Nobody move or somebody gets hurt!

From The Metro, an absolute classic of the genre:

KNIFE crime could get ‘considerably worse’ under Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal, a former minister has said.

David Lammy, who represents Tottenham in north London, said the drop in GDP that the deal would cause would ‘mean everything’ to areas with high poverty rates — and have a bigger impact ‘than the 2008 crash’.

The Labour MP (pictured) told the Commons: ‘In my constituency, just the weekend before last, two men were knifed within an inch of their lives. We would see a reduction in GDP, with a Canada-style free trade deal, of 6.7 per cent in our country. 

'In a constituency like Tottenham, it means everything. It means that the knife crime I’m worried about could get considerably worse. I don’t want the south side of Chicago in Tottenham.’

I strongly suspect that a lot of people who voted Leave did so to thumb their noses at drivel like this.

'Remain' would probably have won if the Remain campaign had stuck to simply emphasising the positives of being an EU member (of which there are many); glossing over the negatives (of which there are just as many); and not wasting most of their energy on trying to scare people into thinking that the world would come to an end if they voted Leave (when it was quite clear that the world would carry on pretty much as normal, Leave or Remain).

The Leave campaign also have made some pretty outrageous claims, but they weren't so stupid as to claim that we'd all catch super-gonorrhea if we voted Remain.That would just have devalued their more plausible stuff.

David Lammy is absolutely spot on (for once)

David Lammy is usually a source of lightweight PC-buffoonery, but this time he's absolutely spot on. From the BBC:

Stacey Dooley has challenged MP David Lammy after he said "the world does not need any more white saviours" following her Comic Relief posts from Africa.

Clearly, he used the word "white" to refer to Westerners generally i.e. non-Africans, it was not a comment about the actual skin colour of Bono, Bob Geldof and their imitators. But she deliberately misinterprets it anyway:

She tweeted: "David, is the issue with me being white? (Genuine question)... because if that's the case, you could always go over there and try raise awareness?"

She's [sic] posted images on Instagram of her holding a young Ugandan child.

OK, David Lammy is "black" in a racial/skin colour sense, as his parents (or grandparents?) came here from Africa. But he is as English/Western as she is (which makes her comment pretty racist, even by my non-PC standards), and he shouldn't be posing with African orphans any more than she should.

And you don't need to go there to "raise awareness", those suffering already know it.

The example I like to use is all these charities asking for money to help save Indian tigers from extinction. How is that any of their business? If I were an Indian with a few bob to spare, I'd round up the last few tigers, fly them over and let them loose in the Home Counties.

Mr Lammy said: "This isn't personal and I don't question your good motives."

Clearly it wasn't personal, he was using her as an example, here's what he meant:

The Labour MP for Tottenham added: "My problem with British celebrities being flown out by Comic Relief to make these films is that it sends a distorted image of Africa which perpetuates an old idea from the colonial era."

Just to reinforce how out of touch these celebs are...

Dooley, who recently won Strictly Come Dancing and has made documentaries for the BBC on topics including fast fashion and an Isis sex slave, said: "Comic Relief have raised over £1bn since they started. I saw projects that were saving lives with the money. Kids' lives."

BBC documentary maker wins BBC dance competition, shock. Guess whose side the BBC will take...

OK, £1 billion sounds like a lot of money doesn't it? Averaged over 34 years, it's £30 million a year. That's about one per cent of the BBC's staggeringly bloated annual budget; about the same as the total annual salaries of the dozen highest paid BBC employees; about 0.2% of UK official aid payments each year, funded by UK taxpayers and spent by the UK government; or about 2.5p per capita per annum for each African.

Naff all, in other words.

Particularly puke making is these people climbing up Kilimanjaro "for Comic Relief". What is the point of that? How does it have any relation to the specific problems that certain African countries are facing? How is that a sensible use of anybody's money?

They'd have done far more good just sending a few ordinary families on nice normal holidays in African countries, putting some money into the real local economies; and making a programme about it on the cheap and thereby encouraging other viewers to go there as well?

Meanwhile, on Planet Zog ...

From today's Metro:

Not enough black men are studying at university, a minister said yesterday... The MP for Tottenham insisted both the African and Afro-Caribbean communities had a 'terrifically strong culture of aspiration and self-improvement'. But he warned that more needed to be done to 'tap into that culture and harness it' - or more youngsters would become gang members. 'When that potential isn't directed and offered an outlet, it is replaced by frustration,' he said. 'You get too many of them winding up in prison. And you get too many of them having their lives cut brutally short.'

Oh, it's all coming back to me now ... back in the 1970s and 1980s when only 12% to 15% of people went on to higher education (see Figure 1, page 2) and the other 85% to 88% all became no-hope hardened criminals ... I remember it all vividly.

"Gangs linked to male insecurity"

From today's Metro:

Young men are turning to crime and a violent gang culture because they are losing their sense of masculinity, a minister has warned. They are being overtaken by women in the jobs market as tradit­ional male positions disappear and see crime as the way to wealth and status instead, skills [sic] minister David Lammy said.

And in the 'warped world' of 'get rich or die trying' gang culture, they can earn respect and regain their manliness by carrying a weapon, he wrote in the New Statesman*. 'An aggressive street culture rep­laces success in other spheres of life as an expression of masculi­nity,' he added. At the same time, the 'fetishis­ation' of money and the growth of consumerism was adding to pressures, the Tottenham MP said.

Mr Lammy acknowledged problems in the black Caribbean community, where 59 per cent of children are raised by lone parents, but stressed the issue affected youngsters from all races and social backgrounds. 'While there may be young men on estates missing fath­ers, there are also children in Middle Britain whose parents become strangers in a culture of long working hours,' he said.

Shorter David Lammy:"I blame crime on those people, especially women, who try to achieve something in life. The fact that black Caribbeans tend to have no sense of family values has very little to do with it"

* The full article kicks off with "We are failing miserably to provide Britain's teenage boys with meaningful occupations, worthy role models or hope for the future. David Lammy, minister for skills, on the crisis we must resolve,"

Who's "we" for f***'s sake? How is any of this my f***ing fault? Has he never heard of 'personal responsibility' or 'self-reliance'?

Twat.