[RedSparrows]

Watching the news and reading the papers over the last 6 weeks you would think that the country was in the grip of serious disorder but the reality is very different. Last night I was in Nottingham with my wife celebrating our 27th wedding anniversary, we had booked into a hotel for the night so I could do a Parkrun this morning.

After enjoying a really good Indian meal we decided to take a walk through the Cities main park just to check out where the Parkrun would start and what the course was like. At 7 o'clock on a Friday night there must have been between 300 and 400 people of different races and nationalities all get a long fine. There were people playing football and cricket, some people were enjoying an evening stroll and others were just sat in groups socialising. There was no trouble and no tension. This morning we headed back to the Parkrun and it was just the same. A football coach was setting up a training session that catered for a wide mixed of children, Parkrun itself also involved a wide mixed of participants including parents with kids in buggies, a group of runners recovering from cancer, a Nordic walking club plus runners from the age of 10 to 85. Everybody got on absolutely fine. This is probably much closer to the reality of multi-culturalism in this country than the news and the papers would have us believe.

'Go touch some grass' seems ever more applicable for columnists...

[Tubby Isaacs]

https://uk.yahoo.com/news/epping-hotel- ... 30743.html

A lawyer who writes for the Spectator, and who appears to have no background in asylum issues, has submitted a complaint against the chief judge in the Epping Hotel case. To describe it, I think the word we're looking for is "vexatious".

Basically, Judge Bean is from Matrix Chambers. Yeah, Cherie Blair's gang! He's bias, and he's dun a hippocrasee!

Seriously, that's about all there is to it. Torygraph considers it news.

Ha ha ha. Steven Barrett. He's a Tory councillor. Surely we can disregard his complaint on the same basis.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I see he's also claimed that Lucy Connolly's sentence was partly down to the PM condemning the violence strongly. Did he make this argument in 2011?

[Boiler]

Sadly, the Hot Cross Roundabouts have arrived here Picking up a parcel from a neighbour this morning, she remarked that "we'll be having a civil war soon" and it was she who told me about the vandalism. My remark of "no we won't, it'll just be a load of fat old blokes who'll keel over at the exertion" didn't go down well. She said she was right-wing (and is ex-Forces) so my remarking that "I'm a leftie" was met with a surprised look...

[Youngian]

They arrived late to Wisbech but a hit squad arrived on Friday night, I guess Wroxham or Yeovil was next. The locals can't even be arsed to bin litter let alone paint on mini roundabouts.

[Abernathy]

From Fleecebook :

𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗼 𝗥𝗼𝗯𝘀𝗸𝗶:
["One of the best observations I've read in a while:
"When a nation starts draping its lamp-posts in bunting and painting roundabouts in the colours of St George, it is not asserting confidence. It is broadcasting insecurity. England today is not flying its flag as a gesture of joy, but brandishing it as a warning sign. The Union Jack and the cross of St George have become the semaphore of a culture that feels besieged.
The irony is obvious. A country that once wrapped half the world in its empire now wraps itself in cloth to keep the world out. The flag is not an emblem of strength but a comfort blanket for those who believe England is being “invaded” by strangers. It is meant to signal pride, but it reeks of fear.
And it is not a spontaneous flourish of patriotism. This new fashion for “raising the colours” is a stage-managed pantomime of grievance, orchestrated by populists and far-right agitators. They know that a flag is cheaper than a policy. It costs nothing to paint a kerb or festoon a roundabout, but it pays rich political dividends: it divides the world into “us” and “them”, insiders and outsiders, the righteous and the unwanted.
For migrants, or simply for anyone who does not conform to the fantasy of ethnic homogeneity, this spectacle is not innocent. A forest of flags does not whisper “welcome”. It shouts: You are tolerated, at best. You are under suspicion, at worst. The flag becomes not a national embrace but a territorial marker, a scarlet letter on the landscape that says: beware, foreigners.
This is not patriotism. It is parody. Patriotism is expansive, confident, capable of laughing at itself. This ersatz version is crabbed and joyless, all clenched fists and painted kerbstones. It is the opposite of pride, it is the confession of a nation that no longer believes in itself enough to live without props.
The English flag deserves better than this.
A people sure of who they are do not need to wallpaper their towns with proof of it. When the flag becomes omnipresent, it stops being a symbol and starts being a crutch. And the louder it is brandished, the clearer the message: England, in the grip of fear, is shrinking not in territory but in imagination.
Meanwhile, Reform thrives on this shrinkage. Its permanent crisis is not a bug but a business model. It weakens the social fabric with one hand and cashes in with the other, feeding parasitically on the anxieties it manufactures. It does not want solutions, only resentments. For if England ever recovered its self-confidence, Reform would be left with nothing to sell."]

[Tubby Isaacs]

I see Douglas Carswell is now on to getting rid of "Abdul" from the UK.

There's not really any limit on this stuff on the American Right, whereas here you have a few prominent people like Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid who really don't like it. I wonder if there's an element of job application in this stuff from Carswell. Mississippi is seen as a joke state more than as a bastion of proper conservatism, Texas, by contrast, has an awful state government, but it's growing very fast. I'm sure Dougie would rather be there. Or indeed in Washington DC, New York or California where they have wingnuts too. You can praise Mississippi without living there, all while pretending it's unbearable in the Blue State you're residing in yourself.

[kreuzberger]

They arrived late to Wisbech but a hit squad arrived on Friday night, I guess Wroxham or Yeovil was next. The locals can't even be arsed to bin litter let alone paint on mini roundabouts.

Are these cretinous fuckers even able to do it in alphabetic order?

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Talking to daughter in law this afternoon. She told me of a colleague, a barrister, who had been planning to buy a house in the Luton area, until he realised that due to the flags his Asian heritage, even though he was born and raised in England, meant that he would not be welcome. He is now looking to buy elsewhere, and it is safe to say that flags and roundabouts will figure in his choice of location.

[Bones McCoy]

Talking to daughter in law this afternoon. She told me of a colleague, a barrister, who had been planning to buy a house in the Luton area, until he realised that due to the flags his Asian heritage, even though he was born and raised in England, meant that he would not be welcome. He is now looking to buy elsewhere, and it is safe to say that flags and roundabouts will figure in his choice of location.

The painters will see that as a virtue.
One less of "them" moving into our neighbourhood.

[Youngian]

Not sure if the story about estate agents warning that flags and painted roundabouts will lower property prices is verified but watch patriots relegated to vandals if it is.

[Oboogie]

Not sure if the story about estate agents warning that flags and painted roundabouts will lower property prices is verified but watch patriots relegated to vandals if it is.

It seems likely. It's not just people of colour and anti-racists who'll be put off, those areas have to be potential flashpoints.
I wonder how insurance companies are responding? If I was in that business I'd definitely see houses/cars in flag strewn roads as high risk.