Archive 12
UkTabloid
The People's News Portal
Sunday 31st August 2008
Labour Party failed candidate for Silloth, Jonathan Wood, of Selina Terrace, Maryport, son of Labour Councillors Janice and Martin Wood, has today posted the below, disgusting comment (on this blog), in response to an article relating to the murder of Keith Brown -
Jonathan Wood.
Labour Party failed candidate for Silloth, Jonathan Wood, of Selina Terrace, Maryport, son of Labour Councillors Janice and Martin Wood, has today posted the below, disgusting comment (on this blog), in response to an article relating to the murder of Keith Brown -
Jonathan Wood said...
Flagellation, no different to what some Christian sects do. If you ask me all religion is bollocks whether it be Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism or Christianity.
As for the murder of the BNP member, the bastard deserved it from what I hear.
I have just checked my blog and find that Wood was not content with his first comment and has left this -
Jonathan Wood said...
(To the tune of Harry Roberts is our friend or the lesser known tune London Bridge is Falling down)
Habib Khan is our friend,is our friend,is our friend,Habib Khan is our friend, he kills fascists,
Let him out to kill some more,kill some more,kill some more,Let him out to kill some more, kill the fascists
29 August 2008 16:26
Wood is clearly unstable and has recently boasted of his arrest for abusing the Queen, the only person arrested on the day of the Queens recent visit and was also fined this month for being drunken and disorderly in Workington.
He is also an Anti-BNP zealot and runs a hate filled, obsessive little blog where he regularly incites violence (for which the police have already questioned him) and openly supports ANTIFA, an illegal militant communist group responsible for the recent attacks on the BNP RWB family festival and countless other violent attacks.
Wood is also linked to other local "militants" who have formed their own ANTIFA group in Cumbria, we are monitoring their activities. Continued
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As an Asian man from Stoke-on-Trent begins a jail term for killing his British National Party activist neighbour, what impact has the case had on the city?
Habib Khan, 50, was jailed for eight years on Friday for the manslaughter of 52-year-old Keith Brown, who was stabbed to death during a fight outside his home last July.
Mr Brown's death and the subsequent trial have become an important part of British National Party (BNP) campaigning.
The party believes that had the roles in the fatal fight been reversed, Mr Brown would be serving life for murder.
Its bloggers rail against a judicial system they say is hamstrung by political correctness and dominated by a middle-class liberal elite.
BNP leader, Nick Griffin, even attended Mr Brown's funeral.
Mr Griffin told mourners that Mr Brown's family was subjected to a reign of terror by racist neighbours and their gang friends.
He said that when Mr Brown's son tried to protect his family and dad, the authorities did nothing but jail him.
"When it's English white victims they simply don't care," he said.
Labour stronghold
Locals used to say everyone in Stoke-on-Trent worked in "the pots, the pits or engineering," but old Stoke is disappearing.
The factories have been closing and the familiar terraced streets have been torn down.
The city's population is in decline, though its mainly Muslim ethnic population is bucking the trend.
Stoke has always been a Labour stronghold. Eleven years ago all 60 city councillors were Labour - but traditional supporters have been deserting the party in droves.
The city's political landscape has fragmented. There are seven separate groupings.
Labour has only 17 councillors and the BNP is the third largest group with nine. In the May local elections it polled more votes than any other party in the 10 wards it contested.
Traditional Labour supporters feel alienated by New Labour but voting Tory remains anathema to them. The Lib Dems are not a major force in the Potteries.
It is into this gap that the BNP has stepped.
A neighbour of Habib Khan's said: "The Labours and the rest of them haven't done the canvassing in the same way the BNP have, so an average person is going to vote for the person who's come and knocked on their door and taken time to speak to them.
"From personal experience I've had three leaflets from the BNP posted through my door, and none from the other parties."
The BNP says it is not racist, and there have been relatively few racially aggravated incidents in Stoke.
Local councillors urge their supporters not to resort to violence but to register their protest at the ballot box.
A Muslim man, who did not wish to be named, said that it had not stopped him worrying about his safety in some parts of the city.
"A lot of the time it makes you think about entering certain areas, especially if you are a taxi driver as some of us are," he said.
Michael Coleman, a BNP councillor and friend of Keith Brown, says Labour no longer represents the white working class which is why his party has had so much success.
"It's not fashionable to champion the cause of the white working class, in fact I think we're seen as something of a nuisance," he said.
The Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent South, Rob Flello, said the danger with the BNP is that it represents the politics of poison and negativity which would put people off investing in Stoke.
Really? Once again it's demonstrated here, by Labour's Flello's ignorance of Nationalist politics with nothing more than accusations and no substance to his claim or any examples to back his claim whatsoever.
Get a life Mr Flello and participate in politics as real politicians do without resulting to childish smears and throwing your toys out your pram! The fact that racist incidence have been very low in that area compared to anywhere else proves the BNP are doing something right unlike non-BNP areas with large racial problems! and this is why toy politicians like Flello are afraid of this truth being made public and therefore turns to smearing! (Ed)
The BNP plans to hold a rally in the city on 20 September with Mr Griffin expected to make a speech. News Source (BBC)
Disclaimer: This News Item has been duplicated in its entirety to serve as public information (Ed)
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Women preachers are urging followers at one of Britain’s most influential mosques to kill homosexuals and view all non-Muslims as “vile”, according to a television documentary.
The London Central Mosque and Islamic Cultural Centre, known as the Regent’s Park Mosque, is one of the most respected centres for moderate Islam in western Europe.
However, an undercover investigation by the Channel 4 Dispatches programme has found extremist preachers have held study circles there and are teaching followers a hardline version of the faith followed in Saudi Arabia, known as Wahhabism.
The documentary, to be broadcast tomorrow, is a follow-up to Undercover Mosque, which investigated a number of mosques and was made by the same team more than a year ago. That resulted in an investigation by West Midlands Police, who accused the makers of distorting sermons and inflaming tensions. Officers took no action against extremist preachers whose words were broadcast. Ofcom rejected the complaint and the force had to apologise to Channel 4. It agreed at the High Court to pay £100,000 for libel.
In the new documentary, a female reporter infiltrated women’s study circles. In one, a preacher using the name Umm Amira told followers: “We are not going to be like animals . . . or to be like the homosexuals, God save us from that, you understand? We have to take the judgment, the judgment is to kill them.”
Umm Amira is recorded as saying converts from Islam should also be killed. “He is Muslim and he gets out of Islam, he doesn’t want any more. What are we going to do? We kill him, kill, kill.”
In another study circle, Umm Amira describes Christians as “vile”. Another preacher, Umm Saleem, tells her congregation not to take British citizenship or become friends with nonMuslims.
In the programme, Ahmed Al-Dubayan, the mosque’s director, said the women were not authorised by the mosque.
The preachers could not be reached this weekend, but Umm Saleem told Channel 4: “We are not blind followers of any government or any clerics.
We criticise other religions, just as other religions criticise Islam . . . we encourage integration into society.”
The Muslim Council of Britain, of which the mosque is an affiliate, said: “Some of the statements are deeply offensive . . . [but] it would be very wrong, and quite unfair, to smear the whole centre.” News Source
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The killer of headmaster Philip Lawrence has been freed from prison — into a new life costing taxpayers millions of pounds.
Learco Chindamo, jailed for life for stabbing to death dad- of-four Mr Lawrence in 1995, has been given a new identity.
He has been moved to a secret address away from London where he grew up — and where his mother, stepfather and brothers lived during his 12 years inside.
He has also been given a living allowance and a car, and has been provided with 24-hour police protection via a panic button.
Talks are continuing about relocating his close family later.
Chindamo, 27, was smuggled out of Ford Open Prison, Sussex, about three weeks ago. Details of his whereabouts are being closely guarded by officials for his own safety.
This animal should live in fear just as Mr Philips must have felt in the last moments of his life after being stabbed! But' as usual it's the criminals human rights that matter more than Mr Philips and now his widow Frances! (Ed)
A source familiar with the case confirmed: “Chindamo is out. This is a highly sensitive case.
“His identity’s been changed and he’s been relocated. His whereabouts are known only to a handful of senior public protection officials.”
It is not clear whether even Mr Lawrence’s widow Frances, 59, is aware of Chindamo’s new location.
She reacted angrily last year when a bid failed to have the Italian-born killer deported.
An asylum and immigration tribunal decided returning him to his home country would breach his right to a “family life”.
The Ministry of Justice, which lost an appeal against that ruling, has found itself responsible for ensuring the Chindamos’ safety.
Mrs Lawrence also blasted the proposal — made public last year — that the killer would be given 24-hour police protection.
Lawrence outside St George’s school in Maida Vale, North West London. The head, 48, was trying to protect a pupil.
Chindamo’s 12-year minimum term expired in January when he applied for parole.
His release is believed to have been carried out under Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements — also used for the killers of Liverpool toddler James Bulger.
A source close to the Chindamo case said: “It is extremely expensive to provide this kind of protection. But it has been ruled necessary in this case.” News Source
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A new study suggests that a million or more European Christians were enslaved by Muslims in North Africa between 1530 and 1780 – a far greater number than had ever been estimated before.
In a new book, Robert Davis, professor of history at Ohio State University, developed a unique methodology to calculate the number of white Christians who were enslaved along Africa’s Barbary Coast, arriving at much higher slave population estimates than any previous studies had found.
Most other accounts of slavery along the Barbary coast didn’t try to estimate the number of slaves, or only looked at the number of slaves in particular cities, Davis said. Most previously estimated slave counts have thus tended to be in the thousands, or at most in the tens of thousands. Davis, by contrast, has calculated that between 1 million and 1.25 million European Christians were captured and forced to work in North Africa from the 16th to 18th centuries.
Davis’s new estimates appear in the book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 (Palgrave Macmillan).
“Much of what has been written gives the impression that there were not many slaves and minimizes the impact that slavery had on Europe,” Davis said. “Most accounts only look at slavery in one place, or only for a short period of time. But when you take a broader, longer view, the massive scope of this slavery and its powerful impact become clear.”
Davis said it is useful to compare this Mediterranean slavery to the Atlantic slave trade that brought black Africans to the Americas. Over the course of four centuries, the Atlantic slave trade was much larger – about 10 to 12 million black Africans were brought to the Americas. But from 1500 to 1650, when trans-Atlantic slaving was still in its infancy, more white Christian slaves were probably taken to Barbary than black African slaves to the Americas, according to Davis.
“One of the things that both the public and many scholars have tended to take as given is that slavery was always racial in nature – that only blacks have been slaves. But that is not true,” Davis said. “We cannot think of slavery as something that only white people did to black people.”
During the time period Davis studied, it was religion and ethnicity, as much as race, that determined who became slaves.
“Enslavement was a very real possibility for anyone who traveled in the Mediterranean, or who lived along the shores in places like Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, and even as far north as England and Iceland,” he said.
Pirates (called corsairs) from cities along the Barbary Coast in north Africa – cities such as Tunis and Algiers – would raid ships in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, as well as seaside villages to capture men, women and children.
The impact of these attacks were devastating – France, England, and Spain each lost thousands of ships, and long stretches of the Spanish and Italian coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants.
At its peak, the destruction and depopulation of some areas probably exceeded what European slavers would later inflict on the African interior.
Although hundreds of thousands of Christian slaves were taken from Mediterranean countries, Davis noted, the effects of Muslim slave raids was felt much further away: it appears, for example, that through most of the 17th century the English lost at least 400 sailors a year to the slavers.
Even Americans were not immune. For example, one American slave reported that 130 other American seamen had been enslaved by the Algerians in the Mediterranean and Atlantic just between 1785 and 1793.
Davis said the vast scope of slavery in North Africa has been ignored and minimized, in large part because it is on no one’s agenda to discuss what happened.
The enslavement of Europeans doesn’t fit the general theme of European world conquest and colonialism that is central to scholarship on the early modern era, he said. Many of the countries that were victims of slavery, such as France and Spain, would later conquer and colonize the areas of North Africa where their citizens were once held as slaves. Maybe because of this history, Western scholars have thought of the Europeans primarily as “evil colonialists” and not as the victims they sometimes were, Davis said.
Davis said another reason that Mediterranean slavery has been ignored or minimized has been that there have not been good estimates of the total number of people enslaved. People of the time – both Europeans and the Barbary Coast slave owners – did not keep detailed, trustworthy records of the number of slaves. In contrast, there are extensive records that document the number of Africans brought to the Americas as slaves.
So Davis developed a new methodology to come up with reasonable estimates of the number of slaves along the Barbary Coast. Davis found the best records available indicating how many slaves were at a particular location at a single time. He then estimated how many new slaves it would take to replace slaves as they died, escaped or were ransomed.
“The only way I could come up with hard numbers is to turn the whole problem upside down – figure out how many slaves they would have to capture to maintain a certain level,” he said. “It is not the best way to make population estimates, but it is the only way with the limited records available.”
Putting together such sources of attrition as deaths, escapes, ransomings, and conversions, Davis calculated that about one-fourth of slaves had to be replaced each year to keep the slave population stable, as it apparently was between 1580 and 1680. That meant about 8,500 new slaves had to be captured each year. Overall, this suggests nearly a million slaves would have been taken captive during this period. Using the same methodology, Davis has estimated as many as 475,000 additional slaves were taken in the previous and following centuries.
The result is that between 1530 and 1780 there were almost certainly 1 million and quite possibly as many as 1.25 million white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast.
Davis said his research into the treatment of these slaves suggests that, for most of them, their lives were every bit as difficult as that of slaves in America.
“As far as daily living conditions, the Mediterranean slaves certainly didn’t have it better,” he said.
While African slaves did grueling labor on sugar and cotton plantations in the Americas, European Christian slaves were often worked just as hard and as lethally – in quarries, in heavy construction, and above all rowing the corsair galleys themselves.
Davis said his findings suggest that this invisible slavery of European Christians deserves more attention from scholars.
“We have lost the sense of how large enslavement could loom for those who lived around the Mediterranean and the threat they were under,” he said. “Slaves were still slaves, whether they are black or white, and whether they suffered in America or North Africa.” News Source
Reader Submitted Link. Thank You Welshie
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Councils are recruiting 'citizen snoopers' to report litter louts, dog foulers and even people who fail to sort out their rubbish properly.
The 'environment volunteers' will also be responsible for encouraging neighbours to cut down on waste.
The move comes as local authorities dish out £100 fines to householders who leave out too much rubbish or fail to follow recycling rules.
It will fuel fears that Britain is lurching towards a Big Brother society, following the revelation this week that the Home Office is extending some police powers to council staff and private security guards.
Critics said the latest scheme could easily be abused and encourage a culture of bin spies and curtain twitchers.
Matthew Elliott, of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: 'Snooping on your neighbours to report recycling infringements sounds like something straight out of the East German Stasi's copybook.
'With council tax so high, the last thing people want to pay for is an army of busybodies peering through their net curtains at their neighbours as they put out their rubbish.'
Recruitment adverts appealing for the unpaid environmental volunteers have appeared across the country in recent months.
In Hampshire, Eastleigh council wants locals to 'monitor local environmental quality' and report 'issues' involving recycling and waste. In East London, Tower Hamlets is recruiting volunteers for a crackdown on reluctant recyclers. Other councils are expected to launch similar schemes.
Eastleigh has already taken on around a dozen who answered an advert in a council newsletter which said: 'Volunteers will be involved in reporting issues in their area such as recycling, waste, fly-tipping, graffiti, dog fouling and abandoned vehicles'.
The recruits will also be involved in the 'promotion of recycling and waste minimisation across the borough'.
The LibDem-controlled council denied the volunteers would be asked to spy on neighbours.
Yeah Right! All policies implemented to date have been abused so if you believe the Marxist Lib-Dems then you are naive enough to believe anything! (Ed)
'These are all people who care about the environment and they will be ambassadors for their area,' a spokesman said. 'They will be there to report graffiti, abandoned vehicles and local vandalism, but not to report on other individuals.'
The volunteers will be trained on the council's waste and recycling policies and asked to explain them in the community.
'They might go to an over-60s club and talk about recycling,' said the spokesman.
But Labour councillor Brian Norgate said: 'I wouldn't be overkeen on asking volunteers to be snooping, if that's what this turned out to be. We have people trained in doing this.'
Of course there are! Labour too have made great leaps and bounds in the subject of surveillance. They have managed to turn Britain into a police state within a decade! (Ed)
Tower Hamlets calls its volunteers 'environment champions'. According to the council they report on 'a number of environmental crimes, issues and concerns, such as graffiti, dumped rubbish and abandoned cars.'
A spokesman said: 'They demonstrate environmentally-friendly behaviour, encourage other residents to recycle and are pro-active in the neighbourhood.'
The Local Government Association said: 'Environment volunteers care passionately about their area and want to protect it. They are not snoopers. They will help councils cut crime and make places cleaner, greener and safer.'
The news follows a trend of recruiting ordinary people to help catch those responsible for minor crimes.
On Wednesday, it emerged more than 1,400 people will have police powers under the Home Office's Community Safety Accreditation Scheme.
Security guards, park wardens and other local authority staff can issue fines for a large number of offences, stop cars and seize alcohol from underage drinkers. News Source
Disclaimer: This News Item has been duplicated in its entirety to serve as public information (Ed)
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Our Brussels masters predict that Britain will soon be the most crowded country in the whole of Europe. Presumably this is what they want, since it is their laws that have destroyed our borders and abolished British citizenship and British passports (that wretched puce thing in your pocket is an EU passport, not a British one, and the further east you go, the easier they are to get).
The European Commission says there will be almost 80million people crammed into our landscape by 2058. Just imagine all that concrete, the thousands of square miles (or square kilometres as they will be by then) chewed up by bulldozers.
Imagine the unending 24-hour whoosh and grind of traffic, the bulging trains, the seething, noisy, litter-strewn parks on hot summer Sundays, the crowded schools, the endless waits at enormous polyclinics to see a doctor you've never met before and will never see again, who probably doesn't have English as a first language, and the multicultural schools where half the class will always be from somewhere else. I'm quite glad to think I'll be dead by then.
I've always been unmoved by arguments that immigration benefits' the country economically. Maybe it does, if you eat at restaurants rather than working in them, and then hurry away to expensive areas where no immigrants live. But for most people it's an unmixed curse.
For the migrants themselves it is often a journey into exploitation and squalor, miserable pay and ten-to-a-room living conditions. It holds down wages and puts unwanted pressure on services, transport and housing which are already under strain.
But there's something else about it that is profoundly, heartbreakingly sad. When so many of our fellow creatures don't speak our language, don't understand our laws and customs, don't know our history, can't read our facial expressions or work out when we're joking, we live at a lower level than we did before.
This was summed up for me by an article in a magazine for Poles working in Britain.
Please don't take this as some kind of rant against Poles. If this country is going to be repopulated by anyone, I'd like it to be Poles, whose hard work, resilience and general civilisation can teach a lot of our own young people a useful lesson.
But the article advised opening electricity and gas accounts with bogus personal details.
'Once you've cheated the Communist government and the Iron Curtain, running rings round British Gas is child's play. How can I pay bills that aren't addressed to me?' the writer asked. Then he added: 'The accounting system in Britain is based on trust.' That was the bit that choked me up.
For our entire society is - or rather was - based on trust. But from now on it can't be. Trust exists between people who know each other well, who share a long history together, who are bound by the ties of unselfishness that grow up only in a stable, ancient society.
And now it's gone. So we must be ruled by snoopers and carry slave-badge ID cards and, soon enough, register with the police before we can have gas or electricity. And we are not a people any more, just inhabitants of a sort of airstrip, where nobody belongs and everyone is entitled to be. News Source
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A man who raped a UK journalism student at an illegal immigrants' camp in Calais is believed be a people smuggler and may have fled to England, police have said.
An international manhunt was under way after the attack on a 31-year-old Canadian-born woman on Tuesday night.
She was set upon while visiting a makeshift camp nicknamed "the Jungle" near the port in Calais, the Boulogne-sur-Mer prosecutors' office said.
The woman, who was studying in London and had lived in Britain for years, had gone there to produce a photojournalism report. French detectives believe she may have been attacked by a human trafficker, it was reported.
Vice-prosecutor Philippe Muller said photofit images of the rapist had been put together using descriptions by the victim and a witness.
The two pictures, which were described as "very similar", have been sent to the French ports, the British authorities and Interpol.
Mr Muller said there was a strong possibility the man was a people smuggler or migrant and had already left the country.
He said: "We fear he may well have already gone, possibly to England or to another French port. It's also possible he's gone to Belgium or the Netherlands."
Investigators have traces of the rapist's DNA and also his fingerprints to help identify him. It is believed he is not a French national but this possibility is not being ruled out, Mr Muller added. News Source
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Abu Qatada will no doubt argue that this is not a breach of the strict bail conditions which ban him from using a mobile telephone.
But is the fanatical preacher - once described as 'Osama Bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe' - obeying the spirit, as well as the letter, of the law?
On a shopping trip this week near his London home, the 47-year-old was photographed in conversation with a friend, who then appeared to relay Qatada's words via his mobile to another person.
An onlooker said: 'It was clear to me that the man with the mobile phone was speaking to Qatada before speaking to the person on the other end of the phone.
'He would speak to Qatada holding the phone in his hand away from his ear and then put it to his ear and speak to whoever was on the other end of the line.'
Qatada, who was granted asylum 15 years ago, was freed from a high-security prison in June after the courts ruled that sending him home to Jordan would breach his human rights. He has already been convicted of terror attacks and bomb plots there in his absence.
The eight-page bail order set out a series of stringent rules which placed him under virtual house arrest.
The father of five, whose family are living on benefits of an estimated £50,000 a year, is allowed to leave his rented £800,000 four-bedroom semi for just two hours a day.
He is also banned from using any communications equipment apart from a landline telephone, which is almost certainly bugged by the security services.
He cannot use a computer and he is banned from having any contact, directly or indirectly, with a list of terrorists including Bin Laden.
Qatada has claimed incapacity benefit for a bad back - but it didn't stop him carrying two bags on the shopping trip. News Source
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Britain is facing "arguably the worst" economic downturn in 60 years which will be "more profound and long-lasting" than people had expected, Alistair Darling, the chancellor, tells the Guardian today.
In the government's gravest assessment of the economy, which follows a warning from a Bank of England policymaker that 2 million people could be out of work by Christmas, Darling admits he had no idea how serious the credit crunch would become.
His blunt remarks lay bare the unease in the highest ranks of the cabinet that the downturn is making it all but impossible for Gordon Brown to recover momentum after a series of setbacks.
His language is much starker than the tone adopted by the prime minister, who aims to revive his premiership this autumn by explaining how he will help struggling families through the downturn.
The chancellor, who says that Labour faces its toughest challenge in a generation, admits that Brown and the cabinet are partly to blame for Labour's woes because they have "patently" failed to explain the party's central mission to the country, leaving voters "pissed off".
In a candid interview in today's Guardian Weekend magazine, Darling warns that the economic times faced by Britain and the rest of the world "are arguably the worst they've been in 60 years". To deepen the sense of gloom, he adds: "And I think it's going to be more profound and long-lasting than people thought."
The economic backdrop presents Labour with its toughest challenge since the 1980s. "We've got our work cut out. This coming 12 months will be the most difficult 12 months the Labour party has had in a generation," he says. But Labour has been lacklustre. "We've got to rediscover that zeal which won three elections, and that is a huge problem for us at the moment. People are pissed off with us.
"We really have to make our minds up; are we ready to try and persuade this country to support us for another term? Because the next 12 months are critical. It's still there to play for."
But of course! it's nothing more than a game for them playing with peoples lives whilst they don't live through any of the hardships ordinary folk endure!!! (Ed)
Darling was given a personal taste of the austere climate when ticked off by a waiter for ordering a second bottle of wine during a meal with his wife, Maggie, and another couple. "The waiter came over and said 'too much wine' in a loud voice. So we stuck to one bottle for the entire meal." Continued
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Fewer than two-thirds of babies born in England and Wales are now registered as 'White British'.
Newly-released figures give the first official breakdown of births by ethnic identity, and offer a striking insight into the changing face of Britain's population.
Of 649,371 babies born in 2005, 64.4 per cent were recorded as 'White British'.
The next largest group were the 8.7 per cent who were recorded as Asian - of whom Pakistanis formed the biggest section with 3.7 per cent.
Five per cent of babies were recorded as black - 3 per cent African, 1.2 per cent 'black or black British Caribbean' and 0.8 per cent 'other black' identities.
Mixed race babies accounted for 3.5 per cent of births, while 5.1 per cent were Irish or 'other white identities' and 2.4 per cent were Chinese or 'other groups'.
Just under 11 per cent had no ethnic identity recorded.
Yesterday's statistical bulletin from the Office for National Statistics follows a separate publication last week showing that a quarter of all babies are now born to immigrant mothers.
In London the figure is 54 per cent, rising to 75 per cent in some boroughs.
The fast-moving trend means that babies born to immigrant mothers are set to become the main driver of Britain's population growth within the next few years, taking over from immigration itself.
The data on ethnic identity of births reveal stark differences in the lifestyles and social norms of the UK's various communities.
Virtually all Asian babies - more than 95 per cent - were registered by married parents compared to only around half of 'White British' babies and just a third of the Black Caribbean group.
The proportion of births registered by single mothers - those where no father's details are given - was highest in the Caribbean group at 20.5 per cent followed by African (13 per cent) and 'White British' (7 per cent).
By contrast in each of the three main Asian groups - Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi - fewer than 1.5 per cent of births were registered by a single mother. Continued
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There have been four serious economic downturns in Britain over the past 100 years.
The first of these remains stuck in folk memory: the Great Depression of the Thirties, which led to mass unemployment and industrial dereliction.
World War II was followed by a period of sustained, though jerky, economic growth.
This came to a grinding halt in the mid-Seventies, when inflation soared to 25 per cent, growth ceased and unemployment increased remorselessly to more than 3 million.
Mass unemployment and high inflation returned at the start of the Nineties, a problem made much worse by the insane decision, forced on Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher by John Major and Douglas Hurd, to join the Exchange Rate Mechanism.
Following this week's sobering news that economic growth in Britain has once again ground to a halt, and that the pound has suffered its worst monthly fall since we left the ERM in 1992, it can be stated with reasonable confidence that we are now entering a fourth economic recession, with all that means in terms of sheer, grinding human misery.
Like each of the last three crises, this one will produce political consequences.
The catastrophe of 1931 ripped apart Ramsay MacDonald's Labour government, and led to a long split in the Labour movement that was only fully mended with the victory of the Attlee government of 1945.
Internationally, it is worth remembering, the consequences of economic collapse were graver still: the conditions were created for the rise of fascism and, in due course, the carnage of World War II. Continued - Please Read News in Full
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Energy bills for hard-pressed families smashed through the average £1,300-a-year mark for the first time yesterday.
The punishing charges are now 40 per cent higher on average than at the start of this year – a record increase.
The figures emerged after the last of the “big six” power firms announced huge rises.
Watchdog Energywatch called it a crisis and said that the Government should step in. Gas and electricity bills were pushed to the record high with increases from rivals npower and Scottish Power.
Bosses of both firms, which have nearly 12 million customers between them, apologised for their eye-watering increases.
Now all six major energy suppliers have increased their prices twice since January 1. As a result, the average household will fork out nearly £400 extra for their gas and electricity over the next 12 months.
npower yesterday put up its gas prices by 26 per cent. The German-owned firm, which has 6.6 million British customers, also raised electricity prices by an average 14 per cent.
Scottish Power, which has 5.2 million customers, announced hikes of 34 per cent for gas and
nine per cent for electricity, with effect from Monday. Its duel fuel customers will see their bills rise by 25 per cent.
All six energy giants have blamed soaring wholesale costs for their latest bill increases.
npower managing director Giuseppe Di Vita said yesterday: “We have made this decision extremely reluctantly, especially as household budgets are being squeezed so much.”
Scottish Power director of energy retail Willie MacDiarmid said: “Although we are one of the last companies to announce increases, we are sorry we couldn’t hold on any longer.”
The increases sparked outrage from charities who warned that the elderly and vulnerable would struggle to heat and light their homes this winter. Continued
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Energy bills for hard-pressed families smashed through the average £1,300-a-year mark for the first time yesterday.
The punishing charges are now 40 per cent higher on average than at the start of this year – a record increase.
The figures emerged after the last of the “big six” power firms announced huge rises.
Watchdog Energywatch called it a crisis and said that the Government should step in. Gas and electricity bills were pushed to the record high with increases from rivals npower and Scottish Power.
Bosses of both firms, which have nearly 12 million customers between them, apologised for their eye-watering increases.
Now all six major energy suppliers have increased their prices twice since January 1. As a result, the average household will fork out nearly £400 extra for their gas and electricity over the next 12 months.
npower yesterday put up its gas prices by 26 per cent. The German-owned firm, which has 6.6 million British customers, also raised electricity prices by an average 14 per cent.
Scottish Power, which has 5.2 million customers, announced hikes of 34 per cent for gas and
nine per cent for electricity, with effect from Monday. Its duel fuel customers will see their bills rise by 25 per cent.
All six energy giants have blamed soaring wholesale costs for their latest bill increases.
npower managing director Giuseppe Di Vita said yesterday: “We have made this decision extremely reluctantly, especially as household budgets are being squeezed so much.”
Scottish Power director of energy retail Willie MacDiarmid said: “Although we are one of the last companies to announce increases, we are sorry we couldn’t hold on any longer.”
The increases sparked outrage from charities who warned that the elderly and vulnerable would struggle to heat and light their homes this winter. Continued
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Stunned cattery owners have been hit with a £300 bill — for playing music to their moggies.
Mel and Maggie Boustead calm and entertain the pampered pets by turning on the soothing sounds of Radio 2.
But the Performing Rights Society, which protects the copyright of songwriters and acts, claimed they should have a special radio licence — and owe two years’ fees.
The couple have now been forced to switch off the radio at Follybridge Kennels and Cattery in Peakirk, Cambs.
Licence
Mel said: “It is outrageous that they want us to pay for a licence so animals can listen to the radio. We won’t pay it.
“We’ve been told we can have it on during ‘out of office hours’, but cats don’t want it then.”
The PRS has said it will reassess the case.
A spokeswoman said: “If the music is predominantly for the cats, then a licence is not required.
“But if the radio is audible to staff and visitors one may be needed.” News Source
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The leading Labour Party ‘think tank’, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has issued a report saying that the government needs to employ even more `migrants’ to `boost the economy’.
The IPPR — which has a history of helping to shape government policy — says in its latest report that the government must do more to encourage local authorities to “encourage migrants to stay.”
The Communities and Local Government said it tried to maximise benefits and ‘mitigate’ the impact of migrants. Previous IPPR analysis of immigration statistics showed that more than a million migrants came to the UK from the eight Eastern European countries that joined the European Union in May 2004, but about half of those have already returned home.
MigrationWatch UK Chairman Andrew Green responded by saying that the last thing Britain needed was more immigrants.
“Our population is increasing by a third of a million every year, mainly due to immigration. We will have to build the equivalent of the city of Birmingham every three years just to cope with this. The public are, rightly, deeply opposed to the present massive levels of immigration without encouraging yet more.”
Last month a report by the Commons communities and local government committee said rapid immigration had damaged community relations in parts of England.
In three areas with high immigration: Peterborough, Burnley, and Barking and Dagenham; community cohesion was among the lowest in the country, the MPs said. The report said there was “significant public anxiety” over issues such as pressure on public services.
The IPPR is best known for its Commission on Social Justice, which provided the basis for many of the policies of the New Labour government that came to power in 1997. News Source
Reader Submitted Link. Thank You Christine
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The former mayor of London has dismissed claims from Britain's highest ranking Asian officer that the head of the Metropolitan Police is racist.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur has brought an employment tribunal claim against Sir Ian Blair, accusing him of racial discrimination.
But Ken Livingstone defended Sir Ian, insisting he has made a positive contribution to diversity in the Met.
Mr Ghaffur's solicitor said the former mayor's support was misplaced.
He said Mr Ghaffur had been sidelined in his role as head of security for the 2012 Olympic Games.
The employment tribunal claim also includes claims of religious discrimination.
But Mr Livingstone said he knew Sir Ian was "not a racist".
"Here's somebody who's got incredible flak for pushing the equalities agenda.
"What we have here is a quite simple situation. Tarique had done his 30 years and would like an extension and he would have liked to have been the supremo right up to the Olympics.
"It was never on the cards. Even before we won the Olympics the acceptance was the Government would be the boss in all this."
Ghaffur's solicitor, Dr Shahrokh Mireskandari, said the former mayor's defence of Sir Ian was wrong.
"You blindly support Sir Ian Blair," he said.
"The issue about Tarique being in charge of the Olympics - he got praise from everybody that he is the right man and in writing and also he was promised to be the Deputy by Sir Ian Blair himself, so please don't say he just didn't make it. Sir Ian Blair himself had promised him the job." News Source
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An illegal immigrant who attempted to rape a woman in a Twickenham internet cafe was told he had “disturbed” sexual views as he was sentenced to four years’ prison.
Anosh Ahmed, 30, from Harrow, was handed the prison term at Kingston Crown Court yesterday by Judge Matthews after he was found guilty of attempted rape late last month.
Ahmed was convicted of attacking a 21-year-old in the Coffee Day internet cafe in York Street at about 5pm on February 24 by a majority verdict .
The court heard that Ahmed let the victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, into the cafe after hours to use the internet and then started kissing and touching her, preventing her from leaving.
He then dragged her into a toilet, forced her to the floor and told her to take off her clothes, telling her: “It’s ok, it’s only sex, you don’t want to die do you?”
Judge Matthews said: “You appear to be someone with an inability to form long-term relationships and, at 30 years of age, you lack sexual experience.
“You have continued to deny any wrongdoing and to blame the victim.
“The pre-sentence report suggests you have disturbed views about sexual entitlement and appropriate sexual behaviour.
“I have read [the 21-year-old] victim’s impact statement. She has become very anxious around strangers and feels stressed and frightened if she is on her own.
“This incident has had a very significant impact on her life. There was no physical injury of consequence to her, but the psychological impact is self evident.”
Ruth Field, speaking in mitigation, told the court that Ahmed, who has an economics degree, had come to the UK six years ago and stayed on illegally.
She also went on to say that he had had a good character until now.
Judge Matthews ordered that Ahmed be deported upon release and sign the sex offenders’ register for 10 years. News Source
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A Takeaway worker has been jailed for sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl after they kissed under a bridge in Derby River Gardens.
Derby Crown Court heard Mohammed Ramzan was "an immature man of 20" at the time of the offence and thought the girl was 16, although he had no proof about her age.
Clive Stockwell, prosecuting, said the pair exchanged text messages and met in the River Gardens after the girl finished school for the day.
They went under the bridge, kissed and "got off with one another" as the girl later described it. Ramzan touched intimate parts of her body and the pair "left on good terms", said Mr Stockwell.
When social services heard of the incident, they contacted police, who interviewed Ramzan. He denied the incident and also said he did not know the girl, added Mr Stockwell.
Ramzan, now 21, of Silverhill Road, Derby, later pleaded guilty to sexual activity with a girl under 16. Continued
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An asylum seeker who caused three major street disturbances in Halifax in just two days as a protest against his failed application has been jailed for 14 days.
Imran Marish, 44, of no fixed address, was described by police during one incident as going "totally crazy" in the town centre, while in another he continually screamed obsentities at residents in a quiet Pellon street until officers arrived.
And each time after his three arrests on June 16 and 17 he refused to co-operate or speak to officers.
He was sentenced for the public order offence at Calderdale Magistrates Court after being found guilty in his absence during a trial at Bradford Magistrates. He also admitted shoplifting from a discount shoe shop and failing to provide a drug test sample.
Carole Lawford, prosecuting, said: "He has a history of public order offences and they have become more regular."
She added police had tried to handle matters by arresting Marish and making him see a doctor before releasing him the next day but they feared he had now become a danger to the public.
The shoplifting offence happened at Priceless shoe store, in Bradford city centre, where a security guard had spotted him trying to smuggle a £5 bag from the shop. He had been drawn to staff's attention because he was carrying an HMS prison bag from his time in the police cells.
Mohammad Ryaz, for Marish, said he had come to Halifax as an asylum seeker where he claimed benefits and accommodation but this help was removed after the application failed.
Mr Ryaz said: "This was a protest at the removal of that help but because he has some suspected psychological problems he went about it all wrong."
He was sentenced to 14 days in prison. News Source
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The man arrested in Derby over a plot to kill the Prime Minister is Kosovan, sources have told the Telegraph.
The 29-year-old was captured at a house in Moore Street, Normanton, on Tuesday for alleged offences under the Terrorism Act 2000.
He now faces up to 28 days of questioning before police have to charge him, release him or apply for an extension.
Officers dressed in white boiler suits and face masks have been searching the house and are expected to continue to do so for several days.
Two cars outside the property were taken away by police to be examined. He was detained as part of an ongoing investigation by Lancashire police and Greater Manchester Counter Terrorism Unit.
Four other arrests have been made in the past fortnight as part of an anti-terror operation.
Police sources said officers were investigating threats to kill Prime Minister Gordon Brown and former PM Tony Blair.
It is understood no actual plot was in place but that officers discovered a written threat on an extremist website early this year.
News of the arrest was released yesterday morning and sent shockwaves through the local community.
But residents, community leaders and business owners said they had no idea who the man was other than he was Eastren European.
However information obtained today by the Telegraph indicates he is Kosovan.
Councillor Fareed Hussain, a member of the Derby Muslim Forum and the city’s council, last night appealed for calm in his local community. Continued
If he is appealing for calm then the reflection must be that of this Kosovan man's actions by the community otherwise there would not be any need for the appeal! (Ed)
Saturday 30th August 2008
George Orwell's 1984 was supposed to be a warning about the dangers of totalitarianism, not a blueprint for government.
No one seems to have told New Labour. Barely a day goes by without another assault on our civil liberties, another extension of state snooping, another exciting ruse for meting out punishment for the most trivial offence.
This week’s outrage is the news that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is creating a whole new vigilante class of quasi-policemen, drawn from the ranks of Town Hall jobsworths, security guards and car park attendants.
They’ll be allowed to wear uniforms, patrol the streets with dogs, confiscate property and hand out fixed-penalty notices for everything from littering to under-age drinking.
It’s emerged that there are 1,400 of these Accredited Persons out there already, and their numbers will soon swell into the thousands.
They have the power to stop cars, take photos of people, demand names and addresses and issue fines.
For now, they wear badges sewn onto their tunics by their employers.
But the Home Office wants to see a uniform standardised across the country. How about peaked caps, jodhpurs, jackboots and black shirts with swastikas on the sleeves?
For a few hundred pounds a head, any council or private security firm can apply for accreditation.
With little or no training, these wannabe stormtroopers can then take to the streets and start throwing their weight around.
Jackboot Jacqui thinks this new force is essential for tackling ‘low level’ crime, thus freeing up the proper police to concentrate on their full-time task of filling in forms, suing each other for racial and sexual discrimination and pursuing those suspected of ‘hate crimes’.
Hang on, wasn’t that what David Blunkett’s Plastic Plods were supposed to do? So what’s the difference between a Police Community Support Officer and an Accredited Person? Very little, except Accredited Persons don’t have the power to detain suspects.
The ranks of PCSOs are comprised of people who are too stupid to pass the entrance exam for the real police. You won’t even have to be that bright to become an Accredited Person.
It’s not difficult to imagine the class of person who would want to be accredited — pig-thick playground bullies; the sort of swaggering oaf you see at your local Arndale Centre, done up like a member of the NYPD and swinging his walkie-talkie like a six gun; sexual inadequates who seek solace in prying into the private lives of others; the scum of the earth who become wheel clampers; Max and Paddy pub bouncers in bomber jackets; and illegal immigrants presently working as traffic wardens.
These are the kind of characters the Home Secretary thinks should be a.‘key component of the extended police family’.
What else should we expect from a Government which has been happy to welcome paramilitaries into the police in Northern Ireland?
If the Krays were around, they’d be Accredited Persons in the East End. Given Ronnie’s sexual proclivities, he’d probably be an Assistant Commissioner in the Met by now.
‘Hand over that can of lager, sonny, or Mad Accredited Person Fraser will have to pull your teeth out with a pair of pliers.’
You know from bitter experience that if you give anyone in authority any kind of power they will always, always, always abuse it.
In this case, the scope for abuse is almost unlimited. Any villain can pull on a hi-viz jacket, slap a sheriff ’s badge on his lapel, arm himself with a clipboard and a fake two-way radio and start stopping cars and demanding entry to people’s homes.
How will anyone, especially the elderly and vulnerable, be sure who is ‘accredited’ and who isn’t?
Labour has trashed the notion of privacy, torn up the idea that an Englishman’s home is his castle.
A standing army of inspectors and enforcers has statutory power to demand entry to our property. Our private records, bank accounts, emails and phone calls are an open book.
Town Halls use laws designed for anti-terrorism operations to sift through people’s rubbish, mount Spooks-style surveillance operations against people suspected of living ten yards outside a school catchment area and use satellite technology to spy on anyone guilty of adding a conservatory without declaring it to the tax department.
Yet despite widespread protest — not just from civil libertarians — and a supposed obsession with yuman rites, the Blitzkrieg rumbles on.
Now Jackboot Jacqui decides to dole out quasi-police powers to any skinhead who can register as a ‘security consultant’ and cough up a few quid for a warrant card.
Look, before some of you start saying something must be done about drunken behaviour, vandalism, littering and graffiti — I agree.
But it should be done by properly trained, properly accountable police officers.
Good policing starts from the bottom up, not the top down. If ministers really cared about ‘anti-social behaviour’ they would get the police out on the streets, feeling collars and dragging hooligans before the courts.
But Labour is about box-ticking, target-hitting and quotas. That’s why they favour fixed-penalty fines and cautions.
It all goes towards the ‘clear-up’ rate. And because they’ve failed to provide enough prison places, real criminals are walking free.
Here’s how barking mad the system is. Yesterday, it was reported that throughout the Midlands, magistrates courts are cancelled daily.
At a time when you’d think they would be working overtime, both the adult and juvenile benches find they have nothing to do because offenders are being given cautions or on-the-spot fines because it’s cheaper than taking people to court.
The very foundation of our justice system — local magistrates sitting in judgment on offenders arrested by bobbies on the beat — is in tatters.
Yet this Government continues to dream up ever more ‘crimes’ and punishments and hands over enforcement to unaccountable, uncontrollable vigilantes in uniform. News Source
Disclaimer: This News Item has been duplicated in its entirety to serve as public information (Ed)
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Labour and their obsession with Fines
Hefty fines are to be inflicted on householders who fail to recycle their rubbish correctly, it emerged last night.
People caught mistakenly putting normal waste into their green recycling bins could be fined £70 – more than many shoplifters, drug users and dangerous drivers.
Campaigners said the draconian penalties were merely an excuse for town hall bullies to squeeze more cash out of already hard-pressed families.
And they raised fears of a miscarriage of justice if innocent people are fined because of rubbish dropped in their bin by passers-by.
Exeter City Council is the first local authority in the country to start fining residents, and others are expected to follow suit. Anyone putting the “wrong” waste into a green bin will be sent a fixed-penalty notice to compensate the council for the cost of cleaning it.
Those who fail to pay will then be taken to court and prosecuted for non-payment of the fine rather than misuse of the bin. The idea is to get round a legal loophole.
In 2006 the council lost a landmark legal action against mother-of-three Donna Challice, who was taken to court for putting rotting food and cigarette ends in her green bin.
Ms Challice, 32, was found not guilty after the court ruled the council had been unable to prove she put the waste into the bin herself. Mike Trim, the city’s head of cleansing services, said: “In the case of Donna Challice, the court decided that we had to have evidence from either eye witnesses or CCTV to ensure that the person taken to court was in fact the person responsible.
“Now if we find a contaminated bin, under the terms of Section 46 of the Environmental Protection Act, we serve a notice on every adult person in the household concerned.
“This instructs them what they should put in their bins. If we do bill them and they don’t pay, they will not be prosecuted under Section 46 but can be prosecuted for non-payment of a bill, which is much easier to prove and will be easier to enforce in the courts.”
Shadow Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles blamed Gordon Brown for the crackdown, saying Labour’s bin policies had left the council with little choice.
“It says it all that under this Government hard-working households who put their bins out on the wrong day get clobbered with larger fines than shoplifters,” he said.
“If Labour is not imposing bin fines it’s forcing bin cuts and introducing bin taxes. This will be hard to stomach for the public, who are already struggling with the spiralling cost of living.
“People genuinely want to improve recycling and go green, but Labour’s bin policies will harm the environment by causing a surge in fly-tipping and fuelling public resentment at town hall bin bullies.
“Council tax has doubled under Labour and all the public have got in return are cutbacks to local services.”
Matthew Elliott, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Putting in place financial penalties for putting rubbish in the wrong bin is unnecessary and will catch lots of innocent people who make an honest mistake. Continued
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Elderly people and their families face paying billions more for personal care services like cooking and cleaning, MPs say today.
Because Government spending on personal care for the elderly is growing more slowly than the number of people needing help, a £6 billion "funding gap" will emerge, the MPs say.
More than 1 million people use council care services in order go on living independent lives, paying fees that can vary widely between council areas. Ministers are reviewing the care system and have promised a green paper next year.
In a report published today, the Work and Pensions Select Committee say that without major reform of the current unpopular system of means-tested care services, the old and their families will end up shouldering even more of the burden.
Private care spending is around 57 per cent of total care expenditure, but on current trends this share will grow to 66.5 per cent by 2022, the MPs say.
"Those who need care will be expected to pay more of the cost," the report says.
It adds: "Currently state funding for social care is growing at a much slower rate than the demographic changes require. This means the Government is heading for a funding gap of an estimated £6 billion, unless the system is changed."
The number of people over 65 using council care services is forecast to more than double over the next 40 years.
Last year, the Commission for Social Care Inspection, the Government's watchdog, showed that responsibility for paying for care was shifting from local councils to the families of society's most vulnerable citizens.
Anyone with assets over £21,000, including property, has to pay for their own social care whether they live in a nursing home, their own home or warden-controlled sheltered housing. Continued
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Babies born in some deprived parts of Britain will die almost 30 years before their wealthier neighbours, a landmark report has disclosed.
The study by experts at the World Health Organisation discloses the size of the gulf in health between rich and poor.
It found that a boy born in one deprived part of Glasgow is likely to die 28 years earlier than one born in a village just a few miles away, and will have a life expectancy shorter than that of people living in India or the Philippines.
The three-year study claims health inequalities around the world are largely avoidable and are down to social environment, not biology.
It warns: "The toxic combination of bad policies, economics and politics is, in large measure, responsible for the fact that a majority of people in the world do not enjoy the good health that is biologically possible.
"Social injustice is killing people on a grand scale."
The report, which took evidence from hundreds of researchers and academics from universities and government bodies around the world, cites an academic study that found a boy born in the deprived Glasgow district of Calton was likely to die 28 years earlier than one born just a few miles away in the village of Lenzie. Continued
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The number of people dying who were suffering from C difficile has risen by 28% in England and Wales, new figures reveal.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said 8,324 death certificates mentioned the infection in 2007, compared with 6,480 the previous year.
In some of these cases the deaths may have been caused by other factors, but the patient was also infected with C diff.
The number of reported deaths involving the infection has more than doubled since 2005 when there were 3,757 mentions on death certificates.
Some of this may be due to more complete reporting on death certificates, the ONS said.
The number of death certificates that mentioned MRSA decreased from 1,652 in 2006 to 1,593 in 2007.
This is the first time the number of MRSA-related deaths has fallen since ONS records began in 1993. News Source
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Deaths linked to the hospital infection Clostridium difficile have more than doubled in two years, official figures show.
Last year in England and Wales 8,324 people died either from C. diff or were infected with it when they died from other causes - a rise of 28 per cent in just one year.
The infection, which particularly affects elderly people, is linked to more than four times more deaths than in 2001 when there were 1,804 deaths, data from the Office of National Statistics show.
Deaths linked to the superbug MRSA rose steadily between 2003 and 2005 but have since levelled off.
In the last year there has been a slight drop of 3.6 per cent in deaths either directly from MRSA or linked to it to reach 1,593.
Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley said the 'vast majority' of these deaths could have been avoided with better prescribing of antibiotics and proper isolation of infected patients.
It has been argued that Labour's waiting list targets have encouraging hospitals to rush through patients leaving wards overcrowded with time for cleaning patient areas between cases.
The data is collected from death certificates where doctors note down one underlying cause of death and can mention any number of other factors that may have contributed.
Yes but how many have avoided mentioning MRSA and CDIFF up to recent times in death certificates? it has been known! Anyway if those are official figures then you would be forgiven for thinking the figures are much higher! (Ed)
In recent years doctors have been encouraged by the Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson to mention hospital infections on death certificates where patients have them even if it was not the underlying cause of death.
The figures show of the 8,324 death certificates that mentioned C.diff, around half noted it as the underlying cause of death.
Levin Wheller, author of the report, said it was not possible to say whether the increase was due to more complete reporting on death certificates or poor infection control in hospitals.
C.diff is mainly a disease that affects the elderly who have been in hospital for other reasons and who have received broad spectrum antibiotics. These drugs cut the natural flora in the stomach allowing C.diff to multiply and produce a toxin which causes diarrohea.
The ONS figures show there was one death per million people aged under 45 but 2,000 deaths per million people aged 85 and over.
Over 90 per cent of deaths from c.diff occurred in an NHS hospital, with most of the remainder happening in nursing or residential homes. Continued
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Heroes in our Communities: The Carers!
Relatives of the sick and elderly should be paid a salary of up to £110 a week for looking after them, MPs are demanding.
The benefits system for unpaid carers is outdated and needs to be ' radically overhauled' to recognise carers' 'critical importance', they say in a report today.
There are almost 6million carers in the UK who are believed to save the taxpayer £87billion a year.
But experts believe many more people taking on such roles do not consider themselves to be carers, as they see it as simply a normal part of family life.
However, they often suffer financial hardship from giving up work, reducing their hours or moving into lower paid jobs - and missing out on pensions contributions.
Almost three-quarters of carers lose an average £11,000 a year, the support group Carers UK claims.
Carers also face greater health problems as a result of the physical and emotional stress of their demanding roles.
There is a carer's allowance of £50.55 a week, but it is denied to those receiving a state pension, those who spend less than 35 hours a week on care, those earning more than £95 a week after tax and full-time students.
The report recommends a new two-tier benefits system, which could see welfare payments to full-time carers more than double to £110.
Under proposals from the Commons Work and Pensions Committee, those providing care for at least 35 hours a week should receive £60.50 - equal to jobseekers' allowance - as 'income replacement'.
This carer support allowance would still let carers earn up to £95 a week from paid work.
However, it would add an estimated £130million to the annual welfare bill.
A second benefit of between £25 and £50 a week - the caring costs payment - would be available to all carers, including those on a state pension, at a cost to taxpayers of up to £2billion a year.
It would be used to compensate carers for the extra costs of looking after someone - for example heating, washing and food bills, transport and parking costs.
Many also pay for dressings and other medical equipment out of their own pocket and some even cover the costs of adaptations to their homes. Neither of the proposed benefits would be means-tested.
The report aim to redress the failure to provide direct financial aid to carers in June, when the Government announced a £255million package of measures to support carers, including cash to extend respite breaks, provide health checks and help carers stay in jobs. But there was not enough money available to pay carers for the support they provide.
'Caring matters deeply to individuals, families and society in general,' Labour MP and committee chairman Terry Rooney said.
'Sustaining the ability of carers to provide the care and support they give to others is of critical importance.'
The report calls for an immediate independent review on the 'impact of caring on carers' incomes and of the long-term costs of caring for an older person or someone with a disability'.
It says: 'Carer's allowance is outdated. Carers' benefits should be radically overhauled at the earliest opportunity to recognise the contribution carers make and to be more flexible to reflect carers' different circumstances.'
Imelda Redmond, chief executive of Carers UK, said: 'As well as being insultingly low, carer's allowance does not recognise carers' individual circumstances and discourages them from combining caring with paid work.
'The two-tier benefit recommended by the committee would be a major improvement.
'Carers need a separate benefit which recognises that they are not unemployed, but are making an important contribution to society.
'Many carers are living in poverty and rising fuel and food prices are hitting them hard.'
The MPs warn that with longer life expectancy and improved survival rates among the sick and disabled, more and more people will have to shoulder the burden of caring for friends and relatives.
Citizens Advice welfare policy officer Vicky Pearlman said: 'It is crucial that the Government takes action to boost carers' incomes as a matter of urgency.
'The current system is enormously complicated. Even Department for Work and Pensions staff struggle to correctly identify, and clearly explain, the benefits that carers and their families are entitled to.
'The Government needs to look seriously at how it can remove the barriers that make it difficult for carers to engage in the labour market.' Continued
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Children in substandard nurseries are more likely to progress if they are kept at home with their parents, Government-backed research has shown.
They are better behaved at 11 and achieve higher exam scores if their parents avoid poor quality pre-schools and help them at home instead.
Researchers believe that around 15 per cent of centres are failing to offer adequate standards of pre-school education for three to five year olds.
But they also found that children sent to one of the top 15 per cent of pre-schools have a significant head start which persists at least until age 11.
The effect was particularly marked for maths, with children scoring on average 27 per cent better in SATs tests in the subject than peers in substandard nurseries.
The boost to maths scores was seen in families across the social class spectrum, with children of affluent and well-educated parents seeing a benefit as well as more disadvantaged youngsters.
In other findings, the landmark 11-year study uncovered a link between heavy use of computer games and poor attainment in English in SATs at age 11.
The researchers concluded that children who benefit from a stimulating environment at home, go to a good nursery and progress on to an academic primary school are massively ahead of classmates by age 11.
The absence of these three advantages would send a pupil from the top of the class to near the bottom, regardless of their potential as an infant.
Academics who worked on the Government-funded project called on ministers to fund better training of nursery staff to bring all centres up to the standards of the best.
Good quality nurseries were judged by researchers to be highly responsive to children and offer activities and learning experiences to match their level of development. They also effectively introduced early number concepts. Continued
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More than 60 judges have given 'unduly lenient' sentences to offenders convicted of serious crimes, according to figures published yesterday.
The Court of Appeal ruled 62 judges across England and Wales let off criminals, including terrorists, murderers and rapists, with light sentences.
The Attorney General Baroness Scotland QC referred 106 criminals to more senior judges last year to seek tougher sentences. Among them were robbery gangs, drug smugglers, paedophiles and terrorists linked to al Qaeda.
Of these 86 individuals were ruled to have been given 'unduly lenient' punishments, with 75 handed harsher terms.
Sentences were increased in 12 sex cases, 15 violence cases, 17 robbery cases, 11 drugs cases and one murder. The number of Court of Appeal referrals fell by 38 and the number declared unduly lenient fell by 27 compared with 2006.
Among the cases highlighted were: Internet terrorist Younes Tsouli, of West London, whose tenyear jail term for inciting murder overseas was increased to 16 years; and Essex businessman Rohail Spall, who spiked a woman's drink at a restaurant and planned to sexually attack her. His sentence was increased by 18 months to three-and-a-half years.
Since 1988 prosecutors, victims, MPs, pressure groups or members of the public can ask the Attorney General to refer a case within 28 days of sentence.
A spokesman for the Attorney General's office said the referrals 'should not be interpreted as a public criticism of the judge in the case'. Continued
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A man described in court as a ‘devout Muslim’ has been sent to prison for eight years for killing a BNP activist by knifing him to death.
Habib Khan, 50, of Stoke-on-Trent, was convicted in May of the manslaughter of 52-year-old Keith Brown who he stabbed with a kitchen knife in July 2007.
In what was widely regarded as a gross miscarriage of justice, Khan was found not guilty of murder, even though Keith had been stabbed in the back. Instead, Kahn was found guilty of manslaughter “because he did not have the intent” to kill the BNP activist.
Of course, if it had been a BNP man who stabbed a Muslim in the back, there is no chance that a court would have entertained a manslaughter charge — another indication of how twisted British ‘justice’ has become.
Khan’s son, Kazir Saddique, was sentenced to a year in prison and a year on licence after admitting the unlawful wounding of Keith’s son..
There will be a BNP Day of Action in Stoke-on-Trent on 20th September to commemorate Keith Brown. All BNP activists and those wishing to pay tribute to this martyr for Britain are invited to attend.
More on Keith and the memorial here. News Source
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A Good Samaritan was attacked by a knife gang after he tried to help a teenage girl caught up in a fracas in the street in the middle of the night.
The man was chased and stabbed in the neck and body by a gang of six along Commercial Road at Limehouse in London’s East End at 2am on Sunday.
He managed to escape down a side street and was later treated at the Royal London Hospital Whitechapel, where his injuries were deemed non-life threatening.
Trouble flared outside All Seasons food and wine store when an argument started between a man of 21 and an 18-year-old girl.
The passer-by stepped in and tried to help the girl—but the man arguing with her warned him not to interfere.
The man then called up the gang on his mobile phone and six of them turned up outside the store.
The passer-by tried to escape, but was caught and stabbed by the gang in the neck, chest back and arm.
Police are looking for six Asian men. One was described as having gold teeth, wearing a grey tracksuit and was driving a blue Nissan. News Source
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A fraudster who claimed benefits while holding down four different jobs could be forced to pay back £14,000 she swindled.
Oluwakmi Bakare, now known as Omolewa Ibiyoye, 40,, admitted failing to declare two periods of employment while claiming housing and council tax benefits.
She has now been ordered to carry out 160 hours of community service - but Croydon Council is refusing to write off her debt and says it will seek full repayment.
The fraud came to light when Croydon Council ran an operation to match data held on their systems with other agencies.
Ms Bakare, of Goulding Gardens, Thornton Heath, was convicted of three offences relating to benefit fraud and false representation on Friday August 15.
Click here!
For failing to declare her employment she was sentenced to 160 hours community punishment order, and she was given 60 hours for failing to declare her savings account, but these will be served concurrently.
She was also placed under a one year supervision order and ordered to pay £2,000 costs.
Councillor Gavin Barwell, cabinet member for resources and customer services said: "I hope this case acts as a warning to others who think they can cheat the system, you will be found out and you will be prosecuted." Continued
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Where are we now? And why are we so effectively silenced?
Why do we have nothing to say about a sharia credit card? Have we really forgotten what sharia law means for women?
While English clerics debate the pros and cons of introducing an element of sharia law into their legal system, where are our voices in this debate? Do we seriously think it won't happen in Scotland? Look at their website. It's happening already.
What do we think about the headline "Muslim sprinter wins Olympic sprint dressed head to toe in hijab" (from the Scottish Islamic Foundation website)? Or of Al Jazeera talking to Nicola Sturgeon, the deputy first minister, about a " Scottish division" of their TV station.
Why on earth would they want a Scottish division? I need to know.
I am not opposed, in principle, to any of these, but I am opposed to the suffocating, politically correct silence that now surrounds any criticism of organisations such as the Scottish Islamic Foundation.
We need to bring this debate into the open. I don't fear the debate; I fear the silence. News Source
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To be screened Monday 01 September 2008 08:00 PM
A year-and-a-half after the critically-acclaimed film Undercover Mosque was first screened, Dispatches goes undercover again to see whether extremist beliefs continue to be promoted in certain key British Muslim institutions.
The film also investigates the role of the Saudi Arabian religious establishment in spreading a hard-line, fundamentalist Islamic ideology in the UK - the very ideology the Government claims to be tackling.
A female reporter attends prayer meetings at an important British mosque which claims to be dedicated to moderation and dialogue with other faiths. She secretly films shocking sermons given to the women-only congregation in which female preachers recite extremist and intolerant beliefs.
As hundreds of women and some children come to pray, a preacher calls for adulterers, homosexuals, women who act like men and Muslim converts to other faiths to be killed, saying: "Kill him, kill him. You have to kill him, you understand. This is Islam."
Worshippers are repeatedly told they must lead separate lives from non-believers and not tolerate other religions. Christian teachings are described as "vile and disgusting, an abomination." And at private, invite-only prayer meetings linked to the mosque, the reporter films the leading preacher from the women's prayer circle issuing strict dictats on women's personal freedoms - decreeing they must not travel far without a male member of the family to escort them, and instructing them not to integrate with British society or work in a non-Islamic environment.
In the same mosque, the reporter visits the bookshop and discovers books and DVDs still on sale, promoting extremist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic and intolerant messages.
Unbelievers ('kuffaars') are described in one DVD as: "Evil, wicked, mischievous people - you can see the evil in their face". Whilst Jews, "have abominated, filthy, disgusting gross belief - their time will come like every other evil person's time will come." Moderate Muslims and Islamic academics tell Dispatches they reject and condemn these teachings.
Dispatches traces the links between the teachings and materials at the mosque and the Saudi Arabian religious establishment, and examines the extent to which Saudi Arabia exports such teachings around the world through the funding of literature, schools, mosques and other organisations.
Dispatches also interviews a former teacher at a Saudi-run faith school who describes how the official Saudi educational curriculum was taught in the school. He shows Dispatches official Saudi textbooks from the school which featured anti-Semitic and anti-Christian teachings.
As part of the investigation, the undercover reporter also films inside a key Saudi-funded Muslim organisation which claims to promote tolerance and integration yet distributes literature which promotes intolerance for non-Muslims, an extreme version of Sharia law and teachings which support discrimination against women.
The Government claims Saudi Arabia is its partner in tackling extremism, but a former Foreign Office Minister tells Dispatches he believes the Government should take a stronger line.
The film also features interviews with Islamic academics who condemn these messages of intolerance and segregation and warn of the impact this version of Islam is having on British society. One imam at a leading university accuses the Saudi religious establishment of the: "distortion of Islam itself, the abuse and misuse of this great faith of mine and not only mine but of my children as well." News Source
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A 20-year-old woman was left with a broken jaw following a violent attack in Abington Park.
The incident took place at about 8pm on Wednesday, August 27 in Abington Park near the bandstand when the victim and her male friend were approached by two men.
The men asked them for a cigarette but when they said no the offenders starting punching and kicking them.
The attack lasted around five minutes until the offenders were disturbed by passers by who said they were going to call the police.
The offenders then made off in the direction of Billing Road.
Det Sgt Julie Gallagher said: "This was a nasty attack which left a 20-year-old woman with a broken jaw.
"We will be stepping up patrols in the area and we will work extremely hard to track down who has done this.
"I would also like to urge anyone who saw anything to contact us as soon as possible."
The first offender was mixed race, of large build, with short scruffy hair, 5ft 6in, 18 to 20 years old and wore a khaki coloured hooded top.
The second offender was black, of slim build, with short hair, about 5ft 8in, aged 18 to 20, wearing dark clothing.
The 24-year-old male victim suffered cuts and bruises. News Source
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- No jobs left for school leavers
- Britain is already in a recession
- House prices could fall more than 30%
- Workers will not be getting a pay rise
Around two million people will be unemployed by Christmas as the credit crunch bites, a key Bank of England policymaker warned yesterday.
Professor David Blanchflower said he predicts 2,000 people will lose their jobs every day over the next four months.
This would take unemployment levels to their highest since Labour came to power in 1997.
For families up and down the country, redundancy would be devastating at a time of soaring household bills.
Millions of people are barely coping with rising food, fuel and gas bills, and will be crippled if they lose their job - particularly if they are the sole breadwinner.
Young people will also be affected, with 'no jobs' for hundreds of thousands of children when they leave school, he warned.
In an interview, Professor Blanchflower, who is a member of the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee, gave a series of warnings about Britain's economic meltdown.
He says that Britain is already in a recession which is in danger of being 'very serious and long-lasting' unless urgent action is taken.
And he admits his original forecast that house prices will fall 30 per cent might be 'optimistic' and the drop could be even sharper.
And as a further blow to workers, he says those who keep their jobs will not get a pay rise, or will get one which is below inflation.
His interview, with the news agency Reuters, will worry workers up and down the country who fear that their job is no longer safe.
As one of the nine people who set interest rates every month, he is one of the most powerful economic voices in the country.
Every week, more companies admit that they have had to sack staff in a bid to cope with the economic crisis.
In the past few days, one housebuilder, Bovis, said it has cut 40 per cent of its staff and rival Taylor Wimpey has axed 900 jobs. Continued
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A crack addict was yesterday spared a minimum five years in jail for hiding illegal firearms after a judge took pity on him.
James Kelly, 20, faced the mandatory sentence after a Stirling submachine gun, silencer, 54 bullets and Glock pistol were found stashed at his grandmother Vera’s home in Crawley, West Sussex.
But Judge David Rennie, sitting at Hove Crown Court, let him go with a 12-month suspended sentence, 200 hours’ community service and a curfew after ruling the deadly haul was ‘out of character’.
Kelly, a recovering crack and heroin addict, claimed he was forced into looking after the deadly arsenal by a gang to whom he owed £10,000.
Police who raided his gran Vera's home found a Stirling submachine gun, a Glock pistol, 54 bullets and a silencer in Crawley, West Sussex.
Kelly, of Upper Beeding, West Sussex, admitted at an earlier hearing having firearms and ammunition without a licence.
His lawyer, Simon Burch, said he got involved in drugs when his grandfather and aunt died two years ago and his mother and brother moved to Holland.
Judge Rennie said: 'The minimum sentence for an offence of this kind is five years.
'These sort of weapons are a blight on our society. Anybody who considers having any dealing with firearms of this sort must expect a minimum sentence of five years.'
However, Judge Rennie said Kelly's "exceptional circumstances", including his guilty plea, contributed to his decision to give him a lighter sentence.
He said: "I view this conduct as being wholly out of character and if I'm any judge of character, it's never likely to be repeated."
Raymond Stevenson, of the anti-gun Don't Trigger Campaign,said: ‘I’m disgusted.
This decision sends out a message to everyone hiding weapons that if you get the right judge you won’t get the mandatory sentence.’
Paula Ogungboro, of Mothers Against Guns, said: ‘What is the law for if soft-touch judges are letting people with deadly weapons hidden in their homes get off?’ Continued
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The launch of the Government's flagship database of every child living in England has been delayed just days after The Daily Telegraph exposed serious concerns about its purpose.
ContactPoint will include the names, ages and addresses of all 11 million under-18s in the country, as well as detailed information on their parents, GPs and schools.
It was announced in the wake of the murder of Victoria Climbié as a way to protect children by connecting the different services dealing with them, but this newspaper disclosed that it will actually be used by police to hunt for evidence of crime.
The £224million computer system was meant to come into operation in April 2008 but was delayed following the loss of data discs containing 25 million child benefit records by HM Revenue & Customs last year, which triggered fears that ContactPoint records could easily find their way into the hands of paedophiles.
A review of its security - which the Government refused to publish in full - found the risk of a data breach could never be eliminated and the launch of ContactPoint was pushed back to October.
Now, just weeks before its planned launch and days after the Telegraph disclosed concerns that it will be used to increase the criminalisation and surveillance of England's youth, ministers have announced that ContactPoint will not become operational until the New Year at the earliest.
The Department for Children, Schools and Families claimed that the new delay was not down to security or privacy fears, however, but simply because of "glitches" that had emerged during testing of the system, which is being built by the IT firm CapGemini.
The children's minister, Kevin Brennan, told fellow MPs: "We have identified some issues as a result of recent system tests which we are working urgently to address. Continued
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The parents of the Tetra Pak heir caught with cocaine, crack and heroin have donated more than £500,000 to the Conservatives.
Swedish billionaire Hans Rausing and his wife Marit have given several large sums to David Cameron's party since 2004.
In April, the founder of the global food-packing business and his wife injected £98,000 into the Tories' war chest.
Their son, also called Hans, was let off with a 'conditional caution' by Westminster magistrates last month after police found large quantities of Class A drugs at his £10million home in Cadogan Place, Chelsea.
His wife Eva had been arrested after being caught trying to smuggle heroin and crack cocaine into London's US embassy, which led the police to search their home.
The donations were revealed in the Electoral Commission's latest quarterly report of party political funding.
The donor breakdown also shows Labour's reliance on the trade unions as the party is burdened with £17.8million of debt - of which more than half is due to be repaid by next July.
Tory debt is lower, as the party owes just over £12million.
Labour received just £3.8million in donations between April and June this year - down from £5million a year earlier when the party was embroiled in the 'loans-for-lordships' affair.
The Tories pulled in some £5.6million over the same period with the party attracting more than 160 individual supporters in anticipation of David Cameron winning the next election.
The Liberal Democrats received almost £945,000 in donations - more than double the £392,000 they were given by activists in the previous quarter.
The donor-by-donor breakdown showed that Labour is still heavily in hock to the trade unions. Continued
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Race-row police chief Tarique Ghaffur is facing a rebellion from fellow officers and increasing calls to step aside from his role at the top of Scotland Yard.
Britain's most senior Asian police officer was accused today of damaging the fight against crime in London after denouncing Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair as a racist.
Colleagues of the Assistant Commissioner said his war of words against his boss was making it almost impossible to work alongside him in the battle against crime.
Mr Ghaffur, 53, has launched a race discrimination claim against the Met, saying that he had been repeatedly discriminated against and undermined by Sir Ian.
He is demanding a public apology and an extension to his contract, blaming the Commissioner for sidelining him in his role leading security for London's 2012 Olympic Games.
Speaking for the first time on the issue at a press conference yesterday, Mr Ghaffur said his employment tribunal claim would include accusations of racial and religious discrimination.
He said that he was harassed by Sir Ian and another senior Yard officer, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Richard Bryant, that he was excluded from key meetings and was criticised for his language skills in a way that amounted to racial discrimination.
Deputy Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson said the force would 'robustly challenge' the claims. He urged Mr Ghaffur to 'shut up' and stop speaking publicly about the dispute.
A number of other senior colleagues now believe that it is almost impossible to work alongside Mr Ghaffur.
One high-ranking source said: 'There has been a complete breakdown in trust. To call your boss a racist and then expect to carry on as normal is ridiculous. It is almost on a level of calling him a paedophile. It is a terrible insult.
'This is completely distracting at a time when kids are killing each other and violent crime among young people is exploding. The situation is a disgrace and cannot possibly go on.
'He ought to take the decision to stand aside. Tarique has been badly advised.'
Len Duvall, the chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority, told the Evening Standard that he also believed Mr Ghaffur should step aside until his legal case was concluded.
He said: 'He should not be part of the management board while this continues. The board of senior officers should be focusing on policing London and protecting Londoners and not focusing on themselves.
'He should step down now. Everything should be about protecting people in London.' Continued
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No one one wants to participate in Labours pointless wars anymore!
The Armed Forces are facing a shortfall of almost 6,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen, according to official Ministry of Defence figures.
The latest manning quarterly figures show the total number of full-time, trained military personnel was 173,370 - 5,790 short of the total requirement of 179,160.
The Army had a 3,500 shortfall, the Royal Navy was 1,220 under strength, while the RAF was 1,070 below the required total.
The shortfalls occurred even though the total number of service personnel required has fallen by almost 12,000 since 2005 when the forces were just 3,000 below strength.
Shadow defence secretary Liam Fox said the figures underlined the "retention crisis" facing the military.
"No amount of moving the goalposts can disguise the simple truth that the armed forces still face serious shortfalls," he said.
Liberal Democrat defence spokesman Nick Harvey said the figures showed the "terrible strain" imposed on the forces caused by fighting on two fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Armed Forces Minister Bob Ainsworth said the Government had raised pay as well as introducing other financial incentives in an effort to improve retention rates.
"We face strong competition from other employers and our personnel are very much in demand owing to the skills and experience they acquire during service life," he said.
"At a time when the Armed Forces are heavily committed to operations, recruitment and retention of high quality people is more important than ever. We are determined to tackle these challenges." News Source
Friday 29th August 2008
Appease Minorities and afterwards they want 'EVERYTHING' their own way!
Muslim council leaders have sparked outrage after trying to ban all councillors eating in meetings until sunset during the holy month of Ramadan.
Politicians have hit out after the move to impose hardline Islamic rules on non-Muslim colleagues throughout September.
The bombshell has been dropped by Labour chiefs of the notoriously loony Tower Hamlets Council in east London.
The storm was sparked by an e-mail sent to all councillors this week highlighting arrangements for Town Hall committee meetings next month, which marks the Muslim fasting period of Ramadan.
The memo said that new council leader Lutfur Rahman and his deputy, Siraj Islam, had requested that meetings be kept to a minimum to accommodate fasting councillors.
They have also urged all other councillors to resist eating until the breaking of the fast at sunset.
Cllr Stephanie Eaton, leader of the Lib Dem group on the left-wing East End authority, said she would be ignoring the new Ramadan regime.
She insisted the new Labour leadership was favouring one religious group over others.
No S**t sherlock! how long did it take you to figure that one out? We said many times that one of Labour's agendas is to Islamify Britain bit by bit!
Cllr Eaton said: 'The Liberal Democrats have enormous respect for the contribution of all faith groups and cultures to the life of the community of Tower Hamlets.
'But we fervently believe that the rules of any one religion should not be imposed upon others.'
It is the first time such a request has been made and it comes as Ramadan falls earlier this year during the longer daylight hours.
Council bosses have also ordered that the town hall's business agenda should be reduced, with only seven scheduled committee meetings for the entire month, to deal with the Ramadan restrictions.
Officers have also been barred from arranging any more and been told to explore ways of dropping some of the scheduled seven.
Those going ahead generally start at about 6.30pm.
So with sunset due to fall just after 7.30pm at the beginning of September and around 6.30pm by the end of Ramadan, the breaking of the fast will take place during meetings.
At those points, there will be 45-minute adjournments to allow members to eat and pray, council leaders have ordered.
But it is the arrangements for the food and other refreshments that has angered Cllr Eaton and the rest of her party, which includes two Muslim councillors.
Normally tea, coffee and sandwiches are set aside for councillors to nibble at during evening meetings.
But during Ramadan these will be reduced and complemented by special Muslim food packs containing chicken, lamb and vegetarian snacks.
But in his email, John Williams, the council's head of democratic services, said: 'It is requested that members do not partake of any refreshments until after the Iftar refreshments are served.'
Cllr Eaton said that was going too far. Speaking on behalf of all her stunned party colleagues, she said: 'I was rather disconcerted to see that the arrangements put in place for Ramadan, which we support for Muslim colleagues, have been imposed upon all councillors.
'We object to the request that non-Muslim councillors observe the fasting rules for Ramadan.
'This sends out the wrong message to our community.Our community consists of a huge number of different religions, all of which should be valued, and no one religion should be accorded more status or influence than others.
'Freedom of belief is an important human right, and we Liberal Democrat councillors, Muslim and non-Muslim, agree that this request is inappropriate.'
Cllr Eaton has also written to Town Hall bosses about her concerns that their move 'will not enhance community cohesion and asking for their reassurance that no faith is given any particular status or priority in the operation or decisions of the council'.
Council bosses said their arrangements were in place 'where it is not reasonable to expect members observing Ramadan, and who are required to attend a formal committee or other meeting, to travel home in time for sundown in order to break fast and undertake prayers'.
Your Belief Your Choice! Don't impose it on the rest of us! (Ed)
Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic Lunar calendar and the holiest of the four holy months. It begins with the sighting of the new moon after which all physically mature and healthy Muslims are obliged to abstain from all food, drink, gum chewing, any kind of tobacco use, and any kind of sexual contact between dawn and sunset. News Source
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Twenty young Muslims are to become personal advisers to Cabinet ministers in a bid by the Government to tackle Islamic extremism.
They will keep Communities Secretary Hazel Blears, Culture Secretary Andy Burnham and Schools Secretary Ed Balls in touch with the mood of Muslim youths on the streets.
Labour hopes that listening to and addressing concerns that affect Muslims could ease tensions in multi-cultural communities and lead to fewer at risk of becoming radicalised.
The 20 members of the Young Muslim Advisory Group, which will be officially launched in October, will also work closely with Arts Council England and Sport England.
The aim is pinpoint how cultural and sporting opportunities, such as the use of football tournaments or music gigs, can reduce tensions within different communities.
Ms Blears said: 'Ensuring young Muslims have access to constructive, democratic channels for dealing with concerns and frustrations is crucial to our efforts to build communities that are resilient to extremist messages.
'We need to equip young Muslims to take the lead in challenging prejudice and preconceptions both within their own communities and in wider society.
'The Young Muslim Advisory group is about identifying the next generation of Muslim community leaders and providing a platform to speak out on issues that are important to them.'
Since June, more than 150 applications have been received and over the next few days the prospective advisers, who are all aged between 16 and 25, will take part in discussions and workshops to test their suitability.
The Young Muslim Advisory Group aims to give Cabinet ministers a first-hand understanding of the issues that affect young Muslims, including the risk of extremism, employment opportunities and education.
It will also try to get young Muslims' messages across in the media, promote role models and mentoring and 'build the capacity of young people, in terms of skills, knowledge and confidence, to counter the extremist ideology'.
One of the first tasks of the group will be to organise a national youth conference to discuss the challenges facing young British Muslims over the next few years.
The Government has been attempting to engage Britain's Muslim communities, especially in the wake of the July 7 terror bombings in London which murdered 52 innocent people.
Ministers recently announced £12.5million for Muslim communities to fund projects which aim to 'undermine extremist ideology'.
And last month the Government announced plans for state school pupils to be taught Islamic traditions and values in compulsory citizenship lessons.
Another measure will see Muslim children being taught citizenship lessons by imams in mosque schools in the hope they will be better equipped to resist violent extremist messages.
The Department for Communities and Local Government said the personal advisers would not be paid but would be allowed to claim expenses for any costs they might incur, such as travel or overnight accommodation. News Source
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Debt-ridden Labour's ongoing reliance on the trade unions was revealed as the extent of the party's cash crisis was laid bare.
Gordon Brown's party are struggling to stay afloat as they are burdened with £17.8million of debt - of which more than half is due to be repaid by next July.
Labour received just £3.8million in donations between April and June this year - down from £5million a year earlier when the party was embroiled in the 'loans-for-lordships' affair.
The Tories pulled in some £5.6million over the same period with the party attracting more than 160 individual supporters in anticipation of David Cameron winning the next election.
The Liberal Democrats received almost £945,000 in donations - more than double the £392,000 they were given by activists in the previous quarter.
The figures were revealed in the Electoral Commission's latest quarterly report of party political funding.
The donor-by-donor breakdown showed that Labour is still heavily in hock to the trade unions.
A staggering £2.5million was gifted by the workers' leaders - some 66 per cent - in a desperate bid to stave off the threat of bankruptcy. Unite, the country's biggest trade union, stumped up £1.5million.
Three City financiers - Nigel Doughty, Sir Ronald Cohen and Jon Aisbitt - handed over £250,000 each while Steve Lazarides, the agent for street artist Banksy, donated £121,600.
But business leaders and individual donors have deserted Labour since its slump in the polls and the cash-for-honours affair, where tycoons were alleged to have been offered peerages in return for funding.
The Tories say the unions are taking advantage of Gordon Brown's financial dependence on them by squeezing out policy concessions which add up to a lurch to the Left. Continued
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One of Scotland Yard's most senior officers has told Britain's top Asian policeman 'to shut up' about his public dispute with Met Commissioner Sir Ian Blair.
Deputy Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson rebuked Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur over his dispute with Sir Ian.
Mr Stephenson said he did not think it was necessary for Mr Ghaffur to take his racism claim to an employment tribunal and he was '[disappointed' that attempts at mediation had failed.
Assistant Commissioner Ghaffur made an unprecedented personal attack on his boss and for the first time gave details of his industrial tribunal race and religious discrimination claim.
He singled out Sir Ian, saying his claim was not aimed at the force - which he said he 'loved and admired' - but was simply about his treatment by the Commissioner.
Flanked by his lawyer and Alfred John, chairman of the Black Police Association, Mr Ghaffur, the Met's most senior Muslim officer, claimed he was not motivated by money or bitterness over not being promoted.
He said: 'My case is essentially to do with my treatment at the highest levels of the Met, in particular the discrimination that I have been subjected to over a long period by the Commissioner Sir Ian Blair.
'It is to do with the continuation of that treatment into the very important job assigned to me ensuring the security and safety of the 2012 Olympics.
'It is also to do with the victimisation which I have suffered and my grievances linked to the media.'
He said he found himself in 'unfamiliar and uncomfortable territory" by launching the claim.
'My situation has nothing to do with displeasure at not being promoted. I'm content with my achievements so far," he said.
He said he brought the claim with 'deep regret' and had sought mediation with the Met.
It is the first time an officer of such seniority is suing his own force.
Friends of Mr Ghaffur say critics have accused him of bringing the claim in order to 'line his pockets' ahead of his retirement. Continued
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A father who was coshed over the head when he went to confront youths dropping chips outside his front gate yesterday said the breakdown in society was creating a 'lawless' generation.
Engineer David Thomas, 41, suffered serious injuries when he was struck with what he thinks was a snooker ball stuffed inside a sock.
He is just the latest householder attacked trying to protect his property, and the case once again raises questions over how far ordinary people should go in tackling thugs.
Mr Thomas was working on his computer when he saw two youths dropping food outside the front gate of his home in Droylsden, Greater Manchester.
'I went out and told him in no uncertain terms not to flick chips in front of my house, then he turned round and said 'They're not chips, they're onions'," the father-of-two said.
When he said he'd make them move, one retorted 'You can't do that - I'm 17'.
The youths left, but returned minutes later with a larger group, and when Mr Thomas went back outside he was struck over the back of the head with the home-made cosh.
At the time his daughters, Molly, eight, and Emily, five, were out visiting their grandparents, but his horrified wife returned home to find him injured and bleeding.
Mr Thomas was taken to Tameside Hospital where he had staples inserted into a gash in his scalp. He is also thought to have suffered concussion in the attack last week.
He said his wife Amanda, 38, teaching assistant, now feared the area was too dangerous for them to stay in, but he hoped it was a one-off.
Today he said he had feared he could end up fatally wounded, like Garry Newlove, the father-of-three punched and kicked to death after confronting a gang of drunken thugs vandalising his wife's car in Warrington, Cheshire last August.
'I'm fairly certain that if I had gone down then they would have continued to hit me and more would have joined in,' he said. 'But they were cowards and couldn't stand and fight.
'I'm big and daft enough to stand up for myself.'
Mr Thomas said he blamed a lack of authority in today's society compared to when he was growing up. Continued
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A badged army of wardens are using police powers - and in some cases dogs - to patrol the streets of Britain.
As well as town hall workers, dozens of private firms - including security companies - have been given permission to hand out fines for low-scale offences and demand personal details.
One example is Parkguard, a firm which normally offers to patrol parks, open spaces and housing estates.
After securing special accreditation, it now boasts of the new powers it can use while working in Hertfordshire and Essex.
These include issuing fixed penalty notices, dealing with anti-social behaviour and confiscating alcohol and tobacco.
To help with its work, the firm uses dogs to deter drug dealers and troublemakers as well as engage with youths.
On its website, Parkguard boasts about being part of the 'extended policing family', adding: 'We have a number of police powers, not normally available outside of the police service.'
Dogs are used in many of the firm's projects.
They have also been used to patrol parks in Islington, North London, where staff await accreditation under the Home Office scheme but have been given designated powers by the council to hand out £80 fines for offences such as littering and graffiti.
In all, 1,400 town hall and private sector staff have powers under the scheme, designed to free up rank-and-file officers.
In Tunbridge Wells, Kent, council parking attendants can hand out additional penalties.
As well as giving fines to drivers for parking violations, they can also issue fixed penalty notices to people dropping litter or spraying graffiti.
The officials can be recognised only by a small badge sewn into the right shoulder of their uniforms.
Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council's street warden team are also among those to be granted police-style powers by Hertfordshire Constabulary.
Accredited staff are now able to confiscate alcohol, tobacco, fireworks and knives from minors - tasks that were once solely the responsibility of local police.
Twenty-seven town hall workers from Dacorum Borough Council in Hertfordshire have also been given powers to deal with anti-social behaviour. News Source
Disclaimer: This News Item has been duplicated in its entirety to serve as public information (Ed)
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Elderly people are being "mistreated and abused" in hospitals and care homes, according to a new report.
Age Concern criticises the lack of progress made a year on from a parliamentary report that recommended an "entire culture change" to tackle human rights abuses experienced by older people in the NHS and care system.
The new report includes examples of older people being left to sit in their own excrement or denied food and water because the staff are too busy, being left naked in front of other patients, or being heavily sedated so they are easier to care for.
The charity says although some progress has been made by the Government, more needs to be done to improve the quality of health and care services.
It says human rights is an "invisible issue" in health and social care.
Gordon Lishman, director general of Age Concern, said: "Failing to meet basic rights is not acceptable. No one should have to go without help with eating and drinking or using the toilet, yet this is still happening everyday in hospitals and care homes. It's horrendous that people are still being mistreated and abused."
Norma Scott said her father died of renal failure after the way he was treated in a Yorkshire hospital.
She said: "We were told my father needed to be given extra fluids for his kidneys, but he wasn't given any help to drink water or to pass fluids. He couldn't use the water jug left by his bed as he couldn't sit up.
"After six days I spoke to a doctor. When a drip and catheter was fitted, two litres of urine were drained off. He died of renal failure.
"My father should not have been treated this way. It took months to get my complaint heard and I have been battling for many more months to get the hospital to implement the Action Plan. No one checks change has happened - it's all taken on trust." News Source
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By design Fines are purely for boosting Government coffers!
They care not about the public or what dangers threaten the people
It's always been about the money!
Adult and youth courts in the Midlands are being cancelled because fewer offenders are reaching formal proceedings.
A letter from Staffordshire Justice's Clerk was sent to all magistrates in the country alerting them to the changes.
It says: "As a result of a reducing workload directly attributable to increased use of fixed penalties and cautions by the police and Crown Prosecution Service, a number of courts have had to be cancelled each week at each of our court houses."
The letter also accused agencies of using the fines and cautions to cut costs.
It continued: "I am deeply concerned about the increased use by the prosecuting agencies of judicial powers but it seems that those powers are likely to be used increasingly given that they are a cheaper means of sentencing than by going through a judicial process."
The number of crimes dealt with by convictions into he courts was overtaken for the first time in 2006 by the number handled by the police through cautions and fixed-penalty fines.
And the figures have continued to rise in the last two years.
Nick Herbert, the shadow justice secretary, said: "The increasing use of penalty notices is leading to soft justice, where offenders who should go before the courts are able to escape with a fine which they might not even pay and avoid a criminal record."
Cindy Barnett, the chairman of the Magistrates Association said: "We are extremely concerned if an inappropriate use of out-of-courts disposals is removing serious cases from court." News Source
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More than one in 10 British workers fear the economic slowdown means they will lose their job in the next year, according to union body the TUC.
A survey of almost 3,000 employees across Britain suggested those in Wales and Scotland felt most vulnerable.
Workers in east England were most optimistic about employment, followed by those in London, it said.
Replicated nationwide, the survey would mean about 3.3m people, or 13% of the workforce, feel their jobs are at risk.
'Jittery'
Latest official unemployment data said the number of people out of work rose by 60,000 in the three months to June.
This took the official unemployment rate to 5.4% - 1.67 million people - the Office for National Statistics said, suggesting that a slowing economy was taking its toll on the labour market.
"These poll findings show just how many people are getting worried about losing their job in the current economic slowdown," said TUC general secretary Brendan Barber. Continued
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John Hutton, the Business Secretary, admits households will struggle to pay their heating bills this winter due to rising costs.
But he effectively rules out imposing a windfall tax on energy firms because it would only lead to higher charges for customers.
And he warns that Russian aggression in Georgia has cast doubt over Britain's future energy supplies.
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Mr Hutton:
- Denies energy companies are ripping off customers who have benefited "very considerably" from low prices in recent years.
- Says Britain's ability to generate its own energy needs to be above climate change in Government's priorities.
- Risks upsetting environmentalists by calling for new nuclear reprocessing plants to be opened.
- Says he expects French electricity supplier EDF to conclude a deal with British Energy within two weeks - paving the way for a new era of nuclear power stations in Britain.
Mr Hutton's refusal to levy a windfall tax on power firms will dismay many who had hoped for extra government help to pay for heating this winter.
Millions of homes have been hit by a wave of recent energy price rises of more than 35 per cent, while petrol and food bills have also soared.
Seventy Labour MPs have signed a petition calling for a one-off tax on the "excessive profits" of the energy companies.
Two out of three people in the latest polls also favour the move. But the Treasury and Number 10 fear that any windfall tax could backfire with the energy firms just passing on the costs.
Gordon Brown levied a £5 billion windfall tax on the privatised utilities when Labour came to power in 1997.
But the measure, which paid for Labour's New Deal programme, was included in the party's manifesto - something Mr Hutton says gave it legitimacy. Continued
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More than a hundred asylum seekers are being held tonight after a British student was gang-raped by illegal immigrants in Calais.
The woman was writing a story on asylum seekers for her journalism course when she was attacked, police said.
Up to 100 men have been rounded up as potential witnesses to the crime, which is alleged to have taken place in a notorious squatter camp nicknamed 'The Jungle'. Police said the attack was of a particularly 'brutal nature'. The victim is still in Calais.
The victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was described as 'a London student who had travelled to France to highlight problems surrounding clandestine immigration'.
Police confirmed tonight she was born in Vancouver and also carried a Canadian passport. A police spokesman added: 'She appeared to be working alone, which was clearly a very dangerous thing to do.
'We fear that the men she was reporting on attacked her in the wood where they were staying.'
The woman, who is thought to be in her twenties or early thirties, told locals she wanted to spend time with would-be illegal immigrants who were attempting to reach Britain by stowing away on lorries.
The squatter camp is in a disused industrial zone called 'The Dunes' and is a short walk from the ferry port. Up to 500 men live there, supported by local charities. Continued
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A police community support officer has been suspended after colleagues accused him of goose-stepping about at work and making Nazi salutes.
PCSO Paul Ryan has been ordered to stay at home after allegedly impersonating Adolf Hitler while on duty.
The claims are now being investigated by the Metropolitan Police.
Ryan is alleged to have begun goose-stepping and making Nazi salutes in the North London office of the Swiss Cottage Safer Neighbourhoods Team during a conversation about Germans last month, Met sources said.
The controversial volunteer officer was previously removed from the Kentish Town team for suggesting to a black colleague that there was nothing wrong in voting for the far-Right British National Party, it is understood.
The Community Security Trust, a charity guarding against anti-semitism in the UK, said the Met had been right to act.
Spokesman Mark Gardener said: 'Obviously we would thank the police for their prompt action, and voice extreme concern at the suitability of this police officer.
'This kind of action would cause offence, not only to Jewish people, but many others as well.
'We would be extremely concerned at any police officer making fun of Nazism.'
With the atrocities the Nazis committed we see nothing wrong in ridiculing or making fun of Nazism, what better way to show your contempt towards evil!
Swiss Cottage Councillor Don Williams said: 'This is only an allegation, so it has to be investigated and no one is proven guilty.
'Police officers should follow guidelines for their behaviour and there should be clear punishments if they break that.
'I think police officers are individuals civilians look to behave well and not act in a way which is prejudiced to other people of any colour, religion or gender.'
But Trudy Gold, chief executive of the London Jewish Cultural Centre, cautioned against making 'politically correct' assumptions about the alleged incident.
She said: 'It all depends on the context. If it was meant as humour, it is probably in bad taste - but is Monty Python funny? Is Mel Brooks funny when he does the dancing and singing Hitlers in The Producers?
Indeed!
'It comes down to the question of whether we can make fun of evil.'
Ah' here it comes!
She added: 'It is a difficult area but I wouldn't want to condemn him as evil for making a Hitler salute until we know the context - if he is a card-carrying member of the BNP, for example.'
Basically it's not wrong to take the P**s out of Nazism and Hitler, unless of course you are a member of a right wing party in this case the British National Party? So what's the difference? Are supporters of right wing politics not allowed to ridicule Nazism? If so then why is this bias against them? Do values and morality only apply to a select group in society and not for all?
A Camden police spokesman said Ryan was suspended on August 5 after an allegation of misconduct at work on July 24.
He said: 'The alleged incident occurred in police premises not accessible to the public.
'All such allegations are taken very seriously and an internal investigation has been launched.
'It would be inappropriate to comment any further at this stage.' News Source
Springtime for Hitler
It seems that one of the plastic police as been suspended for having a sense of humour.
Then again only the Jews and enrichers are allowed to have a sense of humor and boy what a sense of humour, as you can see by watching the clip above from the film, The Producers.
The controversial volunteer officer was previously removed from the Kentish Town team for suggesting to a black colleague that there was nothing wrong in voting for the far-Right British National Party, it is understood.
This time the PCSO, upset the establishment by goosesteping whist in a discussion with colleagues about the Germans. Whatever you do don't mention the war. News Source
Credits to Green Arrow
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In his Essay on Population, published in 1798, the Rev Thomas Malthus took a very gloomy view of the prospects for the nation if people continued to have large families.
A high birthrate, he extrapolated, would lead to population growth, that would outstrip the food supply, until famine acted as a corrective.
When he was writing, the population of Britain was eight million. It is now 61 million and that famine hasn't happened.
Perhaps the most famous thing about Malthus is that he was spectacularly wrong about food production. He argued that population increases geometrically - 2,4,8,16 - while food production increases arithmetically - 1,2,3,4. Why he made this assumption no one knows. It wasn't true in 1798 and it certainly isn't true now.
Since Malthus, there have been many more scares about resources running out. The 19th-century economist Stanley Jeavons predicted that the industrial revolution would grind to a halt because of the exhaustion of coal mines: he failed to foresee the emergence of other sources of energy.
Then, in 1962, the Club of Rome produced its famous report The Limits to Growth which said much the same thing about other natural resources. It contained a table showing estimated dates for the exhaustion of major resources. All of which have long passed.
In 1980, the American economist Julian Simon became so frustrated by the doomsday predictions that he made a bet with the principal doom-monger, Paul Ehrlich, on the actual scarcity of resources.
They compiled a notional basket of $1,000-worth of natural resources and agreed that if at the end of 10 years the basket was worth more than $1,000 - which would indicate scarcity - then Julian would pay Ehrlich the difference. When the bet matured in 1990 the resources were worth $424.
By this time, I had become involved with Julian in running an organisation called the Committee on Population and the Economy, which argued that population growth was nothing to fear.
Julian's view was that, if the right political institutions were in place to allow people to exercise their talents, more people would equate with a higher standard of living, because more people mean larger markets, lower unit costs, and higher levels of consumption.
Resources would never run out. Furthermore, Julian made no distinction between population growth resulting from high birthrates or from immigration, believing in a completely open-borders policy.
I hope I will not cause his departed spirit any disquiet if I say that I have now moved away from my original wholehearted support of his position.
It seems to me there is an enormous difference between growth that results from parents deciding to have large families and that which results from virtually uncontrolled mass immigration such as we have had in Britain since 1997.
When parents have children, it creates pressures on resources, but, in the main, these pressures fall on the parents. Parents pretty much know how many children they can love and care for.
The huge increase in population in this country occurred during the 19th century when the benefits of scientific advance, the industrial revolution and the opening up of global markets gave everyone, but especially the poor, opportunities they had never had before - like seeing most of their children survive.
Population growth and rising standards of living went together in Britain, as in many other parts of the world.
However, parents take decisions about family size based on their perceptions of society. As that society changes, so does family size.
When people found that they didn't need 10 children to be sure of two surviving, they had fewer children. And when they feel their country is pretty full, they opt for smaller families.
The birthrate in the UK has been below replacement level for 30 years now, although the overall size of the population has continued to grow.
This used to be because of increasing life expectancy, but the growth is now largely because of unprecedented levels of immigration.
The scenario outlined by Eurostat, under which Britain will become the most populous country in Europe by 2060 with a population of 77 million, is not a cheerful one for most of us, as that increase is predicted to be almost entirely the result of immigration.
Whole extended families are arriving from other countries, bringing with them different cultural traditions and higher birthrates.
The most obvious impact of all this is the strain on infrastructure - housing, transport, healthcare, education. In every area, the welfare state is under pressure, much of it deriving from immigration.
David Goodhart has argued that the problem mass immigration poses for the Left is that it offends people's innate sense of fairness when newcomers are seen to be hoovering up benefits they have never contributed towards, and the welfare state is losing support as a result.
The economic benefits of immigration are hard to quantify, and much depends on which end of the telescope you are looking through. If you want to employ cheap labour, mass immigration is a good thing. If you are working in a low-paid trade or profession, it is a bad thing because it drives down pay.
But there is another issue that Julian Simon didn't have to face, as he died in 1998, before 9/11, and before we began to appreciate the extent to which the survival of the free society can be threatened by the presence within it of large numbers of people who do not share its most basic assumptions.
It is now becoming acceptable to say that not all immigrant groups behave in the same way. Some put more into the economy than they take out. Others don't.
Important as this distinction is, it pales into insignificance beside considerations such as belief in freedom of speech and worship, human rights and the freedom of the individual to make choices.
Even facing these new difficulties, I feel certain that Julian Simon would not have changed his position. He was so full of optimism, he never lost faith in the ability of the human spirit to triumph over any obstacle.
But as he was the most passionate believer in human freedom that I have ever known, I hope he can forgive me for changing mine.
Robert Whelan is the Deputy Director of Civitas News Source
Disclaimer: This News Item has been duplicated in its entirety to serve as public information (Ed)
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Why are we still in the EU? They have imposed themselves into every fabric of our society and yet here we are still asking 'How High' every time they tell us to jump!!! It will get much much worse, mark our words!
The crashes and clashes, rumbles and booms, and twittering, flittering trills are all part of the drama of the Proms.
But the Health and Safety police obviously have no ear for music.They are demanding that performers ease off on extra-loud crescendos during the concert series to protect their hearing.
BBC employees will have to measure decibels and put barriers up between musicians to guard the delicate flautists, for instance, against too many trumpet blasts.
Under an EU directive, passed in April this year, the BBC is responsible for making sure performers are not exposed to excessive levels of noise.
As a result, the corporation has been subject to the extra costs and time-consuming bureaucracy to ensure the two-month-long programme at the Royal Albert Hall meets European standards.
The restrictions have caused consternation at the BBC, not least with Roger Wright, controller at Radio 3.
Terry Wogan told listeners on his Radio 2 breakfast show yesterday morning: ‘Last weekend I was privileged to be at the wonderful BBC Proms along with Roger Wright.
‘He was telling me about the EU directives on loudness.
‘They are going to have to tone down the loudness at the Proms because it might be affecting people’s ears.’
He added: ‘Roger Wright told me, “I should warn you that matters are about to take a turn for the worse at the Royal Albert Hall”.’
However, the BBC insisted that the changes, while time consuming and expensive, would not alter the audience’s experience.
A spokesman for Radio 3 said: ‘In April this year EU laws governing musical performers mean that we have to alter the decibel level they were exposed to.
‘The legislation is designed to protect the performers and in the Proms’ case how many decibels they are exposed to over the course of a week.’
The spokesman explained: ‘They have had to put things in place to make sure musicians are not exposed. ‘Woodwind players must now have a level between them and the brass section so that they don’t have a trumpet blasting down their ear drum.
‘Spacing on the stage has to be changed to make room for barriers and levels between performers.’ Continued
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Labour's claim that a cap on immigration would not be effective was left in tatters last night.
The Government insists that most migrants are from the EU and enjoy free movement, and so it cannot control numbers.
But a report shows that it can – because most of those arriving in Britain in the future will actually be from outside Europe.
The massive inflow of Eastern Europeans will be over within three years and go into reverse, according to the study from Migrationwatch UK. That means the main impact on our population growth will then be from migrants from the rest of the world – a flow the Government could control with an annual limit.
The report says: “Most immigration is from non EU countries; these are countries from which immigration could be restricted if it were Government policy to do so.”
Migrationwatch chairman Sir Andrew Green said yesterday: “The impression is being carefully fostered that, since numbers from Eastern Europe are now declining, the public need no longer have concerns about UK immigration levels.
“Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, East Europeans have never accounted for more than a third of the total.”
He said the huge influx of immigrants “cannot be allowed to continue unchecked”.
Almost 900,000 Eastern Europeans have come to work in Britain since the EU expanded in 2004, Home Office figures showed last week. But arrivals from the so-called A8 nations, which joined the Union that year, appear to be tailing off. Levels in the second quarter of this year are at their lowest since the start date.
The Migrationwatch study predicts numbers will continue to fall off while those returning home will increase. Inflows are expected to average at around 75,000 to 80,000 a year from 2011 onwards while outflows will be around 100,000, leaving a net outflow of up to 25,000.
The exodus is due to factors including improving economies at home and the fact that those EU members – including Germany and France – that have not yet fully opened their labour market will have to do so by 2011 at the latest.
Migrationwatch predicts 65 per cent of Eastern European migrants will leave Britain within a decade while 35 per cent will settle.
The Home Office has insisted that immigration from outside the EU was no more than 52 per cent and that therefore an annual limit would have little effect. But in February, the Government’s own statisticians backed a report by Migrationwatch that found 68 per cent of foreigners arriving were from outside the EU.
Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: “This is more evidence why the Government should answer our calls to have an annual limit on non-EU immigration. It also undermines Government rhetoric that immigration cannot be controlled because it is mainly from the EU.”
Sir Andrew also said the Government’s flagship points-based system will not limit migration “and is not even intended to do so”. News Source
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A policeman has been jailed for 12 weeks for punching a boy in the face.
Pc Daniel Gaffney, 30, hit the 12-year-old boy so hard that a custody sergeant thought the youth's nose was broken judging by the amount of blood in the cell.
Gaffney, who had worked for Greater Manchester Police for nearly seven years, was sentenced today by deputy district judge Timothy Gascoigne at Halton Magistrates' Court in Cheshire.
The court heard that Gaffney 'had a sudden and momentary loss of temper' after the boy - who claimed to have a gun in his pants - 'tried his patience'.
But the district judge said: 'The victim was a vulnerable boy, clearly by the fact that he had difficulty in reading and writing and was in a children's home and had been in difficulties before.
'He was the sort of person who needed care and looking after.
'This was an abuse of the position of trust.
'You are, after all, a 30-year-old police officer, considerably heavier and taller.
'I note from the pre-sentence report that you still don't seem to accept you assaulted the lad in question.'
Gaffney - whose father and brother have both served in the force - attacked the slightly-built victim at Didsbury Police Station in Manchester on November 10 last year.
The boy was arrested earlier at his care home with a young girl after the duo drank vodka and threatened staff with a fence post.
When he arrived in custody the boy - who has several convictions for assaulting adults - was taken for a strip search.
As soon as they got to the cell, father-of-one Gaffney hit him and lied that the boy fell over.
A day later, the 999 response officer changed his story claiming he struck the child in self-defence.
Gaffney, of Northwich, Cheshire, was convicted of assault last month after a two-day trial.
Today, his barrister Bernadette Baxter, said he would appeal the conviction. Continued
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Tesco has abandoned controversial plans to build a new 'eco-town' in the heart of the English countryside following angry opposition from locals.
The supermarket is withdrawing its application for Hanley Grange - a 8,000 home town earmarked for a greenfield site near Hinxton, Cambridge.
The move is a major blow to Labour's plans to build up to 10 eco-towns across England in the next few years. Out of the original 15 communities on its shortlist, just 12 remain.
Hanley Grange was nicknamed 'Tescotown' by locals. The new town would have included a large Tesco store, in addition to housing for customers and staff.
Local councillor Julie Redfern, chairman of Stop Hanley Grange, said: "We are delighted that Tesco has seen sense and this is a victory for local democracy.
'Although Tesco now talks about the possibility of going through the proper planning channels, let's not forget that a proposal for a new town at Hinxton was made a few years ago and never made it through the planning process because the location is completely inappropriate.'
Opponents say many of the sites chosen by the Government are badly thought out and environmentally harmful. Some involve building on green belt or valuable wildlife sites. Others would lead to increased road congestion. Continued
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Everywhere the talk is of global war. In Brussels, Russian envoy Dmitry Rogozin compares the crisis in the Caucasus to the tinderbox of the Balkans on the eve of the First World War.
In Georgia, President Mikheil Saakashvili likens Moscow's invasion of South Ossetia to Hitler's occupation of the Czech Sudetenland in the run-up to World War II.
Meanwhile in Moscow, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev cites the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, which came so close to igniting World War III.
Can it really be possible that world peace is threatened once again by ancient rivalries in a small, faraway place of which - let's be frank - most of us had never heard until a few weeks ago?
To listen to our posturing young Foreign Secretary, cranking up the rhetoric on a trip to the Ukraine, anyone might think so.
Calling for a 'coalition against Russian aggression', David Miliband says Moscow's decision to recognise the independence from Georgia of South Ossetia and Abkhazia is 'unjustifiable and unacceptable', hinting darkly at a major confrontation between East and West.
For pity's sake, let's keep this crisis in perspective. Yes, Russia has behaved with shocking arrogance and brutality. But Georgia is hardly blameless either.
Meanwhile, the entire population of South Ossetia is only 70,000, of whom just a third are Georgians, while that of Abkhazia is a mere 250,000 - most of whom welcome Moscow's intervention.
By seeking to draw the entire world into a local conflict, won't Mr Miliband succeed only in increasing the dangers? Continued
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Liebour: The Promise Breakers!
Gordon Brown's 'spin' bill has soared to £391million - £53million more than Tony Blair spent in his last year as premier.
Despite entering Downing Street in July last year with a pledge to put substance before style, the Prime Minister has splashed out record amounts of taxpayers' money on spin doctors and press officers.
The Conservatives said it proved Labour was out of touch with families struggling to pay mounting household bills.
The figures were revealed in the annual report of the Central Office of Information, which sends out the Government's message from each Whitehall department.
The revealed that in 2007-08, a whopping £391million was spent on so-called spin, an inflation-busting rise of 16 per cent..
The year before, the last one of Mr Blair's reign, the bill was just £338million - £53million less - even though he was considered a master of political promotion.
In total, spending on advertising and marketing has trebled during Labour's decade in power from just £11million in 1997-98.
Greg Clark, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, said: 'When he took office, Gordon Brown promised that the era of spin would be ended.
'Yet his pledge of a new politics has been shown to be a sham. In his first year, he has spent even more on spin than Tony Blair.
'At a time when families and businesses are having to cut back, Gordon Brown is increasing spending on promoting himself and his government.
'Spending on PR and advertising has rocketed under Gordon Browns premiership by over four times the rate of inflation, and now Labour want to spend even more.
'This is backdoor state funding of a near-bankrupt Labour Party. Continued
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State Extortion!
Every family in Britain is paying nearly £800 a year in a 'dishonest' green tax grab, a shocking report said last night.
Hard-pressed households are forking out the staggering sum on flights, fuel and for their cars even though it is 'unnecessary', said low tax campaigners.
Figures published by the TaxPayers' Alliance (TPA) suggest hard-working Britons pay £19.6billion a year too much in tax aimed at covering its carbon footprint.
They said it was 'unjust' on families who were being forced to tighten their belts as they struggled to pay the soaring cost of food, energy and home loans.
An analysis of official statistics found that the Government raked in £33billion in 'green' taxes in 2007-08 - up from £30.9billion the year earlier.
The levies included fuel duty, vehicle excise duty, landfill tax, climate change levy and the renewables obligation, which is the cost to the taxpayer of power companies generating electricity from environmentally-friendly energy sources.
Subtracting the £8.8billion spent by the Department of Transport on roads last year gives a total burden of green taxes and charges of £24.2billion.
But the social cost of the UK's entire output of greenhouse gases which harm the environment was £4.6billion, according to estimates from the highly-respected Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
This suggested households in Britain were being forced to pay £19.6billion a year too much in levies on airline tickets, petrol and to run their cars. This works out at £783 per family. Even taking the Government's estimate that the cost of greenhouse gas emissions was £16.3billion last year would mean green taxes were still £7.9billion - or £315 per household - too high, said the TPA.
Matthew Sinclair, the campaign group's policy analyst, said: 'Green taxes are set far higher than is necessary to pay for our carbon footprint, which loads an unfair burden onto hard pressed British families and businesses.
'With the credit crunch squeezing household budgets, people can ill afford this extra tax grab. It's dishonest and unjust for politicians to wrap revenue raising tax hikes in a green banner.
'The Government are talking about raising taxes even further, but our conclusions show that green taxes should be kept as they are or cut.'
He added: 'Excessive green taxes hit poorer people hardest, hurt the competitiveness of British firms, cause Britain to export emissions and fall disproportionately on residents of rural and suburban areas.'
The TPA also said the so-called eco-tax burden also varies significantly between urban areas and the countryside.
Using the IPCC estimate, campaigners said residents of the Essex town of Maldon felt the burden most heavily - paying £607 per person in excess green taxes.
This was compared to just £62 each paid by residents of Camden in north London. Continued
See Also:
Thursday 28th August 2008
Security guards and town hall workers are being armed with sweeping police-style powers, it has emerged.
For a few hundred pounds, state and private sector employees can receive Home Office accreditation. This allows them to hand out fines for a raft of offences, from dropping litter to riding a bike on the pavement.
They can also stop cars to check their tax discs, seize alcohol from underage drinkers and demand people's names and addresses.
The hope is that they will free up rank-and-file officers from having to perform these unpopular tasks. The uniformed, badged army of snoopers will become a vital part of the 'extended police family', ministers say.
But privacy campaigners have dubbed them Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's 'Stasi' after the East German secret police.
Phil Booth of NO2ID said: 'This is a sinister move towards a Stasi snooper state in which jobsworths are devolved the powers of the police - including the right to demand you identify yourself.'
Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve added: 'This is a consequence of the Government's obsession with policing on the cheap as well as their staggering complacency towards the extension of surveillance by an increasing amount of different bodies.
'The public will be angered that the Home Office is seeking to take serious powers that should be appropriately applied by the police and encouraging them to be given not just to local councils, but also to private firms.
'The public want to see real police on the streets discharging these responsibilities, not private firms who may use them inappropriately - including unnecessarily snooping on the lives of ordinary citizens.'
Details of the new army of police-style officers emerged in Home Office papers released today. There are already 1,400 town hall and private sector staff accredited, and ministers want a dramatic expansion of the scheme.
Called the Community Safety Accreditation Scheme, it allows the likes of security guards, park wardens, car park attendants and store detectives to boost their roles if they undergo training and pay a small fee to their local police force.
The powers range from issuing £60 fines for truancy to giving out Penalty Notices for Disorder for more serious offences such as harassment.
Critics said today that the Government is creating a third level to the police service, behind fully-fledged warranted officers and the controversial Community Support Officers known as 'Blunkett's Bobbies'.
The only significant difference between the accredited workers and CSOs is that they do not have the power to detain a suspect.
Instead, they would have to summon police to help if a situation turned ugly. However, they will have a special priority hotline to report their intelligence to detectives.
So no arguments while being interrogated and fined £80 on the spot for brushing off that bit of dust off your shoulder onto the pavement. Otherwise you will be carted off to the nearest Gulag! (Ed)
Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker said the accredited workers have a 'critical role to play in neighbourhood policing teams and are a key component of the extended police family'.
They can wear a special badge, and a uniform approved by the local chief constable. At present, they are wearing their employer's existing uniform with the badge sewn on, but police chiefs could eventually be encouraged to decide on a standard uniform across their force area, the Home Office said. See what they can do
The guidance document seemed to acknowledge that the offences covered by the accredited workers could seem relatively petty.
It stated: 'It is particularly beneficial to use accredited persons to effectively target those community problems that are deemed unsuitable for the police because police enforcement might be seen to be excessive by the community.'
The scheme is being sold to companies such as security firms as a way of boosting their profile. Continued
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Police State Britain is here!
Ministers talk endlessly about reducing police paperwork in order to free officers to patrol the streets.
But, while making little progress in slashing bureaucracy, they have been quietly deploying another tactic: Giving big chunks of the job to other people. First, they invented Community Support Officers, armed with a raft of police powers, but with a fraction of the salary or training.
Inevitably, the recruitment of 16,000 of these 'Blunkett's Bobbies' - who can issue fines, but not make arrests - was greeted with accusations of 'policing on the cheap'.
Now, details of another part of what the Home Office calls the 'extended police family' have emerged - the 'accredited' council worker or private security guard.
They will be able to gather intelligence, help trap road tax cheats and hand out fines to unsuspecting members of the public. But, in a crucial distinction to CSOs, they will not be employed by the local police authority.
They will continue with their current employer, and simply undergo an unspecified level of training, as deemed appropriate by the local chief constable.
Critics believe it is a recipe for disaster.
Vetting runs the risk of being either too lax (with potentially alarming consequences for public safety) or so severe that the scheme does not get off the ground.
Among the 33 police forces who have already accredited snoopers, some have been carrying out no more checks than they would give an external contractor.
Others have been using full anti-terrorist and financial checks, taking so long that - by the time a person had been cleared - they had moved on from their original job, and were no longer interested in accreditation.
In future, the minimum standard is likely to be an enhanced Criminal Records Bureau check.
There are also inherent dangers in giving any civilian some, but not all, police powers.
The new army of officials will be able to issue fines of up to £80 for some serious offences, including harassment.
This is likely to lead to confrontation, but - unlike CSOs - the accredited workers cannot even detain a suspect for 30 minutes, let alone arrest them.
Accountability will also be a worry, given the lack of a direct police role in their employment. It is up to police to check regularly that any local authority or private firm they have accredited is behaving properly.
But senior officers are busy enough already, and this could slip. Meanwhile, a single accredited private security guard or town hall worker will only be reported to their local force if they receive three minor complaints from the public in any 12-month period.
If just a single complaint is made about a police officer or CSO, the local force finds out immediately.
The Home Office papers revealed that, among those officers who have already worked with accredited staff, the sharing of intelligence is another 'major concern'.
There is a difficult balance to be struck - share too much information with somebody who does not have the vetting and training of a PC and, in the worst case scenario, an operation could be compromised.
Share nothing, and the civilian force will not know what it is looking for, or supposed to be doing.
The path ahead appears fraught with difficulties and, for the Home Office, controversy. News Source
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An army of town hall spies who can hand out on-the-spot fines is being recruited by the Government.
Council staff, car park attendants, private security guards and even dog wardens are being used to snoop on the public and issue fixed penalties for minor offences.
Amid accusations of policing on the cheap, they are informing on car tax dodgers and fining people for dropping litter, dog fouling and truancy. They even have the power to demand your name and address.
There are already more than 1,400 so-called “accredited persons” – the equivalent of a small police force – and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith wants even more so they can do jobs regarded as too trivial for the police. This private army have their own badges and uniforms and a review is under way which could see them given the power to dish out fines for more public order offences.
Companies are being urged to sign up to the scheme and even encouraged to use their involvement as a way of promoting themselves for “market advantage”.
The development means yet another tier of civilians being used for cheap policing alongside the already controversial community support officers.
It also fuels the row over the level of powers which town halls have to spy on the public and dispense summary justice. One critic dubbed them a modern day Stasi in a reference to the notorious East German secret police. Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: “The public will be angered that the Home Office is seeking to take serious powers that should be applied by the police and encouraging them to be given not just to local councils, but also to private firms.
“The public want to see real police on the streets discharging these responsibilities, not private firms who may use them inappropriately, including unnecessarily snooping on ordinary citizens. Continued
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Plenty of people gave me advice when I was a child, but one lesson in particular sprang to mind yesterday when I read that the personal details of a million bank customers had been found on a computer sold on eBay. It was this: 'Never put all your eggs in one basket.'
It's a popular pearl of wisdom. Indeed, when Churchill forbade several of his ministers and generals from flying in the same aeroplane, he joked that you should 'never put all your baskets in one egg'. As usual, he was right.
So why, in this digital age, when mountains of sensitive information can be stored on a single disk, and lost as easily, does everyone seem so eager to ignore that elementary counsel?
On this occasion, it was customers of American Express, NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland who were left reeling by someone's extraordinary ineptitude.
The personal details - including names, addresses, mobile numbers, account numbers, sort codes, mothers' maiden names and even signatures - of more than a million of them were stored on the misplaced computer, which has been described as a 'data thief 's treasure chest'.
What struck me most about this elementary lapse of security was how could any professional organisation allow such a vast quantity of sensitive data to be stored on a single easily-portable computer in the first place? It beggars belief.
But the banks' embarrassment might come as a relief to ministers who have just admitted that the 'unfit for purpose' Home Office recently lost the records of 127,000 criminals.
I can just see Jacqui Smith, the smug and complacent Home Secretary, preparing her excuses for the next time she mislays (or allows to be stolen) the confidential information her ministry has gathered about us.
'Well, just look at the Royal Bank of Scotland,' she will no doubt claim. 'It even happens to the private sector. It's just one of those things.'
Well, here's news: it shouldn't. Indeed, far from being just 'one of those things', electronic data loss is fast becoming an unmitigated, and all-too-frequent, disaster that threatens each and every one of us in modern Britain.
It all goes back to eggs and baskets. Modern data-processing systems now involve placing massive concentrations of information in one place.
This is all well and good - enabling us to replace mountains of paperwork with a single computer chip.
But when the authorities gather highly sensitive and confidential information about us and then choose to store that information on such a device, they place us all in grave peril.
For what happens when that little chip, or disk, or memory stick is misplaced - and then falls into the wrong hands?
Among the demoralised remains of what, not long ago, was the finest civil service in the world, this seems to happen all too frequently.
And as I know, those dealing with such disasters are shameless in covering up their own appalling incompetence. Continued
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The Tories have accused the Government of "policing on the cheap" after ministers revealed that the number of civilians given police powers has increased by nearly 500 over two years.
Employees of private security firms, housing associations and NHS trusts can receive Home Office accreditation to allow them to hand out fines for a variety of offences.
Community Safety Accreditation Schemes, which were introduced under the Police Reform Act 2002, were set up to give civilians working in the community more powers to deal with the public.
Workers wearing special accredited badges are able to seize alcohol from under age drinkers, issue fines for graffiti and littering, and demand people's names and addresses.
The latest Government figures show that 1,406 people are now accredited within 95 approved organisations.
In 2006, there were only 950 accredited workers for 71 organisations.
But while ministers said this was evidence that the scheme worked, critics took the chance to accuse Home Secretary Jacqui Smith of cutting corners while increasing unnecessary surveillance.
Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve said: "The public wants to see real police on the streets discharging these responsibilities, not private firms who may use them inappropriately, including unnecessarily snooping on ordinary citizens.
"This is a consequence of the Government's obsession with policing on the cheap as well as their staggering complacency towards the extension of surveillance." News Source
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The UK's electoral system is stuck in the 19th Century, under "severe strain" and needs reform, a report says.
The Electoral Commission, set up to oversee the electoral process, wants simpler rules on running elections.
It calls for clear leadership with new election management boards and individual voter registration.
It says a new board should oversee Scottish elections, after more than 140,000 ballot papers were rejected in 2007, amid widespread voter confusion.
'Fragmented arrangements'
An independent study into those elections found mistakes at all levels and suggested voters were treated as an "afterthought".
The commission said it was unlikely that the "current fragmented arrangements for electoral administration" would be used if the system was being designed from scratch.
Commission chairman Sam Younger said "a consistently high standard of service for all electors" was needed.
Mr Younger said: "The planning and running of elections need to be more robust and co-ordinated. We are still trying to run 21st Century elections with 19th Century structures, and the system is under severe strain."
The report proposes that funding for electoral administration should be improved, changes to electoral law finalised at least six months before any election and returning officers' roles strengthened. Continued
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Voters may have to take photographic ID into the polling station under proposals to reform the electoral system.
The Electoral Commission says the present system needs an urgent overhaul to restore voter confidence, protect against fraud and bring polling into the 21st century.
In a new report, it also calls on the Government to consider a national register with details of every voter to help to eliminate postal vote fraud. Every voter would have to provide a signature, date of birth and national insurance number.
The national register would replace the current system of local registers.
Its main recommendation is a reform of the way elections are administered with new independent management boards set up in six English regions, Wales and Scotland.
Sam Younger, the commission chairman, said: "The planning and running of elections need to be robust and co-ordinated. We are still trying to run 21st-century elections with 19th-century structures and the system is under severe strain."
The report follows criticisms from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust that efforts to increase postal voting had raised the risk of fraud and undermined public confidence.
The commission says individual registration, which could include a photo ID at the ballot box, would make postal fraud or impersonation much more difficult.
In recent years postal rigging has become a major headache for the Electoral Commission. In 2004 Labour won elections in Birmingham by organising postal vote rigging. The following year a Labour councillor was jailed for postal vote-rigging in Blackburn while voters had their identities stolen in polling booths in Coventry in the same year.
And last year the Conservatives in Slough used postal votes to rig elections.
But despite the concerns a national register is likely to hit opposition after a year of scandals involving lost data from Government departments. Continued
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Only one in 5,000 children who are caught carrying knives are locked up for their crime, figures out today show.
Of the 1,164 ten to 15-year-olds caught with a knife last year only 30 ended up in prison.
The data, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, show that three children a day were caught carrying a knife in England and Wales in the year up to April. Around half received a caution, the other 600 were prosecuted and 30 of those were sentenced to prison.
However, even those caught with a knife is a small percentage of teenagers who admit to carrying one. In a Government survey 150,000 children admitted to carrying a knife over the past year.
The revelations come days after 18-year-old Charles Junior Hendricks was stabbed to death, becoming the 18th teenager to be fatally stabbed in the capital this year and the 50th young person to be murdered in London in the past two years.
Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: "It's a shocking indictment of our broken society."
Scotland Yard have launched a high profile crackdown on knife crime, which includes a specialist task force and extending stop and search powers in crime hotspots.
Operation Blunt 2 began in May after the death of Jimmy Mizen, 16, an altar boy who was stabbed to death with a shard of glass in a bakery in south east London. A total of 11 other teenagers have died since then, despite police carrying out 32,395 searches, arresting 1,437 people for suspected knife offences and seizing 731 knives.
Yesterday the Government announced plans to tackle knife crime in schools by encouraging children from 160 secondary schools and colleges in some of Britain's worst knife crime areas to text Crimestoppers if they saw their classmates with a blade. News Source
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Pressure is growing for action to stop gang attacks in Derby's historic Arboretum park – just weeks after it was given a national safety award.
Attack victim Chris Jordan wrote to the Evening Telegraph and expressed his dismay that the park's CCTV was broken and plans for a police office had not been fulfilled.
The 64-year-old said he was kicked and spat on in a racist attack. It was one of six violent incidents in the park in recent months.
The Arboretum was Britain's first public park, dating back to 1840. It has undergone a £5.5m makeover with National Lottery cash.
But police are now trying to get community leaders together to stop it becoming a no-go zone.
Who are these community leaders??? Were they voted in by the whole community? Stop pussyfooting around and enforce the law ofthe land otherwise there won't be anywhere left to enforce it at all in the future!
They revealed that they were working on "a partnership plan to improve security", as well as making daily patrols.
Shokat Lal, chairman of Derby's Pakistani Community Centre, said: "Racist attacks of any form, on any community, are completely unacceptable and I have in the past few weeks had some very direct conversations with the police about why there seems to be a failure in stopping these attacks and charging those involved.
Who made you leader of the community? (Ed)
"I'm aware Pakistani individuals have also been attacked, so it's not just one community attacking another."
Derby's mayor, Councillor Barbara Jackson, said: "The park is a jewel in Derby's crown and is used by so many people. These incidents are very disappointing and it is a terrible shame. I hope they are isolated incidents and I know local councillors are working with the community to address the issues."
Jangir Khan, chairman of the Friends of Arboretum Park, said: "Security should be good enough to catch these people."
Police have met councillors and representatives of the city's community safety partnership and parks department to discuss problems at the park. Chief Inspector Gary Parkin said: "While there have been incidents of assault at the park, the offenders have not come from one specific ethnic group and neither have the victims." News Source
Reader Submitted Link. Thank You Janet
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A council publishing 'Wanted' photographs of alleged litterbugs insisted today that it has a legal right to identify suspects - even if they are eventually cleared.
As town halls face a growing revolt over their new powers to issue on-the-spot fines and access people's personal data, one authority has already handed out cameras to litter teams who patrol the streets for anyone dropping so much as a matchstick.
The publicity campaign has been launched by Colchester Borough Council who say it has been checked and approved by their lawyers and the police.
Its team of six 'street care officers' will now photograph everyone caught dropping litter in the council's 160-square mile area including Colchester town centre and surrounding villages.
And the council say the photographs will be kept on file indefinitely because people caught may re-offend.
The council spoke in defence of its policy today as it emerged that across Britain town hall workers are being armed with sweeping police-style powers to hand out fines for a raft of offences including dropping litter.
Officials say the Colchester scheme has been introduced after a 23-year-old local woman caught by a litter warden dropping a cigarette butt gave a false name and address when handed a £75 fixed penalty notice.
Her photograph appeared in an evening paper and she was eventually identified and now faces court on charges of littering and wilfully obstructing an officer.
The six-strong anti-litter patrols will now photograph anyone caught dropping litter in the street or from a car. Continued
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Suzanne and Lloyd Bishop did the decent thing when they heard a suspicious noise outside their home.
A glance out of the bedroom window revealed a man breaking into a neighbour's shed - so they swiftly called 999.
They assumed this would be the end of their crime-fighting role other than perhaps giving a statement to police at a later date.
But, to their astonishment, Cambridgeshire police sent them a text message an hour later asking the couple if they could investigate further.
The message said: 'Lloyd. Following on from your call earlier on to the police, please can you contact us is you are able to establish what has been stolen and where from?
'At this time we are struggling to get the police to attend general calls for service, many thanks.'
Mrs Bishop, 29, who along with her husband is a full-time carer for their special needs daughter, Lizzie, two, yesterday said she was 'gobsmacked' by the request.
'We were disgusted that this text was sent out an hour later to us,' she said.
'To text the person who calls and ask them to investigate what had been stolen, broken into and who did it is just incredible.
'What is totally unbelievable was that we were under the impression that this type of crime came under 999.
It just gives burglars the idea that they can get away with it because the police aren't going to send anyone out.
'What message does that send to my neighbours here? Is it just pointless to call police if you see someone breaking in to a house?'
The couple were woken at 5am on Sunday morning when they heard a padlock being smashed outside their home in Cambridge.
When they checked the street they spotted a man in a white t-shirt running away.
Mr Bishop, 33, immediately called police and was told a patrol car would do a sweep of the area.
'We went back to bed and were woken at 6am by a text message saying they couldn't get any officers out,' he said.
'They should have been able to catch a man in a white T-shirt as there couldn't have been many running around the area at five in the morning.
'It's complete madness. The police are essentially asking us to do their job for them. It makes you wonder what we pay our taxes for.' Continued
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More than half the babies born in Luton are to foreign mothers, according to figures released by the Office For National Statistics.
A spokesman said 758,000 babies were born in Britain last year. The UK fertility rate is now 1.91 children per woman - the highest level since 1973. In Luton, 51 per cent of births were to non UK-born mothers.
The rising birth rate has fuelled an increase in Britain's population to almost 61 million in 2007, largely influenced by the growing number of women of childbearing age in the country. Continued
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A devout Muslim was found guilty of child cruelty today in a British legal first after forcing two boys to beat themselves during a religious ceremony.
The jury at Manchester Crown Court found 44-year-old Syed Mustafa Zaidi guilty of two counts of child cruelty.
The boys, aged 13 and 15, were forced to beat themselves with a zanjeer zani, an implement containing five curved blades, during a ceremony to commemorate the death of a Shia Muslim spiritual leader.
Zaidi, of Station Road, Eccles, Salford, also flogged himself during the ceremony at a community centre in Levenshulme, Manchester, on January 19.
The boys, who cannot be named for legal reasons, admitted they wanted to beat themselves, but not under duress and not using Zaidi's zanjeer zani. Continued
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Britain will become the most populated country in the European Union thanks to immigration and soaring number of pensioners, experts warned yesterday.
The UK, despite being far smaller, will overtake Germany and France for having the most number of people by 2060.
And the pressure on the public purse will intensify with people aged over 65 accounting for a quarter of the population by that point.
The projections, from EU statisticians, will also fuel the concerns that Labour’s open-door policy has led to record numbers of migrants.
The study comes just days after the UK’s official statisticians revealed immigration has hit record levels with 1,650 people moving here every day.
Their figures also show that, for the first time, there are now more pensioners in the UK than children.
Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: “This is why it is essential we develop a coherent strategy to deal with population growth. We not only need to ensure that our population grows at a more sustainable rate but that we also prepare properly for that sustainable rate of growth.
“The Government have shown that they have no answers to the challenges we face by failing to plan for our increasing population. This makes them part of the problem.”
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of MigrationWatch UK, said: “This is yet another warning that if we do not get a hold of immigration, the population of this small island will become unmanageable.”
The EU statistical office yesterday predicted the UK population will rise by a quarter from 61.2 million to 76.7 million by 2060. In contrast, Germany will see its population drop from 82.2 million to 70.8 million over the same period due largely to falling births.
France’s population will grow from 61.8 million but will only stand at 71.8 million by 2060 – making the UK the most populated across the 27 nations of the EU. Separate figures earlier this year warned England will become the densest area of Europe as early as next year. Continued
See Also:
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The Scotland Yard officer in charge of security for the 2012 Olympics is being sued for racism by his boss Tarique Ghaffur.
Richard Bryan, who is director of operations for Olympic security, is being accused of racism by Met Assistant Commissioner Ghaffur in a discrimination case lodged on Friday.
Mr Ghaffur, the Met's most senior Asian policeman, alleges that Mr Bryan made "thinly veiled" racist comments towards him and deliberately undermined his position. He is also suing Met Commissioner Sir Ian Blair.
Mr Ghaffur claims Mr Bryan told him "I can't understand what you are saying" and said he had to "calibrate" his reports so staff were able to understand them.
The case also suggests that planning for the Games' policing - overseen by Mr Ghaffur - has been marred by plotting among senior Scotland Yard figures and the Home Office, creating a " degrading and humiliating" environment.
He says he was treated differently to white officers and claims that the three other Asian officers working on the Olympics command have been told their contracts would not be continued.
He claims documents were kept from him by Mr Bryan and Whitehall officials, that he was not made aware of key meetings and his opinions were ignored by Sir Ian.
Mr Ghaffur, who earns £180,000 a year, is continuing to work alongside his deputy and reports three times a week to Sir Ian for "cabinet" meetings.
A spokesman for the Met said they would "robustly defend" themselves at the expected employment tribunal next year. News Source
Few apt comments:
- Does Mr. Ghaffur find time to do any police work thereby justifying his huge salary or is he too busy looking for slights from his colleagues?
- This petty self publicist is a bore and undoubtedly is bringing the force into disrepute. Who's he going to sue next... his tea lady for not asking him what he wants before everyone else?
- About time this idiot was given his marching orders isn't it? He's nothing but a drain on the finances of the Met!
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A man is seriously ill in a UK hospital with a strain of virtually untreatable tuberculosis.
The patient, believed to be an asylum seeker in his 30s from Somalia, East Africa, is the first to be diagnosed in Britain with extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB).
His case was picked up in Glasgow in January but a court order detaining him in hospital for treatment lapsed after his condition stabilised and he travelled south to Leeds, West Yorks.
He has been admitted to an isolation room at a hospital in the city where he is being given high-dose drugs by specialist medical teams.
Hospital chiefs are refusing to comment, but experts say they are confident there is no risk to staff or the public.
The man travelled to Leeds to be near relatives and attended A&E in the city within 24 hours.
It remains unclear if his application for asylum, made when he arrived in the UK last year, has been successful but the bill for treatment - which would run into tens of thousands of pounds a year - is being picked up by the NHS in Leeds.
XDR TB poses a worldwide threat amid major concerns over increasing resistance of tuberculosis to antibiotics which originally proved highly effective against the illness. The World Health Organisation has warned that if the strain becomes established, it could lead to a TB epidemic leaving few options for treatment.
A Health Protection Agency spokesman said it was aware that a patient with XDR TB was being treated in Leeds.
“All the appropriate infection control measures are being taken,” he said.
“The usual routine responses were put in place to identify any close contacts of the patient and all appropriate actions have been taken. There is no infectious risk to public health.” Continued
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A grieving mother who watched her ten-year-old son die of an asthma attack was left devastated after being arrested for his manslaughter.
Claire Humberstone said she was treated like a criminal after police arrived at her home with dogs and riot vans just 12 days after her son Dante Kamara died.
The shocked mother of four was held in custody for eight hours, questioned and had her DNA and fingerprints taken.
A week later, she was told she would not be charged.
Last night, the 29-year-old condemned the police tactics as ' disgusting', and insisted she knew of no reason why she should have been suspected of foul play.
She said: 'I was treated like a criminal and I was a grieving mother - it's made everything worse.
'I'm a good mum who loves my kids dearly.
'I looked after his condition well and did everything I could to save his life the day he died. I miss him every day and I can't believe this has happened. It's torn me apart.'
Miss Humberstone, who is pregnant with her fifth child, said that on July 1, Dante - who had suffered from asthma since he was a toddler - was off school with a bad cold.
But just 90 minutes after seeing a nurse at a local doctor's surgery, he began struggling for breath and Miss Humberstone rang for an ambulance.
She said: 'I was absolutely hysterical and screaming. I knew my son wasn't going to make it. The paramedic didn't know what he was doing.
'He was panicking and even dropped something down my son's throat by accident. It was awful.'
Miss Humberstone, who lives in Shiregreen, Sheffield, with her partner Jamie Maher, 22, and her children Kayden, 13, Roman, three, and Amelia, two, said: 'Police said they were arresting me because the coroner had raised concerns - but that can't be true because he had already issued a death certificate with the cause of death as an asthma attack.'
Detective Chief Inspector Clive Wain, of South Yorkshire Police, said: 'Claire is fully aware of the reasons for her arrest. She was arrested as a potential suspect, but we tried to be as sensitive and tactful as we could.' News Source
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Some 50,000 children are at risk of harm or neglect at the hands of nurseries, childminders and after-school clubs, Government inspectors have said.
Education watchdog Ofsted revealed more than 2,500 child care providers are 'inadequate'.
Its report - Early Years: Leading To Excellence - checked on 84,400 nurseries, creches, childminders and out-of-school clubs that look after an estimated 1.7million children each day.
The figures come at a time when mothers are being pressured to go back to work by ministers who claim they are trying to crack child poverty.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown, as recently as June, unveiled plans to pay mothers an extra £40 a week if they found a job.
Critics said the report's findings also suggested that the best childminders were quitting because they were fed up with increasing amounts of bureaucratic red tape.
Failings included not checking staff for criminal records, leaving children alone too long, providing unsuitable or unsafe play equipment and not having the correct first aid training.
The report found that one in 15 'extended' schools which look after an increasing number of children before and after class were below par, while four per cent of nurseries and creches were poor.
The declining standards are especially worrying as the industry is registering 1,000 new childminders each month.
The number of England's 54,000-plus childminders classified as 'good' also dropped from 62 to 54 per cent. However, those considered 'excellent' rose from three to five per cent. Ofsted also said it was 'concerned' that the quality of childcare was worse in the most deprived parts of the country. Continued
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Children under the age of 16 cannot legally give their consent to take part in religious flogging ceremonies, a prosecutor said in the case of a Muslim man accused of encouraging two boys to beat themselves with a bladed whip at a Manchester community centre.
Syed Mustafa Zaidi, 44, of Eccles, denies two charges of child cruelty in a trial at Manchester Crown Court.
In a closing speech to the jury, prosecutor Andrew Nuttall said: "The law applies to everyone and you can't just ignore it because you choose to do so."
He added that the issue of the boys consenting to take part in the ceremony was `no defence', since the law existed to protect children from themselves.
Earlier, Mr Nuttall said the law had drawn a `line in the sand' at the age of 16, with the intention of protecting children from harm.
He said: "Children under 16 are not allowed by law to buy cigarettes; it's unlawful for a man to have sexual intercourse for a girl under 16, the idea being to protect girls from certain people like the Gary Glitters of this world.
"A line has been drawn in the sand by the government and people in this country," the barrister added, claiming Mr Zaidi had chosen to ignore this line.
Mr Nuttall said there was `no doubt' that the defendant knew when he gave the whip to the two boys that they would `suffer injury', but not only did he not stop them from whipping themselves, but `ensured that they would receive injury', which amounted to `ill treatment', making him guilty of the charge.
The prosecutor also said the issue of religion was `no defence' in this case, since the use of the whip or zanjeer was voluntary, and not fundamental to the Shia Muslim faith.
The `emotion' of the event, and whether or not the boys were forced, were also no defence, said Mr Nuttall, since Zaidi knew the children would suffer injury and that it was against the law, but handed them his whip anyway.
The court has been told that Mr Zaidi encouraged the two boys to flog themselves with a 'zanjeer' at a Matam ceremony held in Manchester in January this year. They both sustained injuries to their back.
Zanjeer Matam is practised on the 10th day of Muharram, the Muslim month of mourning, to mark the martyrdom of Hussain, the Prophet Mohammed's grandson, who is central to the Shia faith. News Source
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A senior doctor says thousands of hospital patients are "starving" because nurses are too busy to feed them.
Professor Paul Goddard, a former radiology section president of the Royal Society of Medicine, made a scathing attack yesterday on the way the health service is being run, saying "an enormous amount of money has been put in but it has been wasted on excessive management".
He said the NHS is in "meltdown" and claimed medics refused to speak up about the problems for fear of being sacked.
Prof Goddard told Radio 4's Today programme: "Thousands of patients have been starving in beds because the nurses do not have time to feed them.
"That used to be a major part of the nursing process; now they just don't have time because they have to spend all their time doing reports and management work."
Superbugs were killing people by the "hundreds"; "you can't get dental care"; and people had to pay to have elderly patients looked after. Draft guidance to deny patients four kidney cancer drugs on the NHS was a "disgrace". News Source
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Thank Goodness for occasional good news!
For the first time a drugs company will pay to top up patients' treatment where the level of care paid for by the Health Service is not enough.
In a decision that marks a climbdown for the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), the first 14 injections of the sight-saving drug Lucentis will be paid for by the NHS.
If the patient still needs further treatment then Novartis, the manufacturer, will pay for any additional doses.
The ruling overturns previous draft guidance that patients would have to go blind in one eye before receiving treatment with Lucentis, which costs more than £10,000 per eye, on the second.
It also paves the way for other new drugs for which top-up doses may be required to be funded in the same way in future.
Richard Barker, director general of the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry suggested other medicines the NHS cannot afford to pay for in full could be provided through cost sharing schemes between the NHS and the drugs industry.
A similar approach has been suggested for kidney cancer drug Sutent, which costs £24,000 a year, and three other drugs after Nice issued draft guidance saying that they were not "cost effective" despite extending life by two months.
NICE has been severely criticised in recent months by health campaigners, who have accused them of condemning patients to "an early grave" by denying them the drugs.
It has also been at the centre of a previous controversy over its decision to deny the £2.50-a-day drug Aricept to victims of Alzheimer's in the early stages of the disease.
Lucentis can stop the deterioration in sight caused by the condition wet age related macular degeneration (AMD), which affects about 250,000 people in the UK including 26,000 new cases each year. It can cause blindness within three months. Continued
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Patients' lives are being put at risk because a shortage of staff means ambulances are sent to emergencies without paramedics on board, experts warned today.
Vehicles manned only with lesser qualified technicians or emergency care assistants are often dispatched to deal with 999 calls.
Although skilled, they are not authorised to administer some drugs or treatments.
The Association of Professional Ambulance Personnel (APAP) today said it had 'great concerns' that the lack of paramedics is putting the welfare of patients in jeopardy.
South Central Ambulance Service, which covers Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire and Oxfordshire, is now desperately trying to recruit paramedics to plug the gap.
Paramedic and APAP spokesman Simon Surplice, said: 'I have got great concerns.
'The additional skills of a paramedic are required on about four to six per cent of all jobs.
'It's all very well that the vast majority of our jobs don't require extended skills or paramedic intervention.
'But that's no consolation for the relatively few jobs where those skills are needed, and needed urgently, and it turns out there is no available paramedic with the crew, or no way, within a reasonable time, of getting a paramedic to the scene.'
Campaigners also blasted the lack of paramedics, claiming it could lead to unnecessary deaths.
Michael Summers, vice chairman of the Patients Association, said: 'Patient care is going to suffer.
'Patients could lose their lives because of the inability of technicians to be able to use certain equipment and administer certain drugs.
'This could be avoided if ambulance services employed a greater number of paramedics as opposed to technicians - there is clearly a need.'
South Central Ambulance Service NHS Trust today admitted that the staff shortage means technicians are sometimes dispatched without paramedics. Continued
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Three men held in a suspected race hate plot to kill Barack Obama will not face any charges relating to an attempt on his life.
The authorities in Denver said that even though they had high-powered sniper rifles and were racists who said they wanted to kill Mr Obama to stop him becoming President, the case did not meet the legal standard to charge the men with a federal offence.
Tharin Gartrell, 28, Shawn Adolf, 33, and Dwaine Johnson, 32, are to face charges of possessing firearms and the drug methamphetamine following their arrest.
The US Attorney for Denver, Troy Eid, said that while investigators were keeping an "open mind" an intensive investigation had found no evidence of a credible plan to kill Mr Obama as he accepted the Democratic nomination at Denver's Invesco football stadium tomorrow.
"There is a difference between a true threat and the reported racist rantings of drug abusers," said Mr Eid. "This involved a gang of meth-heads who were all impaired at the time."
The plot was only uncovered after police seized two high-velocity rifles, camouflage clothing, walkie-talkies, wigs, a bulletproof vest and telescopic gun sights during a routine traffic stop.
One of the gang - who has the surname Adolf and was wearing a swastika ring - jumped from a sixth-floor window to escape after the FBI swooped on two hotels in the city.
Another denied being part of the plot, but reportedly said of Obama: 'Blacks don't belong in political office. He ought to be shot.'
The foiled 'hit' has sent shockwaves through the convention crowds pouring into the Colorado capital for the 47-year-old senator's Democrat coronation. Continued
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A bundle of sensitive files linked to a massive police drugs bust have been found dumped in a skip.
A probe has been launched after more than 100 'restricted' statements from police officers and forensic experts were discovered lying in a giant bin at a recycling centre.
They reveal personal details about suspects and witnesses linked to Operation Montrose, run by Merseyside Police from 2004, which led to 59 drug traffickers being locked up for a combined 340 years.
They detail how cops seized items including brown powders, bundles of cash and mobile phones across the country.
The papers provide information linked to a Liverpool Crown Court case involving gang leader Paul Hannon and eight others.
HM Courts Service has vowed to investigate the security breach after the files were handed to a local newspaper. A spokesman said: "HMCS takes data security extremely seriously and we will investigate all allegations of breaches or incidents." Continued
Wednesday 27th August 2008
Shoulder to shoulder, dozens of police barricade the street to stop a violent, angry mob from rioting.
These were the disturbing scenes which marred the end of London's Notting Hill Carnival on Monday night.
A gang of 40 troublemakers, hellbent on wreaking havoc, hurled bottles and bricks at officers as the festival drew to a close.
The pitched battle marred what was largely a peaceful weekend enjoyed by more than one million people and police in riot gear had to be drafted in to break up the fighting.
One witness said: 'It was a full-scale riot. Bottles were flying everywhere. Carnival-goers and police officers were bloodied. A policewoman was carried off unconscious.
'Another had a two-inch gash above his eye. He was staggering and supported by two colleagues. 'The mob weren't scared. They were running towards the police who were chanting "one, two, three" and charging them.
'It was like a war zone. I haven't seen anything like it at the carnival since the early 90s. It reminded me of the Brixton riots.'
A resident, who saw the battle from his flat, said: 'I've lived here 12 years and this is the worst trouble and the biggest deployment of police I've ever seen at carnival.
'At one point there were about 200 police down there. The officers looked terrified.'
The mood turned ugly as the festival drew to a close when the group rounded on the police in Ladbroke Grove, West London.
Chief Insp Jo Edwards said: 'Whilst thousands of people came to join in with the fun and spectacle of carnival, once again the event ended with a small minority of people determined to fight and cause trouble.
'For over two hours our officers were faced with a hard core, mainly of young men, who came to carnival not to enjoy the event but to fight, commit crime and cause trouble.
'Officers had to work hard and deliver a strong interventionist style of policing late into the night to make sure that these criminals were not allowed to take over the streets of Notting Hill.
'This is not the way anyone can want to see the carnival finish.'
Organiser Michael Williams, from London Notting Hill Carnival Ltd, said: 'More than a million people had a great time at the Notting Hill Carnival and enjoyed an amazing spectacle of colour, energy and music.
'While this incident - which happened after the festivities were over and people were on their way home - is extremely disappointing, it is important that it should not overshadow what is Europe's greatest street party.'
There were a total of 330 arrests, a rise on 247 arrests last year, though Scotland Yard said this was down to an increase in 'proactive policing'.
Officers carried out more stop-and-searches using metal detector wands amid concerns over the recent spate in knife crime.
Knives, a Taser gun, CS spray and a baseball bat were among the weapons seized Continued
Reader Submitted Link. Thank You Welshie
See Also: How they reported!
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But of course it has! It wasn't bungling or a government that's inadequate' it was done for a purpose! Everything king midas touched turned to Gold. Everything Labour touch turns into Manure! to phrase it politely!
A generation of teenagers have become 'health timebombs' because of their binge-drinking, smoking, drug use and underage sex, the Conservatives warned yesterday.
The scale of the health problems facing those aged 11 to 19 was laid bare for the first time by official figures.
They show the number of young people admitted to hospital for treatment because they have abused alcohol, cigarettes and drugs has soared.
Cases of sexually-transmitted diseases and abortions among schoolgirls have also rocketed under Labour.
And almost a third of children start their teenage years obese, according to figures published by the NHS Information Centre.
Tory health spokesman Andrew Lansley, who compiled the statistics, accused ministers of letting down young people by not doing enough to tackle their health problems.
Mr Lansley said: ' Labour are neglecting a forgotten generation of teenagers.
'It is a sad indictment of our broken society that so many are turning to drug and alcohol abuse at such a young age.
'The Government needs to take action now, before it is too late.'
Detailed statistics showed the number of teenagers admitted to hospital for alcohol abuse rose by 51 per cent - from 8,411 in 2000 to 12,682 last year.
This includes admissions for diagnosed 'primary' conditions specifically related to alcohol, such as mental disorders, liver disease and alcohol poisoning.
It also covers 'secondary' cases for admissions for such things as drunken accidents.
Hospital admissions of teenagers with conditions linked to heavy smoking, including bronchitis and lung illnesses, rocketed by 41 per cent over the same period - from 11,540 to 16,214.
The problem is getting worse among those aged 11 to 15, among whom there was a 63 per cent rise in referrals for treatment at hospital.
A culture of promiscuity among teenagers has sent rates of sexually transmitted infections soaring by 21 per cent since 2003.
Cases of diseases from chlamydia to gonorrhoea have risen from 43,750 to 53,061.
And the number of teenage girls having abortions after becoming pregnant following unprotected sex has increased by 15 per cent, from 36,304 in 2003 to 41,703 last year. Continued
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What is it with Labour and paedophilia scandals?
Lets take a little journey down memory lane after this news item.
Two MPs are under investigation for accessing child pornography websites as part of a huge police operation that this weekend embroiled the rock star Pete Townshend.
Sources have confirmed to the Guardian that the names and credit card details of the two MPs are on a list of subscribers to a child porn internet portal sent to Scotland Yard by the US authorities.
The MPs, who are both reported to be former Labour ministers, are the latest public figures to become caught up in Operation Ore, the largest inquiry into child pornography undertaken in the UK.
More than 1,300 people have already been arrested as part of the police investigation, including judges, teachers, doctors, care workers, soldiers and more than 50 police officers.
On Saturday Townshend, lead guitarist with rock legends The Who, admitted that he had used his credit card to access a child pornography website. The admission followed reports in a newspaper that Scotland Yard detectives were investigating a "legendary British rock star" and deciding whether to make an arrest.
Because of the numbers of people involved and the complexities of gathering evidence, police prioritised subscribers with previous sex convictions and those who worked in areas that brought them into contact with children. But Operation Ore has also exposed the problems of investigating internet paedophilia and the lack of resources available to police forces. Continued
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Memory Lane
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Note This is a Recap: (26th August 2008)
Their involvement with an organisation to which two groups campaigning for the legalisation of paedophilia were affiliated has come back to challenge three leading Labour Party figures.
Before she became an MP, Harriet Harman was the legal officer in the late 1970s for the National Council for Civil Liberties. When Miss Harman joined NCCL in 1978, PIE, the Paedophile Information Exchange, had already been affiliated for three years. Another group, Paedophile Action for Liberation, a Gay Liberation Front offshoot, had also been affiliated to NCCL until it was absorbed by PIE. PIE, which campaigned for adults to have sex legally with children, only broke off its relationship with NCCL when it went undercover in 1982, the same year that Harriet Harman left her NCCL post to become Member of Parliament for Peckham.
NCCL people were earlier involved in keeping the name of an NCCL council-member, Jonathan Walters, out of the People newspaper when it ran an exposé of Paedophile Action for Liberation, of which he was secretary, in 1975. The People still ran the story, but Walters was not named.
Even more extraordinary is the fact that a current Cabinet Minister was running the National Council of Civil Liberties at the time all this was going on.
The Rt Hon Patricia Hewitt MP, Secretary of State for Health, became General Secretary of NCCL in 1974. The very next year, 1975, NCCL invited the Paedophile Information Exchange and Paedophile Action for Liberation to affiliate. In the year after, 1976, the now-notorious paedophile Tom O'Carroll was invited to address the NCCL conference, which promptly voted to 'deplore' the use of chemical castration treatments for paedophiles.
Also in 1975, Patricia Hewitt joined the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, as a 'straight', in the same year that Keith Hose of the Paedophile Information Exchange addressed its second annual conference. Continued
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An investigation carried out by Radio4 Today Programme found that a paedophile at the centre of the Islington child abuse scandal went on to abuse children across three continents.
Had allegations against Bernie Bain, the former head of a children's home, been properly investigated in the 1980s countless children would have been spared.
Margaret Hodge was leader of Islington Council at the time. When she was alerted to the investigation she complained to the Chairman of the BBC. In the letter below she attacks the former victim as an ‘extremely disturbed person’.
He is in fact currently employed as a consultant to a Government Department. Mrs Hodge also accused the Today programme of being unfair in its investigation. She says she was not informed about the case until after she left the council.
Angus Stickler spoke to the victim of abuse concerned, Demetrious Panton. Listen to Angus Stickler's report, plus the statement from Margaret Hodge MP (11/11/03). Some parts of what he has to say you may find disturbing. LISTEN
Margaret Hodge maintains she knew nothing of this case until after she left Islington, and that may well be the case - she was the leader of a council in chaos. In her defence she said her officers misled her over a number of different allegations. She left Islington Council in 1992. In 1994 she was elected as MP for Barking. Her career since then has flourished. In 1996 Demetrious wrote to her directly, hoping for answers.
“And what did she do - I wrote a six page letter. She wrote a four line response saying to me that she would refer me to Islington Council,” Demetrious told me. “And I hear her saying that she has spent since 1992 listening to young people who were abused. I find that an amazing statement. We could have actually had Bernie Bain arrested.”
Margaret Hodge described the BBC investigation as deplorable sensationalism. The BBC however believe it to be a matter of public interest. Whether she was personally informed about this case is beside the point. She was leader of a council that was in chaos, it failed to investigate allegations of child abuse, including those of Demetrious Panton. But rather than commending him for his efforts our minister for children writes him off as an extremely disturbed person. A view not shared by Detective Superintendent John Sweeney. Continued
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Note This is a Recap: (1st July 2003)
Minister for Children admits a 'lack of understanding' when she was a council leader but denies ignoring pleas for help.
The Tories called for the resignation of Margaret Hodge, the minister for Children, last night after social workers accused her of failing to confront one of Britain's worst child abuse scandals when she was leader of Islington council.
The Tories called for the resignation of Margaret Hodge, the minister for Children, last night after social workers accused her of failing to confront one of Britain's worst child abuse scandals when she was leader of Islington council.
Two former officials at the London borough have claimed publicly for the first time that Mrs Hodge failed to back them over allegations that youngsters in care had been subjected to sex abuse. The scandal was first exposed by the London Evening Standard. Continued
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Note This is a Recap: (8th Jan 2006)
A registered sex offender given clearance by Education Secretary Ruth Kelly to work as a teacher landed a job in a high school, it has emerged.
But he resigned after teaching for only a few days when police protested.
Ms Kelly had decided not to ban him because she apparently believed evidence he had accessed paedophile websites was inconclusive.
The teacher, who is on the sex offenders register, was given a job at Hewett School in Norwich last month.
Ms Kelly had handed approval for him to work in schools the previous May.
The Department for Education (DfES) wrote to Norfolk County Council saying that she had "considered all aspects of the case, including sex offender registration, and decided that the risks of the teacher being allowed to continue teaching were acceptable". Continued
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While British Prime Minister Tony Blair is under criminal suspicion in the "honours-for-cash" scandal that has rocked his Labour government.
We have been told that there is an even more explosive scandal that Blair, up to now, has managed to hide behind the draconian British policy of issuing "D-Notices," government orders that prohibit the British media from reporting on certain "national security" cases.
In 1999, an international investigation of child pornographers and paedophiles run by Britain's National Criminal Intelligence Service, code named Operation Ore, resulted in 7,250 suspects being identified in the United Kingdom alone. Some 1850 people were criminally charged in the case and there were 1451 convictions. Almost 500 people were interviewed "under caution" by police, meaning they were suspects. Some 900 individuals remain under investigation. In early 2003, British police began to close in on some top suspects in the Operation Ore investigation, including senior members of Blair's government.
However, Blair issued a D-Notice, resulting in a gag order on the press from publishing any details of the investigation. Blair cited the impending war in Iraq as a reason for the D-Notice. Police also discovered links between British Labour government paedophile suspects and the trafficking of children for purposes of prostitution from Belgium and Portugal (including young boys from the Casa Pia orphanage in Portugal).
Tony Blair: stifling investigations of paedophiles in his Labour government.
In the United States, Operation Ore's counterpart was Operation Avalanche. However, U.S. authorities only charged 100 people out of 35,000 investigated. The international paedophile investigation began when Dallas police and the US Postal Inspection Service raided the offices of Landslide Productions of Fort Worth, Texas and confiscated records on thousands of people around the world who were child pornography customers of the firm. Landslide's halcyon days as a Fort Worth-based international online marketplace of kiddie porn was during the term of Texas Governor George W. Bush.
WMR has learned that the Bush administration, like that of Blair, is rife with paedophiles in top positions. The paedophile network also extends to the U.S. defense industry, particularly some of the companies that have been involved in the sexual abuse of minors at overt and covert U.S. prisons in Abu Ghraib, Iraq; Guantanamo, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Thailand, and now, at three prisons in Ethiopia. Continued - Please Read News in Full
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Note This is a Recap: (18th Oct 2005)
We received the above from an individual who will remain anonymous. Nonetheless, it is plausible and explains why Blair went to war in Iraq, despite massive public opposition.
Quite simply, he was ordered to go to war by those who effectively controlled his political fortunes. Had he not done so his past as a former informant might have been revealed, putting an end to his career in politics once and for all.
As to what secrets they might have on Blair’s likely successor Gordon Brown? We are reliably informed that photos exist of Blair’s deputy with a male prostitute – which obviously also makes him eminently blackmailable and a prime figure for manipulation and thus a suitable replacement for Blair.
Still, Brown may not be the only sexual deviant in the ranks of Blair’s cabinet. For in March 2003, just before the invasion of Iraq, new revelations linking the Dunblane killings with senior British politicians involved in paedophile rings, looked set to threaten Tony Blair’s continued premiership.
However, the Iraq invasion distracted people long enough for secrecy orders to be placed on documents pertaining to the scandal. So that the documents, said to name George Robertson, the current head of NATO, wont see the light of day for another 100 years, long after the offenders are dead. Continued
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Note This is a Recap: (11th Aug 2007)
A hidden world in which Asian men “groom” young white girls for sex has been exposed with the jailing yesterday of two men for child-abuse offences.
Zulfqar Hussain, 46, and Qaiser Naveed, 32, from east Lancashire, were each jailed for five years and eight months after exploiting two girls aged under 16 by plying them with alcohol and drugs before having sex with them.
Both men pleaded guilty at Preston Crown Court to abduction, sexual activity with a child and the supply of a controlled drug.
Despite being told explicitly by police and social services that both girls were under-age and should be returned to care, the men picked up one girl from a children’s home in Blackburn and then drove on to collect her friend who was living in temporary foster care in North Wales.
The trial came amid growing concern at the attitudes of some Asian men towards white girls which campaigners for women claim few people wish to address.
Parents have complained that in parts of the country with large Asian communities white girls as young as 12 are being targeted for sex by older Asian men yet the authorities are unwilling to act because of fears of being labelled racist.
Ann Cryer, a Labour member of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, has been at the forefront of attempting to tackle the problem after receiving complaints from mothers in her constituency about young Asian men targeting their under-age daughters.
Although campaigners claim that hundreds of young girls are already being passed around men within the Asian community for sex, she said that attempts to raise the problem with community leaders had met with little success, with most of them being in a state of denial about it. Continued
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Note This is a Recap: (8th May 2007)
Lisbon - Police are investigating whether a paedophile ring ordered the kidnap of a three-year-old British girl who vanished from her bed five days ago in southern Portugal, daily Correio da Manha reported on Tuesday.
Madeleine McCann is believed to have been abducted from her apartment on May 3 in Praia da Luz, a popular resort in the Algarve, just metres away from where her parents were dining.
Her parents immediately insisted it was an abduction because there was evidence of a forced entry in the bedroom where she was sleeping with her two-year-old twin brother and sister.
"The chance that Madeleine's kidnap was ordered by an international paedophile network of British origin was on Monday one of the most consistent leads police were investigating," Correio da Manha reported unnamed police sources as saying.
British police have supplied their Portuguese counterparts with information regarding British paedophile rings with connections to the Algarve, according to the daily.
Portuguese police declined to comment on the report but said that all possibilities were being considered. Continued
Next thing you know, Gary Glitter will be standing in for elections!
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Government's Unhealthy attitude towards Children
Children could be taught sex education from the age of four, under plans by MPs.
They are calling on the Government to ensure that advice on relationships, contraception and sexually transmitted diseases is compulsory in all primary and secondary schools.
It is the latest campaign aimed at cutting Britain's teenage pregnancy rate, which remains among the highest in Europe despite repeated attempts by ministers to reduce it.
At the same time, sexually transmitted diseases are becoming increasingly prevalent among youngsters, according to the most recent figures.
A group of MPs led by Chris Bryant, parliamentary aide to Harriet Harman, the deputy Labour leader, says that the solution is to educate children more about sex education from a much earlier age.
Currently all pupils are taught the basic biological facts about human reproduction but they do not learn about the emotional aspects of sexual relationships.
The MPs claim that this is not enough and that children should be given relationship advice 'in context' if they are to make informed decisions about when to have sex.
The MPs have written a letter demanding the law must change, which has also been signed by sexual advice charities. Continued
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A second Irish vote may be necessary on the EU’s key reform treaty, the country’s Europe Minister, Dick Roche, said on Monday. Ireland sent shockwaves through the European Union when 53 percent of voters rejected the Lisbon Treaty in the only popular vote on the text anywhere in the 27-nation bloc.
Opponents of the treaty say no new vote is necessary following the June referendum result and claim it is little more than a mildly tweaked version of the previous EU constitution, torpedoed by French and Dutch voters in referendums in 2005.
“‘Not an inch’ is not a policy that has much to commend it in a dynamic Europe that wants to move forward,” Roche told the Irish Independent newspaper. “We have to explore all possible solutions. We cannot exclude the possibility that, at some stage, and in the right circumstances, it may be necessary to consult the people once again.”
“My personal view is that a referendum is the appropriate response to the position we are in; this is very much a personal view at this stage,” Roche said.
The newspaper says Roche is the first minister to publicly suggest an eventual re-run of the treaty referendum. Roche said that if Ireland wants to retain its position as a constructive EU member state, “we cannot simply sit on our hands, as some would have us do, and keep saying that ‘No’ means ‘No’.”
“We have to recognise, however, that all other member states — 26 sovereign, democratic parliaments — are likely to have ratified the treaty by the end of the year. This will leave Ireland in an isolated position,” he said, ignoring the fact that almost none of the other states will have dared let the population actually vote on the issue. Britain, having been promised a vote, was subsequently denied it by Brown’s cabal.
The Irish government is awaiting a specially commissioned analysis of why the people voted ‘No’. It is due next month.
Prime Minister Brian Cowen is due to travel to Paris next month for talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy on a possible way out of the crisis that has left the bloc in limbo.
EU leaders are set to discuss the Irish rejection again at an October summit in an effort to overcome the impasse ahead of elections next year to the European Parliament. News Source
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Cancer patients are being denied information about treatments that could help them live longer by their own doctors, a new survey has disclosed.
A quarter of specialists in myeloma, a bone marrow cancer that claims 2,600 lives in the UK each year, admitted keeping their patients in the dark about possible therapies.
They believed it was better not to talk about certain treatments not yet approved by the health service's rationing watchdog to avoid raising false hope.
Primary care trusts are generally reluctant to pay for drugs not already passed by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice).
Patients can cover the costs themselves, but under current Government guidelines banning "co-payment" they are then deprived of all free NHS treatment.
The poll by charity Myeloma UK reveals doctors are now actively keeping information from cancer sufferers as a result of the drug rationing system.
Its findings are likely to reignite criticism of Nice, which is already under fire for a ruling earlier this month that certain drugs for kidney cancer are too expensive.
More than 103 specialists across England, Wales and Scotland took part in the survey, which shows how they struggle with NHS bureaucracy and cost-cutting.
In 96 per cent of cases where the specialists chose to keep quiet, they said they did so because it might "distress, upset or confuse" their patients.
Three-quarters said cost issues were a factor, while 40 per cent cited "lack of evidence" and 29 per cent said it was pointless talking about unavailable drugs.
Almost the same proportion said they had experienced PCTs blocking their applications for treatments, mainly because of cost. Continued
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A hospital trust has made a 'goodwill' payment to a patient who claims he was told to make his own way to hospital after his lung collapsed.
Anthony Hall, 45, claims he had to make a 13-mile journey on foot and by bus from his home to the hospital.
The trust has denied the accusations but has agreed to pay his travel expenses to the hospital.
Mr Hall had been treated to remove a fluid-filled blister from his lung. A day after being discharged from St James's Hospital in Leeds he awoke with chest pains.
He says he spoke to a doctor on the phone to explain the seriousness of his condition and believed an ambulance would be sent to take him back to the hospital.
But a nurse then told him he would have to make his own way in, he says.
He claims he had to walk half a mile from his home in Shipley, West Yorkshire, to the bus stop, struggling for breath, while carrying a surgical bag which had been attached to drain excess fluid.
Then he had to walk for another 20 minutes to reach the hospital, he says.
'I had a bag of fluid blowing up like a balloon and felt like my insides were being ripped out,' he said.
How convenient
A spokesman for Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust said: 'An investigation into the issues raised by Mr Hall was unable to find any record of a conversation between him and ward staff discussing arrangements for his readmission.
'As we have explained to him in a detailed letter it is normal practice that if patients ring up with a problem, medical staff on the ward discuss this and where appropriate agree a plan. Continued
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On your way to work this morning, you may have shared your journey with some unwelcome hitch-hikers.
The number of bedbugs on public transport has risen dramatically in the past year, according to research from Britain's biggest pest control company, Rentokil.
They reported a 40 per cent increase in the number of transport-related call-outs in the past year. More than two-thirds of infestations involved bedbugs.
Bedbugs thrive in small places and are often found in the creases of seats and seat-belt fastenings on buses, trains and aircraft.
Savvas Othon, technical director at Rentokil, said: 'The short turnaround times for planes and other forms of transport means they are sometimes not inspected as thoroughly as they used to be.
'What should happen is a good vacuum around the back of seats and in the creases of seats. Any small gap is ideal for a bedbug, which can go for quite some time without a meal,' he added to The Times.
Adult bedbugs are brown and wingless and grow up to 1/2 centimetre long. They are visible to the naked eye.
Their bites can cause small, hard welts to appear on the skin accompanied by severe itching that lasts for several hours to days.
Call-outs for Rentokil in the past year have increased 51 per cent for cars, 24 per cent for airlines and 9 per cent for rail.
David Cain, managing director of Bed-Bugs.co.uk, a website dedicated to destroying bedbugs, said: 'The number one reason for the spread of bedbugs is the lack of public awareness. People simply do not know how to detect them in the way they would have done in the 1950s and 1960s.
'They are a problem on buses, trains and subway systems, and on cruise ships too – any form of transport where there is a high turnover, really.
'Recently, on an overground train in south London, I pulled at the parting of the upholstery and found at least four months of dirt and debris.' News Source
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Immigration and a sharp increase in the birth rate among non-British mothers will make Britain Europe's most populated country by 2060.
The European Union's statistics office has projected a British population on the rise, growing from the current level of 61 million people to 77 million over the next 50 years.
As incoming migrants and rising birth rates multiply the number of Britons, Germany, currently Europe's most populous nation, is projected to decline from 82 million to 71 million people by 2060.
France will also overtake Germany to become the EU second-most populous country after Britain with 72 million residents, according to the forecast by Eurostat.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics, released last week, found that inward migration to Britain reached its highest level since the current method of counting was introduced, with 605,000 long-term immigrants arriving in the year to mid-2007.
The EU projections show that the wave of migration to Britain, boosting both the workforce and fertility rates, is out of step with many other European countries where deaths are expected to overtake births after 2015.
The EU figures also show that as the numbers of new Europeans enter into a decline the share of the overall population aged 65 years and over will almost double to 30 per cent by 2060 due.
The latest EU figures have led to stepped up calls for the Government to urgently set out a population strategy to cope with increasing pressure on resources.
The Conservatives are demanding an annual limit on immigration, to take "into account its impact on the public service infrastructure" as well as a broader policy "to tackle other issues like family breakdown" and ageing.
Dominic Grieve, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: "The Government have shown that they have no answers to the challenges we face by failing to plan for our increasing population - this makes them part of the problem, not the solution."
Rosamund McDougall, policy director at the Optimum Population Trust, has called "for stabilisation and gradual decrease to five million fewer people in Britain by 2050".
"This population growth is absolutely unsustainable, in environmental terms, energy terms and food production. It will make life for British citizens significantly worse," she said.
"Even if we comprehensively greened our lifestyles, the UK could only support 27 million people - less than half its present population - from its own resources." Continued
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We and others have said many times that Labour always has a hidden agenda for everything they introduce, and we have always maintained that whatever they stipulate as 'good for the public' that it would be most definitely abused by this Marxist Government! You were warned!
A flagship database intended to protect every child in the country will be used by police to hunt for evidence of crime in a "shocking" extension of its original purpose!!!
ContactPoint will include the names, ages and addresses of all 11 million under-18s in England as well as information on their parents, GPs, schools and support services such as social workers.
The £224 million computer system was announced in the wake of the death of Victoria Climbié, who was abused and then murdered after a string of missed opportunities to intervene by the authorities, as a way to connect the different services dealing with children.
It has always been portrayed as a way for professionals to find out which other agencies are working with a particular child, to make their work easier and provide a better service for young people.
However, it has now emerged that police officers, council staff, head teachers, doctors and care workers will use the records to search for evidence of criminality and wrongdoing to help them launch prosecutions against those on the database - even long after they have reached adulthood.
It comes amid growing concern about the increasing criminalisation of Britain's youth and the extent of the country's surveillance society.
Only this week a report warned that teenagers were being dragged into the criminal justice system rather than being given an old-fashioned "ticking-off", while it has also been disclosed that the DNA profiles of almost 40,000 innocent children are now being kept on the national database.
An estimated 330,000 people will have access to the data stored on ContactPoint, which is due to launch this autumn despite fears the Government's poor record on data security will mean it puts children at risk from paedophiles.
The records will be updated until children turn 18 then kept in an archive for six years before being destroyed, meaning they can be accessed until a young person reaches 24. Those who have learning difficulties or who are in care will remain on the live system until they turn 25, so their archived records will be available into their 30s.
Little-noticed guidance published by the Government discloses that ContactPoint users can request administrators to give them archived data for a number of reasons, including "for the prevention or detection of crime" and "for the prosecution of offenders".
The disclosure has led civil liberties campaigners to warn the entire database will be open for investigators to trawl for evidence that links young people to crime or anti-social behaviour.
Investigators opening a ContactPoint file would be able to see at a glance where they had lived throughout their childhood, where they had gone to school, what contact they had with social services and who their parents or carers were, and use the information to link them to known gangs or areas of criminal or anti-social activity.
The proposed use of ContactPoint to collect evidence will raise further fears about the extent to which citizens are being spied on by the state.
Britain has more CCTV cameras than any other country, and its local authorities are increasingly using powers designed to prevent terrorism to spy on people suspected of petty crimes such as littering and failing to pick up dog mess. Ministers are also pressing ahead with a £20 billion scheme to issue all UK residents over the age of 16 with ID cards.
The launch of ContactPoint was delayed following the loss of data discs containing 25 million child benefit records by HM Revenue & Customs last year. A review of its security - which the Government refused to publish in full - found the risk of a data breach could never be eliminated. Continued - Please Read News in Full
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More than 3,200 laptops and mobile phones containing sensitive information have been lost or stolen from Government departments, it was revealed on Monday.
An astonishing 468 devices a year - more than one every day - have vanished since 2001.
The revelation cast grave doubts on Labour's claims that it can be trusted with confidential data as it seeks to introduce ID cards.
Critics said it proves ministers behave 'recklessly' with the public's personal details, and called for a massive shake-up in the way electronic data is protected.
Experts warned that terrorists plotting a catastrophic attack, as well as fraudsters and blackmailers, could wreak havoc by using details stored on the computers to steal identities.
The statistics were released in a series of written Parliamentary answers to MPs increasingly worried about the handling of data by Whitehall officials following a series of high-profile bungles.
Only last week, a computer memory stick containing the personal details of 127,000 prisoners and high-risk offenders, including rapists and murderers, was lost by an employee of a private contractor working for the Home Office. Last November, two computer discs holding information - including bank details and National Insurance numbers - of 25million child benefit claimants got lost in the post.
The new figures reveal that at least 3,278 items have vanished from Government departments, including 2,168 laptops, 947 mobile phones and 163 'personal digital assistant' (PDA) palmtop computers, such as Black-Berrys.
The worst offender was the Ministry of Defence - which lost 994 laptops, eight mobile phones and 12 PDAs. Defence chiefs refused to say what was on the devices, but confirmed that some of the information was classified as 'secret' or 'restricted'.
The Department for Work and Pensions, responsible for overseeing benefits, had 271 laptops, 128 mobile phones and 20 PDAs vanish.
The other main culprits included the Ministry of Justice, from which 169 laptops, 172 mobile phones and one PDA disappeared, and the Department of Health, which reported that 315 devices had gone missing. Continued - Please Read News in Full
Few comments:
- I.D cards? The government are having a laugh. They can't keep a fart in a paper bag...
- The first security rule should be if you lose sensitive data, you lose your job and pension and you are barred from working in the public sector again, this includes ministers.
- Government not fit for purpose, end of! If they cannot be trusted, to ensure the safety of something as simple, as a laptop or a mobile phone, how can I trust them with running my country?
- What do you expect from a Labor government? No one will be held accountable and the whole thing will be glossed over as some lowly employee's error.
- God Help our "Troop's, Who only wish "For Equipment" to "Survive"
- None of this will even dent the supreme arrogance of Labour. They always know best, their enemies are always wrong, and they never ever have to listen to anyone as they have nothing to learn.
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Government probe launched after details of one million bank customers found on computer sold on eBay
A Government investigation was launched today after personal details of more than a million bank customers were found on a computer sold on eBay.
Highly sensitive information on American Express, NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland customers was found on the hard drive of the machine sold for £35.
The Information Commissioner's Office today said it would examine how eBay customer Andrew Chapman came to acquire the names, addresses, mobile phone numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, mothers' maiden names and even signatures of bank customers.
The banking information was being held by the archiving firm Graphic Data, which copies paperwork from some of Britain's biggest financial organisations, then stores it digitally.
It was on a computer previously used at the company's archive in Shoeburyness, Essex.
A former employee sold it on eBay for just £35.88 earlier this month. Crucially, he did so without first erasing the internal hard drive.
It was only when buyer Andrew Chapman started looking at the hard disk that its astonishing contents came to light.
Mr Chapman, a 56-year-old IT manager from Oxford, said: 'I couldn't believe it. In front of me was reams of extremely confidential information about thousands and thousands of people.'
Some of the data first belonged to NatWest and includes thousands of applications for credit cards.
There are also 1,314 credit card balance transfer requests received by American Express.
Each contains the customer's name, address and signature and the numbers of the cards. Information from RBS included yet more card applications and credit checks.
It was described as 'a data thief's treasure chest', with everything a criminal needs to assume a customer's identity - and clear out their bank account.
The massive data loss - one of the worst ever in Britain - is a clear breach of the banks' obligation under the Data Protection Act to keep all personal information secure. Continued
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Will they teach about 'ALL' Slavery or the slavery the elite want taught?
Britain's involvement in the slave trade is to be studied by all secondary pupils in England from September.
Children will study the development of the trade, colonisation and how slavery was linked to the British empire and the industrial revolution.
Pupils will also study characters like Nigerian-born slave Olaudah Equiano, one of the prominent African figures who campaigned for abolition.
In history, World War I and WWII and the Holocaust are already compulsory.
The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) said all children aged 11 to 14 would be required to study the nature and effects of the slave trade, resistance to it and its abolition.
Children will also learn about the development of international trade and the impact of the British empire on different people in Britain and overseas.
This will include pre-colonial civilisations and decolonisation.
Children's Minister Kevin Brennan said: "Although we may sometimes be ashamed to admit it, the slave trade is an integral part of British history. Continued
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The Arab Slave Trade is the longest yet least discussed of the two major trades. It begins in the 7th century AD as Arabs and other Asians poured into Northern and Eastern Africa under the banner of Islam, either converting or subjugating the African societies they came upon.
In the beginning there was some level of mutual respect between the Blacks and the more Caucasian-Semitic Arabs. Mihdja, a Black man, is said to be the first Muslim killed in battle while another, Bilal, is regarded as a "third of the faith." Dhu'l-Nun al-Misri, born in Upper Egypt near Sudan, is regarded as the founder of Sufism.
Today Sufism's greatest stronghold is in Southern Egypt and Sudan. Islamic prosperity was based upon Black as well as Arabic genius.
But as Islamic prosperity grew, so did an air of hostility towards many Blacks, Muslims or otherwise.
Some Arabs complained about having to work next to Blacks in high positions.
After the Prophet's death, even the descendants of Bilal received negative treatment. Arabic writings became laced with anti-Black sentiment.
This reaction of Blacks at the time to this can be seen in the writings of a contemporary 9th Century Black scholar in residence at Baghdad by the name of Abu 'Uthman' Amr Ibn Bahr Al-Jahiz. Al-Jahiz, to confront a growing tide of anti-black sentiment in the Muslim world, published a highly controversial work at the time titled, Kitab Fakhr As-Sudan 'Ala Al-Bidan, "The Book of Glory of the Blacks over the Whites." Al-Jahiz in his work contended that even the Prophet Mohammad's father may have been of African lineage.
These new attitudes towards Blacks by Arabs marked the beginning of African enslavement.
Though not based solely on race, the Arab Slave Trade did focus heavily upon Africans whom Arabs now saw as inferior to themselves.
At first these Arabs raided African villages themselves seeking humans for sale. This not being always successful, they soon enlisted the aid of fellow African Muslims or recently converted Blacks.
Wrapping themselves within Islam, these converts rationalized the slavery of their non Muslim brethren as the selling of "unbelievers." At other times the Arabs would demand tribute in the form of human bodies from Africans weary of the fight against Arabic-Islamic incursions.
Holocaust: The Numbers
Due to the enormous length of the Arab Slave Trade, from 700 to 1911AD, it is impossible to be certain of the numbers of Africans sold in this system. Estimates place the numbers somewhere around 14 million: at least 9.6 million African women and 4.4 African men.
It has been estimated that in all, at least 14 to 20 MILLION African men, women and children died throughout this trade. (Photos and Information courtesy of The Black Holocaust for Beginners by SE Anderson, A Pictorial History of the Slave Trade, Slave Trade of Eastern Africa by Beachy, Slavery in the Arab World by Gordon Murray and Africa in History by Basil Davidson) Continued - Please Read in Full
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A controversial early-release scheme may be extended as jails approach bursting point.
By last Friday night, the number locked up in England and Wales had risen to 83,670 - 50 more than the maximum capacity.
Some are having to be held in police stations or court buildings.
A fresh influx expected from courts following the Bank Holiday weekend threatens to push the jail population beyond the safe legal limit.
Last June ministers were forced to introduce the End of Custody Licence Scheme, allowing prisoners to be freed 18 days early.
Since then, some 35,000 criminals, including 6,000 violent offenders, have benefited.
Now, according to insiders, officials have drawn up contingency plans to increase the 18 days to 20 or more in an emergency, freeing a few hundred more cell places.
Justice Secretary Jack Straw is extremely reluctant to extend the measure, but the current crisis could force his hand.
Criminals freed 18 days early have gone on to commit hundreds more crimes, including a murder and a rape.
They are also claiming more than £2.6million a year in extra benefits, to compensate for the 18 days they are not housed and fed in jail.
The Ministry of Justice insisted last night that the Prison Service is coping 'effectively', but options for boosting jail capacity are being investigated. News Source
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A suspected burglar suffered serious injuries after he plunged from a tower block in a bid to escape from a homeowner.
The 16-year-old was left with spinal, leg and arm injuries after falling five floors. He was clambering from balcony to balcony when he slipped.
The teenager, who has not been named, is thought to have been raiding an eighth-floor flat when he was disturbed and made a dash for it.
Peter Orpwood, 51, who lives on the seventh floor of the tower block in Laindon, near Basildon, Essex, said he tried to grab the intruder as he saw him climb over his balcony.
He said: 'I heard a banging noise. I rushed out and saw a young man on the outside of my balcony. 'I grabbed hold of his arm, but he broke free. He climbed down two floors to the fifth balcony but slipped and fell.
'It was like something from a film. He fell in slow motion and didn't make any noise. 'He landed on his side and didn't move at first. He was lucky not to land on his head.
'When the ambulance arrived, he was conscious.' Mr Orpwood added that the suspect dropped prescription drugs as he fell.
It is thought the teenager had been living on the ninth floor and been kicked out before burgling the eighth floor home. A resident reported £100 or property had been stolen from the flat, including a pair of glasses and a picture frame.
The boy was taken to Basildon Hospital but later transferred to Queens Hospital in Romford, Essex. Police have not been able to question the boy since the fall on August 7 at 8.30pm because of the extent of his injuries.
Nishan Wijeratne, spokesman for Essex Police, said: 'Police were contacted by ambulance services following reports a man had fallen from a balcony.
'At the same time, a resident contacted police to report he had returned home to find he had been burgled.
'Officers arrived to find a 16-year-old boy with serious spine, leg and arm injuries. Detectives are now awaiting to speak to the boy in connection with the burglary at the flat.' News Source
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Police have been warned of the dangers of approaching a dangerous schizophrenic who is back on the streets just ten years after being locked up indefinitely for killing a WPC.
Magdi Elgizouli, 40, who has a deluded hatred of the police, has been granted leave from a secure psychiatric unit four hours a week in preparation for his permanent release.
He is also allowed out a further five hours each month to visit his brother.
Mental health chiefs say they believe Elgizouli's psychiatric condition has improved significantly since he killed WPC Nina Mackay, and have granted him supervised release to help reintegrate him back into society.
However, police disagree, and an urgent message has been issued under Scotland Yard's 'officer alert system' warning that Elgizouli is a grave threat to officers' safety and should not be approached.
WPC Mackay's father - retired Metropolitan Police Chief Superintendent Sidney Mackay - has also reacted angrily after belatedly learning that Elgizouli has been given leave from St Bernard's Hospital in Southall, West London.
Jobless drifter Elgizouli stabbed his daughter to death with a seven-and-a-half-inch kitchen knife as the 25-year-old went to arrest him at a flat in Stratford, East London in October 1997.
Moments before her death, WPC Mackay removed the body armour that could have saved her life because the protective vest was hampering her movement.
At the time, Elgizouli was in breach of bail conditions for assaulting a police officer and possessing an offensive weapon, a knife, 11 days earlier.
In April 1998, he was detained indefinitely and ordered to be sent to Rampton maximum security hospital in Nottinghamshire after admitting manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
The Old Bailey heard he had been 'very ill' at the time of the killing because he had refused to take the necessary medication for his illness.
Since being locked up, Elgizouli - who was born in Britain but is of Sudanese origin - is said to have responded well to treatment. He is now a patient at a secure unit in St Bernard's as preparations are made for his eventual release.
In a letter to the Mental Health Review Tribunal, WPC Mackay's father said: 'Can I remind you that the death of our daughter remains as painful today as when it happened over ten years ago?
The opportunity for her to visit us for five hours per month would be overwhelming. That is not going to happen and our sentence continues unabated.
'I am well aware the changes to Elgizouli's condition are preparatory to his ultimate release into the community and I will do my best to ensure that those responsible are subsequently held accountable if he disappears or some dreadful happening occurs. Continued
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In the increasing anti-white frenzy which has been generated by years of Labour/Tory misrule, the lack of white taxpayer money has now been blamed for the fact that black youths are murdering each other.
The latest salvo in this anti-white campaign has been fired by Derrick Campbell (image). He is head of the bizarrely-named ‘Race Equality Sandwell’ and chairman of the ‘National Independent Advisory Group on Criminal Use of Firearms’, which is yet another of those invented ‘jobs-for-pals’ parasitical bodies which is supposed to ‘advise’ the government on race relations.
According to Campbell, politicians are “leaving black youths to die” by cutting funding to community groups. His remarks followed a particularly murderous spree by blacks which saw three deaths in 24 hours in Birmingham, Wolverhampton and London.
Campbell told the BBC that funds “earmarked for community cohesion” were not going to the right organisations.
“We have to ask the question whether there seems to be an acceptance that if another black youth is killed they are just another one that we don’t have to worry about,” Campbell, who is well known for exaggerating and distorting ‘racism’ for his own ends, said.
According to Campbell, black youth crime is not the problem of that community, but rather of the white establishment which somehow causes “(Y)oung people to be criminalised.”
Campbell went on to say there was hard evidence from community groups in the Birmingham area that their funding was being cut (as if throwing money at the problem will magically make it go away).
“Black youths within this country have been left to die. And that’s a very strong statement but it’s a statement that seems to be borne out through evidence about black youths who seem to be at the top of the list when it comes to our youngsters being killed,” he said. “Now we’re asking very serious questions of national government and local government as to why it seems that resources that have been allocated for community cohesion and other activities have not been going to those organisations.”
A Home Office spokesman said that in July the ‘government’ (i.e. the British taxpayer) had launched a £100m Youth Crime Action Plan which included enforcement and prevention measures as well as support for parents. So that is obviously not enough for Campbell, as it obviously made no difference to the increasing black crime rate.
Campbell’s curriculum vitae, as posted on the web site, Birmingham Black History, which is supported by the Birmingham City Council, makes interesting reading.
“Through secondary schooling Derrick was always in the bottom sets as Black pupils were not allowed to be in the top sets at that time,” it reads — an outrageous lie which has set the standard for the rest of his career, which is based on blaming whites for everything.
He then says that he “went to university but was thrown out after a year,” failing to say exactly why he was thrown out, of course. News Source
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Racist let off otherwise his wife would no be able to come from Pakistan!
A Shop boss who racially abused a man and smashed his nose outside a Nelson pub has been spared immediate jail.
Waqas Shah punched Dean Cotterill in the midnight assault, knocking him to the floor unconscious near the Clayton Arms, Nelson, last December, Burnley Crown Court heard.
Shah, who later went to the police station as he knew officers wanted to speak to him, had just got married and his bride would not be able to come over from Pakistan if he was locked up, it was claimed.
The defendant (25), of Manor Street, Nelson, admitted racially aggravated assault causing actual bodily harm. He was given 10 months in prison, suspended for two years, with 100 hours unpaid work and £1,000 compensation.
Mr David Macro (prosecuting) said Mr Cotterill had been out with his girlfriend and her sister and were smoking outside the pub when a group of Asian men, including the defendant, abused another man.
Fearing trouble, the victim's group left but were followed by the Asians, some of whom then crossed the road but the defendant walked right behind the victim and then beside him. Mr Cotterill asked Shah if everything was all right and when the victim asked to shake his hand, Shah abused him and, without warning, punched him in the face.
Mr Cotterill's first recollection after the attack was being in an ambulance. Mr Cotterill suffered a displaced fracture of the nose, which had to be manipulated under general anaeasthetic. He also had a gash to his forehead.
The prosecutor said Shah was identified on CCTV footage, although the incident itself was not covered, and went to the police station, claiming he had heard the victims say he was going to do the Asian group over.
Mr Michael Murray (defending) said Shah was in trepidation, knowing the custody threshhold had been passed. He had just married and, if he was sent to prison, his wife would not be able to come over from Pakistan. The barrister added: "He has a decent life when he's not in drink." News Source
Reader Submitted Link. Thank You Les
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Unofficial Sharia courts are governing people's sex lives in Britain.
Ten currently operate across the country, with around 95 per cent of their cases relating to matrimonial issues.
Although the hearings have no basis in British law, they are attended voluntarily by Muslim couples to settle disputes without referral to the recognised authorities.
In some cases they can order wives to be more attentive to their husbands' needs, or deal with releasing spouses from bad or forced marriages.
The first Muslim court was established in Birmingham in 1982 and others have followed in London and the Yorkshire towns of Rotherham and Dewsbury.
Although most of those who attend are from the Indian sub-continent, Sharia courts are also popular among those from Arab and Somalian backgrounds.
Sharia is based on the religious rulings in the Koran, of later judges and on the acts of the Prophet Mohammed.
It encompasses not just enforceable law but moral law too.
Earlier this year the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, came under fierce attack from the Government and his own church for advocating the adoption of parts of Sharia Law in Britain.
"It seems unavoidable and, as a matter of fact, certain conditions of Sharia are already recognised in our society," he said. News Source
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Ministers talk endlessly about reducing police paperwork in order to free officers to patrol the streets.
But, while making little progress in slashing bureaucracy, they have been quietly deploying another tactic: Giving big chunks of the job to other people.
First, they invented Community Support Officers, armed with a raft of police powers, but with a fraction of the salary or training.
Inevitably, the recruitment of 16,000 of these 'Blunkett's Bobbies' - who can issue fines, but not make arrests - was greeted with accusations of 'policing on the cheap'.
Now, details of another part of what the Home Office calls the 'extended police family' have emerged - the 'accredited' council worker or private security guard.
They will be able to gather intelligence, help trap road tax cheats and hand out fines to unsuspecting members of the public.
But, in a crucial distinction to CSOs, they will not be employed by the local police authority.
They will continue with their current employer, and simply undergo an unspecified level of training, as deemed appropriate by the local chief constable.
Critics believe it is a recipe for disaster. Vetting runs the risk of being either too lax (with potentially alarming consequences for public safety) or so severe that the scheme does not get off the ground.
Among the 33 police forces who have already accredited snoopers, some have been carrying out no more checks than they would give an external contractor.
Others have been using full anti-terrorist and financial checks, taking so long that - by the time a person had been cleared - they had moved on from their original job, and were no longer interested in accreditation.
In future, the minimum standard is likely to be an enhanced Criminal Records Bureau check.
There are also inherent dangers in giving any civilian some, but not all, police powers.
The new army of officials will be able to issue fines of up to £80 for some serious offences, including harassment.
This is likely to lead to confrontation, but - unlike CSOs - the accredited workers cannot even detain a suspect for 30 minutes, let alone arrest them.
They would be forced to ring the police for help or - more likely - let suspects go, for fear of violence.
Accountability will also be a worry, given the lack of a direct police role in their employment. It is up to police to check regularly that any local authority or private firm they have accredited is behaving properly. Continued
Tuesday 26th August 2008
The number of failed asylum seekers being supported by the taxpayer because they cannot be sent home has soared by a third.
More than 9,600 are now receiving help to buy food and other essentials at a cost of almost £70million-a-year.
The true figure is likely to be even higher because the official total does not include children and other dependents.
The statistics have sparked new demands that the Government gets a grip on the issue of deporting people who have no right to be here.
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of pressure group MigrationWatch UK, said: “There is a growing tendency to call for people to be allowed to stay on in Britain even if there is no risk of persecution if they return to their own countries. Yet the more the Government fails to remove, the more it brings the law into disrepute.”
A total of 2,220 failed asylum seekers were granted support between April and June this year, up 36 per cent on the same period last year.
The figure, which amounts to 24 a day, is the highest quarterly total for more than three years and signals an ever-growing and expensive backlog of failed asylum seekers. The would-be migrants involved are classed as “hard cases” because although they have had their application for asylum turned down, they cannot be returned to their home countries for some reason.
That can include a medical condition, the lack of a “viable route” home or because the case has been taken for judicial review.
This month the Daily Express told how millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is being spent supporting illegal immigrants and failed asylum seekers amid fears over their human rights.
As of June, 9,620 failed asylum applicants, not including their dependents, were receiving support from the state. That would leave the taxpayer with an annual bill of around £68million. The Home Office was unable to say why the approvals were so high but stressed that figures can fluctuate from quarter to quarter.
The number applying for asylum here in the second quarter of this year was 5,720 – up 15 per cent on the same period last year.
In the 12 months to this June there were 25,070 asylum applications, a 12 per cent rise.
Removals of failed asylum seekers in the second quarter of this year totalled 2,930. That was a 20 per cent decrease on the same time last year and the lowest figure for more than six years. Continued
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Cautions have overtaken convictions as punishment for violent crimes for the first time, a report reveals today.
The number of assault cases where police allow offenders to escape punishment has more than trebled in five years to more than 118,000 - including a near-doubling of the most serious violent attacks.
The rapid expansion of 'instant justice' under Labour has seen a dramatic rise in the use of formal warnings, cautions and on-the-spot fines by police as an alternative to pressing criminal charges.
The detailed study by Professor Rod Morgan, former chairman of the Youth Justice Board, warns the trend could be diverting serious offenders - who would previously have been dealt with in court - towards lesser punishments.
Prof Morgan's report, published by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, King's College London, exposes the full extent of the growth in instant justice.
Police and prosecutors have embraced the policy, partly in response to controversial Whitehall targets which give equal credit for cautioning a child for a trivial disturbance as for catching a murderer.
Cautions handed out for 'more serious violence against the person' - assaults where victims are badly hurt - rose by 92 per cent to 916 between 2001 and 2006. It means nearly a quarter were given cautions, up from 14 per cent.
For less serious violence, cautions leapt from 19,090 to 56,357.
While convictions also rose, from 32,390 to 38,622, the proportion of offenders charged and sent to court plunged from 63 per cent to just 41 per cent.
The increase was repeated for common assault where cautions more than trebled to 60,938.
But the trend is not restricted to violent crime. In 2000 almost two thirds of those caught shoplifting - some 77,000 - were charged and appeared before magistrates.
But by 2006 that had slumped to 41 per cent, or 58,000 offenders, while 32 per cent were cautioned and 27 per cent given fixed penalty fines of £80. Continued
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An investigation has been launched into how a police car hit and killed a mother - amid claims that it was fetching a takeaway with its siren and blue lights on.
The 61-year-old is reported to have been walking with her husband and son when she was struck by the marked police car.
Ambulance crews and an emergency helicopter were scrambled but the woman, named locally as Sandy Simpson, was pronounced dead at the scene.
A source is reported to have said the car was not on an emergency call, and was being driven by a young and newly qualified police driver.
'He had his sirens and blue lights on but there was never any 999 call - he had gone out to get a takeaway for his mates,' the source said, according to The Sun.
A witness said she heard a siren before the sound of impact, and then saw the officer leaning over the prone woman.
'He looked like he was in shock and didn't know what to do,' said Ruth Oswald, 53.
'Her husband was mad. I think he smashed the window on the police car and he was bashing his head against the fence.'
Another witness said both father and son were shouting at the officer accusing him of killing the woman.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission launched an immediate investigation, and the patrol car's data recording system is now being analysed.
The woman died around 9pm on Saturday in Homesdale Road, Bromley, Kent, near the junction with Gundulph Road.
A post-mortem was due to be carried out on the woman's body today and an inquest will open in due course.
IPCC Commissioner Mike Franklin said: 'I send my deep sympathies to the family of the deceased at this difficult time. The IPCC will carry out a thorough investigation into the circumstances of this tragic incident.' News Source
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Last Tuesday I went to bed a normal person. By 6:00am the following morning I had joined a growing band of people who are known as being "victims of crime".
Ok so mine was no biggie, but I still feel violated and angry that someone has dared to come on my property and take something of mine. Some little toe rag had entered my car parked two feet from my front door ransacked the boot and glove compartment and swiped my SatNav.
What to do? Well we needed to get to the station to head of to work and 10 minutes later we called the police. My wife was asked her name, ethnic minority, what job she had, and what car we drove amongst other pointless things including our address and we were told someone would be in touch. How naïve of me to expect a visit that evening from all those police we hear are making our streets safer.
Two days later – yes two days later - we get a call from a PC from a police station 20 miles away to finally give us a crime number. They apologise for the delay – but say they are behind in following up on committed crimes – something I'm sure all criminals will be delighted to hear.
We asked if anyone else has had anything broken into or stolen in an attempt to try to determine if it was part of a gang hitting the estate. No we were told. We ask are we likely to hear or see a police representative and are told it's unlikely.
Now at that point I suddenly concluded the police are just a pointless organisation.
Is it too much to ask for a uniformed officer to visit someone who is a victim of crime? Funny how they had plenty of time to pull my wife over earlier in the year while driving to the station at 6:00am to breathalise her and then let her go on her way as they thought she may have been speeding. That's easy to do. Visiting a victim of crime and actually trying to solve it seems to be too much trouble.
That would have been the end of it had a neighbour not popped over to tell us the local paper had a small piece about someone else on the street who apparently also had things stolen on the same night.
So we do no less than call the police and ask why when we had asked if anyone else had been victims, had we been told no.
First of all we were told there was no record of any other incident. When we point out it is in the local paper we are told that it is up to the public to link crimes.
Funny – I really thought a detectives job may have been to detect things. Maybe I was wrong.
So now I am angry and ask for someone to call us back. Hours later a police constable calls and I yet again have to go through the whole story and say how I am pretty disgusted that now 4 days have g