Saturday Sanity Check

Ever read the news and thought: "Is it me? Or has the world gone nuts?" Hot Tip: It's not you!

UK POLICE have been unable to even nominate a suspect in more than a million burglaries over the past six years … but they can catch the sender of a hurty meme.

The Daily Mail has reported that police haven’t been able to solve a single burglary in nearly half the country’s neighbourhoods in the past three years. More than a million such incidents in the past six years have gone unsolved.

The report said police in many neighbourhoods had been told not to attend burglaries because they were not considered high priority.

But you’d be mistaken if you thought English Bobbies were laying around idle.

Oh no! While your home is being broken into and your valuables are being stolen, police are pretty active back at the station on Facebook.

This week a pensioner was arrested for reposting an allegedly homophobic meme.

I post it here with great trepidation. If you never receive another James Macpherson Report, you will know that I too have been arrested for terrible crimes. Here goes …

The man posted the image of the transgender flag looking like a swastika to make a point about authoritarianism within trans activism.

The six police who turned up on the man’s doorstep to arrest him failed to see the irony of arresting a man for his opinion on authoritarianism.

In a video of the arrest that has gone viral, an officer tells the man he is under arrest because …

'Somebody's been caused offence. Somebody found it VERY offensive. Someone has been caused anxiety by your social media post. That’s what you’ve been arrested.”

Then the shakedown began. British police said that if he paid a 60 pound fine, the crime would be reduced to a ‘non crime’.

Instead of being required to appear in court, he would be required to attend a Community Awareness Course where, presumably, he would be taught to love all things LGBTQI+.

The man disagreed he had done anything wrong and, having been humiliated in front of all his neighbours, was led away in handcuffs.

The police: How dare you compare us to Nazis.

Also the police: We are arresting you for having wrong opinions.

Harry Miller about to be cuffed for posting a meme

So if you unwittingly offend someone you have never even met, six police will turn up on your doorstep at 10am on a Sunday morning, cuff you and take you away.

Controversial opinion: If he was an illegal migrant or of a certain religion the local community would turn out and intimidate the police, forcing them to withdraw. The police would not do this in any community except a white one.

Anyway, the charges were later dropped.

But not before an elderly man had been humiliated. And not before police had made a point to every person in Britain. Think twice before you express a contrary opinion about the LGBTQ+ movement or you may just end up in handcuffs.

For what it’s worth, I reckon, the police who arrested the man should be charged with impersonating police officers.

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Former Victorian Liberal MP Andrew Elsbury has resigned from the party in protest at the preselection of Moira Deeming to run in his old seat at the upcoming state election.

I wrote earlier in the week about Deeming.

Deeming has spoken publicly against abortion and against Covid vaccine mandates.

Anyway, she hasn’t even been elected yet, but is already tidying up the Liberal Party!

As for Mr Elsbury, I’m sure he will love the Greens.

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Manly Sea Eagles coach Des Hasler said the club has taken “learnings” from this week’s gay pride jersey debacle.

But do you think the “learning” was that footballers should stick to football?

Not a chance!

Manly lost a crucial game Thursday night after taking the field without seven of their best players who refused to don the LGBTQ+ tribute jumper.

With Christian players watching the game from home after police warned their safety at the stadium could not guaranteed, the club announced that the gay jumper would be back, bigger and better in 2023.

The club did say they would give more notice to players.

I guess the players have now been given notice.

‘Learnings’ complete.

Manly bosses would have been better listening to and learning from their captain Daly Cherry-Evans who wore the jumper but said after the match:

“I think we need to be really careful about how much we push onto the players to commercialise the game.

“If you look at a dressing room at an NRL squad it is very diverse and it is very inclusive.

“So I just wonder how much we need to do as athletes because we already are a lot of things that the club tries to make you represent.

“At some stage we have to understand that sport is pretty inclusive and it’s not perfect but from my time in the game it does represent a lot of the things that we’re talking about tonight.

“Unfortunately when people get put in a position to have to do something they don’t want to do, I think that’s why you see positions like tonight.”

Daly-Evans made two very important points.

The first was that the LGBTQ+ pride jersey was about commercialisation. It was not about helping gays beat rampant homophobia, it was about selling jumpers.

The Australian newspaper revealed on Wednesday that the idea for the inclusion jersey came from the jersey manufacturer - Dynasty Apparel.

According to the report, the sportswear manufacturer came up with the idea, convinced the club it would be great to do an inclusion round, and then started selling the jumpers on their website for $160 each.

It was clever marketing, not virtuous human rights activism.

The second point Cherry-Evans made was that rugby league is already inclusive and diverse. The football team is very diverse but they all include each other because they are decent human beings.

By virtue signalling with their gay pride jersey, the club created an inclusion problem where there was none. The club, not the players, created a situation where it was compulsory to support gay pride but costly to stand for Christian beliefs.

A united dressing room was actually divided by the so-called Inclusion game.

A spectator at Thursday’s game told The Australian:

“As an LGBTQI woman, I am here to say to those Manly players I think their behaviour was really disgusting; we want to show the players and the fans that being who you are is OK; we love you and you’re safe with us.”

She had been worked into a frenzy over non-existent homophobia.

There had never been any suggestion that LGBTQI players or fans were unwelcome at Manly. And seven players upset at being forced to wear a gay pride jumper affected exactly no gay players. They weren’t refusing to play alongside gay teammates, they just didn’t want to be used as LGBTQI+ advertising billboards.

The homophobia, just like the inclusion game, was entirely manufactured.

This won’t be the learning though.

No, instead, the club will misunderstand the furore as evidence of homophobia where in fact there was none, and so double down on their LGBTQ+ fetish for next year.

So the sportswear manufacturer will make even more money.

The LGBTQ+ activists will pretend homophobia in rugby league and so demand even more attention.

The Christian players will be expected to tow the line or face even more demonisation.

And the rest of us will have to suffer through even more sex education when all we really want is to just watch the bloody football.

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THE German city of Hanover has turned off the heating and switched to cold showers in all public buildings because of the Russian gas crisis.

According to the BBC, Hanover is the first big city to turn off hot water after Russia dramatically reduced Germany's gas supply. (I wrote some weeks ago about this being a possibility. You can read it here)

What interested me about the BBC article were the reader comments.

A major German city is now without hot water in public buildings because their gas supply is reliant upon an aggressive enemy and these were typical responses …

“In the summer heat, cold shower aint so bad.”

and …

“Well, it’s midsummer in Germany & they’re having a heat wave!”

and …

“In the hot summer it is not a tragedy.”

Oh, well no harm done then!

Russia has our nation by the balls but it’s a lovely day outside.

“It just takes adapting to new times & circumstances. The last four generations don’t realize how lucky they have been up until now.”

Should we bring back candles too?

Should we scrap heated homes for dwelling in waves?

It’s just adaption, right?

“We can all, collectively do our bit. Reducing one's energy footprint even a little will help.”

Even as Russia tighten the screws, Westerners worry about climate change. It reminds me of US diplomat John Kerry lamenting that the war in Ukraine would be a problem for (insert drum roll) emission reduction targets!

“Amazing. Cold showers are healthy.”

and …

“Boosts the Metabolism and Gets your Brain Awake!”

Seriously?

The Russians are holding German energy hostage and Westerners respond with: “Amazing. Cold showers are healthy.”

We are too stupid to survive a world war.

And predictably there were a bunch of replies like these …

“It's time to transition to renewable energy.”

“They should turn most city lights off every night all year when almost all business has shut down (maybe 23:00-05:00), even without an energy crisis such lights are a ridiculous waste of energy.”

First, it was over reliance on renewable energy (more accurately called weather dependent energy) that led to Germany’s reliance on Russia in the first place. Renewable energy isn’t the solution, it’s the problem.

Second, Russia turn off the gas and Westerners respond, ‘It’s a good start but we can do more ...’

I honestly don’t think the West has the will to survive a major crisis.

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IF you want more James Macpherson goodness (I love writing about myself in the third person) you can find me this weekend talking about the Manly rainbow jersey debacle on the Six O’Clock Swill podcast with Nick Cater (The Australian) and Tim Blair (Daily Telegraph).

I’m also on Sky television’s Outsiders program Sunday morning around 9.20am.

And to cap off a massive weekend of media appearances, I’ll be guest presenting the weather forecast on SBS Sunday night at 7pm

Ok, that last one’s not true. I don’t have the legs to be a weather presenter.

Have a great weekend and thanks for doing the week with me.