Second Thoughts: London’s Metropolitan Police Service, aka Scotland Yard because its original entrance was located on Great Scotland Yard, is re-considering two rules that seem to have had consequences that could easily have been foreseen.
The first was an instruction to increase the percentage of rape cases that end in convictions.The second was not to challenge the veracity of any accuser. This combination persuaded prosecutors that they had no need to seek or turn over any evidence that might help the defense.
As a young man was about to be sentenced to 20 years in jail, a brave defense attorney pried from prosecutors the emails they had obtained from the accuser’s cell phone. These contained messages in which, after the date on which she claimed she was raped, she said she loved having sex with the accused, and wanted to repeat the act, and that she often fantasized that she had been raped. Instead of passing sentence, the judge tossed the conviction. An investigation of recent rape convictions is underway, and a few have already been reversed, including one of a man who had claimed sex was consensual and has already served four years in prison.
Dance: It seems that the artistic director of the English National Ballet is worried. “In a normal ballet class, there is one boy for every twenty girls, so the boy is always right because the teacher wants to encourage him since they want him to stay. We encourage male self-esteem and men to take chances,” she continued, “but we don’t do that with women.” I suppose that’s a problem that can be eliminated by less diversity in the classes.
Churches: The chancellor of the Diocese of Manchester ruled that St. Thomas Werneth can remove its pews in order to allow it to cater to what the Daily Telegraph calls “the wider community,” which the chancellor noted is “broadly Muslim.”
The church is the only one in a parish which is described as “88 percent non-white British.” The removal of the pews would “enable the community to share its heritage,” said the chancellor. The Victorian society worries that this might be “damaging” to the architecturally listed 19th Century structure. If there were other reasons to object to this change, perhaps of a religious nature, they are not reported.
Lois Lerner is alive and well and living in Britain: The British tax authorities have ruled that the millions contributed by investment banks in support of the campaign to persuade voters to remain in the European Union cannot be taxed—but the millions donated by individual entrepreneurs to the Leave, or Brexit, campaign are subject to taxes as these are charitable deductions that might have been made to avoid inheritance tax.
The larger-of-waist who tend to waste not: A study of 330,000 Britons has led to an interesting hypothesis from the study team. Obese people, reports the Times, “are more likely to be at peace with themselves” while “being skinnier leads to worry and neuroticism.” Dasha Nicholls, head of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ eating disorder faculty is not surprised. He thinks it possible that “nutritionally compromised” people have trouble reining in their emotions, and thus worry a lot. Another (unnamed) expert suggests that people who tend to fret could have faster metabolisms than their larger brethren. The Times warns that the results “need to be confirmed in a larger group.”
Nukes: The new nuclear plant being built by the French and Chinese to serve British consumers was supposed to, its sponsors claimed, provide the energy to cook Christmas turkeys by 2015. There has been a bit of slippage in the turn-on date, not to mention cost overruns. Completion is now scheduled for 2027. It seems that this technology is not quite ready to fight climate change, as then-Prime Minister Tony Blair promised it would.
