy? And how most of the press – notionally a bulwark against exactly this kind of thing – amplified these spurious arguments and spent years questioning, belittling and slandering the motives of the those who voted Leave? Again, had the vote gone their way, there’d be none of that, instead we’d have been lectured to about the importance of losers consent to ensure the smooth running of democracy. The civil wars, the violence and bloodshed that have bedevilled parts of Africa when this has not happened would serve as cautionary warnings. The judiciary – again, notionally a defender of democracy, supposedly available to all and theoretically politically impartial – was consistently used by the rich to prevent parliament from enacting the will of the people.

And yet they call Farrago an ‘extremist’?

I’m no great fan of Farrago and neither do I believe in conspiracy theories. But I do believe in self-interest. And to believe that if one persons advancement of their own self-interest happens to further someone else’s, then thats a happy accident. And if a lot of vested interests just so happen to have a lot of inter-related happy accidents, then that’s not a conspiracy.

It’s how the powerful stay powerful.

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