May there always be an England

From the Guardian:

Do try not to get your penis stuck in a toaster. A message from the fire brigade

It sounds barmy doesn’t it, the London Fire Brigade telling people about men putting their genitals where they shouldn’t? But the fact of the matter is people put body parts in strange places all the time, get stuck, and then call us out to release them. We’re not just talking one or two; our crews have been called out to over 1,300 “unusual” incidents since 2010 – that’s more than one a day.

The Sunday cat proposes soup kitchens for homeless bears

Misogynistic trolls de-anonymized

Today in news of the weird, I’m linking to a Daily Mail story for reasons other than complaining about it. The identity of several of the men who used Twitter to send (in some cases horrifically) misogynistic abuse to female campaigners and members of parliament has been revealed. The onslaught of abuse centered around the fact that these women wanted to put Jane Austen’s face on some money, and therefore feminism is taking over the world and men everywhere are under threat.

Anyway, the really striking thing about the identity revelations is the variety of men who engage in this sort of behavior. Trolls – they come from everywhere. But the end up under bridges and we want them to stay there. So please don’t feed them.

The Law and UKBA stop and search

As many readers will know, the UK Border Agency and police have been doing spot immigration checks at tube stations in areas of London with lots of brown people. This is on the back of the happening commonly known as ‘racist van’ when a van bearing the slogan ‘illegal immigrants, go home’ (just a whisker away from the standard far right entreaty to all brown folks) was driven around the streets of our capital. Unsurprisingly, the good people of Britain – many of them, at any rate – have not been too impressed with these actions. Even Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP, is alleged to have described the spot checks as ‘un-British’ – which is saying something. Now it transpires that the spot checks are of dubious legality. Here’s a handy guide to your rights:

Read more from the Independent.

Colin McGinn and Women in Philosophy, in the NYT

Here.

UPDATE: I will not be able to moderate this post properly because I am travelling. I now regret opening it for comments. With apologies, I am closing the post.