by Anna Raccoon on December 8, 2016 An embargoed report was snuck out at midnight, last night. Just imagine, for one moment, that this report concerned 436 Football coaches dismissed in one 24 month period for ‘abuse of authority for sexual gain’: or 436 Catholic priests dismissed over the same period for ‘abuse of authority for sexual gain’ – the cyber waves would have been alive. We would have been enduring an endless diet of breakfast TV ‘analysis’ over the past 24 months as the victims were paraded by their various agents and their legal representatives. We would have started with one ..read more

by Anna Raccoon on November 21, 2016 Tell you what. I’ll tell you how I see it, and you can spend the rest of the day arguing about who’s right. See, in the beginning there was only ‘todger’ based rights. The law of the animal kingdom. You protect the fruit of your loins. Your children, your wider family, your tribe, your village, your town, your nation. It’s very simple; anything comes over the palisade that is likely to harm them or steal their food or water – you shoot it. No moral quandary whatsoever. Over the centuries, we have installed systems to deal with this problem. You can lik ..read more

by Anna Raccoon on October 18, 2016 A warm welcome to the newest members of our congregation, Ali Mustapha-anuvver and his husband Ali Mustapha-anuvver-relative-somewhere. May they live in peace amongst us, and instil us with the wisdom of their ancient ways. Our little congregation has finally been blessed with the child refugee that we had pleaded with the authorities to be allowed to care for – a bony 16 stone boy  with a full upper lip of hair. As we crowded round his cot to get a better look at him, he curled his little fingers round my dog collar and uttered his first ..read more

by Anna Raccoon on October 17, 2016 Grown men don’t cry. They did. That day. 50 years ago. Those who were born or reached maturity after 1966 will not understand the world of that time; no mobile phones, no internet, no rolling news, we had not been groomed by the nightly parade of Sky’s ‘anything with blood’ version of the national news. 200 blown up in an Afghan market place? Time to put the kettle on! 115 miners immured in deepest Chile? Want any more, shall I start the film now? 40 tortured souls trapped on the top floor of a burning inferno? Is that a film or are we still on the news ..read more

by Anna Raccoon on October 15, 2016 The partisan reporting from all aspects of the media this morning, has resulted in headlines such as ‘Fury of women’s groups as footballer is cleared in retrial’. Football forums have disappeared under a deluge of derogatory comments regarding the sexual behaviour of the young girl. The most pertinent fact regarding the introduction of new evidence into Ched Evans retrial has been – some would say deliberately – buried in a welter of comment designed to appeal to either the ‘he’s a rapist who got away with it’ or the ‘she’s a slapper who should be ..read more

by Anna Raccoon on October 14, 2016 Marmgate is over. The threat to the British nation posed by one web site, belonging to one supermarket, no longer offering to deliver a jar of Marmite that very day, has been lifted. Never in the history of half eaten jars of distinctly unpalatable foodstuffs having to be sourced from other shops has the British nation so thoroughly debated the threat to our wellbeing. Brexiteers swarmed to the social media barricades; outraged that such an iconic product was being ‘imported’ and was now threatened by our decision to leave the EU. Our very health was be ..read more

by Anna Raccoon on October 12, 2016 This is 18 year old Connor Jones wearing his Halloween outfit. It is unlikely to be a custom made outfit, which means that somewhere a manufacturer has made several such outfits and hopefully sold them. Wearing it, and standing with a group of fellow teenagers has just cost Connor £90 and a criminal record. He was waiting for his cousin to come out of school in Caerphilly. “I didn’t say anything to anyone or chase anyone, I was just waiting. It was around 3pm and the school kids came out.” Not holding a baseball bat; nor a chainsaw; nor threatening an ..read more

by Anna Raccoon on October 10, 2016 Ms Raccoon was distracted this morning by a fascinating portal called ‘Bluelight.eu-supply.com‘. Doesn’t sound that riveting? For a Raccoon who loves scavenging through official documents it was manna from heaven! A Raccoon could, and did, get lost for hours in there. Here is all the minutiae of the deals to supply police stations with doughnuts – who is responsible for training the copper who hands out the doughnuts; what criminal record checks the man who delivers the doughnuts needs to undertake; who is responsible for ensuring that if the man who ow ..read more

by Anna Raccoon on October 9, 2016 In 1931, there were just 168,000 Britons living in India (including 60,000 in the army and police and 4,000 in civil government) – to run a country approaching 300 million people. In earlier times, a mere 31,000 stalwart Britons had achieved the same impossible task. A task made possible purely by the agreement of the Indians to accept being so governed. The Raj, in Eric Hobsbawm’s evocative words, was ‘so easily won, so narrowly based, so absurdly easily ruled, thanks to the devotion of a few and the passivity of the many’. In 1919, Mohandas Gandhi re ..read more

by Anna Raccoon on October 6, 2016 Penurial – newly formed adjective; pertaining to the state of penury. synonyms: poor, as poor as a church mouse, poverty-stricken, destitute, necessitous, in penury, impecunious, impoverished, indigent, needy, in need/want, badly off, in reduced circumstances,in straitened circumstances, hard up, on one’s beam-ends, unable to make ends meet, underprivileged, penniless, without a sou, moneyless, bankrupt, bust, insolvent; I have written before regarding the curious desire amongst the ultra-wealthy left wing intelligentsia to ..read more