It's been a minute...

And a lot has been going on.

It has been a minute, as the cool kids are fond of saying. A lot has happened, both in the world generally and my life specifically.

1. Steyn lost, at least temporarily. But truth ultimately won the day:

In the realm of environmental insanity, it was disheartening to see Mark Steyn admonished to the tune of USD$1m by a climate change brainwashed jury in Washington D.C. However, and while it is unlikely that this seven-figure punitive damages verdict will withstand appeal, what Steyn and his fellow defendant, Rand Simberg, did succeed in doing was eliciting evidence demonstrating that Michael Mann’s (in)famous hockey-stick graph was as many had believed: the most tortured example of manipulated statistics to have ever deceived a generation. Steyn and Simberg both deserve hero’s praise for withstanding more than a decade of Mann’s pathological abuse of the legal system, and for exposing Mann and the hidden clique funding him as the incredibly duplicitous villains of their own story.

I followed the trial most days as work and other commitments permitted via the D.C. District Court’s WebEx link. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind by the end that the whole thing was a ridiculous farce - Mann failed to litigate several of his claims, his lawyers were exposed wilfully lying to the jury about the value of supposed lost grants, and there was absolutely no evidence advanced to support the quantum of alleged damages. Had the trial happened 10-12 years ago at the time Mann first filed his clown world lawsuit, the verdict would have, in my honest opinion, been vastly different. Only in today’s mainstream media climate-change brainwashed and hurty-words obsessed woke world could someone as small as Mann be victorious while hiding behind a group of expensive and illicitly funded lawyers, pointing at Steyn like a whining schoolboy and stammering to the effect: “He hurt my feelings!”

2. You have to be antisemetic, because standing with Jewish people is now extremism

Anyone observing events in London beyond those reported in the mainstream media will have noticed that Pro-Palestine marches and other forms of activism have largely gone unchallenged, and in many cases been supported by the Police and Mayor’s Office. Conversely, police officers have: (i) removed posters around London showing missing or kidnapped Israeli women and children; (ii) arrested and, after public backlash, released a protester who rightly labelled Hamas as terrorists; (iii) refused to intervene against muslim and Pro-Palestine protesters who glorify terrorism and terrorists - such as those celebrating the recent Houthi terror attacks in the Red Sea (here) and others carrying flags or chanting calls for jihad (here), and disingenuously sought to claim ISIS flags were something other than the call for jihad that any informed person knows them to be (here).

We also have universities in London where Pro-Palestine and muslim students are allowed to chant pro-Palestine and anti-Israel slogans and make speeches calling for donations to charaties sympathetic to their cause, and where Jewish students live in fear of harassment and abuse (here and here). While I am not Jewish, in recent years I count many wonderful and generous Jewish people as some of my closest friends - almost like family, in fact. I personally have had to provide pastoral support to a female Jewish student who experienced exactly this in one of her midwifery classes - from fellow students in one of what is supposed to be the caring professions.

Which segues nicely to the third item…

3. Destroying a century-old painting is acceptable, because Palestine!

On the 8th of March, 2024 we were greeted with news that an as-yet unnamed but known member of Pro-Palestine, anti-Israel activist group called Palestine Action had entered the University of Cambridge’s Trinity College and damaged a painting of Lord Balfour, an early 1900s politician. Palestine Action claimed responsibility on twitter/X, citing the 1917 Balfour Declaration as the pivotal moment that they say, began the ‘ethnic cleansing of Palestine’. While the Balfour Declaration declared sympathy for the Jewish people, and announced the British Goverment’s support for establishment of a national home, Balfour stated categorically in his cover letter that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.

Lord Balfour through his various declarations and reports could be said to have had significant input in the granting of sovereignty and independance to former colony countries such as Canada and India, and there is nothing in his writings to suggest, as Palestine Action contend, that he in any way would countenance the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of any peoples. As yet, and three days later, this known member of Palestine Action has not been arrested - and there appears to be nothing in today’s media reports to suggest police are even taking action to identify or search for her.

But let’s be clear… Gen Z Moana didn’t just damage the painting as the Trinity college spokesperson says. That downplays and belies the true extent of her actions. She completely and maliciously destroyed an irreplaceable and priceless 110 year old artwork - first with red enamel spraypaint, and second with a blade, a dangerous and unlawful concealed weapon she had secreted into Trinity College.

But what about me?

The last month has been tumultuous.

My 11 year old son is homeschooled. No, we aren’t members of some strange religious sect or cult. And yes, as many who know me are aware, I do have a fundamental disagreement with the proliferation of nonsense that has displaced real education in schools now - such as critical race theory, trans-based sex education and all the other woke and identity-based ideologies. However, it wasn’t even for these reasons. My son and most of his classmates simply weren’t thriving in their Year 4 class, and rather than look at all the ideology nonsense they were drilling into the children each day and the fact that the teacher spent almost no time in the classroom, leaving two teaching assistants to attend to the class. No… the school constantly sought to blame the children, repeatedly harassing parents to allow them to ‘evaluate the children for special needs diagnoses’. It seems that, for the school he was at and from what I am now hearing, many others, the school’s focus had become to register as many children as they could as requiring SEN intervention. This has two effects. First, each SEN-registered child becomes a source of additional funding for the school from the local council. Second, SEN registration can have the effect of extinguishing the parent’s right and ability to remove their child from council-managed education and home school without explicit approval from the council. The teachers kept pressuring me to get my son ‘diagnosed’ and approved for SEN. His inability to thrive and learn in school was apparently his fault. Not theirs.

Two years later and while his classmates are struggling to complete Year 6 of primary school and prepare for High School, I have spent much of the last couple of months helping my son preparing for several IGCSE exams… you know, those exams your 14-15 year old son or daughter who is in year 9 at high school will sit later this year. That’s right… the kid who was, according to them, to blame for his inability to learn in their council overseen primary school has engaged with his love for learning of math (algebra, trigonometry, calculus), science (chemistry, biology) and computer science (programming) and leapfrogged several years ahead of his peers. After a day-trip to Bletchly Park he even recently coded his own python-based enigma machine. For those who think home schooling is cheap and easy… I’m here to tell you it is anything but. Being father, teacher, chauffeur, invigilator, technical support and all of the other roles, and providing him all the materials (books, computer, internet, electronics, tutors etc.) is itself a full time job and costs as much as cheap private school fees might.

But. It’s. Worth. It.

During the last few weeks we moved house. The house we moved into had been largely intact and liveable when we viewed it mid-2023, but in the months it took the vendor to get the tenants out of the property so I could have vacant possession, the tenants - who I can only assume were disgruntled at having the property sold out from under them, took to leaving holes in the plasterwork of almost every room (some around a foot, or 30cm, in diameter), smashing powerpoints and even the cistern of the downstairs toilet, removed internal doors and left them haphazardly arranged in the garage, removed chattels, two light fixtures are damaged such that putting bulbs in them trips several fuses, and they even left a 2tonne skip brimming with rubbish in the front yard. I had to move as the lease was up on the house I had been renting, and I needed to be closer to London for work. But three weeks into the new house we are still largely living out of boxes as I clean and repair each room one at a time and repaint them. The added expense has pretty much cleaned me out financially - even with me spending my nights and weekends doing much of the work (except electrical and plumbing) myself.

The third issue I am dealing with is what appears to be sudden onset of failing eyesight. Most people who know me know I am a prolific reader, which is possibly why I have been so suited to academic research. One ophthalmologist says I have a rapidly developing posterior cataract. Another says I have Meibomian Gland Dysfunction (MGD) that either started gradually after an operation on my left eye in 2019, or rapidly after I suffered a bout of acute biliary colic in the second half of 2023, but which has only started to significantly really damage the lens surface in the last couple of months. The NHS just loses you in a black hole. I keep getting letters saying I am referred to this specialist or that, and that I am on their ‘list’… whatever that means. All we know is that most NHS consultants have two year or more waiting lists and people either die or their condition becomes untreatable or permanent before they matriculate to the top. The TLDR is that I have days where I can read for several hours, and other days where I suffer headaches and eye strain after several pages. I have to sleep with my eyes filled with a lubricating ointment and taped shut - which does seem to make things a little better after a long night. I am (still) awaiting an appointment with a private ophthalmologist from Moorfields - which, like the house repairs, could become very expensive, very quickly.

Where to from here:

Well, I have just been shown another bundle of documents relating to the Lucy Letby trial that I am going to try and read over the next few weeks come hell or high water. The complete Lucy Letby material I have written (both that which is published here on my substack and that which remains unpublished due to the current reporting restrictions) may end up becoming a book - if there is sufficient interest. I have also just released the first of two or three papers written with Professors Fenton and Neil from Where are the Numbers? looking at the statistical manipulations of vaccine studies - this first one showing that every covid-19 vaccination study used at least one form of the misclassification ‘cheap trick’ (here). The deeper analysis to be exposed in the next paper looks at not just the misclassification bias in Covid vaccine studies, but a range of manipulations and biases evident in studies of other vaccines such as influenza (flujab) and measles (MMR). I am also working on something regarding the tricks that were used with respect of predictive models and national statistics to create fear and compliance during 2020. Finally, I am following the case of a Birmingham nurse whose prosecution for similar alleged offences as Lucy Letby may start in the next 12 months.

Stay tuned for these and more…