Blogging break

Hi bloggers,

I will be taking a break from blogging for a good few months.

I am currently job hunting in law and I really need to be 100% focused on it.

The problem is that it’s all very exhausting and all-consuming. Applications take ages to complete. I am also finding it a bit stressful. There are so many people I’m competing against so everything has to be polished. Need to prepare excellent answers for questions.

I stay positive, and remind myself that I’m actually a great applicant. I like to think I’m intelligent. I have good transferable skills, I am an honest person, I work easy with people, and I have that Protestant work ethic, I enjoy the legal sector I’m applying for. I just need to people see that.

Hopefully, I will be invited for interviews (which also stresses me) in Jan/Feb 2026.

I’ve been unwinding this week by watching some of those Peter Seller’s Pink Panther movies!! That was my trick at Cambridge the night before my big exams. Instead of walking around my room going through with my notes, I would put everything away and just watch a movie.

I hope to pop in, now and again, Christmas and whatnot, but in the meantime I won’t blogging much.

Thanks for you understanding,

Cherrio. 😸

David Jagger - Jewish Refugee, Vienna (1938) - poignant portrait of Jewish dignity

Beautiful.

David Jagger painted this anonymous Jewish lady after the outbreak of WW2. Today, it’s at Nottingham Castle. 

1938 was the year of the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany.

Vienna’s large Jewish population faced immediate & horrific persecution. Homes and businesses were seized, they were subjected to public humiliation and worse. 

Many of these Austrian Jews sought refuge at a time when lots of nations were hostile to Jewish refugees from Nazi persecution. 

I love the sense of determination and grit in the pose - but a certain sadness too.

Remembering Manfred Goldberg (1930-2025)

Manfred Goldberg has recently died.

He was a Holocaust survivor with a moving story.

I was listening to talk he gave to the University of Sussex. It was beautiful. 

I was most struck by his thoroughly pleasant & generous disposition when talking about his life story and the horrors he witnessed.

What’s interesting to me is the ordeal Manfred Goldberg’s father had to go through to secure papers to flee Nazi Germany. I forget how hard it was for Jews to get papers and leave - and, even worse, if you had a move a whole family to a foreign place. And then start again. His father managed to get out of Nazi Germany first (reference is made to Frank Foley) and had planned on taking the rest of the family with him afterwards on arrival in England. But within days, WWII had started. So, his poor wife and her two little babies were left behind in Nazi Germany. I just can’t imagine the toll on them both - esp. the wife. All alone without her partner/support and she had to look after 2 small kids who don’t understand what’s going on. Her strength and resolve must have been incredible. Hard not to have tears thinking about her despairing condition, while he was giving his talk.

For 6 years, his father, as refugee, was looking for his lost family. The strain that must have taken. He was also in a foreign country and couldn’t speak English, without the knowhow to get going with his life.

And then there’s the account of Manfred being squeezed onto a barge, like animals, in the Baltic sea, with so many prisoners, and being at the mercy of a true psychopath and sadist Captain. Tissues are needed at this point.

The wonderful part, for me, is that - having been reduced to the lowest rung of subsistence a human being can endure - he was honoured by the King of England and awarded an MBE, also met the Prince of Wales.

I wish I’d met him.

“BBC ‘ignored’ pro-trans bias in sports stories”

The Olympics are moving towards banning transgender women from competing in women’s sport. It seems they received “medical evidence” showing being born a male gives you physical advantages (*open mouth*?!) against women in women’s sport.

And ... how was the BBC approaching this subject, you might wonder?

See below for answer ... (esp. Mr Kay-Jelski (boss of BBC Sports) and the JK Rowling spat: “He highlighted evidence which found there was “little to no difference” in performance between transgender women and their female peers”.)

Can the BBC change?

I think it may be too late - it’s far too homogenous now & too much esprit de corps.

They’re part of a bubble who back the same things - back Labour, Hamas/Palestine, against Brexit, trans activism, total adherence to DEI, and everyone who disagrees is some sort of nasty racist.

✲✲✲

BBC ‘ignored’ pro-trans bias in sports stories
Female staff raised concerns about uncritical reporting on transgender athletes almost five years ago, messages reveal
By Craig Simpson & Oliver Brown
11 November 2025 6:00am GMT

BBC bosses “ignored” warnings about pro-transgender bias in its sports coverage, The Telegraph can reveal.

Messages seen by The Telegraph reveal that female staff repeatedly raised concerns over several years about the nature of reporting on gender issues.

BBC Sport bosses were told almost five years ago that stories about trans athletes were often uncritical and celebratory “puff pieces”, while glossing over any potentially negative impact on women’s sports.

However, insiders claim that the BBC persisted with overwhelmingly positive coverage of otherwise controversial athletes, including Lia Thomas, the biologically male swimmer, the weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, the cyclist Austin Killips and Imane Khelif, the boxer.

Concerns were also raised about biologically male athletes who were referred to as transgender “females”, a practice that appeared to confuse sex for gender and to go against the BBC’s own style guide.

BBC staff have reported feeling ignored and feeling unable to voice opinions that went against the prevailing orthodoxy of affirming transgender identity ...

BBC Sport is currently led by Alex Kay-Jelski, who faced criticism for a column he wrote for The Times in 2019 while he was the newspaper’s sports editor.

In the piece, he wrote that Martina Navratilova, the nine-time Wimbledon champion, and the Olympic swimming medallist Sharron Davies, both vocal opponents of allowing biological males to compete in women’s categories, were “not experts” on the matter of trans participation in sport.

Mr Kay-Jelski appeared to compare those who portrayed trans athletes as being “threatening” to racists who warned, “Don’t let black men in the same shops as you or they’ll rape your women”.

Following widespread criticism of his appointment as BBC Sport director in 2024, including from the Harry Potter author JK Rowling, Mr Kay-Jelski said he would leave his views “at the door”.

While some have expressed frustration with the BBC’s position on transgender issues, other institutions have responded to concerns raised about participation in women’s sports.

Earlier this year, the Football Association ruled that transgender women would no longer be able to play in women’s football in England, and the Rugby Football Union voted to ban trans women from full-contact women’s rugby union.

The International Olympic Committee is also moving towards banning transgender athletes from all female competition following a science-based review of evidence.

A BBC spokesman said: “While we always listen to feedback, BBC Sport has and always will report a wide range of views and perspectives in line with our editorial guidelines. We are unable to say more without further evidence of the points you are putting to us.”

VPN monitoring - gradual erosion of UK civil liberties

Samuel Woodhams writing in Exclusive: Ofcom is monitoring VPNs following Online Safety Act. Here’s how (TechRadar, Nov 2025)

The UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, has told TechRadar that it’s using an unnamed third-party tool to monitor VPN use in the UK.

“We use a leading third-party provider, which is widely used in the industry, to gather information on VPN usage. The provider combines multiple data sources to train its models and generate usage estimates. The data we access and use in our analyses is fully aggregated at the app level, and no personally identifiable or user-level information is ever included.”

✲✲✲

So depressing.

The Online Safety Act is a censorship device, and it cannot function if people can easily bypass it.

They will first go after private VPN usage soon, and go after end-to-end encryption.

And this is why accusing Reform UK of fascism doesn’t work anymore.

These proposals are far more authoritarian than anything Reform have proposed.