In America they have their separation of church and state. In the UK we haven’t managed the same. While the census tells us we are finally no longer a majority Christian country, it’s not just atheists making up the rest of the figure.
Still, here’s some good news for the godless. A school prayer ban has been upheld by the courts as a pupil loses her High Court challenge. Don’t worry, it won’t affect their pocket money, we paid for this through legal aid.
It’s the Michaela Community School, lead by Katharine Birbalsingh. She’s the self-proclaimed “strictest head in Britain”. It’s easy to self-proclaim anything. You should see how good I look in my self-assessment form, but I digress.
The school has a rule that you can’t have public displays of religion. A Muslim pupil complained and, to cut this long story short, the mum took the school to court and lost.
The meat of the dish is this. The school isn’t a faith school. Parents are told that before they sign their kids up. One mother did that and then the child wanted special rights to pray.
It’s a bit like going into a library that has a “shush” rule, and you know it has that “shush” rule but you go in anyway and when you’re in the someone shushes you and you lose your sh*t about it.
The best about this story is that the mother, who was so appalled with the school she sued it, plans to send her next child there as well. This mother is also working on the next case for suing the school. I think we have found the mega-Karen.
Think about it. To join a school that calls itself the strictest school, when knowing the rules but then when your daughter has to stick the school’s rule, which you know they’ll enforce because they’re strict, you sue! And you don’t even pay for it. They don't teach confidence like that in schools these days.
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New legislation in the UK would punish those who digitally alter and spread sexually explicit images with unlimited fines or prison sentences.
The problem is that technology has really made it possible to invade someone’s privacy without even being about to see them. In the old days you’d have to cut out a picture of someone’s head, Prit Stick it on a rude photo from a magazine you found in a bush. All of this didn’t really embarrass someone as much as it made you look weird.
With AI they can take a picture of your face and somehow seamlessly create an adult video of you and let’s be honest, it looks better than the real thing would. The AI version of me hasn’t eaten all those pizzas.
This new law makes sense. It’s an act that victimises someone. The fact that to break the law you have to spread the images or use them to intimidate the person featured means you can still make them for your own personal use, you wrong ‘un.
The government will table an amendment to a criminal justice bill that is before parliament, but officials would not say when the law would be implemented.
That feels like it’s inviting people to hurry up and make all the deepfakes they need before the cut off.
Reality star Cally Jane Beech is in this article saying the law is a good thing, and her picture credit is from “Splash News”. I didn’t know there was such a specialist site.
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In an interview on LBC he apologised to the Adidas Samba wearing community. 2024, man.
He was mocked for wearing them but in his defence he says he was a 'longtime devotee' of the brand. The trouble is there is no evidence, in all of the many pictures of him taken over the years, that he has ever worn them. We’re getting strong, “My girlfriend is hot but she goes to a different school,” vibes.
He also gets mocked for wearing trousers that are too short. I think this is a defence mechanism. He looks likes the kind of guy who was bullied and that’s why he dresses like he’s already been wedgied. The bullies won’t wedgie you if you’ve already been done. They’re busy people.
Meanwhile footwear historian Elizabeth Semmelhack told The Times it could prove to be 'the death knell' for the retro trainer which has previously been described as 'the defining sneaker of our age'.
Footwear historian is a job? We have reached over-employment. I don’t wish offend the footwear historian community when I say that.
The newspapers have often mocked Rishi for the attire. He’s held to a standard normally reserved for any woman in the public eye. Over the years they have mocked him for wearing hoodies, Timberland boots, and sliders.
It makes me feel sorry for the PM because he gets this scrutiny but Boris Johnson dresses like he slept in that suit before coming into work clinging to the side of a train and no one minded.
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The basic story is this: There’s a factory in China copying stamps, selling them for 4p each, but if Royal Mail finds it it costs the recipient £5.
That’s bad. But is it economic warfare? If that’s what brings the UK down China had a point. Centuries of ruling the world. We gave the world the industrial revolution, the internet, technology and medicine. But if was those stamps that did us in.
And who is still using stamps that much? Using stamps to attack the UK is like attacking us with fake Blockbuster video membership cards.
While it might be state sanction economic warfare it could also be the Government not caring. Try this as a thought experiment. “There’s a company in Reading making fake Argentinian stamps.” See how you didn’t really care? That.
The real scandal is that if someone sends you a letter with a dodgy stamp they charge you £5 now. It’s gone up. No, Post Office, we already don’t like you because of what you did to Toby Jones.
They’re also overestimating the importance of what they deliver to you these days. They’re saying, “Someone sent you something but if you want to know what it is it’ll cost you.”
They may have motivated us a few decades ago but now, if you give me the chance to not have something delivered, I’ll go for that. It’s saving me the effort of walking from the front door straight to the recycling bin.
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Honeytrap makes it sound more romantic than it really is. He chatted with someone on Grindr and they exchanged pictures of their tallywhackers. The other guy sent his first but William wasn’t dragged up, he knows that etiquette dictates that one reciprocates with a DP. Manners cost nothing, apart from your position as the vice-chair of the 1922 committee.
They were then meant to meet up, which you could probably spell meet with an a for that. But they never did and the guy started to extort him, to really ring out Willy Wragg and wanted the phone numbers of other MPs. William gave them. He was a regular 118 118 guy, just without the shorts.
Some of those MPs replied to the todger pics they were sent with their own. See, manners. The scammer apparently messaged the MPs saying, "Hi, I met you in the parliamentary bar, have a look at this." And they didn't think this was suspicious.
Unless it’s one-upmanship. Like the peen version of that scene from Crocodile Dundee. “That’s not a knife. (*unzip*) This is a knife.”
William had already said he wasn’t standing at the next election but resigned his current positions and apologised. The worry was that someone managed to get compromising pictures of these politicians that easily. The only solution is for us to not to be shocked by it. The scammer would have no power if we all just presumed that these MPs are spending their time having a look at each other's ding-a-lings. Most of them went to public schools anyway.
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Gen Z, currently aged between 11 and 26, come under much scrutiny. The best thing about Gen Z is that they have made the papers stop hating Millennials. It’s a good thing too, because newspapers used the term Millennials to mean “young people” but they’re now 27 to 43. At 43 you don’t want to be picked on for being an annoying young person just as you’re heading into your mid-life crisis.
The latest trouble with Gen Z is that apparently they’re ditching traditional table manners because they're ''irrelevant'. I wonder how much of this is because Gen Z know they’re growing up into a world where they probably won’t be able to afford to buy a table.
Research has found that there are still some rules they want to stick to. Chewing with your mouth closed is still seen as a good rule.
This is unsurprising as, from my limited time on TikTok, it seems like all young people claim to have misophonia, the medical condition where they can’t stand hearing other people chewing. To those people I say, “Hey, it’s not all about you! Some of us have to eat. I’m not going to starve to death because you’re being all fussy.”
The same research has found that Gen Z think it’s OK to put your elbows on the table. Before we all pile into chants of, “Tut, young people these days,” I want to be honest. I never understood that rule.
Closing your mouth when you eat is practical. It’s messy and, from the point of view of the eater, you don’t want to drop any.
What was the problem with elbows? If you don’t have a sturdy table and a little pressure on one side would make it tip, then I’m onboard. We either don’t do elbows or we all do elbows.
Thankfully society has moved on from making a table out of a disused dartboard rested on a stack of books, so most tables can handle it.
That makes the elbow rule one that isn’t needed but is adhered to out of convention. It’s like the act of shaking hands. Originally it was to show that you weren’t carrying a sword in that hand. These days we still do it despite no one carrying swords, making it unnecessary and knife crime still going up, making it unsuccessful.
In the research, 77% said they 'do not care about cutlery politics'. 60% say they don’t care which way round people hold their knife and fork.
But if we don’t have rules about how you use your cutlery, which knife does what, which way you should leave your knife and fork on your plate if you haven’t finished your meal and how you get soup into your mouth using a spoon how will we know which people are working class so we can judge them accordingly?
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That phrase always struck me as heartless. Jeez, take a second before you move on. At least pretend you’ll miss the old one.
With a new king comes a new regime, a new set of rules. The same is true for a different kind of king; the title of world’s oldest man. If we are taught to respect our elders this guy is the Mac Daddy.
Britain is the proud home of the new holder of that title. John Tinniswood is officially the world’s oldest man at 111. It’s gender specific as the world’s oldest person is mainly a woman. It’s the one area where there would be push-back at biological women identify as men competing. It’s not often the controversy is that way round.
John says he isn’t too bothered by the title. I understand why. It’s one you only get when someone of your approximate age has just died, which is hardly something to celebrate. It’s also a title that you only lose one way. Put it this way, it’s a title for life. What’s left of it.
Normally news stories tell us about the world’s oldest man or woman and they ask the OAP for their secret to living so long. They don’t have a secret. It wasn’t something that set out to do. No 18-year-old has their eye on the title.
Nevertheless the old person will say they have a drink every day or they enjoy a good fry up and the newspapers make it seem like that is scientific evidence. “See, this old person smokes cigars and lived to 111, ergo smoking cigars is good for you.”
These stories totally ignore the other evidence that’s out there of all of the millions of people who also smoked cigars and died in their 50s or 60s. They’re outliers.
Newspapers prefer the narrative that these old people prove medicine wrong. They want to say, “Don’t listen to so-called experts. This guy had red meat seasoned with methamphetamine every teatime and he lived to 100.”
Cut to 2024. The newest oldest man is crowned and Mr Tinniswood puts his longevity down to the fact he does not smoke and rarely drinks alcohol.
I’m amazed the newspapers even mentioned him. No one likes people who rarely drink. He was officially named the world’s oldest man by the Guinness Book of Records. I bet they’re furious. They’ve got stout to flog.
John is a great-grandfather from Merseyside. If the people from Guinness have just left could you send them back. I think most people in Merseyside are great-grandparents by 36, so he might be getting his second record of the day.
The final word should go to John who said his secret to longevity is "pure luck", adding: "You either live long or you live short, and you can't do much about it."
He’s 111 and he’s talking more sense than most stories about people living to an old age.
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The celebs must want the same thing too. No one does an interview in the hope that no one notices. Even with both parties working in concert sometimes you really have to reach to make an answer seem shocking. Here is a case study.
The Mirror newspaper had the headline: “Lulu reveals one thing she refuses to do before 12pm and it's almost unimaginable.”
Obviously our minds try to guess what it could be and we all think of something that’s rude. Is it the old, freelancers lie down? A hand shandy? Some Lulu special time?
Of course it’s not that, sadly. Why would someone in a celebrity interview with the BBC boast that they can hold off from self-abuse till midday? It rather implies that as soon as the clock has done striking 12 she’d be on herself like a drunk and of office party.
In the article in the Mirror it takes five paragraphs of building up the suspense before they finally reveal…
"I don't speak before 12 noon."
Oh. Yeah, sure. That makes sense. When I used to live on my own I did that because I didn’t walk round the flat talking to myself. Heck, when I was a student I didn’t talk till 12pm mainly because I didn’t wake till 1pm.
Lulu said: "I can understand why you think I'm lying but no, I'm very disciplined."
Why would anyone lie about that? It’s not the same as boasting that you recycle, only buy organic food and regularly buy Te Big Issue. You don’t talk till midday and you’re a famous singer. People in your profession have done much weirder things. You technically have the same job as Ozzy Osbourne. In comparison you are not non-weird one.
Lulu added: "I try not to come out of my room until 12. It makes it easier. I take care of my instrument.”
I knew it was masturbation!
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You’d think the sixth richest nation could manage basic sanitation but in 2024 in the UK you’d be wrong.
It’s so bad that this weekend’s boat race was affected by the amount of e.coli in The Thames. I know what you’re thinking, “When will the kids who go to Oxford and Cambridge Universities get a break in life?”
But it’s an embarrassment that we can’t even hold an event on our rivers now. The rowers were given safety advice before the race that they should avoid getting any splashed water in their mouths. During a rowing race!? You might as well tell them to try not to rush.
Leonard Jenkins of the Oxford men’s team said, “It would be a lot nicer of there wasn’t as much poo in the water.”
How terrible that that needs to be said. The only time that would be worse to hear is in a Trip Advisor review of a cafe.
On Wednesday, Environment Agency figures revealed raw sewage spills doubled last year in England to 3.6 million hours of spills compared with 1.75 million hours in 2022. I was shocked that it happens so much we have to measure poos by the hour. To put this in terms you can relate to, an hour of poo is about 30 trip for a woman and about 2 for a man.
This is because our water systems get overwhelmed when there is a lot of rain. Hello, have you met the UK before? Rain is pretty much our thing. Sewage is spilled into waterways to prevent the system backing up.
In a statement issued before the race, Thames Water said: "We have experienced higher than average long-term rainfall across London.” How can you have higher than average “long-term” rainfall. If it’s long-term, it increases the average. Step up and cope with it.
Water companies have two jobs. Well, they have lots of jobs that they keep releasing into our rivers. But they have two main functions to provide. They should give us clean, drinkable water. Remember that when, in a few months time, we’re going from “higher than average, long-term rainfall” to hosepipe bans.
Water firms in England and Wales lost 1 trillion litres via leaky pipes in 2021. That’s more than three and a half Lake Windermeres wasted, yet you’ll be told you can’t water your Rhododendron.
The other role they need to provide is to take our waste away and keep it away. That’s not what happens. If you’re a wild swimmer there’s a good chance you’ll be reunited with your waste when you go for an open mouthed swim.
What can we do if the water companies continue to fail? Basically, nothing. I’d say fine them but it’ll just be added to the water bills we pay. We’ll pay more for the pleasure of swimming with our own poops. It won’t hit their profits.
In 2022-23, England's water firms made £1.7bn in pre-tax profits. This is up 82% since 2018-19. Water UK, the industry trade body, said bills would increase by 6% on average next financial year – more than the current 4% inflation rate. You know what I’d accuse them of taking, but they’re literally not. They’re letting our boat racers drink it.
It would help if we could have a nuanced debate about privatisation. You don’t have to always love it or always hate it. A public owned British Telecom was slow and needlessly bureaucratic. It used to take months to apply to get a second phone installed in your own home. But privatisation only works when you can bring in competition. If I don’t like my local water company my only option is to buy a lot of bottled water and wash my clothes in a local river and I’m not going near that, it’s full of poops.
Having a private company in charge of a local monopoly will always mean they prioritise profits over reinvestment to keep the system running.
If you have any solutions I would say you should float them by me, but we have enough of that happening already.
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That's not exactly the finding of some new research but it's close enough. A study looked at lyrics of popular songs and found that they're angrier and more repetitive since the 80s.
That shouldn't really come as a surprise. You didn't see that parental advisory sticker on old gramophone records. There was no explicit remix of George Formby's When I'm Cleaning Mother***king Windows, B**ch!" Although that song is about some perv watching a newly married couple have sex, but it's not angry or repetitive so that makes it OK.
They looked at lyrics in rock, rap, country, pop and R&B songs. At the risk of getting cancelled, it feels like rap must be doing a lot of the work here. In the 1980s rap songs seemed peaceful when compared to the drill music that Daily Mail readers get angry about. Although back in the 80s we had songs like The Sugarhill Gang's (see, there were gangs back then too) “Apache” with the lyrics...
Tonto, jump on it, jump on it, jump on it
Kemosabe, jump on it, jump on it, jump on it
Custer, jump on it, jump on it, jump on it
Apache, jump on it, jump on it, woo
Cultural appropriation aside, that's quite repetitive. If a song is quicker to write using control-C, control-V you're repetitive.
Rock songs of the 1980s included things like Van Halen's Jump with the lyrics.
Ah, might as well jump (jump)
Might as well jump
Go ahead and jump (jump)
Go ahead and jump
Still repetitive but for a song that's actually called Jump it tells you to jump less than The Sugarhill Gang did.
The research, published in the journal Scientific Reports, found that anger-related words may have become more common because music "reflects more general changes in society and culture". So, we're more miserable. That fits.
It's not all negative news. Eva Zangerle, an assistant professor at the University of Innsbruck's department of computer science in Austria, found that songs are simpler these days and easier to understand.
I'm grateful for that. The 80s had songs like Teddy Pendergrass "Love T.K.O." which I don't know if that's a good thing or not. The 90s had "Smells Like Teen Spirit" whatever that is.
It predates this study but in 1968 Song by Gary Puckett & The Union Gap released Young Girl, which is basically someone admitting they should be on a register.
Modern day songs are easier, like Megan Thee Stallion's, WAP, which seems to be about a cat in a bath. Ah, simpler times.
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The latest fallout is still falling out. Millions of Brits are discovering that their trusty passports are about as useful as a chocolate teapot for getting into the EU. Less so, actually. At least you could eat that.
As the Easter exodus approaches, an estimated 2.4 million travellers are learning the hard way that their documents are now just fancy paperweights. It used to be possible to travel within the EU on a passport that was over ten years old. It was also possible to travel with ID from your driving licence or a particularly good Blockbuster Video card.
Since Brexit, British passports must have an issue date less than 10 years old on the day of departure to the EU, and must have at least three months left before their expiry date on the intended day of return. But millions of passports issued prior to September 2018 have longer validity periods.
It is annoying that your passport looks like it’s valid for the trip but won’t be. Back then, when you’re passport was issued, it didn’t know what was going to happen. That’s because your passport is a left-wing socialist media elite who doesn’t think that anyone would vote to leave.
It is slightly rum to complain about this. You can’t vote to become a third country and then be upset that you’re treated like you’re a third country. It’s like dumping your partner and getting in a mood that they don’t let you use their Netflix log in any more. (You know who you are.)
Normally, the good advice would be to check the expiry date but that’s the problem here. Ignore the expiry date. {Insert joke about prawn in the local takeaway.}
You need to check the date of issue and if that’s over ten years old it won’t work for you. {Insert joke about Prince Andrew.}
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It’s almost as if what we’re seeing could suggest his conversion to Christianity was… not fully successful?
There are other signs he wasn’t a good Christian. Throwing alkaline chemicals at an ex and children but this is another sign.
This is an important issue. His conversion to Christianity was why he was still in the country even though he was a proven sex offender. It’s not the first time the church has been linked to harbouring sex offenders so we should have guessed.
The 35-year-old Afghan national had twice been refused asylum by the Home Office, and was considered so dangerous by the Baptist Church that it drew up a 'safeguarding contract' for the safety of parishioners over his sex assault and exposure convictions. Still, someone from the church gave him a character reference.
It shouldn’t matter if he fake converted or even really converted. If you have broken enough laws that you should be deported, religion shouldn’t come into it.
Of course someone who works for the church will vouch for you, they’re all about forgiveness, but our courts should be about facts.
MPs have said the Rwanda bill would have stopped this happening. No. The deal includes Rwanda’s right to send my any asylum seeker with a criminal record back to the UK. So he’s be exactly the kind of person the Rwanda bill would keep in the UK.
So the church might not be helping but the state isn’t doing much either.
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Nike released a new football kit with a slightly altered St George’s flag and it’s all kicked off like a fight at a football game. Even the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that Nike shouldn’t mess with it. And if anyone knows about messing up England…
Sir Keir Starmer also said the brand should “change it back”. It’s a rare case of agreement across the political divide but why has it stirred up so much anger?
People feel attached to the flag that represents their part of the world. There’s nothing wrong with this but it elevates a small strip of fabric to a level of importance in people’s lives. Attacking that swatch can cause great offence. You will see people burning flags as a protest over many issues.
If burning a flag is offensive you can see why redesigning a flag might leave people at least a bit peeved.
Sunak said: “When it comes to our national flags, we shouldn’t mess with them because they’re a source of pride, identity, who we are and they’re perfect as they are.”
The St George Cross has a complicating factor that for a while it’s been linked to far-right movements in the UK but refusing to the use that flag after this rather gives into the racists. Don’t let them make the flag synonymous with racists. Besides, it’s also used by a lot of passionate football supporters, which might be two circles on a Venn diagram with some overlap but it’s not a circle.
While the media has been drawn into a debate on the symbolism of the flag and the impact of a national flag being alerted we all seem to forget one key thing; Nike hasn’t altered the flag.
They have added a strange little cross to the back of a football kit but that isn’t the St George’s flag any more. On X, formerly a properly named social media platform, Nike described it as “a playful update” to the flag “to unite and inspire”.
It’s not though. If you draw a six-coloured cross you haven’t done the St George one. It also won’t unite and inspire. Adding purple to a flag is only inclusive if you’re Tinky Winky from the Teletubbies.
If you’re outraged that the England kit no longer has a St George Cross on it, take a look at the winning team from the 1966 World Cup. They were in white and red but at no point do those colours form a cross on them.
All that’s happened here is Nike added a weird multicoloured cross to the new football kit but the St George’s flag remains the same colour it’s always been.
You can buy anything that has the St George's Cross on it and it will still be the correct one. The only thing you can't buy is the new Nike kit and at £124 for adult sizes and £119 for kids that feels like a win.
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