Uncategorized | the brilliantly leaping gazelle

I’ve long been convinced that British popular culture has for some years now, been a poor imitation of the American one. An textbook example of this idea was always hamburgers. They had McDonalds and we got Wimpy. Even its name warned of disappointment. Because nothing screamed ‘fast food’ more than waitress service. Now I have an updated example of the same sadsackery, only this one comes with added ‘virtue’.

America now seems to be infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), which effectively views every action committed by President Trump as evidence of something so unspeakably awful that it must be spoken about all the time. Or protested about. But no matter how pathetic I think TDS is, he is at least the President. He has proper power. He can shape millions of lives. He leads a unified government, meaning that every branch of it – him, the Congress and the Senate – are all Republican. He is also the commander-in-chief of the worlds greatest military. He controls a vast nuclear arsenal. He can end billions of peoples lives at the touch of a button.

The most Farrago can do at the touch of a button is change the TV channel on his remote. The leader of a party with a the smallest number of MP’s in Parliament – 5 out of 650 – he somehow manages – in some peoples minds – to be the modern embodiment of Hitler,

So naturally, we have have to make do with Farragos’ Fake Scandals (FFS), which aren’t even proper scandals. The similarities with TDS don’t end there. Both are social contagions and both rely upon worryingly similar methods of transmission. Either passed on via individuals through friendship groups or other social networks, or for much greater propagation via constant repetition on the mass media. And similarly, both TDS and FFS are punishments for perceived ‘crimes’ against democracy.

Perceived of by those who believe in democracy, only it has to be the right kind of democracy. The one in which the right sort of people deliver the right sort of result. And when the wrong result is delivered by the wrong sort of people getting involved in matters best left to others, then the wrong sort of people suddenly became the wrong sort of right; ‘right-wing bigots’ or far right-wing extremists’.

Therefore, according to their twisted, wholly self-serving and corrupted version of democracy, Farrago who galvanised so many into being so wrong, deserves everything he gets. No allegation, no speculative conjecture, no hint of a hint of any impropriety is not so inconsequential as not to be worthy of feverish discussion and opined over.

And nothing is more inconsequential than allegations that when he was 13 – 13 – he made some distasteful comments. At 13 his voice hadn’t yet broken! He was barely a teenager. He was just starting puberty. Yet these allegations are ‘deeply shocking’? Indeed they are. I am shocked that anyone that anyone thought that these were shocking, still less that they thought they mattered.

And that’s my first problem with this. Do people seriously imagine that something boy of 13 is alleged to have said is in any way indicative of the man that boy has become 48 years later. It is alarming that people think it does and beyond ironic that these are the same people who quite happily blame Russian interference for influencing the Brexit vote, completely unaware that they are just as skilfully being manipulated as they believe others were. The motivation of grooming isn’t always sexual.

My second problem is what it says about the media we have and not just that because this isn’t the first time ‘The Guardian’ have tried before to smear him based on decades old here-say about his schooldays. But also because of the calculated cynicism it reveals. ‘The Guardian’ knows full well it’s readers will lap this up because it vindicates their fantasy of Farrago as being a throwback to a world they’d wish never happened. It also allows others to weigh on it, to report on what ‘The Guardian’ is reporting. Very now, very meta. And because of that, it allows Stymied to demand that Farrago to answer those reports.

Which is exactly the point of FFS. Throw enough mud, often enough and unexpectedly enough – who could’ve predicted that things he allegedly said 48 years ago would become a FFS – then some is bound to stick. And hopefully, the more that he’s discredited, the greater the likelihood is that potential supporters of his won’t want to be associated with that kind of mud.

Its also unsurprisingly hypocritical of ‘The Guardian’. Less than a fortnight ago, it gave their newest electoral hope a platform to rail against what he imagines to be his unfair treatment by the press. ‘The right can mock my teeth all it wants – it shows the Greens have struck a nerve.’ He may not have written the headline and probably not the sub-header that followed,’As a politician, I expect opposition and debate. But when it centres on personal insults, not policies, something else is going on.’

But he did write ‘What’s now clear to me, both from the sheer number of attacks and their increasingly wild nature, is that they are a product of a political and media establishment rattled by a party that’s growing fast and willing to say the unsayable: that our country has been hijacked by those interested only in serving the super-wealthy.’

If he really thinks that it is ‘the super-wealthy’ who have ‘hijacked’ our country or that he’s the one saying the unsayable then he’s so green I should rename him Jack Beanstalk. The ‘political and media established’ aren’t in the least bit rattled by him. If anything, the mere fact of ‘The Guardian’ giving him the opportunity to make this claim fatally undermines it.

The fact that FFS is now a staple of British politics proves that it isn’t Jack Beanstalk who scares them. It’s Farrago and what he represents. An ability to divine, articulate and champion the views of a substantial part of the electorate who feel cheated by this version of democracy, The ones who voted for Brexit. The ones who are living with the reality of what that means.

It also amuses me that ‘The Guardian’ which can usually be relied upon to be vocal supporters of an indigenous peoples in their struggles with a political system it believes marginalises them, takes an opposite stance both here and in America.

Although a really cynical interpretation of FFS is that it suits all concerned to let it continue. Farrago can use it to claim he is spearheading a revolt against the status quo, and his supporters can feel vindicated that the more FFS there are, the more worried ‘they’ are by them. Conversely, ‘The Guardian’ has a business model that depends on a endless stream of FFS and TDS stories, so the more they do, the more their readers keep funding them. They too feel vindicated, albeit in an absence parody of virtue.

On and on it goes, the political equivalent of an infinite loop.

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November 11, 2025

33:64 presents “Karl Popper.”

Last week I suddenly realised that the notion of Britain that I’d always imagined existed, didn’t, and hasn’t for longer than I dared dwell on. My reactions to seeing photo’s of an angry mob triumphant in their ability to force their hatred onto the streets of Birmingham were equally as concerning, linked as they were by an uncomfortable truth.

Initially the photo’s reminded me of disturbingly similar one’s, albeit ones normally captioned ‘Jubilant scenes in the streets of Tehran as…’,’ Crowds gathered in Lebanon yesterday to celebrate the deaths of…’ or ‘Fury erupts in Cairo as as another Israel/Palestinian peace initiative was announced.’ In that regard they were akin to having the contents of a bucket of ice-cold water thrown violently in my face.

But on the other, it was just a reminder that this is the new normal now. How after two years of anti-semetic hate gatherings in British cities being allowed to happen, with the police seemingly unwilling to enforce the laws that they already have, and with a government that prioritises short term electoral considerations above a duty to uphold civil liberties suggesting new ones, it is irrefutable evidence of the truth of this uncomfortable truth.

An uncomfortable truth which helps to explains much of what is playing out n our screens and our streets. A truth moreover, that is fast becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because the more those in power seek to appease it, the more those on those screens and on those streets will feel emboldened by it. The truth that might is right and that the rights of some to exercise their might are now more important than the rights of others. One that also grimly proves that the ‘paradox of tolerance’ far from being a abstract philosophical concept, is now an observable phenomena in the Britain of 2025.

The paradox of tolerance is an elegantly simple one. It suggests that if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance, thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance itself. First articulated by Karl Popper in 1945, it is also descriptive of the way Hitler used the letter of the law to subvert the law to take control of the German government in 1933.

All of which makes me think of Martin Bell. He was the distinguished BBC war corespondent who in the election of 1997 resigned from his job to stand against the sitting MP in Tatton, Neil Hamilton. Massively embroiled in the ‘cash for questions’ scandal, Hamilton had little chance of winning, which quickly vanished once both Labour and the Liberal Democrats withdrew their candidates to give Bell a clear run. He won comfortably. Everyone relaxed. The prevailing narrative was that democracy itself had been the ultimate victor, marshalling traditionally opposing elements – voters, political parties and the media – in pursuit of a nobler objective.

By tapping into voters discontent – with a decades long Conservative rule generally, with Hamilton and sleaze specifically – Bell was able to use that discontent to propel him to Westminster. The media also acted in helping lay the groundwork for his campaign, by for years detailing government scandals, cover ups and incompetence for the public to be annoyed over. He didn’t know it, but he his victory was both a vindication of, and a repudiation of our electoral system.

The ‘First Past The Post’ (FPTP) method manages to be both incredibly simple and simply incredible – in that is astounding that a more equitable voting system has yet to have been adopted here. Whoever comes first wins and everyone else; thanks for taking part and better luck next time. Which is fine for the Olympic 100m final, The Grand National or Big Brother, not so much for parliamentary democracy, not if we want everyone to meaningfully participate in it. Last years years by-election in Rochdale proved that.

Because in the Rochdale by-election, Fedora used FPTP against itself to quite devastating effect. Like Bell, he capitalised on voters unhappiness with a government it felt was increasingly not for them. From the day it took office, this was government whose many failings were forensically examined by a tyrannical 24/7 media. Its relentlessly critical coverage of Israel and the war in Gaza didn’t do Fedora any harm either. Making it clear that he was targeting the Muslim community that made up 30% of its population and shifting the focus away from local or even national issues, but instead onto Israel/Gaza was many things, but one of them was being from the same election strategy handbook every other political party ever has used.

As I noted shortly after his victory, ‘His win is a perverse win for democracy, because the if other parties had got their acts together, this probably wouldn’t have happened. He only got just over 12,000 votes and I don’t know how large the electorate was, but only 39.7% of them bothered to vote, compared with 60.1% at the 2019 general election. Granted, a low turnout but the by-election wasn’t held at a moments notice, there was loads of publicity about it and still people couldn’t be bothered to vote! And with rumours of a general election in 100 or so days anyway, his victory will be short lived.’

Fast forward to that election. Three candidates ousted sitting Labour MP’s by using the a depressingly similar strategy to the one Fedora had used.They identified constituencies with a significant Muslim electorate and ruthlessly focused on them. Sure, they may have thrown in the odd platitude about opposition to welfare cuts and made the right noises about the cost of living crisis but everyone, especially the people who voted for them, knew that it was about Gaza. Another repeated it in a newly formed constituency, one with a significant Muslim electorate.

And that’s the problem. It’s not just that last year proved how the FPTP system could be used to reward a newer, more nakedly divisive kind politics, one that prioritised identity above all else. Or that it highlighted how voter apathy might be reasonably be predicted to occur and could well have been instrumental part of the campaign strategy; to get their voters to vote whilst calculating other voters would not bother to. It signalled a shift towards more ruthless politics, one not primarily concerned with traditional, broader and more structurally real class based struggles, but of ever more divisive and contentious notions of identity.

The incredibly fragile basis upon which a coalition of temporarily mutual convenience is doomed by its own contradictions Is neatly illustrated by the political absurdity of what is known as the ‘Islamo-left.’ Broadly, the term describes an alliance between elements of the political left and various Islamist groups, based upon opposition to Western foreign policy, capitalism, and globalism. Specifically, and in relation to the Britain of 2025, its main unifying features are opposition to the war in Gaza, anger at – bogus – claims of genocide, starvation and other nonsenses committed by Israel in that war, and fury that Israel had the temerity to be winning the war.

Equally broadly, the two main groupings who I contend make up the Islamo-left, are Greens and Muslims. Greens are known for their staunch defence of homosexuality and transgender rights. And also on assisted dying and abortion. That’s possibly why people support them. But the policies their supporters support so much are diametrically opposed to the values of more socially conservative Muslim. It’s not me just making this up either. Earlier this year, a Green Party councillor and practising Muslim, Mothin Ali, appeared reluctant to sign a set of ‘pledges’ on behalf of LGBTQIA+ Greens, Feminist Greens and other similar groups. This provoked a comment from the MP for Blackburn, Adnan Hussain, one of the pro Gaza five, who observed. ‘It’s no secret that Muslims tend to be socially conservative.’

Such alliances are doomed because of their fundamental incompatibility, no matter how much short-term political expediency might initially suggest otherwise. And that the uncomfortable truth I mentioned earlier is actually comprised of other smaller ones.

The truth of how easy it is to sow division and create political opportunity. The truth of how poorly served by the way we conduct elections we are, and of how those who have benefited from it haven’t been minded to change it. The truth of the power of the mob, those keyboard warriors and the permanently protesting and how willing officialdom is to appease them. The truth that the failures of our media – even as they are revealed, and even as the BBC has been exposed to having being guilty of – will only be repeated.

The truth that all of this truth is only going to get truer.

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November 4, 2025

33:64 presents “Mandy Rice-Davies.”

I feel sorry for the former Prince Andrew or Andrew Mountbatten Windsor (AMW) as he is now. How could one not? He has done nothing wrong, certainly nothing he has ever been charged with and crucially, nothing prosectors in a criminal trial have convinced a jury he deserves to be convicted of.

Yes he may well be many things, some of which may well be behaviours or ways of conducting himself which we might find objectionable. But then if we doIf we do, we should also ask ourselves how, if we’d have had his ridiculously privileged upbringing which from his birth had him treated with constant indulgence by his equally privileged family or by the fawning sycophants they employed, might we have behaved any different?

That isn’t to excuse what he’s done. But here’s the thing. Only one person knows for certain if he did any of the things everyone assumes he did, and that’s him. Everything else is a mixture of guilt by association, allegations, conjecture and speculation. Which is essentially gossip, rumour and hearsay. Anyone can allege anything about anyone. Doesn’t make it true.

But that’s to forget that the public had been successfully groomed by the press for decades into imagining that AMW was an insatiable philanderer who enjoyed a ‘colourful’ and ‘chequered’ love life. ‘Randy Andy’ they called him. He was news, and it didn’t hurt that the women he supposedly trysting with didn’t look like they urgently needed the services of a plastic surgeon either. If the press were ever to be challenged over their breathtakingly hypocritical double standards, the question is; who would ever challenge them? Who would demand to know how it was possible to go from being enthusiastic chroniclers of AMWs sexploits in the 1980’s and 90’s but then to became more critical of same as Britain emerged into a new Century?

Possibly they’d claim the public mood had changed, that what was once seen as titilating was now tawdry, that social mores were changing and all they were doing was simply reflecting this attitudinal shift. Which conveniently, and disingenuously, overlooks the fact that well before the advent of the faux outrage’s, judgmental pile-ons and quixotically censorious hysterias of social media, it was the press that shaped determined who or what was unacceptable. Far from merely reflecting social mores back at us, the press had decided what these new mores were, were projecting, reinforcing and reframing an ever changing set of morals upon us.

In all of the endless words the press has devoted to crucifying AMW, one thing has struck me as curiously absent. Why, when they speculate on where he’ll live once he leaves wherever it is he is now, they never follow through by asking how it is that his brother just happens to have a few gaffs lying about empty.

They never question why we have a monarchy. Or question why it is that in a society that is so seemingly obsessed with proclaiming its virtue by rubbishing its past, endlessly detects evidences of -ism’s, – phobia’s and -ions, and tears down statues, removes ‘triggering’ artworks from galleries, and has institutions denouncing their founders when it does, why does the single most powerful symbol of privilege still exist?

Because if it didn’t, whilst wealth and privilege would still be with us, newspapers would have to do actual reporting, AMH would be just another citizen and Virginia Giuffre might still be alive.

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October 31, 2025

33:64 presents ‘Michael Myers.”

Today is Halloween. I know! They kept that one quiet. There were no adverts on TV. There was nothing in the shops. No costumes, no accessories and no pumpkins either! It was like how Britain used to be. Only joking. No-one wants a return to the Britain of old, back when women didn’t have penises, but the Labour Party did have socialist ideals and where the salt of the earth weren’t seen as the scum of the earth.

Because things are so much better now. They just are. And one of the things that helps make Britain better is us finally coming to terms with the fact that we are America. Not the proper one, not North America, the Moms apple pie, cheerleaders and the Hollywood one, but the South American one. Without the violence, temperature or exuberance, but still.

And proof of this is demonstrated by just how enthusiastically we’ve embraced Halloween. Although to be fair, its the retailers who’ve done the enthusiastic embracing – of the the massive commercial opportunity – and have convinced consumers to consume. How much more American can one get? Identify and create a market and then sell to it. Its capitalism 101.

So whilst we pretend to care about the environment and pay lip service to the whole ‘keeping it the ground’ thing, the one thing that would really help the environment, would signal ones commitment to a more sustainable future far better than wearing a t-shirt or going on a march, would be to keep it ones pants. Sadly however, Halloween is proof that this isn’t happening.

The only reason why consumers consume Halloween themed tat is because fledgling consumers pester them into it. And we all know that children are the most important people in the world. Because soon they won’t be children, they’ll be having them. And their memories of childhood will inform the childhood they will want to give to their children. And repeat, repeat, repeat…

One thing that has baffled me about Halloween over recent years is how it has escaped the opprobrium visited upon other forms of cultural appropriation. I know that it originated here and then the founding fathers took it with them on the Mayflower back in olden times. But their version of Halloween was all rooted in religion and superstition, of the dead rising from the grave, not of children dressing up and knocking on doors demanding sweets.

How is it not cultural appropriation of a specifically American tradition? Unless the children are dressed up as morris dancers, Beefeaters, or one of Henry VIII’s wives how are they not further compounding the appropriation. How is dressing up like a mummy not appropriating Egyptian culture? Or wearing a ‘Day of the Dead’ skeleton suit equally not as offensive to Mexicans. If they really wanted to dress up and go for something culturally relevant, they could go as Victoria guttersnipes or dolly-mops.

It’d certainly put the trick into trick or treat.

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October 26, 2025

33:64 presents “Bob Dylan.”

The defeat suffered by Labour in the Caerphilly by-election would be incredibly ironic were it not for the fact of it being an ominous portent.

To begin with, the irony is that the same electoral discontent that propelled Labour into government is exactly the same as that which caused them to be so comprehensively rejected in Wales. Just as how their victory in the general election of 2024 wasn’t evidence of some long dormant upswell in Labour values amongst the voters, more than that it reflected their collective disenchantment after fourteen years of Tory Government, so to does its defeat last Thursday indicate less of a desire for Welsh independence than to send a message to Stymied.

No matter how much Plaid Cymru (PC) might claim otherwise, their basic shtick to the people of Caerphilly was ‘We’re not Reform’. Which was a shrewd piece of electoral maths. Anyone that might have otherwise have voted for Labour, the Conservative, Liberal Democrats or the Greens would have calculated that tactical voting was far more important than the result of one inconsequential by election.

Because no amount of testiculation can alter the fact that by-elections are the medieval equivalent of the government of the day being dragged to the stocks by voters and then pelted with rotten fruit, eggs and faeces. They prove only how unpopular a government is, which can be discerned from the both the voter turnout and who it was that the voters bothered to turnout for.

Which in this case amounted to 50.43% of them, of whom only of those 47.4% voted for PC of which significant proportion of those were the aforementioned tactical voters. The change in vote share bears this out, the short version being that Labour and Conservative vote share collapsed from the general election and from which PC benefitted.

My point is that this not only highlights voter disaffection generally – as evidenced by by the low turnout – but also a specific disaffection with the options open for them to choose from. If the main reason for your electoral success is from hoovering up ‘x’s from voters who detest another party more than they support your one, then that isn’t good.

It is also ominous because if we consider the success in 2024 of the six Independent Alliance MP’s and the barely over 30% of the vote they got on a roughly 40% turnout, and then factor that in with the collapse of traditional voting allegiances, then its clear that times are indeed a changing. Gone are the old class based loyalties. There was a certainty about them, rooted as they were in tangible differences which essentially boiled down to rich or poor.

Yes they were simplistic but the Britain of 1970’s, 80’s or even the 90’s, were simpler times, there was no hint of just how complicated politics were to become. But whilst the Britain of 2025 is still one of simpler times, it is not the simple one of of recent history, but rather the simple dvision of identity politics.

This is an inevitable consequence of a society that champions, rewards and celebrates an ever greater division based on identity. One that is increasingly partisan, intolerant and self-righteous but also a society which rewards those politicians that seek to fashion that discontent into political opportunity. By perpetuating the very division proclaims it opposes and by fostering more grievances, more reasons for division, they are like political alchemists; they turn impotence, frustration and alienation into electoral opportunity.

With little or no broad policy agenda – other than being opposed to things – and with scant regard for voter engagement beyond their core base and having no upside in remedying that, we are seeing a new kind of politics. Typified by Rasin, who hasn’t just divided along traditional political sectarian lines – left and right – but also among left and far left, and incredibly, those in the far left who don’t share her vision of what the far left is.

But then again, is she all that different to Stymied or The Cunning Stunt? Only by degree’s, not by instinct or motivation. They have spent the last eight years vilifying people who believed in the wrong kind of democracy. Would ideally prefer that it had never happened, traduced and impugned the reasons of the people who caused it to happen and ignored their point of view. How different is her divisive politics to those politicians who can’t accept that Brexit happened?

How is her continual repetition of the lie of there having been a genocide in Gaze not too dissimilar Stymied and Co banging on about the racist, xenophobic or bigoted motivations of Brexit voters? Or her pandering to disaffected former Labour voters, those who imagine themselves progressives or else those who feel more than they think any more cynical than than those politicians who citing Russian interference, manipulation by the ‘far right’ or fundamental ignorance as comforting explanations for Brexit?

It’s all on the same spectrum. I disagree with you and because you’re wrong, you’ve forfeited any right to be treated with the same respect I demand of others. That’s why the tactical voting in Caherphilly was so ominous, not because of what it was so much as to what it foretold. A growing willingness on the part of the electorate not to vote for who they want but to prevent the election of someone they want even less, And along with that, the idea that society should prioritise your grievances, needs and values above any other concern.

Now there’s a cheery thought.

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October 23, 2025

33:64 presents “Christine Keeler.”

A few weeks ago I posted a blog, in whichI outlined my belief that the British press love a sex scandal, just as long as it’s the ‘right’ kind of sex scandal. And that how, if there was a ‘right’ of scandal, then it followed that there was a ‘wrong’ kind, and that the ‘grooming gangs’ scandal was a textbook example of one.

The very fact of the press describing them ‘grooming gangs’ underlines precisely how much of the ‘wrong’ kind of sex scandal it was. By dint the press repeatedly labelling them as ‘grooming gangs’, then having politicians and the police follow suit, it trivialised the sheer scale and depravity of what they did. Calling them ‘grooming gangs’ made them sound harmless teenage miscreants, engaged in some hi-jinks involving pranks on horses. Calling them rape/torture gangs, by contrast, would have been more accurate and have demanded immediate action.

I’m not suggesting that some sex crimes are more deserving of proper examination than others. A sex crime is a sex crime. There should be no hierarchy. But according to the press there is. The events of this week prove this to be demonstrably so. One looks at how Prince Charmless has been all over the media this week, as compared to the scant coverage given to yet another rape/torture gang trial in Rochdale.

This is a criticism of the media, how they choose to cover certain stories and of how the coverage of these stories can become an end in themselves. Of how these choices are made not according to some arbitrary moral code, but on basest of base principles upon which the media operates these days; cost and time. Of how by pursuing such lamentable objectives they inculcate in their readers an unhealthily prurient interest in how the story unfolds. Often, and the trial in Rochdale illustrates this, at the expense of stories more redolent of their readers lives. In my year at school for example, there were three girls who now would be the subject of all manner inter-agency safeguarding protocols, initiatives or interventions but back then, were just left to fend for themselves

In Rochdale, six men are currently on trial for multiple sexual offences, including rape. The victims are two young girls, one of them 12. Both, the trial was told, “Were very vulnerable children with deeply troubled home lives and were known to the authorities. Their school attendance was poor and they were often missing from home. These men preyed upon those vulnerabilities for their own perverted sexual gratification in the most humiliating and degrading way imaginable.” What is so depressing is just how familiar I’ve become with learning of similar tales involving similar victims and similar perpetrators using similar methods.

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. My contention is that they did and for a variety of reasons to do with how the press now operates, these rumours were not properly investigated by by the local press resulting in them not getting the sort of national coverage that would have angered the public much sooner.

Firstly, most of the local press in this country is syndicated, meaning that apart from the odd local story, most of its content is generated elsewhere. Sometimes starting life as a press release sent out to an agency like Pressat or prfire who will then forward it on to their many subscribers. Maybe the local paper is part of a much larger media behemoth, like Newsquest which is “one of the UK’s largest regional media groups with more than 250 news brands.” TOn top of that you have the advertisers, who if not similarly syndicated, will be acutely aware of local reputational damage if associated with a controversial story. Think of the digital mob, how quickly social media can be weaponised and then think of the struggling retailer with wages to pay.

And as if there weren’t already enough plates spinning in the air to be getting on with, there is also the cost of employing journalists to fill the space that isn’t taken up by all those rehashed press releases, generic celebrity pish, advertorial and proper adverts. So the last thing an editor wants to be thinking about is expensive legal action arising out of a story which instinct, anonymous sources and highly placed whistleblowers have confirmed but for which the pockets are not deep enough.

So we get to learn all about Prince Charmless instead. Editors of the big nationals know they’re on very safe ground there. The royals don’t sue – really, does anyone think Harry is a proper royal? – and Charmless doesn’t have a reputation anymore, well not one worth defending anyway. They can go wild, find ever newer ways to keep people scrolling, posting and consuming. Who knew what and when? Was there a cover up and if so, who was involved? How damaging is it to the monarchy? Will he have to leave his tiny mansion? Where could, would he go? Would Lord Lucan be with him?

It’s all nonsense, a well-organised distraction, one that has claimed so far one dead American paedophile, his former girlfriend and now Charmless, who is as real to most people as Snow White. One that distracts us in much the same way that waving something shiny and noisy will distract a small child.

So unfortunately and for may reasons, the rape/torture gang scandal wasn’t the ‘right’ sort of scandal. For one thing, it hadn’t happened years ago and far away and even worse, It had happened here, very recently and possibly still is. To further compound matters, it was difficult, required the kind of actual investigative journalism our press no longer does and not just a rehash of information others had uncovered. Additionally, it questioned a foundational principle that underlines multiculturalism, namely that if assimilation had been achieved, and the British born Pakistani men who made up those gangs had been fully integrated, how could this evil have happened?

For good measure, they might have asked why such evil flourished in different parts of the country, 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. All of which demands perseverance in the face of official stonewalling, determination when confronted by blanket refusals to co-operate and the sort of fearless leadership needed when the lawyers get involved, qualities our press is not renowned for. Calls for questions to be answered are easier to ask if those answers will have negligible repercussions for those asking them and then only if there exists the will to ask them in the first place.

As far as I’m concerned, the press has demonstrated yet again how poorly they serve the public and how, as the saying has it, what interests the public isn’t always in the public interest. Why is the rape/torture gang scandal so rarely in the news. I don’t mean the political distraction engulfing it either, That too is safe ground for the press, its a known thing, a political row played out in the Westminster pantomime, headlines and tweets. Why hasn’t the inquiry happened? Why has no chairperson been appointed? Why are people so unwilling to take part in it? How committed to it is the government? What will blah blah fucking blah…

The press, normally so keen to foster identification with the victims of crime, the easier to keep the readers interested, has been curiously restrained in dealing the true horrors of the rape/torture gang scandal. Where are the tales of unimaginable degradations, of wrecked lives and ongoing trauma? Or is it easier to focusing on the suffering of children when those children are thousands of miles away? The real scandal is why some scandals become scandals whilst others do not.

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October 20, 2025

33:64 presents “George Michael.”

Earlier this week the English publication of ‘God: The Science, the Evidence’ happened. Written by two French blokes with contributions from more than 100 scientists, it makes the case for the existence of God by using science and rationale alone. Already a bestseller in France, where it has sold over 400,000 copies, it now arrives here, handily in time for Christmas. Oh, the serendipity!

The are so many problems with this book that it’s hard to know where to start. So I’ll begin with conceptual problem, namely which type of God are they referring to, and once we know that much, then what specific example of that type do they mean?

For example, if you’re just interested in the basic no frills God, the one that created everything – the universe, space, the Earth and humans, – that’s called a ‘creator’ God. But there are at least six of them. These include the big three – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – but also ones I’d never heard of. I knew there were other Gods but I didn’t’ realise quite how many there were until I found this wikipedia page which, if hadn’t been so disciplined, I might still be plunging ever deeper into a rabbit hole of endless absurdity.

It’s not entirely clear exactly which God it is that they’re trying to prove the existence of – and I haven’t been all that bothered to find out – so I’ll just go right ahead and assume it’s the one I’m most familiar with, the Christian one. And right there we have one of the main problems with the book, for in order for them to prove that God exists, they necessarily have to reject the very foundation upon which the devout Christians belief in their God is predicated. Namely, that a true believer in God doesn’t require evidence of Gods existence, because faith is enough. Indeed requiring evidence until one can believe that God exists is evidence of a lack of faith itself. Its a circular argument, quite brilliant in its way because its annoyingly irrefutability

I imagine then that a goodly amount of God botherers will be bothered by all this. Belief in God isn’t rational, it’s the very opposite of a rational belief, prides itself on the mystery, the unknown and utter preposterousness of it all. Creation of heaven and earth in seven days? Noah living 950? Virgin birth? Water into wine? Raising from the dead? How does any of that even begin to make any kind of sense? It doesn’t and that’s the point. The more the book uses science to prove the existence of God, the more it does the exact opposite.

Had they expounded upon the theory that God was invented by man many thousands of years ago, when humans gradually became more agrarian and started living in smaller, then larger groups. then I’d’ve conceded the point. That because of this change in human behaviour, towards an increasingly more hierarchical society, those that combined a good spiel with a plausible manner were able to avoid any from of work. By inventing reasons why the crops weren’t growing, why the cows weren’t producing enough milk or why some women couldn’t bear children, charlatans absolved themselves from manual work. And if those things still kept repeating themselves, then whatever it was that people were doing to mitigate against such calamities, then they clearly weren’t doing enough of. Reminds me of the whole faith and evidence bollocks.

Because that’s what it is. Utter bollocks. All religions, complete and utter bollocks, the lot of them. It baffles me that after 150 years since Darwin proved the theory of evolution as being one of incontrovertible fact, one that demonstrated the majestic simplicity of natural selection as the reason why life exists, that religion isn’t treated with scorn and derision. Or that believers in them aren’t roundly mocked for being credulous fools and denied the vote. What other bollocks might these cretins believe in? It’s all bollocks.

Apart from the Mbombo creation one. How alone, and in darkness, Mbombo felt an intense pain in his stomach, and then up vomited the sun, the moon, and stars.

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Several large hats off to the gang who broke into the Loove yesterday and got away with some valuable shiny things. For added style points – which you’d think that the French of all people would appreciate – the robbers did it in broad daylight, when it was open to the public and staff were about. They also, and this is why I hope they get away with it, neither harmed nor hurt anybody.

Is anyone in France poorer, I mean has anyone – real people that is , the ones who drive buses, work in shops and smoke too much – actually lost anything?

Or is it simply a theoretical loss, one that exists only as a headlines, in politicians minds and in loss adjusters nightmares? The theft of these baubles matters as much to the average French person as I imagine the theft of the Crown Jewels would mean to me. It was all stolen, only the methods varied through the ages.

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October 17, 2025

33:64 presents “Robert Bolt.”

If anyone had any doubts whatsoever that the outbreak of peace in Gaza was the ‘wrong’ kind of peace, the cover of the latest edition of ‘Time’ magazine allays them. Ostensibly, it is a photo of Tangoed captioned ‘His triumph’, recognising the most remarkable diplomatic achievement of this century, in bringing an end to the fighting in Gaza. However, out of all the photos of him that they have, they chose one of the most unflattering. No-one looks at their best when photographed from underneath, certainly not an older man, so much so that when I initially saw it, I wasn’t even sure it was even him.

There can be no question that this was an editorial choice made at a very senior level. The cover had to be repeatedly approved and passed up the chain before the magazine was even published. But management at ‘Time’ might have calculated that their readers would have correctly interpreted the cover for the back-handed compliment it was. ‘Yes’, the cover says, ‘ we acknowledge that the fighting has stopped and whilst we are overjoyed at that, did it have to be you that made it happen?

And that, fundamentally, is the main reason why it is the ‘wrong’ kind of peace. It affects people’s business. Because if, for the last two years, lots of people had business’s that depended on the upon the war in Gaza continuing. The longer it did, the more profitable the profitable denunciation could occur, the more outrage, the more fulmination, the type of profit they were making being directly related to whom their it was that business was focused. But no matter what it was, that business has come crashing down around them. At the front of the gravy train there are the heads of governments, intergovernmental organisations and global media conglomerates. In second and third class are the NGO’s, the charities and the various domestic political opposition parties, all the way down the to those at the other end, the student protesters, the march organisers, the keyboard warriors, all of them fucked, and not in a good way.

American politics is a prime example of what I mean by it being bad for business. If you were a Democrat politician who had constantly decried Trump as someone who was the very embodiment of Hitler, as being a very real threat to democracy itself and essentially Satan in a bad wig, then this peace deal is absolutely the worst possible news. If your whole shtick had been to make a name for yourself by castigating Israel for anything and everything, being an apologist for Hamas and suggesting that Tangoes cosying up to Notonyournelly had made the prospects for peace even more remote, then you were fucked. The profit that your business depended on, which was turning media appearances, penning opinion pieces for old and new media, visibly grandstanding at protests, and then turning all that into votes, gone. In an instant.

The same is true for our domestic politicians. They also have the difficult task of welcoming the cessation of war whilst not wanting to acknowledge the fact of who made it possible. This is further compounded by the fact that the Americans have been explicit in critiquing the UK’s recognition of Palestine as a state as making the deal more difficult than it needed. Which in itself was a very deliberate act of diplomatic point-scoring, a chastisement of various government leaders, highlighting exactly how much their chasing of domestic electoral success had acted against the very aims they professed to want.

The media who now find themselves in a situation entirely of their own making. When he was running for President the first time around, the media first portrayed him as a joke candidate until he emerged as a corrective to the more ‘professional’ politician they were used to. When he won, in part by appealing to those who had felt ignored by the old political order, they were appalled. In the UK it was worse, given how irrelevant we are within the American political system. However if one read most of the UK’s broadsheets, visited news websites – like The Huffington Post – or subscribed to online news organisations – like Novara Media – one would be forgiven for thinking that we were integral to its smooth operation.

Because, in a weird way, it was. Tangoed is good copy. He is news, and the business of news is to attract readers, or eyeballs and keep those eyeballs or readers doing so long enough so they can sell them to advertisers. That’s why he’s has been rarely out of news for over ten years now. The media knows this, knows that its in an ever more competitive world and ‘The Guardian’ is the most blatant example of this inevitable reality. It printed at least one negative story about him seemingly every day for years, some about the war, some not and endless opinion pieces all having the same opinion The more they printed, the more money their readers gave them. It was like a weird version of payola.

The’ll have to some proper news now, focus on events much closer to home, do the hard years that actual journalism requires and just reinforce what their readers have been duped into believing. This is equally true for our own shyster politicians, opportunistic rabble rousers and the rabbles they rouse. How can they call for a ceasefire when there is one? How can they pretend to want peace, yet when the very peace they were calling for and which they endlessly claimed was so elusive actually happens, what now for them? What of their profit, which amounted to little more than increased visibility, name recognition and enhanced reputational kudos now?

Its funny that Tangoed once wrote a book called ‘The Art of the Deal’ because with this deal, which they assured us could never happen, he’s managed to call all of their bluffs.

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October 12, 2025

33:64 presents “Sir Lenny Henry.”

The only thing funny about Sir Hoover is more funny peculiar than funny ha-ha. I’m baffled by the fact that anyone ever thought him a comedian. A total mystery. To me, he was as funny as a kick in the bollocks. He was like the joke in a Christmas cracker. The joke being the fact that everyone knows the joke is going to be crap, but plays along anyway so as not to ruin the mood. Everyone knows everyone else is playing along and everyone shares in the communal sense of good-natured embarrassment.

But fuck me, he’s only gone and pulled a blinder. Something genuinely funny and even if it wasn’t totally unexpected, it was still a shock. A fucking big one. Hoover has co-written a book entitled ‘The Big Payback’ in which he advances the case for the UK to hand over £18 trillion in compensatory payments, as reparations for Britains role in the transatlantic slave trade. The book claims that the reason why there is racism in Britain today is because of the slave trade, and that this is key to understanding why disparities exist between black and white citizens. He then goes on to suggest not only in a vast cash transfer to Caribbean nations, but also for money to be given to individual black British citizens, arguing that “we personally deserve money for the effects of slavery”.

Where to start with this? Probably by stating from the get go that slavery was one of the many stains on humanity, unspeakably evil and should be rightfully condemned as the abomination it was. That being the case, we also have to acknowledge that the transatlantic slave trade is but one iteration of this monstrous obscenity. Slavery has a long and ignoble history, one that our own history amply demonstrates.

Before the Roman occupation, slavery was prevalent in Britain, with indigenous Britons being routinely exported. Following the Roman conquest of Britain, slavery was expanded and industrialised and following the fall of Roman Britain, both the Angles and Saxons cultivated it to their own advantage. When not fighting the Vikings, Saxon slave traders sometimes worked in league with them, often selling Britons to the Irish. So prevalent had slavery become in Britain that by the time the Domesday Book was compiled in 1086, over 10% of England’s population were slaves. So most Britons are, one way or the other, descended from slaves.

But as is so often the case these days, there’s a ‘right’ kind of something and a ‘wrong’ kind of the same thing, and suggesting that most the indigenous British population has an ancestor who was a slave is ‘wrong’. It doesn’t accord with the prevailing narrative, which promotes the notion that slavery was exclusively suffered by black people because of white people.

And its also obscenely simplistic to suggest that because Britain owes much of its global success on the Industrial Revolution and that the cheap labour afforded by slavery was a contributory factor in achieving that success, it necessarily follows that if we are white British, we have debt owing. Because most of us don’t. Most of us aren’t rich and neither were a our ancestors.

It wasn’t the rich who were losing their lives deep underground in coal mines. It wasn’t the rich who were evicted from their homes to allow for the building of the railways that transported that coal to the factories that powered the Industrial Revolution. The rich neither worked in those factories, lived in the slum housing that surrounded them or had their lives blighted by poverty, disease and want. It wasn’t the rich who suffered.They never do.

Another problem is the idea that the solution to any problem is money and that’s before we even start with the sum involved, £18 trillions. I know, a trillion sounds a lot like the outlandishly astronomical numbers bandied about in primary school playgrounds, “I bet you a gazillion pounds I can eat a bicycle.”The difference is that whilst a gazillion pounds was made up, and that we all knew it was – rather like everyone knowing the joke in the cracker was crap – a trillion pounds is real. All too real, actually.

A billion pounds is a thousand millions and a trillion is a thousand billions. To put that in terms that are slightly easier to understand, last year Britains GDP was about $3.66 trillions, GDP being the total output of our economy. Sir Hoovers proposal is essentially that in order to atone for an historical atrocity, we should commit a financial one now. The UK’s national debt net debt is already £2.91 trillions equivalent to 96.4% of GDP.

But ignoring that for the moment, who exactly would share in all this largesse, which black Britons would qualify anyway? How black would they have to be, and what kind of black Briton. Most of Britain’s 2.4 million black population is of direct African descent, and therefore not the descendants of people enslaved in the Caribbean. How would anyone prove it? Mixed marriages and children born outside of them would only complicate matters. So would there be point whereby if ones ancestry couldn’t be proven by DNA to be more than 25, 50 or 75% of the qualifying kind, then would one be unable to claim? Or would there be a sliding scale? And who would decide what that scale is?

Again, I’m not making light of slavery, but what I am doing is pouring well deserved scorn on the fatuous assertion that money makes everything better. And where would the money come from anyway? The UK is already facing unprecedented social and economic challenges as it is, without massively adding to them. Reducing the budget of the NHS, of schools and of a whole host of other public services won’t only adversely impact the indigenous British population. Many of whom are themselves descended from slaves and a significant minority of whom – about a third of it it – are either first or second generation immigrants.

I’m one of them. My parents moved here from Ireland. It’s beyond offensive to suggest that others peoples ancestors sufferings are worth more than my own. I don’t know for certain, as I haven’t been bothered to find out, but given that both of my parents families were rural farmers, quite possibly some of their sufferings were caused by English landowners. Why should my life be made worse because of something none of my ancestors participated in or benefitted from? I’d imagine that my reaction might be shared other children of immigrants.

So whilst It might seem at face value radically progressive to call for reparations for slavery, it manages to be logically inconsistent because, as Orwell put it “Some are more equal than others.” Far from eradicating racism as Hoover hopes reparations would, it would exacerbate and entrench it by not only placing a greater value on one groups sufferings than on others, but by giving that value a price and expecting others to pay it

There has to be a statute of limitations regarding compensation for wrongs committed in the past. They weren’t crimes when they were committed and despite them being immoral and obscene, they were legal. Otherwise madness awaits if humanity is now to be forever judging the past by the standards of now. Even the most cursory examination of slavery reveals rather sobering fact that has always existed. As far back in human history as you go, slavery has always been there, existing across many ethnicities and cultures because of a simple irrefutable truism of the human condition. The powerful will always want more power and it is the weak who will always suffer

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October 4, 2025

33:64 presents “Heidi Fleiss.”

Whilst the fatal attack on the synagogue in Manchester was bad enough, the response to it of the media has been utterly duplicitous, brazenly shameless and hypocritically judgmental. Not that the media are alone in all of this. There’s enough guilt to be had so that everyone can have their share. Politicians, both within government and those aspiring to one day be in it. Charities, pressure groups and NGO’s. Organisations, sporting bodies and businesses.

Of course the ultimate blame for what happened lies with the man who did it. But it could be argued that had the media been just a bit less hasty in amplifying the lie that a genocide is happening in Gaza, never mind questioning who was claiming it, why were they doing so and if their claims were supported by any actual evidence, had they been a bit more sceptical in reporting the claims of the Hamas run Gaza Health Ministry, been even slightly critical of the failure of Gaza’s neighbour Egypt to open its border and allow Gazans to flee the war zone, or practiced due diligence before reporting as fact that Israel was not only deliberately targeting civilians but starving them as well, then possibly a disturbed mind might not have become a murderous one.

But since the 8th October 2023, most of the British media has become if not an uncritical outlet for Hamas propaganda, then certainly one that abandoned any pretence of impartiality. The result of two years of the ceaseless demonisation of Israel and by extension of that, a belief in some peoples minds that all Jews share a collective responsibility for Gaza, goes some way to explain Manchester.

But politicians are culpable also. They have not staunchly and robustly refuted the claims of the keffiyeh wearing fuckwits, have not called out the pro-palestinian protest marches for being the rabid anti-semitic grotesquery’s they are. The government has calculated that given the UK only has a Jewish population of less than 400,000, whilst the Muslim population is 10 times bigger and that a significant proportion of them will vote based on how pro-palestine and anti-Israel the government is.

Lesser political chancers, from the ex-has been – Corblimey, to the never will be – Raisin, can also spot an electoral opportunity, but as recent comedic revelations have highlighted, each has their own idea as to what that opportunity is. The Groans have, to no-ones shock, seen a passing bandwagon and jumped on it, attempting to create the impression that they can do more than telling us what we can’t do by also telling foreigners what they can’t do as well, as long as those foreigners are Israeli’s. The Non Dems have done something, but it probably needed a stunt involving a paddle board or a zip line before anyone took any notice.

Assorted charities, pressure groups and other vested interest parties gave done what charities, pressure groups and vested intent groups do; raise their profile, influence, status and funds by reinforcing what all of them say. Business’s prostitute their ‘ethical’ stance by proving that they don’t have one whilst sporting bodies imagine that should.

All have been complicit to varying degree’s of promoting, amplifying and legitimising an insidiously corrosive narrative, one that they seem to have no awareness of its ultimate manifestation. It’s like leaving matches, a few gallons of petrol and a flamethrower next to a house and then being surprised when someone torches it.

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