UPPESTDATE! If you missed the live broadcast, the action replay will be posted shortly.
UPPERDATE! We're live now, so let's have at it!
UPDATE! We'll be going live in about fifteen minutes, so do get ready to fire off your questions via the comment form below. See you at the top of the hour. And to listen simply click the livestream feed.
Yes, it's me! Mark Steyn of that ilk - back in the saddle for another hour of questions from Steyn Clubbers around the planet, as the world's most uniquely unique "peaceful transition of power" chunters on into its final fortnight.
Last week's first Clubland Q&A of the New Year was supposed to be our look-ahead to 2025, but it was rather hijacked by breaking news of holiday terror attacks, so I'm happy to pick up the topic again this week. But there is no shortage of other subjects making news around the world. For example, we have an exciting new Pfizer side-effect. Which sounds like something Boris Johnson ordered inserted into the vax:
Teen's breasts grew to triple G-cup size following COVID vaccination: 'Concerns not adequately addressed'
That's how decrepit our society is: even triple-G breasts can't get the attention of the health service.
And, of course, we have the most outrageous story of recent days. Our antipodean chum Alexandra Marshall was a favourite guest of The Mark Steyn Show, and I miss seeing her every week. She has written an interesting column about the sudden reactivation of concern about England's child gang-rape epidemic, based in large part on getting to know Samantha Smith in the course of our show:
In one of her many interviews, Samantha explained that police asked if she consented to the sexual acts these men inflicted upon her. She was a child. This idea that children might have consented to the abuse is one of the horrifying common threads emerging under the spotlight of international scrutiny.
Just to be clear, it was the "men" of the West Mercia Constabulary who demanded to know whether Samantha had "consented" to these acts. They began when she was five years old. The idea that a five-year-old can give consent to sex ought to be repulsive to anyone, even to Sir Keir Starmer. And yet it somehow became routine in the police stations of England. Alexandra continues:
It is incomprehensible that this could have happened to thousands of little girls while Western feminists shouted 'Me Too!' from the headlines of every mainstream publication. The governments fretted over gender quotas to make their Cabinets 'look diverse' while children were being raped by Pakistani men operating under the immunity of social justice.
The "immunity of social justice" is a good way of putting it. A lot of people assume the "Diversity is our strength!" mantra is obvious bollocks and known to be so. But in fact it's deadly serious - so much so that English constables take it as read that kindergarten moppets can consent to anal sex.
I am disgusted that a lot of things we have talked about here for many years seem to be erupting as hitherto unknown breaking news to many of the English. Faced with the possibility that much of their society is objectively evil, too many consumers of UK news chose to look away or focus on such exciting questions as who's going to be next week's Lord Privy Seal. Even when forced into the news by Elon Musk, the legacy media's only point of interest is various tedious aspects of the Musk-Farage imbroglio. As another overseas pal of the Steyn Show, the great Natalie Winters, notes:
English working-class girls all around you are being gang-raped and anally branded but let's focus on the real issue: whether someone's being mean to Jess Phillips. The Westminster wankers are gossiping their country into the abyss. If you could stop talking about trivia for a moment, you might grasp the heartlessness of your pathetic nation-killing obsessions: