This is Northumberland Calling 24.1.25

The Neeps, taties and Eowyn edition

Hello America (Particularly Central Ohio) this is Northumberland Calling

Tomorrow is 25 January and so Burns Night where people eat haggis (do not try making this barley rich sheep based sausage as it involves sheep’s lungs and recipes encourage having a bowl to catch what comes out…), neeps ( turnips) and taties (potatoes). A wee dram or two of the good stuff (malt whiskey) may also be drunk with various traditional toasts.

Storm Eowyn has hit Ireland with over 100 mph winds (strongest ever recorded) and has advanced to Britain. Lots of trains and planes are cancelled. People have been told to postpone journeys. It is Red Warning. And yes for the sharp eyed the old English female name Eowyn was used by Tolkien in Lord of the Rings. It means ‘lover of horses’. The horse was important to people of that time period. It is thought that Eowyn will be finished before Burns Night but people are advised not to travel in central Scotland. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/24/storm-eowyn-latest-news-weather-warnings-trains-cancelled/

The Southport killer was sentenced to a whole life term yesterday. Because he was under 18 at the time offence, the judge had to specify the minimum number of years before he could be considered for parole. In this case, it is 52 or when the man will be 70 but in all likelihood he will never be released. The judge mentioned the depravity and extreme nature of the act. Even the descriptions of the attack which the press has been allowed to report are stomach-churning. One father could not recognise his daughter so great were the injuries she received. The scene was as Allison Pearson put it – more reminiscent of the Rwandan violence in the 1990s (his parents claimed asylum in the UK from Rwanda) than something one might expect in 2020s Britain. The killer did not slip through the net as much as be roundly ignored. Many chances to ensure the killer received appropriate treatment were not acted on and that was a failure of the State, not Amazon despite the attempted deflection. No overriding ideology, except a desire to commit an act of extreme violence on the general populace. Thus he chose women and young girls to savagely murder and injure. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/law-reform-plea-as-evil-axel-rudakubana-avoids-whole-life-term-qfs7qrm86 or https://archive.ph/62ixs

I suspect the authorities will have their work cut out to keep him safe from the other prisoners as the disgust and repulsion is there as Allison Pearson points out in her op ed. He will not be the object of admiration in prison like he appeared to believe he would be. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/23/southport-killer-sentencing/ or https://archive.ph/Bqjc3

When Trump proved the International Elites wrong… Tim Stanley in the Telegraph has an amusing sketch of how Trump’s speech went down in Davos and where Nick Clegg formerly leader of the Lib Dems and recently departed from the FB fact checker role washed up. The headline is Davos people thought they were more important than democracy. Trump proved them wrong. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/23/trump-davos/ or https://archive.ph/7C1QD

Researchers have uncovered a 50-fold increase in children presenting as having gender distress in England from 2011 to 2021. The cohort has also altered to mainly girls as opposed to boys in 2011. The authors make no conclusion as to what it is causing but have not ruled out social media factors (ie it became fashionable) . It has appeared in most of the UK papers. For those at the back, no test currently exists which allows doctors to tell if children are gender distressed because they are stressed or stressed because they are gender distressed. Two different causes potentially presenting the same way. Indeed no objective test exists to say which children will outgrow and make peace with their bodies and which will develop full blown adult gender dysphoria. The consequences of getting it wrong including lifelong sterilization are far too grave. A recent review by the lead on suicide prevention showed that there was no increase in actual suicides from Puberty Blockers being withdrawn in the UK, from this cohort. https://www.msn.com/en-ie/society-culture-and-history/gender-and-sexual-identity/children-50x-more-likely-to-suffer-gender-distress-than-decade-ago/ar-AA1xKW4q or this from the Times: https://archive.ph/cwdEk

Unity Mitford’s secret diary has been supposedly unearthed. Among other things it reveals her to be every bit as disgustingly anti-Semitic as she was reputed to be. The Mitford sisters have long fascinated the British. Unity was the fangirl obsessed with Hitler who shot herself in the head when war was declared. She survived but was never interviewed by MI5. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/hitlers-english-girlfriends-secret-diary-34507864

It is highly unlikely that she had Hitler’s lovechild as this article from the Evening Standard in 2012 makes clear. But the rumour was revived this week in light of the breathless girlish insights from the diaries, including her code for sex. https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/the-truth-about-hitlers-british-love-child-6617026.html

Kathleen Stock is on skewering form about the demise of the Good Literary Agency who had pocketed £1.3 mil of UK taxpayers’ money, paid out salaries of over £240k but only had an income of £73k (hard to make a business work, even if the owners are full of ‘good intentions towards the Omni-cause’ with those sorts of numbers). https://unherd.com/2025/01/why-virtue-signalling-wont-pay/

Give a gallery, get an exhibition for your wife’s photography ? The National Portrait Gallery who have indeed given a little known photographer Zoe Law a major exhibition. Her estranged husband’s charitable foundation donated an undisclosed but significant sum towards the £40 million refurbishment of the NPG. It is rare for the NPG to do exhibitions based on a sole photographer’s work, particularly one whose work isn’t widely known to the general public but they have this time. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/arts/article/national-portrait-gallery-accused-of-nepotism-over-exhibition-bqmwkl96h or https://archive.ph/MvUoT

Despite being open and shouting the fact, none of the young football players passed to the Prince of Wales when he visited a football pitch in Liverpool. Perhaps they knew he was an Aston Vanilla fan…This low key opening of various facilities is what he does. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2025/01/23/prince-wales-william-jokes-nobody-passes-football-toxteth/ or https://archive.ph/8S7wo

There was speculation on why Harry settled now rather than much earlier and quietly like his brother. But generally the public is not very interested in his doings. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2025/01/22/are-these-reasons-harry-dropped-fight-against-murdoch/ or https://archive.ph/0khOu

Here my revisions have hit for the latest. They are relatively straight forward so I am busy with that.

Paddy is not over fond of Storm Eowyn.

Paddy is not overly fond of the wind and is curled up, waiting for Eowyn to pass.

If you want to find me during the week, I have started putting things on Celia M’s Jottings in Purple

which is where a number of refuge FP commentators are hanging out as they dislike the current FP policy on comments. The discussion is usually lively as you might expect from former FP commentators. Depending on how firmly my Procrastination Princess tiara is attached (aka how well my actual writing is going), I may end up getting distracted.

Hopefully everyone else’s week was a good one. I look forward to seeing you in the comments.

If you like what you read on here, why not subscribe? It’s free and I don’t have any plans to put in a paywall. If you want to ‘reward me’, why not buy one of my books? Currently a number of them are on special at $1.99. https://www.amazon.com/stores/Michelle-Styles/author/B00288QUJM?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1729240286&sr=8-1&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true