...with rampant misandry. Wonder what the stats are for men killed by other men? And by the way, it isn't even accurate (would anyone expect anything less?):
None of these incidents are linked in any way other than that a woman has been killed and a man charged in connection with her death.
So they stuck in that 'allegedly' but if he's acquitted, the number will come down, won't it?
Tim Worstall does a great job of fisking the article, which is just a lot of squealing that black racists are being held to the same standards as white racists, so I won't bother.
I would just like to point out that if I ran a 'Blog Comment Of The Month' award, this would be a shoo-in:
Under Keir Starmer, there is a moral compass in Downing Street once more. But something else has gone missing. Too often, Labour now seems to lack not a moral compass, but a fully functioning political one. It has never needed one more than it does today.
And why is that, pray tell?
The most recent evidence that Labour’s political compass has been lost is in the unnecessary and overwrought row about its role in the US election. Here, once again, Labour has allowed its actions to be defined by its critics. As such, it fits a pattern: the failure to spot the danger in the freebies-for-ministers revelations; the tangled rise and fall of Sue Gray; the peremptory cull of winter fuel payments. With a good political compass, all of these could have been avoided.
Martin seems to have forgotten the 'Guardian's' own little foray into US politics, and just how effective that was!
And they aren't, of course, as the total waste of public money that was the trial of an armed officer for shooting dead a deadly threat has shown...
For Kaba’s grieving family, this latest in a string of acquittals was proof the police “can kill with impunity”, as a campaigner said.
Funny sort of 'impunity' that puts you on trial for following your training. Are you sure you know what that word means, Gaby? Will this help?
Police chiefs, conversely, have responded by demanding more safeguards against prosecution. Though the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, has agreed to demands that officers in such cases remain anonymous until convicted – not unreasonably, given the threats reportedly made against Blake and his loved ones – she has ordered an independent review into some of the more questionable asks on the National Police Chiefs’ Council wishlist, alongside a crackdown on police vetting and an overhaul of CPS guidance on charging officers. It’s time to get to the bottom, once and for all, of why successful prosecutions are so rare.
Because every member of that jury would have put themselves in the place of that officer facing a man using a vehicle as a deadly weapon and wondered just what else he was supposed to do, Gaby....
The home secretary cannot, however, let herself be held to ransom.
The Home Sec has already been held to ransom (by the racehustlers) many times, what's one more?
...let us also hear from those who think justice is already almost impossible to get and who understand the human consequences of some of the NPCC’s more technical-sounding demands, such as making it harder for inquests to return verdicts of unlawful killing against police officers.
I think we've heard quite enough from that quarter, with their selective outrage when blacks are harmed by someone not also black, don't you?
It’s true that we expect extraordinary things of firearms officers. Of the two other fatal shootings investigated in the year Kaba died, one involved a white man with a knife who attacked a police station and charged headlong at a Derbyshire firearms officer, who held off firing until the man was barely arm’s-length away. The other was a white man in Cumbria, holding a knife to a young child’s throat. He was shot after repeatedly refusing to drop the knife, and the child survived. The skill and steadiness under pressure involved in both cases is astonishing, and the consequences of a mistake unimaginable. I certainly couldn’t do it. But the same is true of brain surgery, and that doesn’t render surgeons above the law.
It does mean that it seems to take an extraordinarily long time to bring them to justice, Gaby. And I'd bet there's far more surgeons than AFOs in the country.
It is breakfast and I reach for a painkiller dropped off by a Boots delivery van. The sleep apnoea machine by the bed is beeping and I plug it in to the mains to charge. I can’t stop thinking about the disabled and ill people in Gaza; the dialysis patients who were halfway through their treatment when the power stopped, the children surviving off animal feed who can’t find bread, let alone a wheelchair.I guess now Labour's in power, everything in the UK is rosy, and you have to look further afield, eh, Frances?
There is one aspect that is rarely talked about: what is happening to disabled Palestinians. That adults and children with disabilities are often the worst affected by conflict is an atrocity as old as war itself. If you are paralysed, you cannot run from shrapnel. If you are deaf, you don’t hear the sirens warning you to take cover. More than a decade of Israeli restrictions on imports and travel mean disabled people in Gaza were living without treatment and equipment long before the first missiles fell.
Congratulations, Frances, you've finally found a truly deserving cause, and you only had to go abroad to find it!
I unplug my sleep apnoea machine and I wonder if the real darkness will come when any of this seems normal.
No doubt you'd demand we ship them all over here, eh, Frances? Or is that next week's column?
George Monbiot, our country's biggest joke in the journalism world, and boy, is that a tough field..!
Leading one to wonder what would happen if the lions did too good a job?
The usual whines and complaints in the 'Guardian' about 'institutional racism' being behind the disparity in maternal deaths by race in the NHS.
And hidden amongst the usual squealing about 'microagressions' (and the usual dodgy stats, discussed at length at Tim's place) is this gem:
I know many great women dedicated to anti-racism who want to be midwives who are quitting because they cannot afford to live on a midwife’s salary.
Frankly, that's a good thing. We need midwives dedicated to one thing, and one thing only. You can't serve two masters, Candice!
As the cost of living continues to rise, it is becoming unaffordable to live on a public sector salary. This cannot continue. We must support Black people into these professions by encouraging equal access to education, and supporting them with a fair and decent wage when they are in the job.
What 'unequal access' does she think they have, then? And how do the white/brown/yellow folks manage?
Getting more Black people into senior roles is fundamental, too.
So they should be promoted regardless of merit?
...seeing more of our own faces in spaces where we are vulnerable would allow us to nip microaggressions and racist behaviours in the bud – and to influence attitudes that have been proven time and time again to harm us.
I can't remember going into a NHS hospital recently and seeing no black faces, can anyone else?
But maybe I'm being too harsh, she's clearly a medical expert or som...
Candice Brathwaite is a journalist and author of I Am Not Your Baby Mother, Sister Sista and Cuts Both Ways.
Ah. 'Activist wants more activists in key roles' is a great subtext, eh?
Reprehensible it may be, but Tate’s baseless misogyny and “me-first, get-yours” narcissism is alluring to young men at a time when mainstream culture is telling them to check their privilege for reasons they don’t fully understand.
Well, perhaps, then, the culture should stop telling them that?
We can’t afford to be English about this sort of thing.
Wait, what..?
On the surface, Tate preaches hard work, determination and “no excuses”: values my cousin probably sees as parallel to the philosophy of our Nigerian immigrant family.
Oh...
My friends and I didn’t get any proper education about sex, consent or relationships until we were 13, by which time we had learned it all from internet porn and lads’ mags. Teachers and parents have to be proactive about telling boys what mutually respectful sex is before they’re exposed to something else all together.
So it's only males that need to be taught this?
My cousin’s had a tough time recently, riven with personal and professional insecurity, amped up by a pandemic and a recession. In that context, I understand Tate’s appeal – an alternative lifestyle guru, saying get yours, before someone else takes it.
Sounds familiar. Where have I heard that before?
*snaps fingers*
Oh, yes! Of course! Rap music. Say, why does that get a pass, while you focus on one lone white man, Sacha?
...it's no big deal there, either. Apart from a small minority who don't seem to want to accept reality.
Not that you ever seem to speak out about them, eh, Owen?
I made a mistake and because of it, on Wednesday 18 May, I will be put on a Home Office deportation flight to the country of my birth and torn apart from my five British children and my family.
Gosh, what sort of 'mistake'..?
Did you tick the wrong box on a government form? I mean, yes, those things can be tricky...
I came to the UK in 2000 at the age of 21. In 2017, I received a four-year sentence for growing cannabis plants.
Oh. You're a drug dealer.
I hold my hands up, I did something wrong, I served two years of that sentence, and would never do anything like that again. I have not committed any further offences. But this government does not accept that people like me deserve a second chance. One mistake and my life and my future have been shattered for ever.
Welp, those are the rules! Why should we keep you here when we don't have to?
I’m a parent; my two youngest children are eight and 10.
And the other three? You claim to have started growing cannabis because of a 'financial crisis' - I'm betting it wasn't child support!
If I am forced on to the plane I know my life will be at risk in the country of my birth. I will be looking over my shoulder 24/7.
Just like natives of this country have to do in certain areas, eh, Mark?
