The Hooverville Hexagon: Useful Thursday

 

This issue is dedicated to those hard-working professionals who contribute so much to our world just by doing their jobs. We see you, even if we don't always remember to say thank you.

 

Slugs at Work

by Paigetheoracle

It's wet everywhere, apparently. And if you park your car for too long you'll find that you're sharing the space with some messy neighbours.

 

QotD

from a man who knows his job

I am a forensic pathologist and a medical legal consultant. I was the coroner of Allegheny County, Pittsburgh and 129 surrounding municipalities for 20 years, two separate 10-year periods. When I was asked to review the Warren Commission report, it was in August of that year that I pointed out that the president's brain was missing. Others knew about it, but no one had said a word.

Cyril H Wecht, interviewed in the film The Unspeakable (2021)

 

Work: TJ Could Watch It

All Day (Video)

TJ is a nosy kitty. We made a movie. I admired this man, who hauled off the equipment all by himself with no assistance at all.

 

A Reflection on the Effect of

Geographical Location on

the Effectiveness of Religious

Metaphors

by DG

This was in response to a writing prompt on social media the other day, but in view of today's feature story I thought I'd share. DG

 

 

Today's Featured Experience:

Bembridge Lifeboat

by Bluebottle

 

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution is a volunteer-run charity dedicated to saving lives at sea.

Founded in 1824, it maintains 238 RNLI Lifeboat Stations and over 400 lifeboats around the United Kingdom, with two stations on the Isle of Wight; Bembridge and Yarmouth. The lifeboat crews are unpaid volunteers with full-time jobs willing to drop everything and put to sea in the severest storms and worst conditions imaginable purely to save the lives of those in peril on the seas. There is no doubt whatsoever that they are the bravest, noblest people in the UK today, and I have no doubt that the same can be said of their equivalents in other nations worldwide.

 

The RNLI differs from HM Coastguard, which is a government-funded organisation created to guard the coast and initially stop smuggling. Two hundred years ago, most fishermen on the south coast of England supplemented their income by using their knowledge of local waters as a way of bringing ashore unseen various goods from the continent, so the RNLI existed as a way for seafaring folk to rescue those at sea in trouble, whereas the Coastguard was likely to get anyone found smuggling in rough seas in trouble.

 

In the last decade it has become increasingly difficult for migrants and refugees wishing to travel to the UK to do so through the Channel Tunnel or cross-channel ferries as before, and now people smugglers charge thousands for those desperate for a new life in the UK to travel across the channel in 'small boats', crowding more desperate people onto virtually anything that floats than is possible and launching

them into the English Channel, with a large number of these vessels sinking and deaths by drowning of whole families common. Far Right political parties have used increasingly demagogic language to blame these people desperately fleeing war zones or starvation for all the ills in British society. Increased prices? Small boats' fault. Unemployment? Small boats' fault. Train five minutes late? Small boats' fault. Politicians getting underhand bribes? Small boats' fault. Had a trip or fall at work that was not your fault? Small boats' fault. Virtually all small boat crossings happen between Calais and Dover, and are largely dealt with by HM Coastguard. Only 1.2% of RNLI rescues involve migrants. Small boat crossings take up less than 5% of UK immigration and the number of people having crossed the Channel by small boats continues to decrease, with the number in 2026 so far down 43% on last year, though each dinghy to carries an average of 77 people.

 

On 6^th September, the Yarmouth and Bembridge lifeboats were called upon to rescue 120 migrants on an unstable small boat that unusually was further west in the English Channel, heading north from Cherbourg and near the Isle of Wight. The RNLI Lifeboats, in liaison with UK Border Force and HM Coastguard, rescued these desperate people and, with Dover too far away, the lifeboats took the saved men, women and children to Portsmouth. Unfortunately when a group of far-right extreme activists heard of this heroism, they wore black masks and balaclavas, descended on Portsmouth and engaged in intimidating, violent, criminal behaviour, attacking the police, residents and cricket teams. Several vehicles were damaged and police personnel treated for injuries. Many of the anti-RNLI thugs entered the sea off Portsmouth and had to be rescued by the RNLI.

 

The RNLI lifeboat crew themselves were since branded 'Traitors' by the thugs for saving lives, with the names and addresses of the RNLI crew shared online to allow them to be subject to hate crimes.  Portsmouth's lifeboat station has temporarily closed, as has the RNLI museum, with RNLI volunteers advised not to wear anything with the RNLI logo on in public. The Culture Secretary has told social media platforms to do more to prevent 'doxing' and protect people from having their personal details shared online. Donations to the RNLI have skyrocketed since the incident, with many people pledging to buy RNLI charity Christmas cards and posting them to the Freepost address of the most anti-immigrant political party, as each Freepost envelope sent will cost the party the cost of postage instead of the sender.

Suitable Postlude

 

Stay safe out there,

 Dmitri Gheorgheni, Editor