Bellend Sebastian

Yeah, I think we have to be a bit careful here. I looked this up and the way it's been reported isn't massively helpful, in that it's pretty easy to read it as the kid didn't stand trial because he's got ADHD, when they've actually said that's one of a range of unnamed conditions they'd got. My missus used to do a lot of work around cognitive and capacity assessments and though you cannot read that much from how the story was reported, it's quite possible that the ADHD didn't have much to do with the decision (people with ADHD are overrepresented in the prison population so that's definitely not a reason to not prosecute in itself). It's all about capacity at the end of the day - the media over simplifies things and makes it appear to the reader that there are 'get out of jail free' cards where having a condition (often erroneously lumped into a broad brush 'mental health' category) means you can get away with anything, and it's simply not the case. There's any number of things that might be taken into account in determining whether someone has capacity to stand trial, but it boils down to do they have capacity or not? It's interesting and probably significant that in the report I read "three doctors" had agreed on whatever assessment had been made - that's pretty thorough, this isn't being done on the view of some overly idealistic hippy support worker or something (apologies to any support workers reading) and is not a decision that would be taken lightly. Another thing that's massively unhelpful about the reporting is - and this becomes more and more of an issue as such stories get shorter and shorter (is that because of ever reducing attention spans or because journalism and actual reporting has been hollowed out to the extent there isn't anyone to actually write them anymore?) is again what isn't reported. The story reads as if they weren't fit to stand trial and that's that, end of story, everybody walks away when that probably isn't the case. There are inpatient mental health units and secure hospitals throughout the country full of folk deemed to be a danger to themselves or others, some of whom will have convictions but a lot of whom will not. I've not a clue what happened after the trial decision but the idea that you've got someone that will start a fire in a building with people in it AND has been deemed not fit to stand trial is not a combination where the system says 'nothing to see here, carry on' - just because they've not gone down the criminal justice path doesn't mean they are not still in the system

That's the one where Elon Musk called the British diver a paedo because he disrespected his shit miniature submarine. I'd have countered by asking why he's got a submarine for transporting children but hey not everyone has this gift

Two hours or so of pretty heavy rain in west Leicester in the night. Struggling to remember a storm with so much lightning but the volume and time between the strikes and the thunder made me think the worst of it was to the south so some folk were really getting it

It's amazing isn't it? I know someone that used to do cave diving as a hobby and I always wondered what you would get out of it. There was an interview with a cave diver in the aftermath of those Italians dying in the Maldives (?) recently and everything he said about it, in terms of what it's like, what you need to be able to do and how careful you need to be made it sound completely shit

So how did it go?

How typical of Andy Burnham to remain silent about what he would or would not do to popular TV celebrity Carol Vorderman's back door, whereas his main rival in the Makerfield by election, Reform candidate Robert 'he's only saying what we're all thinking' Kenyon has been very clear on this hot doorstep issue

My wife completely gets this but I used to work with a bloke that would always come back from going for a walk on a hot day with a proper sweat on and EVERY TIME open the window we'd kept shut all morning to let a lovely blast of hot air into the office and say 'oh, that's better'

I think it's a variation on the 'don't tell me what to do' stance which a lot of folk like to take in all sorts of situations including many where they are not being told what to do. 'Don't warn me of risks with a view to helping keep my family and I safe and avoiding foreseeable harm!' doesn't have the same ring does it?

It's horrible, and I think you'll always get an element of 'it'll never happen to me' on anything like this. I was annoyed the other day as there was something on FB about the police warning about these very dangers and the comments were littered with stuff like 'why aren't you catching criminals', 'let kids be kids' and 'I used to jump off a 50ft cliff into 6 inches of water and it never did me any harm' and all that total bollocks, and I imagine if you live in a household where that's the sort of thing that gets said then the risk goes up quite a bit

I saw someone out running at about 11.30 this morning and it didn't look like a lot of fun. I ran in similar heat years ago and the lesson learned from that was that you can re-hydrate all you like but if you don't put those electrolytes back you're going to feel like death, would NOT recommend

My brother has been helping his son and daughter in law move out of their flat and into his gaff. Got a van and did it all themselves, of all the days to pick

Lumbered round a 5K in 29 minutes early doors. Wasn't even that warm but so different to weather of late, really draining

There's a chance of seeing them kicking off when security prevent them going into the Highcross though, one of nature's spectacles

It's very hard to tell who's actually a real person on there these days but wherever this has been posted on Facebook there are hundreds and sometimes thousands of replies that are just folk saying 'no'. No trace of any begrudging acknowledgement of progress on the issue, nothing like that. It does little to undermine my completely unscientific theory that people don't really want it sorting out because if it was you couldn't moan about it anymore

Reform's candidate for the Makerfield by-election's X account has been mysteriously suspended (might be back up now, I'm not on there anymore). The chatter was initially that he'd done/said something pretty outrageous to have fallen foul of their rules, but some talk now suggesting the account being suspended is actually in Reform's interests, given what might have been on there. The curious folk at Byline Times have gone digging into the archive and whilst a few of you will probably say, what's wrong with that, I think it's fair to describe his views as perhaps a little niche: https://bylinetimes.com/2026/05/20/reading-the-riot-act-reform-uks-makerfield-by-election-candidate-during-the-summer-of-trouble/?utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=jetpack_social