Owen Gibbs

The police say an 18 year old man has been arrested 🙏

hilarious phishing email I just got. 10/10 execution

@BBCWorld She wanted to be arrested and detained. That's why she went.

Irish leaders condemn Israel's detention of president's sister bbc.in/49R6Lhd

I knew what I was getting into when I entered this debate and compared to what others have suffered, I've got off lightly. Even so, it continues to astound that Kemi Badenoch remains the only UK political leader offering unequivocal solidarity to women defending their rights.

Let me lay out the unpleasant arithmetic of the replacement rate, and why a modern society finds it so hard to reach. A population of 100 women in an advanced economy needs 210 children to replace itself. Why? Absent sex-selective practices, roughly 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. Evolution overshoots male births because boys are more prone to early death from accidents and disease. Therefore, of 210 children, about 108 are boys and 102 are girls. Not all girls reach the midpoint of their fertile age: accidents, suicide, homicide, and illness take some. In an advanced economy, about 98% of them survive, leaving 100 women to replace the original 100. Now consider the distribution of children per woman. Imagine 15 women have no children. Five do so by choice, for various reasons (professional, affective, religious). Ten face unfixable fertility problems, theirs or their partner’s. The 10% figure is conservative: the medical literature points to around 13%, and that does not even count male fertility problems. Of the remaining 85, 10 have one child, 60 have two, 10 have three, and 5 have four. I am stopping at four to keep the post concise; very few women in younger cohorts have five or more children, but I could adapt the example to account for them. Hence, the 100 women in this population have 180 children, for a completed fertility rate of 1.8. Interestingly, this is roughly the rate we saw in many advanced economies until the early 1990s, and in the U.S. until around 2008. But we are still 30 children short of replacement! Voluntary childlessness is only 5%. Three-quarters of women have two or more children. Look around: most of your friends will have two, plenty will have three or four. And yet, we are well below replacement. You would not look at this population and call it selfish (is having two kids hedonistic?) or accuse it of losing family values (only 5% of women are choosing voluntarily not to have children). The point is simpler. To reach 210 births, you need a substantial share of women to have three or more children. Two as the “normal” pattern will not get you there. And modern society makes three or more a costly proposition for most families. Of course, current fertility rates in most advanced economies are well below 1.8. But my point is that, under present social arrangements, we should not expect 2.1, even if (to humor last weekend’s debate) we banned smartphones and TikTok. We need many, many more families with three or four children. More pointedly, there is no self-regulating mechanism that pushes a society back to 2.1. The market-clearing analogy many economists use is flawed; scarcity feedback does not work the same way. (Another post on this another day.) And, as I often read, the claim that “nature” somehow regulates current overpopulation is just childish mumbo jumbo. So yes, the arithmetic of replacement rate is unpleasant.

It's clear No.10 knows if they publish the Mandelson files before Starmer formally steps down then they will be the trigger that forces him out. Which will again destroy his preferred "go on my own terms" framing.

Appalling things happen almost every day in Britain that he doesn’t so much as mention. Something happens in California that lets him pander to a domestic voter bloc, and the Very Serious International Statesman weighs in.

I’ve said a lot about Pep Guardiola in the past 24 hours and this thread will be a bookend. First and foremost he’s been a genius coach who, inspired by Cryuff, has revolutionised football at all levels in the past two decades. 1/n

I lived in an upscale apartment complex in Lagos, and several of the residents had council flats in the UK which they were subletting. They admitted that they couldn’t believe they were able to get away with it, and asked if Brits were retarded.

@molcranenewman @NYCMayorsOffice Vile communist trash.

This is how you justify murder. and its always by the same type of person.

Calling everyone you disagree with “far right” has destroyed the meaning of the term. I’m sick of seeing serious labels abused to smear ordinary people with legitimate concerns. In 2015, before Brexit, over 50% of the country was concerned about immigration. Does that make half the country “far right”? Throwing these labels around is reckless, dishonest, and damaging to public debate.

@Keir_Starmer Two Tier Keir.

I condemn the deadly attack on a mosque in San Diego. My thoughts are with those affected. I know many Muslims in the UK will be shaken by this, worried about their safety when going about their lives and attending mosque, and what it says about the times we’re living in. I understand those fears. Violence like this does not happen in a vacuum. It grows in an environment where division and anti-Muslim hostility are normalised. That is intolerable. We must all come together against it.

The Intelligence and Security Committee is taking the extraordinary step of tabling a UQ in the Commons today amid concerns over redactions to the Lord Mandelson files The ISC laid out serious concerns about the way the government has been conducting itself on Friday, effectively accusing it of censorship and putting national security at risk It hasn't had a response - so is going directly to the Commons to try to force the government's hand. Jeremy Wright, the former AG, is expected to lead on the debate for the debate for the ISC when/ if it is granted These are the issues at stake: *** The ISC says that it is applying the 'personal information' criteria 'far too broadly' and without any scrutiny. 'We note that no body has been commissioned to review these redactions and assure Parliament they are within the spirit of the Humble Address' *** It also accuses the Cabinet Office of withholding documents, including Mandelson's vetting file. While the ISC does not wish to see the vetting file - indeed it privately accepts that doing so would undermine the vetting system - it says the Government needs to return to Parliament and seek its agreement for withholding documents *** The ISC says that the level of government business conducted on WhatsApp is 'extraordinary'. 'Lengthy Whatsapp conversations between senior officials and ministers appear now to be the format by which Government policy is formulated' *** It says government departments - the FCDO in particular - are failing to keep proper records - agendas, minutes and records of conversations. 'This is unacceptable in government' *** Sensitive exchanges are being conducted on 'lower level' security systems, putting the UK's national security at risk. The ISC says it is 'appalling'

Up soon in Oz is this travesty, in which a breastfeeding expert is being sued by Queensland Human Rights Commission on behalf of a trans-claiming chap who fathered a child he wished to breastfeed. Jasmine wrote it was "experimental" & a "dangerous fetish". vision.org.au/read/news/aust…

Sometimes someone says something so intensely French that you need to smoke a cigarette

It’s set in a men’s prison…….

“The Jews are going to be beheaded one by one, you dirty Jews. Free Palestine” And throws up a Nazi salute. This is the Free Palestine movement. This is Sadiq Khan’s London. This is Starmer’s Britain.

Today is Day 7 of the #OpenSchoolDoor one-month campaign for Afghan women and girls. 🚨😡It is deeply disturbing to read this: The Taliban has officially legalized child marriage under a new family law decree that sets rules for marriages involving minors — treating girls as property that can be exchanged. It also introduces specific rules regarding “virgin girls,” according to reports from Afghan media outlets.