Mr Bean Britain

UK News Report #2

Welcome to the UK News Report, a round-up of wacky stories from everyone’s favourite anarcho-tyranny. The last one was quite popular, so I will produce these as a regular exercise in demoralisation.

The quintessential UK news story mixes the sinister and comical. As I put it last time: the ‘Yookay’ has elements of authoritarian menace with total farce and incompetence, a slapstick comedy in which WPCs turn up at your house to arrest you over Facebook posts while your son sits in a classroom next to a 30-year-old Iranian man pretending to be a child asylum seeker. All the internet mockery of Britain in the past few years focusses on the theme of a bizarrely mismanaged country, run by people whose priorities are totally upside down.

In her recent Wall St Journal column, Louise Perry wrote about what she described as ‘Mr Bean Authoritarianism… after the comic character played by Rowan Atkinson, one of Britain’s most successful comedy exports. Mr. Bean is childish and incompetent. He constantly gets things wrong. He can’t understand the most basic facts about everyday life, which results in various slapstick disasters. The British government frequently manifests Mr. Bean-style incompetence but without his genial manner.’ She wrote:

“Pathways” isn’t the first example of government messaging that treats the British public like naughty children. In 2023, Police Scotland came up with another, much-mocked cartoon character called “the hate monster.” “Before ye know it, ye’ve committed a hate crime,” announced the voice-over, with an effect that was simultaneously sinister and risible. “You are constantly on the brink of criminalization,” the ad implicitly told us. “Now look at this silly cartoon.”

Incompetence and authoritarianism are often bedfellows. Governments that frequently make mistakes will feel compelled to hide those mistakes, for fear of the public’s response.

They’re not sending their best

Louise cited the case of Olabode Shoniregun, an asylum seeker from… the United States of America. As the Telegraph reports:

‘A US asylum seeker has been living in Britain with free accommodation and benefits for more than a year in the first case of its kind. The man, from Las Vegas, fled to the UK claiming he was being persecuted because he is black, Jewish and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – the Mormon Church.

‘He was put up in migrant hotels before his claim was rejected last summer. However, he has not been removed from the UK, and subsequently he was allowed to claim thousands of pounds in accommodation, food and state support.

He was handed benefits only weeks after being ordered to leave the country, with no right of appeal, with a council worker telling him: “Now that you’ve got your benefits, you are like a British national.”

Last November, he was thrown out of his social housing after behaving aggressively towards staff. Even though the police were called, he was not referred to Border Force as an illegal immigrant.

His case attracted media attention because he posted about his life on Instagram.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Mr Shoniregun said: “The taxpayers are paying for me to be here? I didn’t know that and I want to say thank you. I’m grateful for that.”’

I’d like to say ‘you’re welcome’, but it would clearly just be classic British dissembling.

As readers may know, I’m sceptical of the idea that the Trump terror will lead to an exodus of talent to Europe and other western countries. I know they’ve lost Jason Stanley, which must be a huge blow, but I don’t think that compares to the flight of an estimated 50,000 professionals from Germany in 1933. Now they’re doing without Mr Shoniregun. In the words of one American politician, they’re not sending their best.

Two tier justice latest

Lucy Connolly’s trial was fast tracked by Attorney General Lord Hermer, according to the Telegraph (again - I’m just a natural Telegraph reader). As the paper reports:

‘The childminder’s case was treated as an “emergency charging decision”, under which specialist counter-terrorism prosecutors secured consent for her prosecution from Lord Hermer’s office within 12 hours of asking for it on a Friday night. The details have been revealed in Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) documents obtained by Connolly through a subject access request, under which individuals can obtain personal data and information held on them by organisations.

‘The documents reveal the behind-the-scenes actions of police, prosecutors and the Attorney General. Officials say her charge under the Public Order Act of 1986 required Lord Hermer’s consent by law, and the speed was stipulated under a national directive to deal with cases quickly to deter further disorder after rioting in the wake of the Southport killings of three girls. However, the disclosure has sparked fresh claims that she was a “political prisoner” who was “scapegoated” by the Government.

It’s obvious why people saw her as a political prisoner, and why the ‘two-tier’ label stuck. Lord Hermer’s old friend and comrade, Nick Lowles of Hope Not Hate, tweeted inflammatory misinformation about a Muslim woman being attacked with acid during the height of the disorder. Despite this being a far more irresponsible and dangerous tweet than Connolly’s, Lowles escaped punishment.

On the subject, Bob Vylan will not be charged for his chants at Glastonbury. I don’t think he should be, just as I don’t think Kneecap should have been, but it’s funny how it all works.

Take a hike

‘The British countryside will be made into a less “white environment” under nationwide diversity plans. Officials in rural areas, including the Chilterns and the Cotswolds, have pledged to attract more minorities under plans drawn up by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra). The plans follow Defra-commissioned reports that claimed the countryside would become “irrelevant” in a multicultural society, as it was a “white environment” principally enjoyed by the “white middle class”.

‘More diverse staff will be recruited, marketing material will be produced featuring people visibly from ethnic minorities, and written in “community languages”.’

Isn’t English a ‘community language’? I’ve written about the War on the Countryside before; the powers-that-be are obsessed with getting Muslims to hike, for some reason. Just recently, a woman received an MBE for walking up hills while wearing a hijab. It all seems so counter-productive, increasing a sense of paranoia among everyone, when no one is stopping anyone from taking a walk in the countryside, and no one is going to give you a hard time. As Alexandra Wilson explains, some of this is downstream of the incentive systems within academia.

The jury’s still out on the jury system

A jury has cleared six members of Palestine Action of aggravated burglary after a break-in at an arms manufacturer, during which a female police officer had her spine broken with a sledgehammer. I’m not sure how much I can say, as they may face retrial, except that we really need to reconsider how jury service functions. Until 1974, it was restricted to taxpayers; now anyone can be called, including people with a poor grasp of English. There are endless horror stories.

It was depressing to see how many political figures cheered the verdict, especially those who have been victims of political violence themselves. I think people fail to appreciate how bad things get when politically motivated violence isn’t punished; the fact that people believe that what they’re doing is right makes it more necessary to punish than with ‘ordinary decent criminals’.

It’s amusing that the target of the break-in, Elbit Systems in Gloucestershire, is on Google Reviews, and has an average of 1.8. I’ll make sure to strike that off my list of sites next time I’m in the area.

Second city blues

In the last report I mentioned the West Midlands Police, in charge of Britain’s crisis-ridden second city Birmingham. One of the surprising things about the case was that a controversial mosques cited in the story over Israeli fans being banned from Villa Park actually had a say in choosing the city’s police chief.

Now we see an officer from the West Midlands Police speaking from a lectern which proclaims: ‘There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God’ Another video has the West Midlands Police promoting religious fasting. One officer said they do it to ‘show solidarity with my Muslim brothers and sisters all across the world’. This would be a nice, kind gesture to a religious minority which constituted 2 per cent of your city; in one where they account for 30 per cent, and growing, it is incredibly unwise.

In other Brum news, among the people standing for election to council is Shahid Butt, ‘who was jailed for five years in 1999 for conspiring to bomb the British consulate, an Anglican church and a hotel in Yemen.’ He says he’s standing to ‘push back against the far-right’.

(Future) Prisoners in our own schools

The Daily Sceptic reported late last year how last year ‘a Channel 4 News report on violence in our schools revealed that there were 150 stabbings and other injurious knife crime incidents across England and Wales last year.’ On top of this were 20,000 violent crimes recorded in schools by police forces in 2024.

It wasn’t until my own children went to secondary school that I realised London boroughs like ours (Haringey) routinely have police officers stationed in school. This, like the fact that most schools now resemble Category C prisons, was an eye-opener.

The Sceptic reports that between 2013 and 2023, ‘5,000 violent injuries were inflicted upon teachers by their pupils. 1,011 suffered fractures, 126 lost consciousness, 16 entirely or partially lost their sight, and four suffered amputations.

‘According to the most recent Behaviour in Schools survey of 5,800 teachers, conducted by the NASUWT teachers’ union, in the last year 20% of teachers have been hit or punched by their pupils, 38% have been shoved or barged, 25% have experienced pupil violence at least once each term and 81% of teachers say that pupil behaviour has deteriorated.’

This is why we need reverse grammar schools, where unteachable and violent pupils are separated from the rest. No child, and no teacher, should have to feel unsafe at school, and one day we’ll find it as absurd as reading about pre-Arnold public schools where teenage aristocrats were allowed rifles.

Instead, the government is doing the opposite and making it harder for schools to suspend dangerous and violent pupils. The biggest losers from this system, in my experience, are the kids from poorer backgrounds who, while not bad themselves, are drawn into destructive peer groups who end up wrecking their lives. Peer influence is absolutely central to adolescent life.

Incidentally, and in case I’m getting a bit depressing, we should bear in mind that, while some quality of life crimes are certainly getting worse, the overall trend is that serious violent crime is down, and homicides in particular are plunging. Britain is safe, and much of this, I think, is due to mobile phones, which have helped create a surveillance state: it’s extremely hard to get away with murder, but lesser crimes are on the rise in part because police resources are taken up by dealing with the chaotic lives of the bottom rung of society.

Official secrecy

One of the characteristics of the UK state, and which differentiates it from the US, is a tendency towards secrecy. I think it’s in the English character, which is why we basically invented spying, and are very good at it, give or take the odd communist traitor. This was most egregiously displayed by the government’s secret plan to airlift huge numbers of Afghans into the country, without telling the public, and it has become a regular feature of the criminal justice system.

Just last month it was revealed that a ‘reporting restriction was put in place at Nottingham Crown Court in September last year, preventing any mention of the defendant’s immigration status’. The man in question was from Pakistan and the authorities were worried about the risk of disorder, but he was unmasked by local Reform MP Lee Anderson.

This is the second time in a month where a British court has deliberately withheld the nationality of a rapist: ‘Last May in Leamington Spa, a girl was abducted and raped by two Afghan asylum seekers who had arrived by small boat just months before. Initially, Warwickshire Police described the rapists as “two 17-year-old boys from Leamington”, while referring to their 15-year-old victim as a “young woman:. It was not until the case went to sentencing in December that their backgrounds could be reported, after a legal challenge by the Daily Mail was granted. Meanwhile, the “horrific footage” played at the trial has still not seen the light of day, with their barrister saying: “I have no doubt that if the general public were exposed to that, we would have disorder on our hands.”’

I don’t think the press habit of referring to foreign offenders as ‘Newcastle man’ or ‘Burnley man’ really helps the situation. All the details are immediately shared on social media anyway; it’s not the 90s any more.

Elsewhere

The NHS has been offering advice about the benefits of cousin marriage, something I wouldn’t necessarily recommend.

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A woman has pulled out of an ultramarathon after she was bombarded with threats over fundraising for Afghan women and girls.

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More than 700,000 university graduates are claiming benefits because they’re too sick to work. The amount we spend on anxiety conditions – this is a useful chart by the Daily Mail. Paying young people to rot away during their best years is not kind, it’s callous – it’s the state acting as enabler. The problem is made worse, no doubt, by the outrageously unjust student loan repayment system.

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Another one of those ‘they’re stopping what? That was happening?’ stories: Asylum seekers will no longer get free taxis to medical appointments.

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The UK is now a world outlier for abortion rates- another characteristic of Late Soviet Britain. Alcohol-related deaths are another signal, although it’s hard to tell whether this is a lockdown-related issue that might return to the norm (some lockdowns effects have, some haven’t.)

Finally, Shakespeare was a black woman. You might disagree, you might have evidence to the contrary etc etc.

It’s notable that in her essay feminist historian Irene Coslet argued that ‘to build an equal society, it is critical to reclaim Subaltern identities from history’. I’m not sure that the aim of history should be ‘to build an equal society’, and it’s not ideal when British history is used as arena for competing nationalisms, which leads those in power to spread obviously untrue narratives. The Black Bard is a funny twist, since traditional Shakespeare truthers, who claim that the real author was the Earl of Oxford, are obviously motivated by class identity, unable to comprehend that the son of a mere glover could have been such a genius. Overall, though, I find these arguments fun; they enhance the gaiety of the nation. Shakespeare’s genius was such that people will always want to read new theories about him.

A few years back I suggested that the questions in the Life in the UK Test, which are dreary and functional, be replaced with a quiz about Shakespeare. I still think this is a good idea.