Seen in the News

[Stanley]

The news caravan has moved on.... See THIS BBC report.
The American bully XL dog is to be banned, the prime minister has announced, following the death of a man in a suspected attack. Rishi Sunak said the dogs were "a danger to our communities" and would be banned by the end of the year. The man, named as Ian Price, was critically injured by two dogs near Walsall on Thursday and died on Friday. While many have welcomed the ban, some owners and animal groups said a breed-specific ban would not work. The prime minister said: "It is clear this is not about a handful of badly-trained dogs - it is a pattern of behaviour and it cannot go on." Mr Sunak said he was ordering work from police and experts to legally define the breed so it can then be banned under the Dangerous Dogs Act, which applies in England, Wales and Scotland. His plan to ban the breed followed an attack on Thursday which led to the death of Mr Price, 52. A 30-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of being in charge of dogs dangerously out of control and manslaughter. Officers spoke to the man on two previous occasions after being called to incidents in the area involving his dogs, police said.
I hate attack dogs and as many of you know, have experience of them and dealing with the consequences. But neither of those occasions involved a named banned breed, both were lurchers. I admit that some breeds are more prone to attack than others but would argue that any dog can be dangerous if bred or trained to attack. I remember my friend Martha Paas telling me at the time of the furore that led to the passing of the Dangerous Dogs Act in 1991 that in the 1930s the Boston Pit Bull Terrier was recommended as the ideal family dog and especially safe with children.
First there is the big problem of identification. Is the owner of a dangerous dog going to self identify?Then there is the trouble and expense of verifying the identification. In practical terms dangerous dogs are defined by their behaviour and not their breed. All this comes before you address the problem of the culture of owning dangerous dogs and I don't think the 1991 Act did anything to improve that.

[Stanley]

UK domestic news is blanketed by yet another celebrity rape allegation. This time it's someone called Russell Brand.
What grabbed me was THIS....
More Americans than ever are dying from fentanyl overdoses as the fourth wave of the opioid epidemic crashes through every community, in every corner of the country. It was six years ago that Kim Blake's son Sean died from an accidental fentanyl overdose in Burlington, Vermont. He was 27 years old. "Every time I hear of a loss to substance use, my heart breaks a little more," Ms Blake wrote in a blog dedicated to her son in 2021. "Another family shattered. Forever grieving the loss of dreams and celebrations." That year, the US witnessed a grim milestone: for the first time ever, drug overdoses killed more than 100,000 people across the country in one single year. Of those deaths, more than 66% were tied to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin. It is a stark difference to a decade ago. In 2010, less than 40,000 people died from a drug overdose across the country, and less than 10% of those deaths were tied to fentanyl. Back then, deaths were mostly driven by the use of heroin or prescription opioids. The contrast is outlined in a study released this week by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) that examines trends in US overdose deaths from 2010-21 using data compiled by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
I was reminded of this epidemic a few days ago when I heard a discussion on the radio but wasn't really aware of the scale. This is mind-blowing!
In another article I came across this...
"Community Health Project Los Angeles workers provide free Narcan and fentanyl testing strips - so people can test drugs before getting high. They are glad schools will now keep Narcan on hand, and have urged parents and kids to carry it in their backpacks."
Narcan is an anti-narcotic emergency treatment. Can you imagine having to advise children to carry it at all times?

[Tizer]

The fentanyl problem has been a very serious crisis in the US for many years now, Stanley. Typically, the family that own the company manufacturing and supplying it are billionaires and can afford powerful lawyers to protect them. The drug is so powerful it's almost impossible to dilute it to a safe dose level. This is the drug that I mentioned some years ago as making UK prison warders ill because inmates were using it and a warder only needed to handle a piece of paper they'd handled previously. I raised a concern that library books that passed through the prisons could carry the drug. Our National Crime Agency (NCA) reported on fentanyl use in 2017.

While we're on the NCA...they've just bungled a prosecution of a Russian billionaire who has a big mansion and grounds in Highgate, London. The NCA thought they'd got him for money laundering and breaking all the rules around Russian money etc etc. Alas, the NCA didn't get the correct permission when 50 of them raided his mansion and there were other mistakes too. A right botch up. They even tried to scale the fences around his grounds because (they claimed) his staff wouldn't open the gates when they demanded entry. The true story is that the staff pressed the right remote buttons to open the gates but the NCA were so packed around the gates they couldn't open! Now the Russian is going to get a big payout in compensation, thanks to his expensive lawyers. You couldn't make it up!

[Stanley]

I didn't know that Fentamil was involved in what I knew as the opioid crisis Peter. I thought that was just powerful legal pain killers. I thought Fentamil was a separate problem. I stand corrected.
As for the incompetence of the NCA, what a sorry tale but isn't that the same problem we are seeing with all the regulatory 'authorities' connected with financial matters. It has reached the stage where I would be pleased to hear of any public service that is running efficiently!

[Tizer]

It has reached the stage where I would be pleased to hear of any public service that is running efficiently!

Me too!

[Big Kev]

UK domestic news is blanketed by yet another celebrity rape allegation. This time it's someone called Russell Brand.

Yet more 'trial by media'. I'm not defending him but what happened to innocent until proven guilty? It's on the news today that YouTube have stopped him making any money from his channel.

[Tripps]

The Russell Brand thing is so ridiculous - it has changed my whole perception of the internet. Twenty year old allegations are reported not to the Police - but to the media. He is one of the (very long) list of people for whom an instant switch off, or channel change would result. This is a bit different though.

Is it really possible that his views on climate change and vaccines, which (I'm told ) don't coincide with the main stream, are so unacceptable that he must be destroyed and ruined? It's not impossible.

Dr John Campbell should beware I fear. He revealed the other day that the US Government are recommending that all Americans above the age of six months should receive the latest Covid "vaccine". He also mentioned that the price had increased by a factor of about four, and it now costs about $130 per shot.

Make of it all what you will.

[Stanley]

It's a complicated world isn't it..... I had the same thoughts about Brand but dismissed them because I have never had any time for him. Now we have conspiracy theories complicated by suspicions that they are conspiracy theories and so on ad infinitum.
Does it really matter? Is it worth us spending valuable time on it?
Here's another theory for you. In the absence of any serious political news the media have to find something shock horror to report...... We can be in no doubt that they welcome the distraction. (Now it's whether the BBC paid for a 'chauffeur driven car' to take the 16 year old girl from school to his house....)

[PanBiker]

There is no financial news worthy of comment unless you count the 0.1% drop in inflation! Earth shattering according to those that need the Kudos. 0.1% is of course 1/10th of 1% so 1/1000th of the whole. Get the bunting out and lets have a party. Sorry....

[Tripps]

The King and Queen (sic) are on a surprise (to me anyway) visit to Paris. She looks well in the pink - but sadly several hairs are well out of place. We never saw that from her predecessor - even at the races.Charles has finally got himself a single breasted suit. That leaves just Jacob Rees Mogg now. On hearing all the pomp etc, I can't help immediately thinking of the film 'Day of the Jackal' . Hope they've checked all the windows. They've put on a much bigger show than they did for Keir Starmer yesterday. I wonder if they tossed for who visited first.

First class show for them. A lot of attention now for the perfidious Albion - almost as if they're missing us, and would like us back.

Love the anthem
To arms, citizens,
Form your battalions,
Let's March, let's march!
So that an impure
blood waters our furrows! 𝄇

What does this horde of slaves
Of traitors and invented kings want?
For whom have these vile chains
These irons, been long prepared? (repeated)
Frenchmen, for us, ah! What outrage
What furious action it must arouse!
It is for us they dare plan
A return to the old slavery!

[Stanley]

Sorry lads but Queen Camomile doesn't cut it for me. I still see her as the 'third person' in Diane's marriage and him as an adulterer. Call me old-fashioned, they live in a different world than us.....
(If I remember rightly her husband turned a blind eye, now that's loyalty to the Sovereign for you!)

[Big Kev]

Wasn't sure if this headline should be here or in the jokes thread...

Daniel Khalife pleads not guilty Wandsworth prison escape

Who does he think escaped then?

[PanBiker]

I read that one as well Kev, beggars belief really.

Sorry officer, I shot him in the head point blank but didn't mean to kill him, same defence, that one wouldn't work either.

[Tripps]

The Russell Brand thing is so ridiculous - it has changed my whole perception of the internet.

so unacceptable that he must be destroyed and ruined? It's not impossible.

I could contain my curiosity no longer - I took a first look at Russell Brand. Here he takes on Jeremy Paxman - quite a task.
Jeremy Paxman v Russell Brand I would suggest it's worth a quick look.

I now think that perhaps 'the powers that be' are a bit scared of him - imagine watching that when you were an idealistic and naive teenager.
I read that he has 6 million followers. I think he has become dangerous to the establishment, and an attempt is about to be made to destroy him as a media figure. I shall watch the struggle with interest. I think he may put up quite a fight. His main problem is that he can easily, and convincingly, condemn things, but is very short of realistic solutions. He certainly has no problems in the 'low self esteem' department.

[plaques]

I was generally under the impression that his views were to the left of Karl Marks and the 'establishment' ( the right-wing politics we have got at the moment would love to link him to the Labour party). With Starmer at the helm Labour looks like just another blue rinse conservative party which Brant would rant against. Perhaps they think there is a danger that people may start to listen to him?

[Tripps]

PS Most doubt about what's going on has now been clarified. Checkout Dame Caroline Dinenage from Wikipedia. Her second husband is an interesting sort, with an outstanding military record - and who may not be entirely unconnected with the business.

Controversy
2023 letter to Rumble
On 20 September 2023, after allegations of sexual misconduct had been made against Russell Brand,[38] Dinenage wrote to the social media platform Rumble on a House of Commons letterhead, expressing her committee's concern that "he [Brand] may be able to profit from his content on the platform", and enquiring "whether Rumble intends to join YouTube in suspending Mr Brand's ability to earn money on the platform".[39]

Rumble CEO Pavlovski stated: "We regard it as deeply inappropriate and dangerous that the UK Parliament would attempt to control who is allowed to speak on our platform or to earn a living from doing so… Singling out an individual and demanding his ban is even more disturbing given the absence of any connection between the allegations and his content on Rumble."[40]

Make of it all what you will. I think we will be entertained by it all for a long time to come.

[Stanley]

I am not an automatic fan of conspiracy theories but I have to admit David that it all looks a bit murky....
I have never taken any interest in Brand as I find him deeply repellent.

[Stanley]

This week's Private Eye arrived yesterday and it looks as though they have suspicions on the same lines as you David.....

[Tripps]

Thank goodness I don't read the Daily Mail. This unknown disease which doesn't yet exist is so scary.

Never mind Pirola - that's just another "scariant". (See what they did there?)

Hope they are working round the clock for a vaccine. Any price is worth paying for it.

Disease X

Adapted from The Long Shot by Kate Bingham & Tim Hames (Oneworld Publications, £10.99). © Kate Bingham & Tim Hames 2023. To order a copy for £9.89 (offer valid to 07/10/2023; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.

[Big Kev]

Thank goodness I don't read the Daily Mail. This unknown disease which doesn't yet exist is so scary.

Never mind Pirola - that's just another "scariant". (See what they did there?)

Hope they are working round the clock for a vaccine. Any price is worth paying for it.

Disease X

We should be preparing for everything we don't know about yet

[Tripps]

We should be preparing for everything we don't know about yet

How true. . .

Donald Rumsfeld was quite right

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones

[Stanley]

The key phrase for me in that report was "I immediately took leave of absence from my job of nearly 30 years as a biotech venture capitalist ".
The Daily Mail evidently works on:- "If we haven't been smart enough to find a real story, simply invent one....."

[Stanley]

See THIS for what I see as a triumph of common sense over rigid political dogma.
Locally controlled bus services have returned to Greater Manchester for the first time since deregulation in 1985. The arrival of the area's Bee Network marks the first time deregulation has been reversed in England and regional mayor Andy Burnham hopes it will lead to cheaper fares and better services. He said it was "a coming-of-age moment for English devolution". Bus reform has been among Mr Burnham's priorities since he became the region's first elected mayor in 2017. A representative for the Greater Manchester Combined Authority said the number of bus journeys in Greater Manchester dropped from 355,000,000 at the time of deregulation to 182,000,000 in 2019, while the number in London, where services were not deregulated, "roughly doubled" in the same period. Mr Burnham said deregulation did not work on buses and "many other things as well". "The mantra that the market is the answer to everything has been disproved by bus deregulation," he added.
I am certain that Andy Burnham is right and wish the new operators well. I hope that this spreads, what is good enough for London is good enough for the provinces as well. We are not subject colonies of the Southern masters!

[Stanley]

See THIS BBC report on a computer failure at Newcastle Hospitals. Your life in their hands?
A hospital trust failed to send out 24,000 letters from senior doctors to patients and their GPs after they became lost in a new computer system, the BBC has learned. Newcastle Hospitals has warned that the problem, which dates back to 2018, is significant. The healthcare regulator has sought urgent assurances over patient safety.

[Big Kev]

Looks like Yorkshire Water are on the list of companies who are being told to cut their bills because of poor performance
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66922070