Althouse

You might think this is not possible. I hit the Grok icon and asked if this really is what it appears to be and was told yes:

What the HELL have I just watched?!

Two police officers visit a family home to seize a child's phone for *viewing a social media post*.

If she doesn't comply, they threaten to 'escalate'.

This is terrifying.
The police are out of control.pic.twitter.com/Tn83kV8zIn

— Lee Harris (@addicted2newz) September 21, 2025

ADDED: There's some discussion in the comments about the video being edited in a possibly deceptive way. I confronted Grok, and got this response.

"... they will put you in prison and will try to kill you. The Biden administration should not issue assurances. They should drop this shameful case that should never have been brought."

"India Willoughby, 58, reported having 'contacted Northumbria Constabulary' over a series of X posts Sunday by the outspoken author. Rowling, also 58, called Willoughby 'just a man reveling in his misogynistic performance of what he thinks "woman" means: narcissistic, shallow and exhibitionist.'... 'I’m legally a woman, she knows I’m a woman, and she calls me a man. It’s a protected characteristic and that is a breach of both the Equalities Act and the Gender Recognition Act...' Willoughby wrote."

The New York Post reports.

"... I am now political every time I choose where to pee. Less prosaically, the judiciary by continuing to let me be a judge is now at risk of being political.”

From "UK’s only trans judge quits over risk of ‘politicising the judiciary'/Victoria McCloud said she had become a target and was forced to be political every time she chose ‘where to pee'" (London Times).

"The trio broke into the Cheltenham Tweed Company shop in the spa town’s promenade on January 9 and drilled their way through the dividing wall in the basement to get into the adjacent antiques and jewellery shop. Tim Burrows, for Newman said: 'They were all flummoxed by the safe. It was while they were trying to gain entry into the safe that the alarm went off.' Judge Ian Lawrie, QC, interjected: “They behaved like three buffoons with utter incompetence in carrying out this burglary.... Judge Lawrie told Rabjohns: 'You were a complete idiot to get involved in this burglary. You need to take greater care who you mix with in future.'"

That's from England, obviously. Lots of clues, and I didn't even include the part about the "spanner" in the "boot." Notice the spelling "jewellery." In America, we laugh at people who speak as if "jewelry" were spelled "jewellery."

From "‘Buffoon’ burglars sentenced for botched jewellery heist" (The London Times).

It's one thing to get caught committing a crime, quite another to have the judges all mocking you for how stupid you were to get caught. 

Running from a tweed shop covered in brick dust! 

Judge Lawrie: "I don’t think the three men visiting the clothing shop were really interested in adding tweed to their wardrobe when they went on a scouting mission in December."

 Reports the London Times.

The Camelot Castle Hotel in Tintagel, Cornwall, may be themed on Arthurian legends but the flag flown over its tower last year stood for a more modern myth.... Guests at the hotel, which displays a Q flag, said that the owner left conspiracy theory material in their bedrooms.... 

Since Mr Mappin, heir to the Mappin and Webb jewellery business, which holds a Royal Warrant, hoisted a Q flag above the battlements of Camelot Castle Hotel last January he has hosted a regular video broadcast called Camelot TV. 

In a coded message on Wednesday to his 20,000 subscribers, he likened QAnon to an oak tree. “If the roots are strong, all will be well in the spring . . . 2021 is all about the rebirth of our civilisation,” he said. 

"... a judge has ruled. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser highlighted the intense restrictions and isolated conditions he would be likely to face in the US, saying they mean extradition would be 'oppressive.'... [S]ection 91 of the Extradition Action 2003.... states that when 'the physical or mental condition of the person is such that it would be unjust or oppressive to extradite him, the judge must order the person’s discharge.' The court heard that Assange has been held at HMP Belmarsh in London since April 2019, and has been under a care plan for prisoners at risk of suicide or self-harm for the duration of his imprisonment. Medical notes record numerous occasions of him telling a prison psychologist and other medical staff that he has suicidal or self-harming thoughts, felt despairing or hopeless and had plans to end his life, the judge said.... District Judge Baraitser said she had accepted experts’ findings that Assange suffers from a recurrent depressive disorder, which is sometimes accompanied by psychotic features. She said she also accepted the opinion that Assange suffers from autism spectrum disorder, 'albeit high-functioning,' and Asperger’s syndrome...."

"... to become the first Western country to allow mass inoculations.... Britain beating the United States to authorization — on a vaccine codeveloped by the American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, no less — may intensify pressure on U.S. regulators, who are already under fire from the White House for not moving faster to get doses to people. And it has stirred up a global debate about how to weigh the desperate need for a vaccine with the imperative of assuring people that it is safe. 'Help is on its way with this vaccine — and we can now say that with certainty, rather than with all the caveats,' the British health secretary, Matt Hancock, said on Wednesday, as the government exulted in the authorization."

I read Craig Brown's "Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret" — as I noted here — so the minute I see that he's got a new book, "150 Glimpses of the Beatles," I put it in my Kindle. Nothing more is needed to get me. It's Craig Brown! And The Beatles.

"Teachers from his West London school had given him grades — three A’s and one B — that were strong enough to secure him a spot at his first choice of university next month. But after the British government used a computer-generated score to replace exams that were canceled because of the coronavirus, all his grades fell and the college revoked his admission. Mr. Sharpe-Roe, along with thousands of other students and parents, had received a crude lesson in what can go wrong when a government relies on an algorithm to make important decisions affecting the public.... Nearly 40 percent of students in England saw their grades reduced after the government re-evaluated the exams, known as A-levels, with the software model. It included in its calculations a school’s past performance on the tests and a student’s earlier results on 'mock' exams."

From "British Grading Debacle Shows Pitfalls of Automating Government/The uproar over an algorithm that lowered the grades of 40 percent of students is a sign of battles to come regarding the use of technology in public services" (NYT).

Said a former senior courtier, talking about Meghan Markle and quoted in "The British Monarchy Is a Game. Harry and Meghan Didn’t Want to Play" (NYT). The article is by British reporter Tanya Gold, who says:

The royal family is a sacrifice at the center of Britain’s national life, fuel for the creation of a national soul because we can’t think of anything better. Sometimes it works. Often — and increasingly — it doesn’t. We dress them up in coronets. We play with them like toys. It has nothing to do with admiration or love. They submit to us, not we to them.

And if they are to survive this monstrous game? They do what is required.... They allow the nation to project what it wants on them. The Sussexes did not understand this. Harry confused sacrifice with service. Meghan confused it with fame.

I always thought Harry chose a woman, however subconsciously, who would free him... “‘Fundamentally, Harry wanted out,’ a source close to the couple said. ‘Deep down, he was always struggling within that world. She’s opened the door for him on that.’”

Wrote Peter Noone ("Herman"), quoted in "Wayne Fontana, British singer who topped US charts with Game of Love, dies aged 74" (The Guardian).

Born Glyn Geoffrey Ellis in the Levenshulme area of Manchester, Fontana took his stage name from the Elvis Presley drummer DJ Fontana. Backed by his band, the Mindbenders, he released his debut single in 1963 and further singles grew ever more successful: Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um reached No 5 in the UK in 1964, with The Game of Love reaching No 2 the following year and going on to become his signature song....

He was arrested on an arson charge in 2005 after setting fire to a car owned by a bailiff who had come to his house for an unpaid congestion charge fine, and who was inside the car as it was set alight. He faced a possible 14 years in prison, though was eventually sentenced to 11 months, which had already been served.

A "congestion charge" is a fee you have to pay to drive your car in Central London: "The charge helps to not only reduce high traffic flow in the city streets, but also reduces air and noise pollution in the central London area and raises investment funds for London's transport system."

I was wondering why the obituary didn't mention my favorite Mindbenders song, "A Groovy Kind of Love." Answer: Wayne Fontana had left the group by this point, 1965, and the lead guitarist Eric Stewart became the vocalist.

I've never much liked "The Game of Love" and to me "Um Um Um Um Um Um" is a Major Lance song. I didn't even know The Mindbenders had a version of it. In the UK, I guess.

I only got started writing this post because I love "A Groovy Kind of Love":



And here's the 1988 Phil Collins (which I include because I know people are talking about Phil Collins this week):

"I have a perfect record step-wise, and am not about to break it for a raging pandemic. I can’t! If I’m out after midnight when the streets are deserted, I fail to see how I’m hurting anyone. It’s definitely creepy though, the emptiness. If I were driving through the city, looking for someone to rob, I’d definitely choose myself — who wouldn’t? I’m small. I’m alone. I’m maybe fast for a 63-year-old but that’s not saying much. A loris in a full body cast is fast for a 63-year-old. That’s why I decided a few weeks back to leave my wallet at home, and just take a twenty. That way I can be robbed, but not of my hard-to-replace identity card with a picture of a weary tortoise on it."

From "I sneak outside to a New York in which I am the only person" by David Sedaris in the London Times. When did David Sedaris move to New York City? Last I looked, he was somewhere in England.

Anyway, I wanted to read this so much that I subscribed to the London Times — just for this one thing. Now, I'm exploring the London Times, and it's going to be one of my regular stops.

Get ready to see this blog highlighting things like "guzzling biccies as we gawp at teddies." What does it mean??

During this time of unprecedented national angst, Britons are seeking comfort in a television show about broken teddy bears....

As for "biccies" — I guessed what that might mean, and then I looked it up, and I was right: cookies!

[I]t now appears socially acceptable for “wine o’clock” — or cocktail hour — to begin whenever the television is switched on.

Noted.

Said Donovan, about performing in a club in Hamburg in 1965, quoted in "Donovan: 'Can you believe the Beatles and I were paying 96% tax?'" (The Guardian).

“I realised television was for me; I picked it up very quickly. Everything – jazz, blues, folk, pop music, literature, feminism, ecology – I just absorbed it like a sponge, and I was prepared, because I had had poetry of noble thought read to me as a child.”...

He... got his first TV performance before he had even released a single, and slips into the third person, awestruck. “And suddenly, he connected with millions of people. How did he do that? And the cameraman loved it, and the directors loved it, and the producers loved it. How did I learn it so early? Because, what I’m about to sing to you, you already know.” The Gaelic singer-songwriter tradition is actually four: “poetry, music, theatre and radical thought”....

"It was a mundane vigil of switching lights on and off over the plants at set times and watering them every few hours. But it was also punctuated by violence. When a plant failed, Ba was starved and kicked by a Chinese boss.... Ba never received any payment for his work, and wasn't told he was earning to pay off his fare to the UK. He was a slave.... He finally escaped by smashing an upstairs window, and jumping to the ground.... 'I didn't even know I was in England.' The train line, predictably, led him to a train station - and to what was for him a very happy meeting with British Transport Police. 'It had been a long time since anyone had been nice to me,' he says. Ba has now settled into British life. He recently won a prize at college for his grades, and celebrated his first Christmas. He'd never unwrapped a present before. The translator who met Ba when he was taken into police custody says the transformation is remarkable.... Ba doesn't know whether he'll be allowed to stay in the UK. His last meeting at the Home Office to discuss his application for asylum didn't go well. The official tried to persuade him that if he returned to Vietnam he'd be helped by the authorities, which Ba finds impossible to believe. He is sure that if he is sent back, he will be trafficked again...."

From "How a boy from Vietnam became a slave on a UK cannabis farm" (BBC).

"We will get Brexit done on time, by 31 January, no ifs, no buts, no maybes... put an end to those miserable threats of a second referendum," said Boris Johnson, quoted in The Sun, which has this front page displayed at Drudge:



Not sure what the dog symbolism there is, but don't let a dog put his tongue in your mouth. Does it have something to do with the non-Tories who crossed over and voted for Johnson to show they want Brexit? I understand the word "bollocks," and I'm guessing the "x" represents the x-mark on a ballot. If you listen to Johnson's speech (at the link) you'll hear him thank those nonconservatives who "lent" him their vote, and he talks about and gestures marking an "x" on the ballot. Is it The Sun characterizing these votes as saying "Bollocks!" to the resistance to Brexit? Still, why a dog?

I do some research. "Dog's bollocks" has an entry at Wikipedia. It's something irrelevant but interesting. It's this punctuation mark, which you can see in the Declaration of Independence:



Well... maybe the Declaration of Independence is a little bit relevant to Brexit, but there's no way the Sun's headline is about the old-timey punctuation mark.

Now, I see that there was a slogan "Bollocks to Brexit" in this last election. Obviously, that's the anti-Brexit side, the side that lost badly in yesterday's election. So the headline might want to express "Bollocks!" to the side that said "Bollocks to Brexit." Still, why a dog?

Maybe it's based on the idiom "a dog's breakfast." Fortunately, I have already done my research on "a dog's breakfast" — back in 2013. "A dog's breakfast" is just "a confused mess." But yesterday's election was very decisive, more a cleaning up of a confused mess than a confused mess. I abandon this line of thinking.

Googling, "dog brexit," I find "U.K. Holds A Pivotal General Election, And Voters Bring Their Dogs To The Polls" (NPR) and "Polling stations/Forget politics, focus on the puppies!" (Vox).

So, there you have it! Dogs are a symbol of voting in the UK, and that's been combined with the slogan "Bollocks to Brexit." The "dogs" (the people) voted for Brexit: — The "dog's" expression of "Bollocks!" went against those who were hoping to get the "dogs" to say "Bollocks to Brexit." The "x" drives home the idea that we're talking about voting.

IN THE COMMENTS: Nicholas said:

Ann, as an Englishman, let me help you out. The expression "the dog's bollocks" is pretty obscure and I cannot explain how it came into being, but sometime around the 90s, in laddish circles (i.e. typical readers of the Sun, which is like a simplified version of the NY Daily News) the expression began to be used as a term of approval and admiration. For example, a car that was "the dog's bollocks" was a car to be coveted and regarded as better than its competitors.

So... it's like "the bee's knees."

Attested since 1922, of unclear origin. There are several suggested origins, but it most likely arose in imitation of the numerous animal-related nonsense phrases popular in the 1920s such as the cat's pyjamas, cat's whiskers, cat's meow, gnat's elbow, monkey's eyebrows etc....

... the dog's bollocks.

It seems as though you can take any animal and add some body part (or — in the case of "the cat's pajamas" — an attribute that the animal doesn't even have).

“... according to an exit poll. A victory in the general election on Thursday would cement Mr. Johnson’s claim to 10 Downing Street, paving the way for Britain’s exit from the European Union in less than two months. For the prime minister, whose brief tenure has been marked by legal reversals, scorched-earth politics and unrelenting chaos, it was an extraordinary vindication. Defying predictions that he would be tossed out of his job, Mr. Johnson now seems likely to lead Britain through its most momentous transition since World War II.”

The NYT reports.

NPR reports:

The Norwegian city of Oslo has given a Christmas tree to decorate Trafalgar Square in Central London since 1947 and it is a popular attraction during the holiday season.... During World War II, the Norwegian king and his family fled to the United Kingdom after Nazi Germany invaded their country. "The Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree is a gift from the Norwegian people as a thank you for London's aid during WW2 against tyranny. They have continued to send a tree as a symbol of our enduring friendship," officials said.

I mean... just look at the poor thing... I’d insert a bad lefty joke about Brexit or austerity here but I just feel too sorry for the poor old tree to also add self loathing in to the mix... pic.twitter.com/8IYSIa52Ml

— Calum OBM (@cobm123) December 2, 2019

The terrorist was armed with a knife, and the narwhal tusk was 5 feet long, I'm reading in "Narwhal tusk and fire extinguisher used to tackle London Bridge attacker/Members of the public, including a convicted murderer, bring terrorist to the ground" (The Guardian).

Scotland Yard is investigating how 28-year-old Usman Khan was able to launch the attack in London Bridge, despite being known to the authorities and fitted with an electronic tag to monitor his movements. He was allowed out a year ago after serving time for his part in a plot to blow up the London Stock Exchange.

In footage that has since emerged, Khan is sprayed with a fire extinguisher, while another man tries to suppress the assailant with a narwhal tusk – a long pointed tooth from a type of whale – lunging at him. It is believed the item was pulled from the wall of Fishmongers’ Hall, a grade II-listed building on London Bridge, by a Polish chef called Lucasz....

ADDED: I'm re-reading "Moby-Dick," so let me give you the chapter on the narwhal:

WaPo reports.

We take years to crank through an election and then stick with our choice for years. The British approach is nerve-wrackingly chaotic: