There'll always be an England, you just won't want to live there (Updated)

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London woman fined $200 for pouring splash of coffee down storm drain before hopping onto bus

A London woman was slapped with a hefty fine for pouring a splash of her coffee down a storm drain before hopping on a bus, according to reports.

Burcu Yesilyurt made the split-second choice to empty “just a tiny little bit” of coffee from a reusable cup of joe down the drain instead of risking spilling it on her bus to work in southwest London on Oct. 10, the BBC reported.

As soon as the drop of java dribbled out, Yesilyurt was immediately swarmed by three officers at the bus stop and slapped with a £150 fine — or roughly $200 — under Section 33 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, which makes it illegal to dump waste in a way that could pollute land or water, including pouring liquids into street drains.

Three - THREE — enviro-agents of the state were clustered together, hanging around on the same corner, waiting for something to do, and then —Hosannah! —they sprang into action.

“As soon as I turned around, I noticed three men, enforcement officers, chasing me, and they stopped me immediately,” she told the outlet.

The law enforcement encounter over such a minor, unsuspecting move left Yesilyurt feeling “shaky.”

“It was quite a shock,” she said.

She hadn’t seen any signs in the area indicating that she was not allowed to dump anything into the drain, and was told by officers that she should have poured the morning brew in a nearby rubbish bin.

“It feels quite unfair. I think the fine is extreme. It’s not proportionate,” Yesilyurt said.

After reports of the incident went viral across social media — where users balked at the “ridiculous” fine — local officials decided to drop the offense on Wednesday.

The Richmond Council canceled the fine, declaring it was “likely” that Yesilyurt’s appeal would have been approved anyway, the outlet reported.

The council still maintained that the law enforcement response was “justified.”

ECO-TERRORIST LOOSE ON THE STREETS:

UPDATE.

HERE’S A FUN ONE:

They lie because lies are all they have

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And their flying media monkeys are there to help spread those lies:

A LOT of taxpayer money was spent 15 years ago for some White House renovations under Barack Obama, but we don't recall any media hyperventilation about this: 

After getting settled in a new house, who doesn’t want to take on a home improvement project?

Parts of the White House have gotten a little creaky and out-of-date since the last overhaul five decades ago, so starting tomorrow the jackhammers and backhoes will be fired up to begin a four-year, $376 million project to improve the infrastructure in the East and West Wings.

“This is the biggest upgrade since the complete renovation of the executive mansion in the Truman era,” said Bob Peck, public buildings commissioner of the General Services Administration, the agency that manages federal facilities.

The Progressives searched for and recruited a Maine senatorial candidate who’d appeal to gun groups, but they may have missed their target audience with this pick

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The group describes itself as "working class, progressive, anarchist, socialist, communist, eco-warrior, animal liberator, anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, PoC, LGBTQ-plus."

The Maine Wire:

Sullivan aquaculturist [great renaming — so much better than “Oyster Farmer” —ed] Graham Platner, the ex-Marine running against Gov. Janet Mills (D) for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination, instructed members of the Socialist Rifle Association on paramilitary tactics, according to newly uncovered social media posts.

The progressive star revealed in an Aug. 8, 2020 post that he’d provided advanced firearms instruction to the far left group, including a “defensive handgun course” he put on in June of 2020, shortly after the Black Lives Matter riots erupted across the country.

I’m all for everyone exercising their 2nd Amendment rights, and if a group of lawful citizens wants to band together and be trained in gun use, why not? Still, the “Socialist Rifle Association” seems an unfortunate choice of organizations to belong to for a senatorial candidate who was selected because of his potential appeal to rural voters. Here’s who Wikipedia, at least, says they are:

The Socialist Rifle Association (SRA) is a socialist gun rights advocacy group based in the United States, which is dedicated to "providing working class people the information they need to be effectively armed for self and community defense."[5][6]

Membership

In July 2019, a third of the SRA's 2,000 members identified as LGBTQ and 8 percent are transgender.[25] The organization claimed 10,000 active members in November 2020.[4] The SRA has 52 local chapters operating in 33 states.[15]The organization is headed by a National Assembly consisting of elected representatives from each chapter.[15]

Ideology

The SRA describes the goal of their organization as "to provide an alternative to the mainstream, toxic, right-wing, and non-inclusive gun culture that has dominated the firearms community for decades. We seek to provide a safe, inclusive, and left-leaning platform for talking about gun rights and self defense, free from racist and reactionary prejudices, while providing a platform for the working class to obtain the skills necessary for all aspects of community defense."[26][self-published source] The group describes itself as "working class, progressive, anarchist, socialist, communist, eco-warrior, animal liberator, anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, PoC, LGBTQ-plus."[27]

Points of unity

Membership of the SRA is predicated on the acceptance of particular points of unity:

  • We are working class and poor people dedicated to educating our class in the safe use of firearms for personal and community self-defense as well as recreation and subsistence hunting.

  • We are a multi-tendency association of social democrats, communists, and anarchists united by class, for our class. We respect one another's political stances and differences, especially when we disagree.

  • We are dedicated to Liberation and Freedom of ALL people and therefore oppose all forms of oppression and exploitation.

  • We are party to our local communities and as such we volunteer in various ways to further the connections between leftist political radicals and the unorganized communities in which we live. We help feed, house and protect other working class and marginalized folks.

  • We stand against the disarmament of the working class.

  • We are dedicated to arming the working class, both physically and mentally.[2]

Platner had such a bad week last week that last night he brought out his mother to defend him before an appreciative audience in (mostly gay) Ogunquit, but I doubt that even the support of a loving mom will be sufficient for his campaign to regain traction. Chuck Schumer must be rubbing his hand with glee.

Really? The Wobblies?

And given the tendency of transgenders to commit mass shootings, is training these poor, mentally ill creatures to shoot more accurately really such a good idea?

Somehow, I still hadn't realized how far the Democrat party has shifted away from any pretense of a mainstream political organization

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Unbelievable: they’re actually setting up, encouraging the murder of U.S. law enforcement officers.

Stephen Green: Via AG Hamilton, who adds: “This is dangerous and wrong. It’s insane that lawmakers are trying to undermine enforcement actions like this, but even more so when you consider the recent attacks on ICE agents. What happens when someone uses this tracker to ambush agents?”

Nothing that Democrats aren’t willing to enable, apparently.

Since there's literally no other reported activity on the GMLS so far today, I might as well note a meaningless price cut of 2.7%

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143 Lockwood Road, reduced from $2.595 million to $2.525. In the current market, even a 1929 Mock Tudor* should have sold by now, especially in Riverside, so I’m guessing that it was originally overpriced by more than $70,00; time will tell.

*Mock Turtle is to architecture what Mock Turtle is to soup:

Mock turtle soup is an English soup that was created in the mid-18th century as an imitation of green turtle soup. It often uses brains and organ meats such as calf's head to duplicate the texture and flavour of the original's turtle meat after the green turtles used to make the original dish were hunted nearly to extinction.

Where are the protesters?

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If Israel were to prohibit the use of Arabic within its borders, ban Islam entirely, tear down all mosques, imprison thousands of Palestinian religious leaders, and place all Palestinian children in indoctrination camps, cries of genocide! and demands that Israel be wiped from the face of the earth would be even louder than they are now on campuses and in the streets of our most progressive cities. And yet ….

China has done, and continues to do all of that in Tibet, just as it similarly oppressing and wiping out the moslem Uyghurs, yet our Leftists are essentially silent. Even those old “Free Tibet” and Tibetan flags decals one would occasionally spot on VW vans’ bumpers have been gone for decades, missing in action like BLM stickers and Ukrainian flags of yesterday.

Here are just two examples:

China: UN experts alarmed by separation of 1 million Tibetan children from families and forced assimilation at residential schools

06 February 2023

And:

Immigration and Human Rights Law Review

Learning to Forget: China’s Dismantling of Tibet’s Education and Culture

Published May 29, 2025

It’s curious, and might make one wonder whether this always been about Jews, not Palestinians or Chinee Muslims.