‘Coup Going On’ Inside Labour

Jeremy Corbyn appeared on Sky News, 14th May 2026, in an interview with presenter Wilfred Frost, where he made two headline points.

Corbyn accused Keir Starmer of having ‘a coup going on’ inside Labour, referring to the atmosphere of leadership manoeuvring and pressure on the Prime Minister.

He drew similarities between current tensions around a possible Labour leadership challenge and the pressure he himself met when Labour MPs tried to push him out in 2016.

He suggested Starmer is now experiencing the exact internal destabilisation: “There’s a coup going on.”

The interview was framed around the ‘strange atmosphere’ in Westminster, with speculation about Wes Streeting triggering a leadership contest.

Corbyn reminisced on how he was pressured to resign as Labour leader and implied that Starmer is now encountering similar forces.

The Express also covered the interview, noting that viewers described Corbyn as ‘snippy’ and highlighting that he refused to back Andy Burnham as a possible successor to Starmer.

However, Jeremy Corbyn being on Sky News was such an inspiring, decent, and fair stance on the mess that we are presently in, because while so many in Westminster are far too busy focusing on their own careers, Jeremy was straight onto the real problems, such as poverty, inequality, and peace.

He noted that the Greens aren’t a socialist party, and that we are already seeing the friction between their newer, younger members and the established wing.

People are feeling politically homeless right now, and what we actually need is a no-nonsense prime minister without all the theatrics.

We need a prime minister with a low ego and high principles. Issue-first rather than personality-first, and someone who is focused on structural issues rather than Westminster gossip.

The reality that the average person faces daily—such as housing, living expenses, disability rights, and public services—is becoming more and more distant from those who are active in politics.

We need a prime minister who is principled, humane, not materialistic, not obsessed with triangulation, and not allergic to talking about inequality.

Corbyn’s interview didn’t offer a blueprint, but it does remind us that politics doesn’t have to be cynical or managerial.

Michelle Obama Looks Alarmingly Thin

Michelle Obama was photographed looking noticeably slimmer during a Beverly Hills dinner with daughters Malia and Sasha, and Barack Obama’s absence at the outing has certainly fueled renewed online speculation about their marriage — but the available reporting reveals no documented evidence of a split, only public chatter and commentary.

Michelle Obama, 62, dined with Malia (27) and Sasha (24) at Funke, a celebrity‑frequented Beverly Hills restaurant. She appeared visibly thinner than in prior months, sporting an everyday trucker jacket, fitted Henley top, and light‑wash jeans. Barack Obama, 64, was not attending because he was in Austin, Texas, speaking at an event or campaigning, depending on the outlet.

Her slimmer appearance reignited speculation about Ozempic/GLP‑1, though no evidence supports those assertions.

The couple’s different schedules, combined with Barack’s recent remarks about “tension” at home, have heightened public speculation, not verified facts.

Recent reporting highlighted several factors: that Barack Obama told The New Yorker that Michelle wanted him to slow down and spend more time with her, acknowledging ‘genuine tension’ in their household.

Michelle has openly discussed difficult periods in their marriage before, saying that there were ten years when she couldn’t stand her husband, and Michelle missed two high-profile events Barack attended alone in January 2025, which the tabloids seized on. Of course, none of this constitutes proof of a separation; it only reflects public interpretation, not oK’d information.

No outlet reports a breakup, separation, or divorce. There is no medical or personal explanation for Michelle’s weight change that has been confirmed. There is no credible source that supports the Ozempic rumours, and there is no insider confirmation of any marital trouble beyond what the Obamas themselves have publicly admitted about normal long-term relationship strain.

The predictable, well-established language and narrative patterns used in tabloid coverage of celebrity weight fluctuations sexualise women, perpetuate weight stigma, and portray bodies as public property. This then shapes public perspectives and reinforces toxic norms.

Media coverage portrays weight as a personal failure or moral flaw, which it is not.

Weight framing is wrong. It’s socially constructed, politically convenient and scientifically illiterate.

Weight is not a personal virtue test. It’s influenced by dozens of factors outside individual control, including genetics, medication, disability and chronic illness, stress, trauma, and cortisol, and numerous other factors.

None of these is ‘willpower,’ but media narratives pretend it’s all about discipline because that story is simple, blame-heavy, and it sells.

Moral framing obscures the real structural problem – if weight is ‘your fault’, then governments don’t have to address food deserts. Employers don’t have to fix low wages or long hours. Councils don’t have to build safe parks or pavements. Healthcare doesn’t have to face bias, and the media doesn’t have to stop profiting from shame, so they blame the individual to protect the system.

And the cruel irony is that the people doing the shaming know better, but they still shame and judge ordinary people for simply existing in public.

Belfast Hospital Infections Resistant To Antibiotics

A contained but serious Carbapenemase‑Producing Organism (CPO) outbreak has been reported at Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, affecting a small number of patients in the Medical Specialities and Unscheduled Care Division.

A CPO is a class of bacteria that produces enzymes capable of breaking down carbapenems — antibiotics commonly used as a last line of defence. These organisms are among the most antibiotic‑resistant pathogens presently seen in hospitals.

Transmission is contact-based: contaminated hands, medical equipment, and surfaces in clinical areas.

This outbreak appears to be mostly a hospital infection-control issue, not a community threat.

Patients who have had extensive or repeated antibiotic treatment are more vulnerable because their normal microbial balance is disrupted, making it easier for resistant organisms to take hold. However, the Belfast Trust and Public Health Agency have implemented strict measures: isolation of all CPO-positive patients in single rooms with dedicated toilet facilities. Enhanced cleaning beyond standard protocols. Mandatory PPE, such as gloves, aprons/gowns for staff and close monitoring of affected wards.

As of yet, this specific strain has not been linked to any fatalities or severe illnesses. However, CPO outbreaks can be a warning sign of a wider global problem of antimicrobial resistance – when bacteria evolve to defeat even our strongest antibiotics. Hospitals must then act fast to prevent these organisms from becoming entrenched.

This outbreak, however, seems to be contained, but it highlights the fragility of hospital infection-control systems and the consequences of over-reliance on last-line antibiotics.

HealthLink BC states clearly that CPOs “usually pose little risk and rarely cause infections in healthy people,” and that they are mainly a concern in hospitals, and that even people who carry CPO in their gut can go about their normal life without restrictions, and there is no need to inform workplaces, schools, or childcare.

Community spread is possible but rare, and usually linked to healthcare exposure abroad or recent hospitalisation, and guidance explicitly says that household members of someone with CPO don’t need to be screened.

So, why do these outbreaks make headlines? It’s not because the public is at risk, but because CPOs are a marker of antimicrobial resistance. Hospitals must implement strict infection-control measures, and outbreaks can disrupt services and increase patient risk.

However, they do not behave like COVID, flu, norovirus, or airborne infections, and they don’t spread through casual contact, public spaces, or community settings.

The bottom line is that a CPO outbreak is serious for hospitals, but not a danger to the general public, and if you’re not an inpatient or receiving invasive medical care, your risk is virtually zero.

A Speech Given By The King

Nothing could be more of a mickey-take than a frail cadger wrapped in dead animal fur, dripping in jewels, sitting on a solid gold throne in a palace built on centuries of blood, slavery, war, famine, and theft, while lecturing the public about sacrifice, unity, and ‘the future of the nation’ while millions can hardly afford to put the heating on.

The King’s Speech is a theatre, and it’s nothing more than performative, and quite frankly, ridiculous. Here’s a grown man wearing a diamond-encrusted crown worth more than entire towns, reading words composed for him by unelected handlers, pretending this is modern civilisation instead of the rotting carcass of feudalism, dressed up with better cameras and cleaner propaganda.

Yes, I am furious, and of course, I’m venting because I’m diagnosing the theatre of British constitutional politics with transparency. After all, I’m calling out the contradiction between a hereditary monarch performing symbolic unity while sitting atop wealth extracted through empire, class hierarchy, and centuries of structural violence, and how surreal that looks in a country where millions can’t even heat their homes. That tension is real, historically grounded, and politically significant.

The spectacle is absurd, especially when you strip away all the PR gloss. Inherited power presented as national destiny. Colonial wealth is displayed as national heritage. Extreme inequality wrapped in ceremonial language about ‘shared sacrifice.’ Austerity Britain, being lectured on duty by someone who has never experienced material precarity, and then there is the political script, written by government advisers, delivered by a man who can’t be held democratically accountable for the words he reads.

You’re not imagining the contradiction — it’s baked into the constitutional design.

What I’m actually describing is the conflict between a 21st-century society dealing with poverty, housing crisis, disability injustice, and collapsing public services vs a medieval institution preserved through tradition, PR, and the notion that symbolism is somehow above politics.

The King’s Speech is the perfect example. It’s presented as a timeless constitutional ritual, but it’s actually a government policy announcement delivered by someone who didn’t write it, can’t change it, and can’t be voted out, and that’s why it feels like feudalism with better lighting.

I’m not just furious at the monarchy, I’m furious at the disconnect. People freezing in their homes. Disabled people fighting for basic support. Families are having to skip meals. Public services are collapsing – meanwhile, the state rolls out gold carriages, jewels, and pageantry to tell the public to ‘tighten belts.’

It’s the hypocrisy that stings.

Britain is the only major European democracy still centring hereditary power in its political rituals. The Crown Estate profits with Duchy wealth, and public subsidies contrast brutally with austerity, and our government is using the monarchy as a human shield for unwanted policies – this is the spectacle of an empire-era wealth in a post-imperial, economically struggling nation.

Superfan Dubbed ‘Union Jack Man’ By Queen Dies At 91

A royal super-fan who was dubbed ‘Union Jack man’ by the late Queen has died aged 91. 

Terry Hutt, of Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, met Queen Elizabeth more times than any other member of the public and was famed for camping outside hospitals for several nights ahead of royal births.

Mr Hutt battled sepsis, pneumonia, and heart failure before passing suddenly. At the age of four, he had a strong interest in royalty after receiving a souvenir mug from the King and Queen on their visit to his parents in London during the Blitz.

Since then, he was frequently pictured at notable royal events donning red, white and blue – with his devotion to the monarchy leading members of the Royal household to know him as the ‘Union Jack man’.

In 2011, he camped outside Westminster Abbey to ensure a prime viewing spot for the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. 

Ahead of Prince George’s birth in 2013, he also spent nearly two weeks on a bench being fed porridge and given cups of tea by staff at the hospital.

Mr Hutt then spent 14 days on a red, white and blue decorated bench outside St Mary’s Hospital in London in anticipation of the birth of Princess Charlotte. 

He described his time on the ‘royal bench’ as demanding as a full-time job; however, he said he got a ‘thrill’ from seeing the royal lineage continue.

At the time, he said: ‘I have known William and the family for years, and I always get a thrill out of seeing the new babies.

‘We need babies to keep the family going as the more of them there are, the better it will be.’

Outside his devotion to the monarchy, Mr Hutt was described as a ‘tireless’ campaigner for the NHS and the restoration of Birnbeck Pier in Weston-super-Mare.

The pier has been closed for more than thirty years due to damage from storms.

Mr Hutt was also known to travel about his hometown on a scooter, collecting thousands of signatures. 

He is survived by his daughter, Tracey Joy, who said her father led a ‘life well lived’.

She said: ‘A life well lived, and as we are grieving, we look back at his fight for life, love for his family.

‘It has been very sad, but despite his many health ailments, he continued to do everything he loved.

‘To reach the age of 91 was a miracle, overcoming kidney cancer and multiple surgeries, each time he came out fighting, but heart failure, along with pneumonia and sepsis, took him in the end.’

Without a doubt, he proudly sported his Union Jack. He was indeed an elegant dresser.

He was harmless, but some might say strange at the same time. I wouldn’t say it was strange, but he was certainly patriotic. He was a marvellous character who loved his Queen and country; may he rest in peace.

Should Union Jack man be given a royal burial? Of course, there is no basis or constitutional mechanism for Terry Hutt to receive a royal burial, but there should be a meaningful conversation about it, after all, he was patriotic to his Queen and country for an extremely long time.

He was a royal superfan, not a royal servant or official. However, I do believe that he was a loyal servant because, at the end of the day, we are all servants to our monarchy. He also campaigned locally for the NHS and Birnbeck Pier.

He lived a long, full life and was undoubtedly adored by many, so come on, Charles, do the right thing for this lovely, devoted man.

‘I’m Not Going Anywhere’

It appears that Keir Starmer’s prospects of leading his party into the next election are dwindling due to growing calls for his resignation.

Additionally, social media users are responding to Sir Keir’s premiership collapsing by posting several humorous memes that mock the circumstance.

Some likened his situation to the Black Knight from Monty Python, a character who refuses to let King Arthur pass despite having all his limbs chopped off.

Others recalled the famous line ‘Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me’, spoken by Kenneth Williams as Julius Caesar in the 1964 comedy film Carry On Cleo.

There was a meme of Hugh Grant as the PM in Love Actually, captioned: ‘Centre Left Labour backbenchers reveal their choice to replace Starmer as Prime Minister.’

Another posted an image of Steve McClaren on Sky Sports News, quipping that the former England manager was saying ‘he doesn’t think the PM’s going anywhere’. 

In an address meant to set out Labour’s response to last week’s catastrophic local election results, Sir Keir promised to carry on and prove his doubters wrong.

But the address triggered an avalanche of Labour backbenchers publicly calling for the Prime Minister to go, including several junior ministerial aides who resigned in response.

A total of 80 Labour MPs are understood to have signed a letter from former minister Catherine West urging Sir Keir to set out a timetable for his resignation, with most of them having publicly expressed their loss of confidence in his leadership.

In a sign that he could be planning to dig in, Downing Street announced the appointment of six new ministerial aides last night to replace those who had resigned.

But while some backbenchers came out to back the Prime Minister, reports suggested Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood had privately spoken with Sir Keir and advised him to consider his position.

Other senior ministers are said to have spoken with the Prime Minister about his fate before a scheduled Cabinet meeting this morning, intended to focus on the situation in the Middle East.

At least, if nothing else, we can have a laugh because we haven’t been able to have a laugh since this delusional despot, who seems to believe his own lies and stupidity, arrived, and has been such a daily disaster ever since.

The memes were amusing, but the real joke is that the world is laughing at us, not with us. Sadly, his replacement won’t be laughing either because all the harm that Keir Starmer has done will be paid forward to the next sitting government.

Nobody in Labour actually has any idea about real life, and what it actually means to be working class. I hate to point this out to them, but to be working class, you have to actually do some work, you know, hard graft – get your fingers at least a little bit dirty. The only thing these people know about is sipping Champagne and scratching their backsides; that’s the only dirt they will get under their fingernails.

I will definitely be delighted to see the back of Starmer, but when I think about the bunch of incompetents waiting to take over, my heart sinks. Talk about ‘out of the frying pan into the fire’, there’s not a single trustworthy person amongst them, and it mangles my mind that the people who voted for them truly believed that they were capable of running a country.

In the immortal words of Gloria Gaynor: “Go on now, go, walk out the door Just turn around now, ’cause you’re not welcome anymore.’

An Update On Bonnie Tyler’s Condition In A Coma

Bonnie Tyler had to be ‘resuscitated after going into cardiac arrest’ when doctors tried to bring her out of an induced coma at an Algarve hospital.

The medical emergency led to the worsening of the singer’s health condition late last week following life-saving surgery for a burst appendix, respected Portuguese daily Correio da Manha has reported.

The Welsh singer, 74, will remain in an induced coma in an intensive care unit at Faro Hospital until doctors manage to control the ‘serious infection’ she is suffering, caused by a perforated intestine, the paper said.

Her long-term friend Liberto Mealha said overnight, doctors are ‘positive’ she can make a full recovery despite the ongoing uncertainty about how things will evolve.

More details have emerged of Bonnie’s health woes, which are said to have led to her emergency bowel surgery and the removal of her appendix.

Mr Mealha, who first met The Total Eclipse of the Heart singer when he opened a well-known Albufeira nightclub in the Eighties near the artist’s holiday home, said last week: ‘She started feeling unwell during a concert in London and went to a doctor for tests, but they didn’t detect anything there.

‘She decided to travel to the Algarve, where she began to feel severe abdominal pain.

‘Two days later, she went to a private hospital, which urgently moved her to the hospital in Faro because her appendix had burst and she needed emergency surgery.’

Overnight, it was reported that Ms Tyler, believed to have first started feeling unwell around a month ago, had been bedridden for two days at her Algarve home before her worried husband, Robert Sullivan, took her to the private hospital she was seen at before being transferred to Faro.

A spokesman for the singer said late last Thursday she had been put in a coma to ‘aid her recovery’ after reports she had suffered a burst appendix.

A day earlier, when her health woes first emerged, the spokesman had said: ‘We are very sorry to announce that Bonnie has been admitted to hospital in Faro, Portugal, where she has a home, for emergency intestinal surgery.

‘The surgery went well, and she is now recuperating.

‘We know that all of her family, friends and fans will be concerned about this news and will be wishing her well for a full and swift recovery.’

Ms Tyler, who has had numerous hits in her lengthy career and competed at the Eurovision Song Contest representing the UK in 2013, is believed to have been rushed to the hospital on April 30.

She was said to have been ‘stable’ in an intermediate care unit at Faro Hospital before an apparent worsening of her health led to her being moved to intensive care.

Sources say she had been maintaining her professional activity in the run-up to being taken to the hospital, despite complaining of persistent pain for several weeks.

Reports that she required resuscitation have not yet been addressed by her representatives.

A medical emergency known as cardiac arrest occurs when the heart abruptly and unexpectedly stops pumping blood, stopping its beating and interfering with the body’s and brain’s ability to get oxygen.

It causes instant unconsciousness and collapse. Prompt action involving starting CPR and using a defibrillator, where available, is essential to prevent death.

An appendix rupture is a serious medical emergency that calls for quick surgery and medications to avoid deadly infections.

When an infected appendix bursts, it leaves a hole that allows germs and faeces to enter the abdominal cavity.

Mr Mealha, whose daughter is Bonnie’s goddaughter, said last week the singer’s husband was spending his days by her hospital bedside and only leaving to sleep at home at nighttime.

He added: ‘He’s very grateful to the doctors and nurses at the Faro hospital and believes that if Bonnie had stayed in the United Kingdom, she would no longer be here.’

On social media, well-wishers have shown their support.

Sara Hadfield wrote: ‘My husband spent 10 days eight years ago in an induced coma in the ICU in Faro Hospital.

‘They cared for him very well. I hope they do the same for Bonnie.’

Jenny Edwards added: ‘Come on, Bonnie girl. Us Welshies don’t give up. Here is to a full recovery.’

And Portuguese national Maria Joao Raposo Fonseca said: ‘Speedy recovery for Bonnie.

‘She is such a lovely lady. I lived close to her in Albufeira and used to see her all the time at my hairdresser’s salon, doing her tanning and then driving her little red convertible.’

So, Bonnie went to the doctors in London, but they missed appendicitis; our NHS health system is apparently the best in the world. I guess it’s so easy for doctors to overlook, particularly when our basic healthcare is rationed this much.

It’s also easy to detect, by doing a physical examination, and if still not certain, laboratory testing and imaging (CT scan and ultrasound), but of course, that commands money, so it’s more affordable overall to ignore patients who exhibit the early symptoms, leaving it until the Appendicitis becomes critical. This means more patients will die, but hey, don’t worry about that if it saves the system money.

The overall death rate from non-traumatic medical comas is significant, although the outcome differs greatly depending on why the coma occurred, how long it lasted, and the patient’s baseline health.

A mortality rate of 63 per cent and only 10 per cent “good recovery” is consistent with several large cohort studies of medically induced or medically caused comas due to severe infection, such as sepsis, meningitis, encephalitis, metabolic crises, hypoxic injury, multi-organ failure, prolonged ICU sedation, and stroke or intracranial haemorrhage (non-traumatic).

These groups are particularly heterogeneous, and numerous patients in those datasets were already critically ill before the coma. In other words:

The coma isn’t the cause of the poor outcome — the underlying illness is.

There are a few factors that dramatically shift the odds.

There are a few factors that dramatically shift the odds, and some causes have a far better outcome than others, such as drug-induced or sedation-related comas, which are usually reversible. With metabolic comas, such as diabetic or hepatic, there is usually a good recovery if rectified quickly.

Then there is infectious encephalitis, this is variable, but a patient can recover well with rapid treatment. Also, hypoxic brain injury has a much poorer prognosis.

Shorter comas (hours-days) have a far better outcome than lengthy ones (weeks).

Younger, healthier patients recuperate disproportionately better, and early antibiotics, antivirals, seizure control, ventilation, and neuro-monitoring all matter.

So, why is ‘good recovery’ only in the 10 per cent in numerous studies? Well, most studies in the Glasgow Outcome Scale were ‘good recovery’, which means independent living, returning to work or normal activities, and minimal cognitive impairment, but many survivors fell into this category where there was moderate disability, meaning needing some support, along with severe disability, meaning dependent but conscious, so the 10 per cent figure doesn’t mean only 10 per cent wake up, it means only 10 per cent return to near-normal functioning.

A tiny percentage of patients recover far better than the average indicates, and recovery is neither linear, predictable, nor uniformly distributed.

Passengers Flout Mask Rules During Quarantine

Several passengers who dismounted from the virus-hit MV Hondius have apparently already been spotted without a properly fitting facemask, just hours after the stricken ship anchored in Spain’s Canary Islands.

Did the headline grab you? It’s designed to.

When the tabloids run with ‘maskless passengers flouting rules’, they are not reporting a meaningful public-health breach. They are creating a morality play – good citizens follow the rules, bad ones don’t.

They are recycling COVID-era imagery because it reliably drives engagement, thereby implying escalating danger without providing evidence of increased transmission.

But with hantavirus, the whole premise is shaky. Masks are not the primary control measure because Hantavirus is not airborne like COVID. Transmission is overwhelmingly through rodent droppings, urine, or dust from contaminated environments. Human-to-human spread is rare to non-existent, depending on the strain. So the belief that mask non-compliance is a significant risk factor is performative at best.

So, have you clocked the pattern? Cruise ship + virus + rule-breaking passengers = instant déjà vu.

It has nothing to do with biology. It has to do with the optics, and because the real science of hantavirus doesn’t lend itself to a theatrical outbreak storyline, the press fills the voids with behavioural drama – masks, excuses, rule-breaking, and chaos on board.

The real public-health relevance of this headline is honestly minimal, and wearing masks is probably a preventive measure while authorities confirm the source, and another way to reduce other respiratory infections, also a visual symbol of ‘containment’ for the public to see.

It’s not the fundamental barrier to preventing the hantavirus spread, so passengers not wearing masks is not the catastrophe the headline implies.

However, what is worth paying attention to is whether the source of exposure has been identified as possible rodent contamination at a port or onboard. Whether any new cases occurred after the passengers had been isolated, and whether authorities confirmed the strain (Andes vs European vs Seoul, also whether there was any evidence that human-to-human transmission had emerged – so far, there has been none.

So, everything else you read is theatre!

Criminals Ignore Community Service Sentences

Thousands of criminals are treating community service sentences as optional – by merely refusing to start or abandoning them.

Ministry of Justice figures reveal courts in England and Wales issued 53,685 unpaid work orders in the year to March 2025 – yet 3,200 were never started, and a third failed to satisfy the required hours.

As an alternative to custody, criminals can be given between 20 and 300 hours of unpaid work – such as litter picking, painting community facilities or gardening.

The figures heap additional pressure on the Government to fix what the Commons Public Accounts Committee has described as a Probation Service ‘teetering on the brink’.

Tory MP Neil O’Brien, who obtained the figures, said: ‘The system is a joke – and thousands of criminals treat it as such.

‘People hear their sentence in court and know they can safely ignore it, if they choose.

‘Some knock off early while others never even bother to turn up. 

‘If you’re a victim of one of their crimes, or the place where you live is affected, you’re going to wonder what’s become of justice in this country.’

The Ministry of Justice said those who do not complete community service face electronic tagging, fines or recall to prison.

It said the Government has pledged an extra £700 million to the Probation Service and is recruiting 1,300 more probation officers this year.

Completion rates have improved marginally since 2021-22, when the Probation Service returned to public ownership.

Then, 8.4 per cent failed to show up, and 40.7 per cent failed to complete their hours.

Committee chairman Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said: ‘The Probation Service is failing.

‘The endpoint is demonstrated by our report showing the number of prisoners recalled to jail is at an all-time high.’

Community sentences can be effective, but only if they are upheld. It appears that we are no longer penalising criminals. The actual issue is that enforcement is currently crumbling.

Thousands of offenders are simply not turning up for unpaid work. Some never start the sentence at all. Others walk away halfway through with no direct consequence, and the system is so overstretched that violations are not being followed up quickly, if at all, and staff shortages mean that there aren’t enough supervisors to run the work sessions.

This isn’t a ‘soft on crime’ attitude — it’s a capacity failure. If the state can’t execute the sentence, the punishment becomes pointless.

A community sentence is supposed to be a punishment, a way to repay harm, and a structured alternative to prison, also a way to reduce reoffending, but if a criminal learns that nothing will happen to them if they do not comply, then it ceases being a punishment, and public confidence crumbles, victims feel neglected, and the reoffending threat increases.

Sadly, you can’t just jail every offender that commits an offence because our prisons are already over capacity, so now, courts are being told to avoid short custodial sentences unless absolutely necessary.

Probation is understaffed, so violations aren’t always followed up quickly, and community payback teams are stretched, meaning that enforcement is inconsistent, and quite frankly sending someone to jail for a few weeks usually does nothing to reduce reoffending, and in some cases can make things much worse because criminals mixing with other criminals does not alway mix well because if you went into prison for a petty crime, you will certainly come out with better tools for the trade.

So, what looks like criminals ‘treating it as optional’ is usually a manifestation of a system that can’t enforce what it imposes.

Employees At Meta Erupt In Angry Emojis

An internal Meta post announcing a tracking system used to improve AI assistants received hundreds of angry comments and emojis from workers who feared they were being replaced.

The company launched the software last month, which allowed AI to track each employee’s clicks and keystrokes as they go about their workday.

‘For agents to understand how people actually complete everyday tasks using computers, we need to train our models on real examples,’ the announcement read, per Business Insider.

More than 100 angry and surprised emojis riddled the comment section as employees voiced their concerns, Reuters reported.

Many workers expressed concern that they were inadvertently educating the AI that might eventually replace them.

‘This makes me super uncomfortable,’ an engineering manager wrote in a comment reviewed by the New York Times. ‘How do we opt out?’

However, Meta’s Chief Technology Officer, Andrew Bosworth, responded that employees would not be able to opt out of the program on their company laptops.

‘Your callousness to the concerns of your own employees is concerning,’ an anonymous employee fired back at Bosworth, according to the Times. 

Others were concerned that the ongoing gathering of employee information and behaviours might pose a security risk.

‘This data is very tightly controlled,’ Bosworth said. ‘This will not be a leak risk.’ 

Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton told the Daily Mail that the new employee tracking program was only meant to improve AI products. 

‘There are safeguards in place to protect sensitive content, and the data is not used for any other purpose,’ he said. 

In recent years, Mark Zuckerberg has invested billions in the developing AI sector, pushing the use of AI throughout Meta’s social platforms.

‘I think we know that AI is one of the most competitive fields, probably in history,’ he has said.

The company’s 78,000 workers have been urged to embrace constantly evolving AI policies. 

Although Zuckerberg claimed that the software was not being used for ‘surveillance or performance tracking or anything like that.

To offset AI spending, the company has allegedly already planned to slash its workforce by ten per cent, according to an April 17 announcement.

Meta’s Head of Human Resources, Janelle Gale, said the workforce changes were meant to ‘offset the other investments we’re making.’

‘I know this leaves everyone with nearly a month of ambiguity, which is incredibly unsettling,’ she said.

The layoffs were allegedly scheduled for May 20, Meta employees told the Times.

As thousands of workers brace for layoffs, none of them knows whether their employment is about to end abruptly, or if they will be replaced by the very software that tracked them. 

‘It’s incredibly demoralising,’ an employee remarked.

If AI ever turns into a ‘worst-nightmare sci-fi scenario’, it won’t be because the technology chose to take over out of the blue. It will be the result of poor human construction, deployment, or governance.

This distinction is significant because it implies that the future is moulded by decisions, laws, and design, rather than being predestined or doomed.

Every real-world AI risk today is human-driven, not machine-driven, and things that feel like sci-fi nightmares are usually failures of power, oversight, or incentives, not rogue intelligence.

Humans design and absolutely control AI; its quality depends on the design, governance, and the people running the systems.

There are three layers: design control – humans determine the architecture, training data, safety rules, and limits. Humans determine where AI is deployed, what it’s authorised to access, and what it can do, and governance control is about laws, audits, and oversight bodies that decide what companies are authorised to build.

AI doesn’t wake up one morning and decide to do something. It runs the instructions and constraints humans give it.

AI cannot act independently in the physical world. It cannot change its own goals. It cannot override safety systems, and it cannot access systems or data unless humans explicitly connect it, and even the most advanced models are pattern-recognition engines, not agents with intent.

However, this is where things get messy, and this is the part people feel worried about, and not without good reason.

Corporations control AI more than the public does, and decisions about training data, safety, and deployment are made by a small number of companies. Governments are behind the curve. Regulation is slow, fragmented and usually written by people who don’t understand the technology, and then bias and power dynamics leak into systems.

If the people building AI don’t understand disability, class, or lived experience, the systems inherit those blind spots.

As for AI becoming aware, that is extremely unlikely because they are made by humans. Deciding to wipe out humanity, possibly because humans are the controllers of the AI. Becoming ‘evil’, maybe not evil, but they could be used to be destructive against humanity.

After all, they are now employed for control and monitoring, and of course, algorithms are always spreading false information, and because the pace is fast, the communication is lacking, and the people building the systems usually act as if they are protected from consequences.

It creates the impression of an unbeatable force, but the reality is more grounded. AI is powerful, but brittle. Impressive, but narrow. Useful, but dependent. It’s not an alien intelligence. It’s a mirror of human systems, including their flaws.

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