Archive 13
UkTabloid
The People's News Portal
Sunday 9th November 2008
Managers of the Highcross shopping centre in LEICESTER asked a WW2 hero to sell poppies outside in the freezing cold.
Shopper Joan Underwood said: “It made my blood boil.” Bosses say he was invited back inside but declined.
In CHINGFORD, East London, no poppies were on show or sale at the Co-op or Churchill Medical Centre.
A Tesco in HULL, East Yorks, was also without poppies. News Source
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Europe's oldest man has spoken of his sense of duty as he prepares to lead the national commemorations to mark the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War.
Henry Allingham, 112, will be joined by Harry Patch, 110 and William Stone 108, the only other known surviving veterans of the Great War in Britain, at the Cenotaph in London on Tuesday Nov 11 for a service of remembrance.
They are the last three, from more than five million Britons who bore arms when the Armistice was signed exactly 90 years before.
It will almost certainly be the last major anniversary of the First World War at which a living link with that generation will be present.
For Mr Allingham, who served with the Royal Naval Air Service and later the RAF, it will be an ordeal but one he feels he must endure as a personal tribute to those he knew.
"I don't look forward to it," he said. "I'm glad that I'm able to do something to serve those men who did so much for me, and all of us.
"That's what I want everybody to know and understand." Despite being wheelchair bound he is likely to insist on being helped to his feet to lay his wreath of poppies in person.
At a Remembrance Day service at Whitehawk Primary School in Brighton (yesterday) he did just that. After he was wheeled to the front holding a wreath, well-wishers offered to lay the tribute for him.
But he told them firmly: "I'll put it down," before being lifted to his feet and leaning forward to lay the wreath in person. Continued
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Thousands of former servicemen could be falling foul of rules which mean they could be refused income support.
Veterans who have been awarded war pensions for combat injuries have that payment taken into account when benefits are calculated, according to BBC News.
Just days before Remembrance Day it has emerged some ex-soldiers may be losing out because they have been awarded a war disablement pension for suffering an injury during the line of duty.
But the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) treats all but the first £10 of the war pension as income, therefore taking the bulk of it into account when assessing for benefits such as income support.
Mark Smith, 36, served as a peacekeeper in Bosnia and was awarded a war pension of £58.04 per week after he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and assessed as 40% disabled.
A letter he received earlier this year said he was entitled to £2,633 in arrears for his war pension, but while waiting for the money he received income support.
After this had been deducted, he actually received just £20.10.
'Compensation you're entitled to is taken away from you... that's no justice,' he told the BBC.
'That's no way to treat people who fought for their country.'
The Royal British Legion, which supports former members of the forces and their dependants, said up to 60,000 ex-servicemen and women could be in a similar predicament.
'On a day-to-day level they're surviving on the absolute minimum,' Lisa Wise, the Legion's head of public policy, said.
'However, there remains a range of additional financial help available to all disabled people - including veterans - through their local Jobcentre Plus, who can provide all the help and advice needed on how to claim it.' Continued
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The heartbroken family of a Rowley Regis teenager killed when he was punched to the ground by a blow described as "ferocious" have slammed the 34 month jail sentence passed on his "evil" attacker.
Richard Blakeway was on his way home after drinking with friends in Chaplins pub, Dudley Road, when he was killed by 19-year-old Michael Cameron of The Shrubbery, Eve Hill.
Cameron, who was on bail at the time after an affray committed just four days earlier, sent his 19-year-old victim reeling with a single punch - he fell backwards and his skull fractured as his head hit the ground.
Judge John Warner sentenced Cameron at Wolverhampton Crown Court today (Wednesday) on the basis he didn't intend to cause serious harm.
After the case Richard's sister Cheryl Blakeway said: "The sentence passed by the Judge is pathetic.
"It is absolutely shocking. This man was involved in two cases of violence in just four days - 34 months isn't justice.
"We were obviously expecting a far more severe jail term because this man took a treasured life."
His cousin Sarah Blakeway said it sent the message "his life was absolutely worthless."
Cameron admitted manslaughter and the earlier affray. Anesta Weekes QC prosecuting said Richard, of Royal Oak Road, had made an innocuous remark to a woman which had led to him becoming involved in a scuffle with a friend of Camerons. The scuffle was over when Cameron came out of the pub and hit Richard.
Miss Weekes said Cameron was heard to say: "Did you see it. A one punch KO." In a victim impact statement read to the court Cheryl said Richard was "full of zest with a sense of fun."
She said: "The family simply does not feel complete without him. "What kind of person is so evil they can take the life of another human being." News Source
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The Leftie leader of Britain’s biggest trade union has taken his wife on a week-long junket in Communist Cuba.
Unite boss Derek Simpson says his luxury hotel stay in the capital Havana is for “high-level” talks on trade and human rights.
But it has sparked anger among his two million members battling rising bills on low pay.
Mr Simpson, 63, and wife Freda flew out business class joined by assistant general secretary Doug Collins and his wife.
Unite’s North West regional secretary Kevin Coyne said last night: “You have to ask how appropriate this was at a time when our members are facing recession and losing their jobs.”
Seven months ago, Mr Simpson sent a delegation of 12 on a £25,000 trip to Cuba — which has stunning beaches — to salute retiring dictator Fidel Castro.
He vowed “no frills” leadership when elected boss of Amicus in 2002, before it merged with the TGWU.
But he later flew by helicopter to Glastonbury pop festival and blew £20,000 on a kitchen for his £1-a-week rented union home.
Unite said both wives were paying their own way in Cuba on the estimated £5,000 trip.
A spokesman said: “It is a packed week and it is work.” News Source
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It’s exactly a year since a computer disc holding the details of 25 million people mysteriously went missing.
You would think that a Government still misguidedly propagating the idea of ID cards would, at the very least, have tidied up its act over the protection of information about the public.
But no. Since last November there has been a catalogue of incidents which show that Whitehall still has a casual disregard for the security of this data.
Data protection is often used as an effective block on us getting hold of important information.
Yet the protection of data about us, by government departments, is about as lax as it can get.
Why, even a Government Minister, in this case Works and Pensions Secretary John Purnell, left confidential papers on a train.
Mr Purnell was luckier than the intelligence officer who was fined for leaving classified documents on a commuter train.
The Department of Works and Pensions reared its ugly head again recently when a memory stick relating to its computer system
was found lying in a pub car park.
Well, I’ve heard of taking work home with you. But this is ridiculous.
What on earth is going on when staff can simply remove bits out of computers containing what may well be sensitive data, and wander off home for the weekend.
The level of complacency is terrifying. Inevitably one of these security lapses is going to lead to serious trouble. Possibly the acquisition of home addresses of the military might even fall into the hands of terrorists.
ID cards will cost an arm and a leg to introduce. There is no clear evidence that they will be effective.
The Government has not made out a convincing case for them and it certainly hasn’t shown a capacity to handle them responsibly.
We are already in danger of being snooped upon at every street corner, even in our own homes, by Big Brother bureaucrats.
Every new case of mislaid data makes you wonder just who has information about us and how secure it is.
They shouldn’t be bringing in new measures until they have proved they can be trusted with what they have pinned on us now. News Source
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So the answer to my question turned out to be yes, America really was going to do this. A historic moment indeed.
The hyperbole for once is not exaggerated: this is a watershed election which changes the fate of the world. The fear however is that the world now becomes very much less safe for all of us as a result.
Those of us who have looked on appalled during this most frightening of presidential elections – at the suspension of reason and its replacement by thuggery -- can only hope that the way this man governs will be very different from the profile provided by his influences, associations and record to date.
It’s a faint hope – the enemies of America, freedom and the west will certainly be rejoicing today.
America has voted for change, apparently. Change from what, precisely? From Bush?
But in the second term, Bush stopped being Bush. His foreign policy lurched from paralysis to appeasement (redeemed only by the strategic genius of Gen Petraeus – and what price Petraeus now?)
As Frank Gaffney wrote in the Washington Times yesterday, Bush’s Treasury is about to open the way for sharia law to be imposed upon America’s banking system.
And it was a Democrat-controlled Congress that helped provoke the sub-prime lending crisis that triggered the current financial meltdown.
What this election tells us is that America voted for change because America is in the process of changing – not just demographically by becoming less white and more diverse, but as the result of a culture war in which western civilisation is losing out to a far-left agenda which has become mainstream, teaching American children to despise the founding values of their country and hijacking discourse by the minority power-grab of victim-culture.
The reaction of conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic to this undoubted change – not just in the US but in Britain too – shows the intellectual disarray caused by these profound developments. They say politicians must stop trying to hold the cultural line and go instead with the flow of change. In Britain, the Tory party has adopted this strategy. Now there are Republicans saying the same thing.
But John McCain is a Republican who does not fit the old template, who does subscribe to some of this ‘change’ agenda on a number of issues. As a result, he was incapable of attacking Obama on the most important grounds of all: that he stood for values inimical to America’s founding principles.
When he did venture into this territory, it was half-cocked and far too late, appearing merely like the desperate throw of a loser. The reason he couldn’t do it earlier was that he had no coherent platform of his own. So why vote for a muddled and erratic quasi-'progressive' when the real thing is a rock star?
It cannot be said too emphatically -- the Republicans lost this election. Obama ran a superbly disciplined campaign and he was an impressive candidate, particularly in his calm and stately demeanour throughout. The Republicans screwed up in government, they selected a hopelessly frail and erratic candidate, he ran a shambolic campaign. They deserved to lose.
So now we are promised a change in America’s fundamental values. And they really will be changed. Obama has said in terms that he thinks the US constitution is flawed. America’s belief in itself as defending individual liberty, truth and justice on behalf of the free world will now be expiated instead as its original sin.
Those who have for the past eight years worked to bring down the America that defends and protects life and liberty are today ecstatic. They have stormed the very citadel on Pennsylvania Avenue itself.
Millions of Americans remain lion-hearted, decent, rational and sturdy. They find themselves today abandoned, horrified, deeply apprehensive for the future of their country and the free world. No longer the land of the free and the home of the brave; they must now look elsewhere. News Source
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Labour have constructed a powerful myth in recent weeks.
They argue the success of the banking bailout and the international applause it has received has convinced voters that Gordon Brown is, after all, the right man in the right job at the right time.
As a result not only has there been a dramatic improvement in the party's electoral prospects, but its somewhat battered reputation for economic competence has been restored too.
Our poll today gives the lie to this myth. When we last polled, just after the Labour conference in September but well before the Government stepped in with its offer to recapitalise the banks, Labour were on 31 per cent, twelve points behind the Conservatives.
Now, nearly four weeks after Mr Brown's allegedly bold move, Labour is still in almost exactly the same position.
Indeed, Mr Cameron remains sufficiently far ahead to suggest he could inflict a devastating defeat on the government in any immediate general election.
Labour's position is, though, clearly better now than it was in the summer when its support was just 26 per cent.
However, the 'Brown bounce' since then is not a reflection of the public's appreciation of his efforts in the banking bailout.
Rather, it occurred because of the effective reselling of the Prime Minister during Labour's September conference.
Labour has profited from raw political salesmanship, not international statesmanship.
At most, the banking bailout helped the Prime Minister to live up to and sustain his newly refurbished reputation and so consolidate his party's recovery from the dire straits of the summer.
It seems to have done little either to enable Labour to pull ahead of the Conservatives as the party of economic competence.
At the beginning of last month, just before the bailout, ICM found that more or less as many people reckoned that David Cameron and George Osborne were better able to handle the economy as felt Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling would.
That remained the case immediately after the full details of the bailout were announced in the middle of October - and even though the public have now had some time to appreciate the fruits of Labour's efforts, that is still the case today.
True, the proportion nominating Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling has increased by five points since mid-October. But this has been at the expense of those saying 'Don't Know' rather than those nominating the Conservative team.
The latter duo have held their own even though George Osborne has been on the receiving end of some decidedly unfavourable publicity in recent weeks.
Meanwhile, despite the plaudits Mr Brown has received from abroad, it seems he still has to sell himself at home as better able than Mr Cameron to act effectively on the international stage.
Even though Labour are usually thought to be more comfortable than the Conservatives at getting along with the Democrats, more people feel that David Cameron would build on Britain's 'special relationship with the United States in the wake of Barack Obama's election than believe Mr Brown will.
Many people feel of course that in joining the Iraq invasion, Labour under Tony Blair mishandled its relationship with the United States. Perhaps the effect of that perception still dogs Labour. If so, then if the recession comes eventually to be seen as Mr Brown's fault, it seems unlikely he will be forgiven just because he bailed out the banks. News Source
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"The bad news is that despite all attempts to shift the costs off-balance-sheet, this autumn's report to parliament on the ID scheme costs will show an increase in the projected spending over the next 10 years.
The Home Office projections only show estimates for its own set-up and running costs for the scheme. They do not include using ID cards for anything."
"The weird news is private companies will be 'encouraged' to bid for collecting fingerprints from the general public, which begs the questions - Why has the Home Office spent millions already for its own chain of Identity and Passport Service enrolment centres?
How can such a procedure be made secure? And, who would be crazy enough to bid, given the guaranteed unpopularity of fingerprinting the public?"
"The tactical retreat is the news that "ID cards for airside workers from 2009" actually means trial schemes at two airports from this time next year. Jacqui Smith claimed as recently as February that 200,000 people would be captured for the scheme in this way, and that it was justified by the needs of security."
Phil Booth, NO2ID [2] National Coordinator said:
'The Home Office knows the more people are reminded of the ID scheme the more they despise it. Hence one more set-piece speech to a hand-picked audience on a busy news day.
An open presentation to parliament or a press conference might ask questions or stimulate discussion. The Home Office wants compliance, not discussion. On the costs report, Phil Booth said:
'The ink is barely dry on the first minor contracts for the ID scheme and already costs are spiralling. Yet of course these figures are just a fraction of the real cost.
There are billions to be buried in other departments' budgets. The cost to citizens and to business of cooperating with the surveillance state will be billions more.'
On private companies for fingerprinting he said:
'The government is selling a pig in a poke. What company is going embarrass itself to the tune of millions for a contract that that everyone outside the Home Office itself knows will be cancelled by a new administration?'
On the 'pilot' of ID cards for airside workers:
'The unions [3] and the industry [4] are opposed. An expert just described the security justification as 'absolute bunkum'[5]. Dropping to trials at a couple of airports is a transparent attempt to save ministerial face.
Dropping the entire scheme, by comparison, would save only privacy, liberty, public money and long-term national embarrassment.' News Source
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UK energy prices have increased at a faster rate than any other EU country. In fact, UK gas and electricity prices have increased by 29.7% in the past year - twice the rate of the European Union average of 15%.
The statistics, from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, also reveal that prices for customers were up by 12.2% in Germany and 14% in France.
Consumer Focus chief executive Ed Mayo said: "The UK has a relatively free market, but the freedom to cut prices in the early years now seems to be the freedom to raise prices with impunity.
"Of course, those least able to afford it suffer most. The suppliers must offer their most vulnerable customers social tariffs and reduce prices generally at the earliest opportunity."
A spokesman for the Energy Retail Association defended the price rises: "What the OECD's figures fail to demonstrate is that British customers have enjoyed historically very low prices compared to Europe and indeed the rest of the world. Primarily, this is due to us having our own vast reserves of natural gas in the North Sea and not being exposed to global prices in the same way as we are now.
"We are no longer an energy island. With increased demand from growing economies such as India and China, the prices we now pay for our energy are more vulnerable to fluctuations across the world." News Source
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Chippenham residents living in Allington, Redlands, Westcroft, London Road, Pewsham, Monkton Park and Hill Rise have already refused to pay their water bills because water company Wessex Water cannot cut off individual homes.
They are also doing this because if they are taken to court they think they will be made to pay back the outstanding debt and any incurred costs on a nominal basis – usually £1 a month.
Chippenham town councillor Bill Douglas sympathises with their situation.
He said: “In Chippenham, families in the benefit and lower income sections that I work with are discussing the possibility of jointly stopping all payments on water bills, as they know that water supplies cannot be cut off.
“The feeling being, that this is the only way of surviving the crisis.
“With the money saved they hope to pay energy bills and get through the coming winter.
“It may be a desperate measure but one can only sympathise with their plight and ask that the Government take practical steps to assist people in their situation.”
One father-of-three from the Redland area said: “I have stopped paying my water bill because I simply cannot afford to pay it.
“We would rather be warm and alive than owe a few pounds here and there.”
But the move has been slammed by North Wiltshire MP James Gray and by Wessex Water.
Mr Gray said: “As citizens were are duty bound to pay our bills.”
A Wessex Water spokesman said: “It would be irresponsible for anyone to encourage customers not to pay their water bill just because it is a service that can’t be disconnected.
“If people do not pay their water bills, other customers who do pay would end up paying more. Wessex Water has a range of “Wessex Water has a range of schemes that support people who are struggling to pay their water bills, however, we won’t hesitate to take action, through using various debt recovery measures, against those who are simply refusing to pay.” News Source
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A council has been criticised for offering debt advice to the same residents it is charging 76 per cent more for their heating and hot water bills.
About 3,000 residents – many on low incomes – face the big rise in their Leicester City Council heating bills from Monday.
The same residents have now been offered help if they get into financial hardships.
One bill payer accused the council of "giving with one hand and taking with the other".
About 200 residents packed a meeting at Highfields Community Centre on Monday to hear councillors and officers explain the bills.
They were told there was no going back on the deal, which will hit residents in the St Matthew's, St Mark's, St Peter's and St Andrew's estates in Leicester who get the council's district heating service in their homes.
The rise has been blamed on spiralling wholesale gas prices paid by the council – up 157 per cent since 2004.
During the meeting, council representatives said they were offering financial assistance such as a debt line and extra benefits for those unable to pay.
Some residents threatened to withhold payment, despite fears they could lose their council homes. One spoke of taking the council to the High Court.
Mike Watson, from the city council's income management team, told them: "Once the charges are set, it's my team's job to get the money in.
"Our advice workers are here to make sure people get the benefits they are entitled to. There is also a debt line."
Councillor Hanif Aqbany, cabinet member for housing, said energy costs had to be covered.
He said: "We are looking at avenues to reduce it, but I'm not promising anything."
Dave Pate, council service director for housing improvement and repairs, said the council tried to keep bills down, but had to balance its books. Continued
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Around 300 people a day will be plunged into insolvency this year, experts warned.
They fear record numbers will be forced to declare themselves bankrupt or resort to an alternative known as an Individual Voluntary Arrangement.
Official figures, published yesterday, show how the recession is 'starting to bite', amid warnings it is just the tip of the iceberg.
Companies are also paying the price for what the Bank of England warned this week is the worst economic crisis 'for almost a century'.
More than 4,000 firms collapsed into liquidation between July and September, up 26 per cent, according to the figures from the Government's Insolvency Service.
The number of firms going into receivership - an attempt to rescue them from the brink - rocketed a staggering 238 per cent over the last year.
Between July and September, 270 firms went into receivership, compared to just 80 in the same period last year.
This is just the start of the corporate carnage, which will mean workers will lose their jobs at a time that unemployment is predicted to nearly double.
Economists fear unemployment, currently 1.8million, could rocket to three million by 2010, equal to one in 10 people losing their job.
Shadow Business Secretary, Alan Duncan, said: 'These figures are a stark indication of how the financial crisis is now causing huge pain to already hard-pressed families and small businesses. 'After a decade of debt-fuelled boom, it is ordinary British people who have to deal with the consequences of the bust.'
At present, around 43 firms every day, from one-man bands to giants employing thousands of workers, are collapsing.
Business lobby groups warned yesterday they fear the number could rocket to 140 a day if the Government and the banks do not send a lifeboat.'
It is not just the property and construction sectors which are suffering, but the crisis is spreading to all sectors, including retail, leisure and manufacturing. Continued
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An early General Election was odds-on again last night after Labour chiefs were stunned by the size of the by-election victory in Fife.
Cabinet Minister Jim Murphy claimed the result was a sign of voters’ “affection” for the Prime Minister.
And, in a sudden surge of optimism, one senior backbencher said the next General Election was now “Labour’s to lose”.
Bookmakers slashed the odds on a General Election next year, believing Labour could capitalise on the “Brown bounce”.
Party insiders confessed to being “genuinely shocked” at candidate Lindsay Roy’s 6,737 majority over the Scottish Nationalist Party in Thursday’s poll in Glenrothes.
One source said: “Of course we are pleased. But there is an inquest into how our own polling under-estimated our vote by so much.”
Senior Labour aides were yesterday refusing to be drawn into the new speculation, all too conscious of the debacle of last year’s cancelled poll.
For weeks Labour had expected defeat in Glenrothes, and right until the votes were counted party chiefs had been gloomy while the Scottish Nationalists crowed over an expected victory.
A Downing Street source said that even Mr Brown had gone to bed before midnight on Thursday believing that Labour had lost the by-election.
But it was the turn of jubilant Labour MPs to crow yesterday. Former minister Denis MacShane said: “The next election is now Labour’s to lose. It is up to Labour ministers, MPs and union leaders to make sure the seriousness of the hour is met with a seriousness of politics and discourse.”
Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy said the result showed local loyalty to Mr Brown, whose Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath constituency borders Glenrothes.
He said the fact that Labour had polled more votes than in the last General Election was a result of the public’s “affection” for Gordon Brown.
He added: “It is a reflection of the appreciation of the work that he has been doing in the UK and across the world on the economic crisis.”
Mr Brown yesterday said the Government’s decisive response to the economic and financial crisis had helped the party’s vote in Glenrothes.
“What I have learned from this by-election is that people are prepared to support governments that will help people through the downturn and offer real help to people.”
Bookmaker Paddy Power was yesterday offering odds of 10-11 that the next General Election takes place in 2009, down from 7-4, and 2-1 that the poll takes place as early as next June. News Source
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A new opinion poll has given the Conservatives a 13-point lead over Labour - handing Gordon Brown a reality check in the wake of his party's unexpected by-election victory.
The ICM survey for The Sunday Telegraph puts the Tories on 43 per cent with Labour on 30 per cent and the Liberal Democrats on 18 per cent.
In another boost for David Cameron, he is rated the British leader best placed to build a new relationship with Barack Obama, the US president-elect, beating Mr Brown by 40 per cent to 35 per cent.
Mr Obama's popularity with British voters is dramatically underlined with 81 per cent rating his election a "good thing for the world".
There is some good news for Labour with Mr Brown and Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, continuing to lead Mr Cameron and George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, when voters are asked who they trust most to steer Britain through the economic downturn.
Overall, however, the poll will dampen Labour spirits after recent surveys saw the Tory lead cut to single figures. The ICM findings, if repeated in a general election, would give the Conservatives an 80-seat majority in the House of Commons.
The poll follows Labour's victory, by a comfortable margin of more than 6,000 votes, in the Glenrothes by-election.
The surprise result, in which Labour held off a challenge from the Scottish National Party (SNP), was seen as a personal triumph for Mr Brown, who broke with tradition to make two visits to the constituency, and for his wife, Sarah, who was also on the campaign trail.
The result also increased speculation that Mr Brown would call an early general election next year, to benefit from the "bounce" in Labour's fortunes after a summer in which his leadership came under serious threat from his own side and the Tory poll lead rose above 20 per cent.
However, the ICM survey dramatically underlines the dangers of going to the country early. The next election must take place before June 2010. News Source
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A new army of more than 1,000 lawyers has marched through Britain's courtrooms in the first decade of the Human Rights Act, defending the rights of convicted criminals and terrorists at a cost to the taxpayer of up to £100 million.
The barristers and solicitors have fought more than 4,000 legal battles and used the controversial legislation to secure the right of prisoners to take drugs in jail, and of hate preachers and murderers to enjoy a family life in Britain.
They have even used the Act to justify allowing nine Afghan hijackers to stay in the UK after they flew hundreds of terrified passengers to Stansted airport.
On the eve of the 10th anniversary of the Act tomorrow (sun), Nick Herbert, the Tories' Shadow Justice Secretary, said: "Labour's Human Rights Act has fuelled a decade of rights without responsibilities, allowing a culture of grievance to devalue the concept of fundamental rights, yet failing to protect important liberties.
"The Act has undermined the fight against crime, burdened public services and brought judges into the political arena.
"The authors of the Act knew that the legislation would have a massive impact throughout our legal system, but they could not have predicted how unpopular it would become.
"We need a different approach for the modern age, balancing rights with responsibilities. That's why we have pledged to replace the discredited Human Rights Act with a new settlement which the public can support."
The Act enshrined in English law the European Convention on Human Rights, drawn up after the Second World War to protect fundamental freedoms from slavery, torture and unfair trials.
But it quickly became abused by criminals who wanted to avoid punishment and remain in Britain, while lawyers were quick to realise the potential it had to keep them in work and earn them thousands in Legal Aid.
Research by the Conservatives shows that there are at least 1,200 specialist human rights lawyers now practising in Britain - including Cherie Blair, the former Prime Minister's wife.
Meanwhile, more than 130 textbooks have been published on the Act with another title added to the pile every week.
The legal publishers Sweet & Maxwell has calculated that human rights arguments were used in at least 4,200 court cases over the past decade.
They are now being cited in an increasingly wide variety of cases including the right of a Sikh schoolgirl to wear a religious bangle, and the right of Northern Rock shareholders not to see the bank nationalised.
However the most controversial use of the Act has been to prevent suspected terrorists and convicted criminals from being deported. Continued
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A pensioner told yesterday how X Factor star Rachel Hylton mugged his wife in their home.
Rachel, an 18-year-old crack addict at the time, barged into 61-year-old Marjorie Mair’s house and tried to wrench her bag from her shoulder after following her
in North London. Husband Hepburne, 68, said: “I heard Marjorie screaming and sprinted downstairs to see her wrestling with this girl. It was terrible.”
Rachel, now 26, has already told X Factor bosses she was jailed after a string of offences.
Hepburne Mair, 68, said: “It really shook Marjorie. She was scared to go out for weeks afterwards. It was a terrible thing.”
Hepburne raced to Marjorie’s side after hearing her scream – and found her fighting with Rachel, an 18-year-old crack addict at the time. He said: “I was upstairs and I sprinted down and saw her wrestling with a girl trying to wrench her bag from her shoulder.
“Marjorie was hanging on and wouldn’t let go.”
When Rachel saw Hepburne she fled the North London house. But cabbie Hepburne chased and caught Rachel, holding on until police arrived.
Rachel, now a 26-year-old mum of five, had seen Marjorie walking home and followed her. When Marjorie, who died three years ago of cancer, opened the door Rachel shoved her way inside. Late in court, the junkie admitted attempted theft and got community service and 18 months probation. News Source
Sunday Roundup
of the News this week
One in three teachers believe that creationism should be taught in school science lessons. Why? It's not because they've developed a sudden respect for fundamentalist Christian interpretations of the Bible. It's because devout Muslim pupils - and their parents - regard Darwin's teachings as blasphemous.
The number of small businesses employing migrant workers has more than doubled in the past two years, according to research commissioned by accountancy firm Tenon.
Labour was last night accused of creating a 'human rights industry' containing more than 1,000 specialist law practices. The astonishing number making a living from the Human Rights Act emerged ahead of the 10th anniversary of its enactment today. The figure is the equivalent of 100 rights practices setting up every year of the Act's existence - or two every week.
The UK's place at the top of a European league table of cocaine use has been blamed on the Government. A report by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) shows that, for the fifth year running, the UK has recorded the highest number of cocaine users in the EU.
Opponents of ID cards have renewed their attacks on the scheme, claiming security is being watered down even as the cost of the cards rises. Cards will only be checked against biometric details on the National Identity Register (NIR) in a "minority of cases" according to Home Office documents, prompting accusations it has been relegated to a "flash and go" card.
The cost of buying an ID card will leap from £30 to £60 or more as applicants will have to pay hefty fees to private firms for the privilege of having their fingerprints and facial image scanned.
Brown admitted the Government cannot promise to keep safe the millions of pieces of sensitive personal information it has gathered on the British public. The Prime Minister's remarks came amid an urgent inquiry into how a memory stick with user names and passwords for a key Whitehall computer system was found in a pub car park.
Nine out of ten people are happy - and seven in ten optimistic about the future - a government survey suggests. The National Social Marketing Centre's findings were published amid widespread fears of recession, falling house prices and rising unemployment.
Jacqui Smith says public demand means people will be able to pre-register for an ID card within the next few months. The cards will be available for all from 2012 but she said: "I regularly have people coming up to me and saying they don't want to wait that long."
A Kosovan who was mistakenly shot in the jaw by a British soldier has been awarded £2.4million compensation. The huge sum is more than 200 times the amount available to a UK soldier suffering a similar injury in a battle.
David Miliband faced a backlash today after formally recognising Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. The Foreign Secretary was accused of undermining the Dalai Lama's talks with the Chinese authorities by updating Britain's position on Tibet.
A furious row has erupted after town hall officials made dozens of plane trips all over the world at taxpayers' expense. Staff at Islington Council caught flights more than 100 times during the last year, new figures show. Between May and September, taxpayers forked out £3,096 for several social workers to visit Ethiopia on a fact-finding mission.
Liberal Democrat peer Lord Lester of Herne Hill has resigned as unpaid adviser to Justice Secretary Jack Straw. A brief statement issued by the Lib Dem whips office in the Lords, said he was standing down because he did not agree with "the Government's current proposals for a Bill of Rights and Responsibilities, and with some aspects of its proposals for constitutional reform."
So TRUE! But Rich coming from someone that is not in touch with 'REAL LIFE' herself! Voters are being turned off politics by career politicians with no experience of "real life," a Cabinet minister has said. Hazel Blears criticised the "deeply unhealthy" move towards politics being dominated by an elite whose whole careers have been spent in political jobs, a description that fits several of her Cabinet colleagues.
An Indian playboy who was spared a jail term after agreeing to apologise to the woman he attacked is now suing UK immigration for 'trauma' after being detained at Heathrow over his criminal record. Prashant Modi, who is the son of a millionaire oil tycoon, admitted sexually assaulting a sleeping student in his hotel room in London.
Dr Annette Wood, TB lead for the Health Protection Agency (HPA) in the West Midlands, said that immigration is one of the factors led to the spread of the disease. According to the latest report from the HPA, 50 per cent of the people affected by TB in the West Midlands are from a South Asian background.
Jobless Eastern Europeans who return home are being paid dole money by the British taxpayer, it emerged last night. Thousands who leave because they have lost their jobs in the economic downturn could benefit from the £60-a-week handouts.
Each asylum seeker in Britain gets a cash payout of £42.16 per week, the current National Asylum Support Service (NASS) rate - in addition to all the other benefits, which work out to a minimum of £200 per week. Even this figure does not include the cost of translation services, NHS costs, prison and judicial costs and so on.
The cash payout figure has emerged into the public domain after Solihull Council refused to increase the level of payment it gives to failed asylum seekers - insisting that it is up to central government to fund the change. The £42.16 per week does not include their rent, utility bills, TV license, items deemed ‘essential expenditure’ and a fortnightly travel allowance of £13.50.
Related Recap: Failed asylum seekers paid £36 million to set up vineyards, ostrich farms and beauty salons back in their own countries
Are these people afraid for their lives where handouts are concerned? Or Economic Migrants simply posing as Asylum Seekers? A total of £36 million has been paid out to failed asylum seekers to enable them to set up businesses back in their own countries, it was reported today. More than 23,000 migrants have received payments of up to £4,000 each under the Voluntary Assisted Return and Reintegration Programme since it was set up in 1999.
Related Recap: Migrants get UK cash to start a business at home
Thousands of failed asylum seekers are being paid up to £3,500 taxpayers' cash to start their own BUSINESSES when they are sent home. They are given the huge hand-outs with no questions asked — and the government has absolutely NO way of knowing what they do with our money, we can reveal. Last year alone nearly 5,000 were sent packing with a wad of cash. If a whole family is kicked out EVERY MEMBER can claim the state grant, meaning they walk away with a FORTUNE.
British aid to Pakistan has doubled to a record £480m over the next three years as part of the world's Millennium Development Goals to reduce poverty. Some £250m of that is being used to boost mainstream education, including at religious schools, or madrassas. A representative for the madrassas said the cash would help modernise teaching.
Internet "black boxes" could be used to record every email and website visit made by computer users in Britain, it has been reported. Under Government plans to monitor internet traffic, raw data would be collected and stored by the black boxes before being transferred to a giant central database.
A "deeply unhealthy" number of Government posts are being handed to career politicians, one of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Cabinet colleagues is set to warn Communities Secretary Hazel Blears wants action to encourage the election of a new generation of working class MPs such as Labour's Dennis Skinner and Tory David Davis. Some colleagues live on "planet politics", she will complain, blaming the lack of real-life experience - as well as the media and political bloggers - for leaving politics "in trouble".
A young woman recently stoned to death in Somalia first pleaded for her life, a witness has told the BBC. "Don't kill me, don't kill me," she said, according to the man who wanted to remain anonymous. A few minutes later, more than 50 men threw stones. Human rights group Amnesty International says the victim was a 13-year-old girl who had been raped.
Tessa Jowell in row over £10,000 trip to Brazil to watch Lewis Hamilton (and guess who paid for it?)
Tessa Jowell came under attack today for taking a trip to Brazil which included tickets to watch Lewis Hamilton in the Grand Prix at the weekend. Ms Jowell and two government officials were at the Interlagos circuit to witness Hamilton becoming the youngest Formula One champion at the start of their five-day excursion funded by the British taxpayer.
We've had the bin police - now meet the tea bag Nazis. In the latest initiative designed to make us more environmentally friendly, Government advisers are calling on businesses to appoint tea monitors to make sure staff don't overfill the kettle at work.
An illegal immigrant who killed a brilliant young writer by driving into her at 60mph cannot be deported because it would breach his human rights. Ahsan Sabri, 28, was unlicensed and not properly insured when he roared through a red light and ploughed into Oxford University graduate Sophie Warne. The 30-year-old died instantly from a broken neck. She had published five books, was writing her first novel and was about to announce her engagement.
The Government has faced calls to clamp down on the growing number of illegal motorists as an alarming rise in the number of hit-and-run deaths was revealed. In 2004, 145 people were killed in 23,714 hit-and-run incidents. There were 119 deaths in 18,357 such crashes in 1997 when Labour came to power. This is a 22 per cent increase in deaths and a 30 per cent rise in the number of hit-and-run crashes.
Shocking police figures have revealed that 40 per cent of drink drivers in some areas of Britain are now immigrants. The leaked statistics also show the vast amount come from Poland or Lithuania - fuelling fears that some foreigners ignore our breathalyser rules. In Cambridgeshire, two in every five motorists caught over the legal limit or driving while banned are from overseas.
Related Recap: Illegal drivers who kill 'will not be jailed'
The threat of jail was lifted yesterday from drivers who kill while at the wheel without a licence or insurance. New rules for judges said that those among the army of illegal drivers on the road who cause death should normally escape with a community punishment.
The Human Rights Act (HRA) was intended to enshrine the European Convention of Human Rights in English law. The HRA’s proponents argued that it was invidious for complainants to be forced to travel to Strasbourg to obtain ‘justice’ in human rights matters, rather than having a remedy in the British courts. The Left often seek to portray any opposition to the Human Rights Act as being synonymous with opposition to the very idea of fundamental rights, but of course that is just typical left-wing sophistry.
Children from low-income homes have no more chance of gaining better jobs and higher incomes than their parents, it found. The report by the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit offers only the most slender evidence for claims by Labour that the situation may improve.
There are some stories which are so preposterous on so many levels that it is difficult to know where to start. Take the case of the Muslim chef suing the police for religious discrimination after being asked to cook sausages. Hasanali Khoja is accusing Scotland Yard of breaking an agreement that he did not have to handle pork. It is reported that this deal was done when he was appointed as catering manager at Hendon police college in 2005. Whoever heard of a chef being excused pork?
Brown today admitted the Government cannot promise to keep safe the millions of pieces of sensitive personal information it has gathered on the British public. The Prime Minister's remarks came amid an urgent inquiry into how a memory stick with user names and passwords for a key Whitehall computer system was found in a pub car park.
Ministers were embarrassed by a new security row last night after one of Business Secretary Peter Mandelson's top officials allowed secret Whitehall information to be read on a packed commuter train.
When Prince Charles claimed thousands of Indian farmers were killing themselves after using GM crops, he was branded a scaremonger. In fact, as this chilling dispatch reveals, it's even WORSE than he feared.
Brown and other European leaders have drawn up plans to 'speed up' the introduction of GM crops, it emerged yesterday. Minutes of a private meeting between 27 government representatives reveal that EU leaders also want to 'deal with' public resistance to the technology.
The mass development of genetically modified crops risks causing the world's worst environmental disaster, The Prince of Wales has warned. In his most outspoken intervention on the issue of GM food, the Prince said that multi-national companies were conducting an experiment with nature which had gone "seriously wrong".
A Ban preventing the British National Party from speaking at Exeter University has been overthrown by students. Representatives of Exeter's Students' Guild wanted to continue their 'no-platform' policy against extremist groups, concerned they might prove a safety threat on campus. But at a meeting yesterday to debate the proposal, it was defeated by other students who argued for freedom of speech.
Fraud and theft by members of staff has cost Government departments a whopping £4.3million. In one case, a so-called trusted employee worked with accomplices to fiddle more than £1million by making false payments of taxpayers' cash. In another swindle which raked in £516,000 a civil servant set up a system to make false repayments to bogus clients - and pocketed the money themselves.
Britain's recession will be deeper and last longer than any other major European economy, the European Commission has warned. The UK economy will shrink by 1 per cent next year and manage just 0.4 per cent growth in 2010, according to the Commission.
The Islamisation of the west is proceeding according to plan, as the Times reports: Gordon Brown claimed success yesterday in his attempt to persuade Saudi Arabia to help stricken economies by pumping more money into the International Monetary Fund... Lord Mandelson, who was also at the dinner at the Royal Palace, said Mr Brown wanted to ensure that the Saudi King was ‘on the same page’ over the causes of the financial problems and the solutions.
Pupils who create mayhem in the classroom are to face a punishment that will make them quake in their shoes. They will be asked to slip off their socks before being given a foot massage designed to control their unruly behaviour. Medical experts say there is little evidence that such treatment can improve the behaviour of young tearaways. Yet Labour-run Lambeth Council in South London is to spend £90,000 next year sending reflexologists into its schools to practise their soothing art.
Brown's tax raid on pension funds has snatched £17,000 from every worker's retirement pot, research says today. Yet the value of public sector schemes - funded by taxpayers - has soared to an astonishing £1trillion. Opposition MPs, business chiefs and campaigners demanded an investigation into the growing 'pensions apartheid'.
Six asylum seekers are claiming £300,000 compensation for being detained over a number of days as their status was checked. They are all understood to have arrived in the UK saying they were under 18 — but had no documents to prove it. They each want up to £50,000 for “false imprisonment and breaches of human rights as a result of the actions of the Immigration Service”.
RISING immigration has played a part in the increase of tuberculosis in the Midlands, according to a health expert. Dr Annette Wood, TB lead for the Health Protection Agency (HPA) in the West Midlands, said that immigration is one of the factors led to the spread of the disease. According to the latest report from the HPA, 50 per cent of the people affected by TB in the West Midlands are from a South Asian background.
Related Recap:Asylum seeker brings in strain of virtually untreatable tuberculosis. a 'deadly super TB'
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).
A tuberculosis scare in an East Midlands hospital has once again highlighted the fact that the rise in drug-resistant tuberculosis cases in the UK is linked to immigration. Hundreds of patients at Wolverhampton’s New Cross Hospital, including people with cancer, have to be screened for TB after coming into contact with an immigrant worker with the disease. A total of 458 patients and 69 members of staff who were in the haematology ward at the hospital’s Heart and Lung Centre at the beginning of last week will receive letters informing them they may be at risk.
Tory and Labour governments have consistently refused to fund the NHS properly and instead have blown taxpayers’ cash on foreign aid (£7.8 bn per year) and the illegal and immoral war in Iraq (£8bn and rising) — as the news emerges that almost 6,000 young British medics may be forced to move abroad, or even quit medicine, because they can’t get jobs in the NHS.
In two months, 21,000 will be applying for just 9,500 confirmed posts. A British Medical Association (BMA) survey found that 55 percent of junior doctors would go abroad if they didn’t get the jobs they needed, while 42 percent would give up medicine.
Health and safety watchdogs have ordered Britain's coastguards to stop using illuminating flares for the first time in almost a century. The Maritime Coastguard Agency (MCA) said the pistol-propelled devices - used to illuminate the sky during night-time searches - are 'capable of causing considerable injury'. Rescue teams have now been told to use 'safer' alternatives such as torches and night vision goggles during land-based cliff and beach rescues.
The British National Party has launched White History Month this November in response to calls from the British public following yet another officially-endorsed Black History Month in October. The BNP, its youth wing, the Young BNP, and its dedicated white British history web site, Britishpride.org, has launched a nationwide campaign for White History Month, starting on November 1st.
Trade unions want the right under UK law to expel British National Party activists - and deny them membership - as part of Labour plans to check the electoral advance of the far right.
A plan to axe the word Christmas from this year’s city centre festive celebrations has been criticised by religious leaders. Council chiefs have confirmed there will be no traditional Christmas light switch-on in Oxford this year, but instead revellers will be greeted with a 25-metre high mobile of lanterns in the shape of the solar system. A city council spokesman confirmed this year’s event would be called the “Winter Light Festival” to include all religious denominations. Shoppers on the streets of Oxford criticised the decision to cut out the word Christmas and called for a return to tradition.
It's a simple pleasure that brings a little extra joy to these pensioners' lives. Once a day the seven friends meet up for a cup of tea and a chat on the benches outside the sheltered accommodation where they live. But their get-togethers could soon be banned - because of claims they are an anti-social nuisance. The housing association which owns their homes says it has received several complaints over the past two years about noise from the group, the oldest of whom is aged 96.
If the move is confirmed, it means post offices will lose one of their most valuable sources of income, condemning up to 3,000 more to the scrapheap. This is in addition to the 2,500 already being axed under cost-cutting plans which have been condemned by MPs and campaigners as divisive and damaging to communities across Britain.
The BBC faces unprecedented pressure to have its licence fee cut following the obscene calls furore after an opinion poll found that three-quarters of people now oppose the charge. The first survey since the Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross storm broke has found that support for the £139.50-a-year levy is lowest among the ‘youth’ target audience for the entertainers’ ‘prank’ Radio 2 calls to 78-year-old actor Andrew Sachs.
Ministers have been forced to order an emergency shutdown of a key Government computer system to protect millions of people's private details. The action was taken after a memory stick was found in a pub car park containing confidential passcodes to the online Government Gateway system, which covers everything from tax returns to parking tickets.
Almost 42,000 pupils have been sent home for alcohol or drug-related reasons in the past four years, it emerged today. A total of 1,930 primary and secondary school children were expelled and a further 39,890 suspended between 2003-04 and the end of the 2006-07 year, the latest period for which figures are available.
A machine gun used by British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan suffers from a fault that can cause it to fire ten rounds a second without anyone pulling the trigger. Internal Ministry of Defence documents - leaked to this newspaper - reveal that the Army’s 7.62mm chain guns, which are mounted on 800 Warrior armoured vehicles, have fired without warning at least 18 times since 1999.
The former Archbishop of Canterbury has accused Gordon Brown of undermining the identity of Britain. Lord Carey of Clifton criticised the Prime Minister for railroading through changes to the country’s ancient constitution, damaging institutions such as the Monarchy and the Church of England.
Brown's boast that Britain is well placed to weather the recession was dealt a serious blow last night. A report by the influential Institute for Fiscal Studies claimed Government finances are in a far worse state than the Prime Minister admits. It said the budget deficit is more than four times as high as under the Tories in the early 1990s.
“If a political party wishes to campaign, constitutionally, for the abolition of democracy in the UK and its replacement by a totalitarian system, why should it not be free to do so?” These are the words of the Conservative Muslim Forum, in its report, An Unquiet World: A Response [pdf]. It may be a rhetorical question, but having spent some time looking at this organization, I can say that I have very grave concerns about it, and about its influence on the Conservative Party, and, by extension, on British politics.
A new airline catering for Britain’s Muslim community will start flights from Stansted and Manchester to Dubai from December. Air Sylhet is backed by a group of private investors who are all British-Bangladeshi businessmen from the Sylhet region of Bangladesh.
In a written answer to MPs, Justice Minister Bridget Prentice said that decisions made under Islamic sharia law can be accepted by English and Welsh family courts. She said that the rulings from sharia councils can be “rubber stamped by the courts, although she stressed that English family law would still apply.
Despite the best efforts of the BBC (”Brussels Broadcasting Corporation”) to promote UKIP’s badly compromised leader Nigel Farage as a false flag ‘anti-Establishment’ figurehead, discontent among his colleagues is said to be reaching fever pitch.
One most Fridays when parliament is sitting BBC2’s “Daily Politics” programme announces the results of its latest ComRes poll on matters of current concern. This generally gets picked up by other parts of the media who treat it, quite naturally, like any other ComRes political poll. It’s not and the BBC should say so. For the Daily Politics polls have one fundamental difference compared with the standard ComRes voting intention surveys - there’s no effort to ensure a politically balanced sample which almost inevitably means that its skewed towards Labour supporters.
Jason Lightwood, 38, enrolled on a group training session designed to help people struggling to find work. As part of the session, jobseekers were given a questionnaire, set by Juniper Training in Tamworth, Staffordshire, in a bid to boost their self-esteem.
Dennis Darch has been hounded by Somerset's Taunton Deane Council over the penny which they claim he owes from the 2004/5 tax year. However Dennis, 54, who lives in the village of Rockwell Green with his 18-year-old daughter, said the council told him in 2006 it was an error and would write it off. Dennis, a former soldier who served in Northern Ireland, said he was willing to fight them in court and even go to jail over the debt.
The Cabinet's 'away-day' to Birmingham as the Prime Minister faced a political crisis cost more than £62,000, it has emerged. The cost is for the 'public engagement event', which included a Cabinety meeting, on September 8, and was aimed at winning votes as Labour slumped in the polls and Gordon Brown struggled to retain his leadership. But it is only a fraction of the full cost as it does not include staff time, security or VAT.
Saturday 8th November 2008
They will either be begging you to stop recycling next or.. they will be charging you for the privilege!
Town hall chiefs are to hire warehouses to store a mountain of recycled rubbish for which there is no use and no market, it was revealed today.
Tin cans, plastic bottles, paper, card and glass carefully sorted by families and homeowners will be held indefinitely in the new refuse mountain.
Councils which have introduced fortnightly rubbish collections and enforced draconian bin rules to compel householders to recycle admitted that no-one wants the material they have collected.
The build-up of recycled rubbish has come because the financial crash has brought a slump in demand for recycled raw materials from manufacturers in countries like China.
News that local authorities are to pile up rubbish mountains at warehouses - former military bases may also be used - came as ministers trumpeted the success of Labour's campaign to hit targets for rubbish recycling.
But the warning from councils that they
will need to store the recycled material
comes on top of growing doubts
about how useful recycling really is.
In September it was disclosed that more than 100 local authorities have no idea where the recycled rubbish they collect ends up.
A high proportion of recycled material collected by contractors is thought to be sent to be buried in landfill in China or countries in Africa and Asia.
A spokesman for the Local Government Association that represents town halls confirmed that recycling and waste depots have filled up following the collapse of prices for metals and plastic in recent weeks.
Plastic bottles and containers which many householders are forced by law to separate from the rest of their rubbish are now fetching virtually nothing and cannot be sold.
The Environment Agency is expected to publish new regulations next week which will govern how metal, plastic and paper can be stored.
Some material, for example tin cans, will contain the remains of food and will be both smelly and attractive to vermin. Other material will pose a high fire risk.
Adrian Harding of the Environment Agency said: 'We recognise that these are exceptional market conditions and could have a potential impact on maintaining waste treatment capacity, achieving recycling targets and avoiding illegal disposal of waste. Continued
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Around 300 people a day will be plunged into insolvency this year, experts warned today.
They fear record numbers will be forced to declare themselves bankrupt or resort to an alternative known as an Individual Voluntary Arrangement.
Official figures, published yesterday, show how the recession is 'starting to bite', amid warnings it is just the tip of the iceberg.
Companies are also paying the price for what the Bank of England warned this week is the worst economic crisis 'for almost a century.'
More than 4,000 firms collapsed into liquidation between July and September, up 26 per cent, according to the figures from the Government's Insolvency Service.
The number of firms going into receivership - an attempt to rescue them from the brink - rocketed a staggering 238 per cent over the last year.
Between July and September, 270 firms went into receivership, compared to just 80 in the same period last year.
This is just the start of the corporate carnage, which will mean workers will lose their jobs at a time that unemployment is predicted to nearly double.
Economists fear unemployment, currently 1.8million, could rocket to three million by 2010, equal to one in 10 people losing their job.
Shadow Business Secretary, Alan Duncan, said: 'These figures are a stark indication of how the financial crisis is now causing huge pain to already hard-pressed families and small businesses.
'After a decade of debt-fuelled boom, it is ordinary British people who have to deal with the consequences of the bust.' Continued
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Gordon Brown may have to work harder than he anticipated to keep the 'special relationship' between Britain and America strong.
For although he managed a 'very friendly and positive' ten-minute phone conversation with the new American president elect, French president Nicolas Sarkozy spoke to Mr Obama for a full half hour.
Mr Sarkozy's office says he and Mr Obama discussed the global financial crisis during their 'extremely warm' conversation.
It also says they agreed to meet in the 'quite near future'. Bookies William Hill have already opened a book on who will meet with Mr Obama first, putting Mr Brown as the favourite.
During their ten-minute conversation, Mr Brown and Mr Obama also discussed the world economy, the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Middle East peace process.
The British/American 'special relationship' also appears to have been surpassed by the relationship between Canada and America.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office said that he, also, spoke with Mr Obama - and that the two leaders emphasized that there could be no closer friends and allies than the United States and Canada and vowed to maintain and further build upon the relationship. Continued
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A toddler who starved to death above the pub her mother ran had not been seen by social workers for almost a year, a report into the case reveals.
A midwife asked social services to look into Tiffany Wright's case 11 months before her death but the department merely sent a letter to the three-year-old's mother - which was ignored.
No-one visited the home and social services in Sheffield then dropped the case after just three days.
Three-year-old Tiffany was found dead, 'looking like a porcelain doll with sunken eyes', in a room above the Scarbrough Arms in September last year.
She had already been dead for two to three days and had insect bites all over her body after suffering a 'prolonged period of malnutrition' and 'utter neglect'.
The toddler had not been fed or given any water for at least 20 hours and spent her last days in rooms filled with dog faeces and buckets of putrid water.
A post-mortem examination revealed she had died from bronchopneumonia due to malnutrition.
Now a review of the tragic case has highlighted serious failings by various official agencies.
The review found that the midwife who had visited in October 2006 'showed persistence' in trying to access the living quarters above the pub, but her concerns were 'never adequately addressed'.
The review also revealed that the records of midwives and GPs had not been shared.
A month after the midwife's visit, Tiffany was enrolled at an independent nursery, which she attended for seven weeks, but the Hirsts never paid her fees and she did not return after the Christmas holidays.
Pub regulars and some relatives became concerned but never informed the authorities, the review found. Continued
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The chief executive of one of Britain's biggest health and safety watchdogs has pleaded for a return to 'basic common sense'.
Tom Mullarkey, of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, said people should be able to 'get on with' activities like walking or mowing their lawn themselves.
His call for leniency to members of his watchdog follows a string of accusations that bureaucrats have attempted to eliminate all risk from all manner of pursuits to avoid costly lawsuits.
The compensation culture has particularly affected children's activities, resulting in games of tag, football conkers and British bulldog being banned.
It has been revealed that Peter Miller, 88, who served in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the Second World War and was captured during the retreat to Dunkirk, has been banned from carrying the banner of remembrance tomorrow - despite his wishes - because he has become frail and there would be a 'problem with insurance'.
The health and safety axe has even come down on collecting firewood.
Retired builder Mike Kamp was told earlier this year that he could no longer gather supplies in local woods for the stove at his cottage near Betwys-y-Coed, North Wales, because of the 'increasing constraints' of modern legislation.
Speaking at the charity's annual general meeting, Mr Mullarkey said the quest for 'absolute safety' was impossible and should be abandoned - and that health and safety officials should stop intervening unnecessarily in public life.
Instead, he said information should be made available so people can decide for themselves whether to take part in a particular activity, by using their own judgement.
A change in mindset was needed to avoid accusations of Britain being a 'nanny state', he said.
'The application of common sense and balance is much more reasonable than the seeking of mindless increments towards 'absolute safety', a destination which is neither feasible nor, in all probability, desirable, since it would come at such cost to our freedoms,' he said. Continued
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Thousands of children aged between two and five were thrown out of school last year for violent attacks on classmates and teachers, official figures show.
Overall, there were 46,000 expulsions and suspensions of primary school children aged 11 and under for a range of offences including drunkenness, drug-taking, sexual misconduct, racism and bullying.
Just over 4,000 cases involved children aged five and under. It means 240 pupils were excluded from primary school on average each day.
The figures, obtained by the Tories, also show the number of primary pupils sent home last year has shot up 10 per cent since records began in 2004.
The figures emerged as teachers' leaders complained that 'permissive' parents are failing to lay down boundaries at home contributing to tantrums and disobedience at school. Research for the National Union of Teachers found poor pupil discipline is a growing problem for primary schools.
Staff reported that even the youngest children are throwing chairs, using foul language and refusing to follow instructions. And the report showed loutish behaviour begins even before children start formal schooling.
In nursery classes, 20 two-year-olds were sent home for attacking pupils or teachers in 2007, while 380 three-year-olds were excluded for violence, verbal abuse and damage to property.
Some 300 assaults on children were carried out by four-year-old pupils and 420 attacks on staff. Persistent disruption and 'uncontrollable' behaviour is also starting at a young age, with almost 1,000 children aged five and under sent home for unruliness in class.
In total, there were almost 18,000 suspensions of primary children for violence.
Meanwhile, 350 pupils were barred for racist abuse, 260 for sexual misconduct and 60 for offences involving drugs or alcohol. A further 560 were suspended for bullying other pupils and almost 14,000 for persistent disruptive behaviour.
Last night, the Tories claimed head teachers' weak disciplinary powers were behind the trend.
Michael Gove, Tory schools spokesman, who tabled a Parliamentary question to obtain the figures, said: 'The number of young children being suspended from school is shocking.
'Teachers need powers to maintain order in the classroom and clamp down on bad behaviour before it escalates into violence.
'Ministers have eroded teachers' ability to keep order by restricting their powers to deal with disruptive and violent children.' Continued
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A Takeaway worker sexually assaulted a terrified stranger in her own garden.
Muhammad Khan kissed and cuddled a woman he had never met before she fled inside her home, locked the door and called police.
Khan denied the attack at first but was found guilty at his trial.
The 23-year-old approached the woman as she tended her garden and said “hello” during the incident on Thursday, August 14, magistrates in Worcester were told.
She replied “hello” but turned away and he then walked on to the edge of her lawn as he tried to continue the conversation, telling her he worked at Domino’s Pizza in Malvern and offering, in poor English, to get her a pizza.
Sallie Hewitt, prosecuting, said: “She didn’t want to know anything about him or for him to know anything about her.
"He held out his hand and asked for her to shake it. She shook his hand but he held on and pulled her towards him.
"He then wrapped both of his arms right around her.”
In her statement, read out by Mrs Hewitt, the victim said: “He then tried to kiss me on my lips but I moved my head to the left and downwards to avoid that.
"He ended up kissing me on the forehead.
"I started to move back towards my front door. The victim still had both his arms around me but I braced myself against him and he let go.
"I was afraid this man would drag me into my house.”
She told him three times that she was busy and that her business partner would be back soon to try and get rid of him but he grabbed her again and tried to kiss her.
She then said “get off me” and managed to get free of the University of Worcester student before running to her front door, locking it behind her and calling the police.
Mrs Hewitt said he continued to stare at her through the window and was now wearing only a vest.
Steve Wetton, defending, said Khan’s mother died during the Pakistan earthquake in 2005 and his dad three months ago of a heart attack.
He added: “This offence is the lower end of the scale for sexual offences.”
Khan, of Stoneleigh Close, St Peter’s, Worcester, was given a 12 month community order but with 36 months of supervision.
He was also ordered to attend a community sexual offender’s group and sign the sex offender’s register for five years.
He was ordered to pay compensation to the victim of £400 and costs of £450. News Source
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A 15-year-old boy is critically ill after being stabbed in his school playground, Scotland Yard has said.
The teenager was attacked on Thursday afternoon at a school in Greenford, west London.
He was airlifted to hospital where he is in a critical but stable condition.
Police arrested a 16-year-old youth at an address in Southall at around 5pm. He is being held at a west London police station.
According to reports, the attack happened at the Wiseman Catholic School on Greenford Road.
A notice on the school's website said it would be closed on Friday. News Source
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This was the gruesome moment an illegal immigrant who murdered his neighbour was captured on bus CCTV carrying his victim's head in a bag.
Mohamed Boudjenane had murdered Lakhdar Ouyahia two days earlier, just hours after he had raped a Phillipino woman in his flat.
The 45-year-old Algerian was obsessed with the woman and shaved off her hair after assaulting her.
He then killed Mr Ouyahia after believing the pair were having an affair, a court heard.
He was captured on CCTV carrying the head of Mr Ouyahia in a plastic bag on a bus to the Regents Canal in Maida Vale, west London.
Two days later the headless corpse was discovered wrapped in a duvet at the back of a supermarket near his home in Kilburn, north-west London.
Boudjenane showed police where he had thrown the head in a canal and police divers recovered it from the water.
But he claimed he had no memory of hitting Mr Ouyahia with a hammer and hacking off his head with a meat cleaver.
The Old Bailey heard he met the 42 year-old Phillipino woman at a party a few months before the attack.
She worked as a nanny in Oxford but on February 3 this year ran into him outside a newsagents in Kilburn, and reluctantly agreed to go to his flat.
He double locked the front door, tied her up with shoelaces and shaved off her hair, raping her twice.
The court heard Boudjenane threatened to kill her by putting her in a tub of boiling water and also accused her of being a prostitute and having sex with 'the man upstairs' - Mr Ouyahia.
But he let her go the next day after she repeatedly promised to become a Muslim to marry him.
He then went to Sainsbury's at around 8pm to buy bleach, Dettol and a mop as he plotted to kill Mr Ouyahia and was next seen boarding a bus carrying a 'head-shaped' bag on February 5.
The victim's headless body was discovered by a member of the public at the back of Somerfield's supermarket in Kingsgate Place on February 6 this year.
Boudjenane admitted he had killed Mr Ouyahia but claimed he could not remember anything about the attack or his movements up until his arrest. Continued
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An unexplained “dramatic” rise in rape and sexual offences across Sutton has caused serious concern among women’s groups.
The percentage increase in rapes, up by 50 per cent compared to last year, is the third highest in the whole of London.
Ruth Hall from Women Against Rape described the rise as “startling” and demanded an explanation from police.
The number of reported rapes rose from 28 in 2006-2007, to 42 by September this year, a 50 per cent increase. Sexual offences, which include indecent assault and underage sex, rose from 107 in 2006-07 to 161 in the 12 months to September 2008, a 50.5 per cent leap.
Across London, Metropolitan Police figures showed an increase of just 13.3 per cent for rape and 2.4 per cent for sexual offences.
The Met’s figures show that only the boroughs of Croydon and Hillingdon reported a larger percentage rise in rapes this year.
Miss Hall said: “Although we acknowledge there are some police out there who want to get convictions, some are still making appalling mistakes when dealing with rape victims.”
Pete Smythe, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation said: “It is a fairly dramatic rise. Reporting of rape has changed and I would like to think women are more confident in coming forward and reporting incidents.
Angie Conroy from Rape Crisis England said: “A 50 per cent rise is very concerning, I don’t think that it can be put down to women being more confident in reporting.
“Something needs to be done.”
“I am not aware of Sutton police encouraging women to come forward any differently to the rest of the Met.”
Councillor Paul Scully, leader of the Conservative group on Sutton Council, said: “The 50 per cent increases are a cause for deep concern. I shall be writing to Chief Superintendent Bob Reed to express my concern and find out why there has been a significant spike in these offences from baseline figures.”
A spokesman for Sutton police said: “We regard all reports of sexual offences as serious and we investigate all such crimes in a robust and thorough manner, while dealing with victims and witnesses in a sensitive and supportive way.
“We actively encourage victims to come forward. We have a specialist investigative team – Sapphire – dedicated to investigating all sexual offences.
“They have been working with victims more closely than ever to build their confidence and to encourage them to come forward with the information we need to prosecute offenders in court.
“Sutton is one of the safest London boroughs for all types of crime, including sexual offences.” News Source
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Two Asian men were jailed indefinitely for sex attacks on teenage white girls they had plied with drink and drugs.
Mirza Baig, 35, and Mohammed Ditta, 39, picked up vulnerable teenagers, offering them drink and cigarettes, Manchester Crown Court was told.
But after luring them back to Ditta's flat in Hulme, Manchester, the girls were given vodka, Ecstasy pills and cocaine, until they became unconscious.
They then pounced on their 15-year-old victims, stripping them naked, putting them in beds and trying to force them to have sex.
Baig, of Longdon Road, Longsight, Manchester, and Ditta of Newdale Road, Levenshulme, Manchester, were jailed indefinitely for the public's protection and told they must each serve at least three years before parole.
Passing sentence Judge Anthony Gee said: "These are despicable and truly shameful offences. Neither of you have displayed the slightest hint of remorse or regret."
The pair were arrested in May last year after an investigation by a team of social workers from Manchester Children's Services, detectives from Greater Manchester Police and project workers from the voluntary sector.
In the first incident, on April 18, 2007, Baig met up with two 15-year-old girls and drove them to Ditta's flat.
Once inside Ditta gave the girls drink and drugs. He offered to pay one of the girls £20 to have sex with him, but she refused so he punched her twice in the face.
A few weeks later on April 30, 2007 the third victim, who was also 15 at the time, went to the same flat with a girl she knew.
Intoxicated
There, Ditta and Baig gave her drink and drugs. While she was heavily intoxicated, Baig then sexually assaulted her. He then trapped her in the bedroom and threatened to kill her.
Ditta also sexually assaulted her before she was able to escape.
One girl told Manchester Crown Court she was terrified and thought she was going to die after Ditta ordered her to have sex and threatened her with a gun.
Ditta was convicted of assault and sexual assault after a three week trial.
Baig was convicted of sexual assault and threats to kill after calling one girl a "slag" and saying he would shoot her if she did not have sex with him. News Source
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Yobs ignored victim arrested! Where is the Bl**dy Justice?
A grandfather was arrested after using an unloaded air rifle to confront a gang of youths who had fired rockets at his house.
Alan Parker, 62, said he felt like a prisoner in his own home for two years during which he was plagued by teenagers.
He said gangs repeatedly vandalised his car, causing £5,000 damage, and threw bricks and eggs at his window.
The retired lorry driver, who suffers from a heart condition, finally "snapped" on Halloween when fireworks rained down on his terraced house in a quiet cul-de-sac in Hertford.
Several rockets exploded against his front window just inches from his gas meter.
Mr Parker, a keen game shooter who holds a shotgun licence, took out his .177 air rifle, marched across the street and confronted a group of eight to ten teenagers who then fled.
But minutes later armed police arrived at his home, surrounded the house and cordoned off the road.
Four shotguns, for which Mr Parker had a licence, and cartridges from his gun cabinet were seized by police, as well as the air gun.
The grandfather-of-four was arrested and taken to a police station where he was given a caution for possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence.
Mr Parker said: "I just couldn't take it any more. I was terrified and irate. I just snapped. I feel wrong about it now but I was so fed up.
"The youths cause mayhem around here. I'm a prisoner in my own home. They terrorise decent folk who just want to be left to live in peace.
"They set fire to everything, hurl missiles at people and their property, vandalise everything they can get their hands on and shout abuse. They make everyone's lives a misery."
Mr Parker said he gave up reporting vandalism on his property to police after he contacted them three times in 2004 and no arrests were made.
A Hertfordshire Police spokeswoman said: "We are aware of incidents reported in previous years but do not have information about reporting anti-social behaviour recently."
In 2005 special needs teacher Linda Walker, 51, confronted youths who terrorised her family with an air pistol, firing up to six rounds into the ground.
The teacher from Manchester was jailed for six months but released on appeal after 36 days following a public outcry. News Source
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One in three teachers believe that creationism should be taught in school science lessons. Why? It's not because they've developed a sudden respect for fundamentalist Christian interpretations of the Bible. It's because devout Muslim pupils - and their parents - regard Darwin's teachings as blasphemous.
The science of evolution contradicts a literal reading of the Koran, just as it contradicts the seven-day creation narrative of Genesis. The difference is that most devout Muslims - more than 90 per cent worldwide - accept Islam's account of creation as the simple truth, whereas in Britain only a small minority of churchgoers are creationists.
In the last five years, Harun Yahya, a Turkish-based Islamic creationist propaganda machine, has been flooding the developed world with sophisticated material, including an incredibly glossy, huge and heavy 800-page Atlas of Creation which "proves" that all living species were created simultaneously. "Living beings have not undergone the slightest change for hundreds of millions of years," it asserts.
Multiple copies of this "atlas" have arrived at the two newspaper offices where I work, the Telegraph and the Catholic Herald. Schools all over the country are receiving unsolicited copies for their libraries. Is anyone even flicking through them before they go on the shelves? My guess is that the book is fast becoming an accepted resouce for state schools with Muslim pupils. Who is paying for this vast work of fantasy dressed up as science? I bet the funding doesn't all come from Turkey. Saudi, perhaps?
Meanwhile, as counterknowledge.com reports, the influence of Adnan Oktar, the fundamentalist who runs Harun Yahya, is growing enormously. Oktar has managed to block access in Turkey to numerous websites that challenge him, including at one stage Google groups. According to one report, 61 websites have been targeted by Oktar/Yahya, whose work has been translated into 57 languages.
This is a battle that the educational establishment just isn't prepared for. Guardian readers associate creationism with US Republicans, not ethnic minorities. Now they face a painful dilemma: should they fight to exclude the creationist viewpoint from science lessons, risking accusations of Islamophobia from angry parents, or should they embrace pseudoscience in the name of cultural diversity? It's a tough one. News Source
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The number of small businesses employing migrant workers has more than doubled in the past two years, according to research commissioned by accountancy firm Tenon.
Interviews with more than 1,000 senior managers found that 48 per cent of small businesses now employ non-UK nationals. A similar survey of 600 small business directors in 2006 found that only 21 per cent employed migrant workers.
Although many migrant workers have returned to their native lands in recent months, business owners said they may still need to make more job cuts.
Lambert Brothers Haulage employs seven Polish people as part of its 140-strong workforce, largely because of the shortage of heavy goods vehicle drivers available in the UK.
However, Clive Watkins, managing director, said only one of the Polish workers he has hired has left the company and some had brought wives and children over to settle in the UK.
The growth in use of migrant workers may also be limited. Some 30 per cent of Tenon’s survey sample said they had no intention of employing foreign workers in the future.
The Federation of Small Businesses said many of its members did not employ non-UK nationals because of the red tape involved.
Under the new system for employing people from outside the European Economic Area and Switzerland, any migrant applying for a non-executive position must be sponsored by a UK-based employer.
Those who do not follow the rules could be fined up to £10,000.
Employment bill in final stages
Legislation to simplify the current workplace dispute resolution procedures, saving businesses an estimated £175m over a year, reached its final stages in parliament this week.
The Employment Bill, which will repeal regulations introduced in 2004, had its third reading in the House of Commons on Tuesday. The new system is set to come into force next April.
The changes to be introduced include powers for tribunals to raise or lower awards by 25 per cent if parties fail to comply with a revised code on discipline and grievance. Continued
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An illegal immigrant who sexually assaulted a woman at Kirriemuir has been jailed for three months.
Syed Razlu Miah, from Bangladesh, was warned that he faces deportation on his release.
The 26-year-old was put on the sex offenders register for seven years when he appeared from custody at Forfar Sheriff Court yesterday.
Miah, of no fixed address, had previously pleaded guilty to assaulting a 22-year-old woman in the Roods at around 2.15am on September 28. He admitted a charge of assault by repeatedly handling her breast above her clothing.
The court had previously heard that Miah approached the woman as she was sitting outside a local pub smoking a cigarette.
Defence agent Steve Wilson said the offence had happened after his client had been drinking and felt the effects of alcohol for the first time.
He said: “My client is very ashamed of his actions and will never do anything like this again.
“The incident itself started innocently enough when he asked a young girl for a cigarette but it went on from there.
“He thought perhaps that she would befriend him but it didn’t turn out that way.
“He did, and does, wish to apologise to the court and the victim for his actions.”
Miah first entered the country four years ago on a 12-month visa but stayed in the UK after it expired.
Sentencing, Sheriff Kevin Veal said Miah’s immigration status limited his options.
He said: “In passing sentence I recognise that you made your plea at the earliest opportunity.
“The victim of the assault has not had to give evidence, which could have been a seriously embarrassing experience but, nevertheless, this is a very serious assault with a significant sexual element. “I am obliged to place you on the sex offenders register and if you are allowed to remain, which is extremely unlikely, it will run for seven years if you are in this country.”
He added: “Recognising that this is a serious sexual assault, I move for a recommendation of deportation.” News Source
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A Failed asylum seeker has been jailed for four years for swindling more than £180,000 from women he seduced.
Sheikh Ijaz, 37, from Pakistan, posed as a businessman and formed relationships with four women before stealing their money.
The smooth-talking conman, who lived in a guest house in Bowburn, and a bedsit in Neville’s Cross, County Durham, before his arrest, was caught after calls to police from several women he had tried to pick up.
Jenny Haigh, prosecuting at Durham Crown Court, said: “The ladies were all deceived out of their money.
“His latest victim said she loved him and believed they were going to marry. She says she feels sick.”
Ijaz, whose visa application was refused in 2000 and who has been living in the country illegally since 2005, pleaded guilty to three charges of fraud.
The court was told that he received £20,500 from a Doncaster woman he met at bingo after he told her he wanted to open a restaurant and a leather clothes shop.
He took the money between May 23 and July 1 last year, leaving her bankrupt.
He also persuaded a barmaid from Alnwick, in Northumberland, to give him £15,000 for a shop, between September 1 and December 1 last year, before she realised his intentions and threw him out of her home.
The court was also told that Ijaz defrauded an Asian doctor, who lived in Nelson, Lancashire, between January 1 and June 13 this year, of £152,000 by saying he wanted to open a Pizza Hut franchise and marry her.
The court was told that Ijaz was also wanted by police after he failed to attend a trial at Kingston Crown Court, in Kingston upon Thames, London, in January 2006, for the theft of a Nissan Primera from a 40-year-old Asian woman.
He pleaded guilty to this offence yesterday. Continued
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Labour was last night accused of creating a 'human rights industry' containing more than 1,000 specialist law practices.
The astonishing number making a living from the Human Rights Act emerged ahead of the 10th anniversary of its enactment today.
The figure is the equivalent of 100 rights practices setting up every year of the Act's existence - or two every week.
The 1998 legislation, which enshrined the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law, has led to a sharp increase for lawyers in cases involving privacy, inhumane treatment or the right to family life.
Using the Act, the rights of a raft of minority groups, including travellers, prisoners, gays and murderers seeking shorter sentences have been strengthened.
Now research by the Tories has revealed the bewildering scale of the rights industry. There are 831 solicitors firms in
England and Wales dealing with human rights and 72 individual barristers.
In Scotland,173 firms which do rights work are listed, while there are 60 specialist advocates.
The Tories also found more than 137 books with the words 'Human Rights Act' in the title.
Their spokesman on justice Nick Herbert said: 'Labour's Human Rights Act has been a gift to litigants and bureaucrats, fostering grievance and a rights culture while sidelining personal and social responsibility.
The Act must be replaced to achieve a balance bet- ween rights and responsibilities.'
Justice Secretary Jack Straw, who piloted the Bill through Parliament a decade ago, admitted it was disappointing that support for the law had 'dissipated'.
The legislation has been widely blamed for the failure to deport fanatics.
Despite Tony Blair's promise to deport extremists in the wake of July 7, only one 'preacher of hate' has been forced from our shores.
The nine people who have been deported on 'national security grounds' since 2005 were Algerians, who went voluntarily.
Those permitted to stay - on grounds they may face ill-treatment- include terror suspect Abu Qatada, known as Osama Bin Laden's ambassador in Europe.
But Mr Straw hails the Act as 'one of the great legal, constitutional and social reforms of this Government'.
He said: 'Contrary to soothsayers' predictions it would cripple the justice system, encourage vexatious litigants and throw common sense out of the window, the 1998 Act has neither caused a gridlock in our courts nor fundamentally changed the character of the law.'
Human rights campaign group Liberty also defended the Act.
Director Shami Chakrabarti said: 'It is heart-breakingly illogical for Conservatives who have stood shoulder to shoulder with Liberty on personal privacy and fair trials to bash the Human Rights Act.'
James Slack's Analysis
Justice Secretary Jack Straw admits: 'I have to accept that what the Human Rights Act has not done is find a place in the public's affection.'
Indeed, in one recent poll six out of ten people said they wanted to scrap it.
So what went wrong? Firstly, public faith has been shattered by a series of hugely controversial human rights rulings.
These include the granting of £4,000 compensation each to prisoners forced to go cold turkey in prison and allowing those refused asylum to seek free NHS care.
In a world where Alzheimer's patients are denied £2.50-a-day drugs on cost grounds this was bound to cause animosity.
Secondly, protecting the public from terrorist attack is vastly more important than in 1998.
Yet the Act has thwarted the Government at every turn. Ministers were ordered by the Law Lords to release international terror suspects being held without trial in Belmarsh.
Then, when they sought to place the suspects - including Osama Bin Laden's friend Abu Qatada - under control orders, these restrictions were diluted by judges.
But the influence of human rights law extends far beyond the court judgments, which brings us to the third explanation for what went wrong.
Ministers complain that the pernicious influence of the Act has been exaggerated, insisting it was not, as has been claimed, responsible for a criminal involved in a siege being given KFC. But the truth is it has created a climate in which such absurdities are possible and in which public bodies are so afraid of being sued they take decisions verging on the criminal.
When the Home Office mistakenly freed 1,000 foreign prisoners who should have been up for deportation, police refused to put up 'wanted' posters for fear of breaching their rights.
Of course, the Act has not been all bad. One ruling delivered the right of an elderly couple to be kept together in the same care home. Families now also have a right to be represented at the inquest of a loved one. But such cases, sadly, are few and far between. News Source
Disclaimer: This News Item has been duplicated in its entirety to serve as public information (Ed)
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The UK's place at the top of a European league table of cocaine use has been blamed on the Government.
A report by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) shows that, for the fifth year running, the UK has recorded the highest number of cocaine users in the EU.
The annual figures show that 7.7% of Britons aged 15-64 have taken cocaine - rising to 11.2% for the 15-24 age group and 12.7% for the those aged between 15 and 34. In each category Spain is second (7%, 8.7% and 9.6% respectively) and Ireland fourth (5.3%, 7% and 8.2%).
Shadow Home Secretary, Dominic Grieve, commented: "This report confirms Britain's status as the cocaine capital of Europe, not to mention the fact we also have the highest prevalence of amphetamine and ecstasy use amongst adults.
It is particularly disturbing that we have the highest proportion of fifteen and sixteen-year-olds using cocaine - the Government's failure is betraying a whole generation of young people.
"This is due to Labour's chaotic, confused and staggeringly complacent approach to drugs. Drugs wreck lives, destroy communities and fuel crime - the fact Labour do not
recognise this makes them
part of the problem, not the solution."
The survey says that 12 million EU citizens aged 15-64 admit to having taken cocaine at some time in their lives, while 11 million have used amphetamines and 9.5 million have used ecstasy. Cannabis use is much higher - 71 million Europeans say they have tried it - about one in four citizens. Continued
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(Recap: August 2008)
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.' Continued
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(Recap: June 2008)
Shocking new figures revealed the extent to which the country’s immigration policy is running out of control.
It is now clear that 2.3million people have been allowed to flock through the “open door” into Britain.
Most of the newcomers have arrived from outside the EU, making a mockery of Government claims that an annual cap on migrants would have a limited effect. Critics said the influx – equivalent to the entire population of Greater Manchester – has put a massive drain on public services.
It has also forced up the tax burden on already hard-pressed families and seen police forces pleading for more cash to deal with gangs of foreign criminals.
The figures come two weeks after the Daily Express revealed that a record number of British passports are now being handed out to immigrants settling here.
Philip Davies said: “Immigration is having a dramatic effect on our public services. It’s one of the biggest reasons we’re having to build so many new houses and concrete over the country.
“The quicker the Conservatives can get in and get a hold of the problem the better. Mass immigration is making all services scarcer and more expensive in terms of tax.” The latest picture follows analysis of official immigration statistics by Migrationwatch UK.
Chairman Sir Andrew Green said: “As public concern has increased, supporters of immigration have tried to give the impression that the majority come from the new EU member states and that, in time, as their economies improve they will return home – thus implying that public fears are groundless.
“But the Government’s own figures show that this is far from the case. They also give the lie to those who claim that there is no point in immigration controls which do not apply to EU citizens.”
Based on figures from the Office of National Statistics, the Migrationwatch study shows there was a net migration to the UK of 2.3 million people between 1991 and 2006. Continued
Ministers have been accused of "burying bad news" by misleading the public over how many foreigners are coming to live and work in Britain. Professor David Hand, the head of the Royal Statistical Society, complained that a Home Office official had been handing out a press notice promoting Government policy at a ONS briefing on migration figures. He said that this "succeeded in partially diverting some journalists' attention away from the comprehensive range of data being presented towards one specific issue".
Well, well: the statistical chickens are coming home to roost for a government that has long played fast and loose with official figures. The Home Office has been forced to say sorry for seeking to interfere in the way immigration figures were released recently. It seems old habits die hard. In order to inject some credibility into official figures, the Government agreed that they should all be issued by a new arm's length body under the auspices of the new UK Statistics Authority.
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(Recap: June 2008)
The detection rate for violent crime has plunged by a third since Labour came to power, it has been claimed.
While offences have soared, the proportion of offenders caught fell from 82 per cent in 1997 to 57 per cent last year - despite record numbers of police, according to Tory analysis of Home Office figures.
Last year police in England and Wales recorded 1,406,427 violent offences, but officials believe fewer than half of such crimes are actually reported, meaning that on average a victim suffers an assault once every 15 seconds around the clock.
Dominic Grieve, the new Shadow Home Secretary, pledged to cut police red tape by immediately scrapping the infamous stop-and-search form which officers must fill in every time they use the search powers on the street.
He also promised to tackle 'uncontrolled immigration' by introducing an annual limit on those arriving from outside the EU and placing restrictions on workers from any new EU states which join in future. News Source
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(Recap: August 2008)
A growing number of white people believe they are the victims of racial prejudice in Britain, official research has found.
Almost one in three - 29 per cent - said they now expected to be treated worse than other races by key public services.
And the number of whites claiming to have been refused a job or discriminated against at work for reasons of race has doubled in the last five years, according to the Government study.
A survey of 15,000 people - ordered by Communities Secretary Hazel Blears - is likely to prompt a fierce debate about the disillusionment of the white majority.
The Tories blame Labour's race relations strategy.
Tory communities spokesman Baroness Warsi said: 'It's no wonder more people feel there is an increase in racism when Labour's multicultural industry is forever talking up what divides us rather than concentrating on what unites us.'
The survey found that 29 per cent of white people expect to be treated worse than other groups by at least one of eight public services, including the police, prisons, courts, Crown Prosecution service, probation service, local housing organisations, schools or GPs.
Whites identified council housing departments or housing associations as the most likely to discriminate against them.
The proportion of members of ethnic minority groups who expected to face discrimination from one of the eight bodies fell from 38 per cent in 2001 to 34 per cent. Continued
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(Recap: October 2008)
The true level of gun crime is far higher than the Government admits in official statistics, it can be revealed.
Figures to be published by the Home Office this week will massively understate the scale of the problem.
Data provided to The Sunday Telegraph by nearly every police force in England and Wales, under freedom of information laws, show that the number of firearms incidents dealt with by officers annually is 60 per cent higher than figures stated by the Home Office.
Last year 5,600 firearms offences were excluded from the official figures. It means that, whereas the Home Office said there were only 9,800 offences in 2007/8, the real total was around 15,400. The latest quarterly figures, due to be released on Thursday, will again exclude a significant number of incidents. Continued
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(Recap: September 2008)
Shocking new figures have revealed knife crime in England and Wales is more widespread than believed.
Last year's figures did not show the true extent of the crime epidemic because they excluded a number of offences.
The true picture is two thirds higher than thought - with more than 100 knife offences a day.
Crimes categorised as actual bodily harm, rape, sexual assault or threats to kill were not included in last year's figures.
Their inclusion in statistics causes the number of offences to soar from last year's total of 22,151 to an estimated 38,000 in England and Wales this year. Continued
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God help us. This will soon be a country more spied upon than Communist East Germany under the Stasi
(Recap: October 2008)
We live at a time when many of the certainties taken for granted by our parents and grandparents are being destroyed under our very eyes.
Even in the socialist Seventies, no one imagined the Government could control not one, not two, but three High Street banks.
Our forefathers also believed, with some justification, that Britain was the freest country in the world.
Unlike some Continental nations, let alone those in the Soviet Bloc, we did not have a large state apparatus spying on people's private activities.
However, since 1997 New Labour has progressively undermined this assumption.
We have more CCTV cameras than any other country in the world. Our DNA database, which comprises four million people, many of whom have committed no crime at all, is also bigger than that of any other country. Identity cards are in the pipeline.
Even so, I am dumbfounded by proposals unveiled by Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, in a speech yesterday.
The Government is considering creating one vast database which will contain details of every single e-mail and telephone call, mobile or otherwise, made in the United Kingdom.
Every call you make, every visit to an internet site, every e-mail you send - all will be logged and stored in some vast Government computer, if Ms Smith has her way.
If this had been proposed ten years ago, no one would have believed it. Even now, after ten years of creeping surveillance by an authoritarian Government, it seems incredible.
The Home Secretary envisages a society more spied upon than communist East Germany was under the Stasi, and potentially more watched over than George Orwell's nightmarish society in his novel 1984.
That is what I mean about the speed of change. None of our treasured assumptions holds true.
A Labour Home Secretary can propose changes which offend against the values our grandfathers held dear - and for which, in part, they fought - without any apparent sense that she is flying in the face of hundreds of years of history, and certainly without the smallest indication of shame or sign of regret. Continued
Residents routinely spied-on by councils, police and intelligence 'services' in Police State UK The telephone and e-mail records of thousands of people are being secretly invaded by overpaid council officials every year, new research has revealed in the latest case of Police State UK.
George Orwell's masterpiece 1984 is brought to the big screen as parallels are drawn daily between Orwell's prophetic vision of a total surveillance society which modern Britain has become. This is evinced by the alarming fact that doctors are actively involved in the Stalker Squad to make on the spot 'psychiatric assessments' of known "troublemakers" and section them in secure mental hospitals where they can no longer cause 'problems' for the bent Royal and Political Establishment.
More than half of town halls admit using anti-terror laws to spy on families suspected of putting their rubbish out on the wrong day. Their tactics include putting secret cameras in tin cans, on lamp posts and even in the homes of 'friendly' residents. The local authorities admitted that one of their main aims was to catch householders who put their bins out early.
It has become a cliché to describe many of the developments in modern Britain as ''Orwellian": the CCTV cameras, the databases, the cloying bureaucracy. Yet the news that children as young as eight are being recruited as local authority snoopers really does come straight from the pages of 1984. In Orwell's dystopian nightmare, the children are encouraged to denounce their parents.
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(Recap: April 2005)
Six middle-aged Muslim men, all pillars of their communities, won seats on Britain’s biggest local authority in the most corrupt election campaign since the Victorian era.
Vote-riggers exploited weaknesses in the postal voting system to steal thousands of ballot papers and mark them for Labour, helping the party to take first place in elections to Birmingham City Council.
They believed that their cheating would be hidden for ever in the secrecy of the strong boxes where counted votes are stored, never suspecting that a judge would take the rare step of smashing the seals and tracing the ballots back to the voters. Election corruption has been so rare in the past 100 years that lawyers have struggled to find examples since the late 19th century, when Britain was adjusting to the novelty of universal male suffrage.
The elections last June were the dirtiest since the general election of 1895, when Sir Tankerville Chamberlayne, the Conservative candidate for Southampton, notoriously travelled by cart from pub to pub, waving and throwing sovereigns at the crowds. His election was later ruled invalid.
The Birmingham vote- riggers were more cunning than the flamboyant Sir Tankerville. They coldly exploited communities where many cannot speak English or write their names. They forced what the judge called “dishonest or frightened” postmen into handing over sacks of postal ballots. They seem to have infiltrated the mail service: several voters gave evidence that their ballot papers were altered to support Labour after they put them in the post.
Proof that votes were stolen came when Richard Mawrey, QC, the election commissioner, ordered ballot boxes to be unsealed. Unknown to most voters, ballot papers can be traced back to individuals through serial numbers. The judge was struck by how many had been amended, sometimes using correction fluid.
Voters were traced and asked if they really had voted Labour. It emerged that some had handed completed postal ballots to Labour supporters calling at their homes offering to post them. The envelopes had been opened and the papers altered, then delivered to the election office for counting.
One of the wards where corruption was rife covered Aston, an inner-city neighbourhood. This is the fiefdom of Muhammad Afzal, a city councillor for 23 years, regarded as the most powerful man in Birmingham Asian politics. At midnight two days before the election, the police stumbled on what appeared to be a vote-forging factory. Half a dozen men were discovered in a warehouse with 274 unsealed postal votes for Aston ward. Continued
Few Lab / Con Vote Fraudsters
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Opponents of ID cards have renewed their attacks on the scheme, claiming security is being watered down even as the cost of the cards rises.
Cards will only be checked against biometric details on the National Identity Register (NIR) in a "minority of cases" according to Home Office documents, prompting accusations it has been relegated to a "flash and go" card.
The Home Office consultation documents said: "Most transactions involving the identity cards are likely to be visual checks of the card, or a local check of the information held on the card (e.g. using a scanner).
"In only a minority of cases - requiring the highest standard of identity assurance - will it be necessary to check identity against information on the NIR."
Ian Angell, a professor at the London School of Economics (LSE) and one of the authors of a report into the scheme, said this undermines the government's claim the ID card system will offer a rock-solid way of verifying a person's identity by locking an ID to biometric details on a secure database.
And Phil Booth national co-ordinator for ID cards pressure group NO2ID said: "It makes the whole system a nonsense, the government is saying that ultimately the whole national identity scheme will come down to a 'flash and go' system.
"A system that is presumed secure which is in fact insecure, then that is worse than having no system at all."
LSE's Angell said: "If they do not check the database then fraud will go up as criminals will quickly figure this out and be able to make a copy of the card and change the photo.
"These shortcuts are going to turn it into a hugely expensive failure."
But an Identity and Passport Service spokesman denied the system would be vulnerable to fraud: "The majority of instances where people use their identity cards will be day to day situations where the cards offer a convenient method of proving identity such as a young person proving their age to buy alcohol," he said.
"Whenever the highest level of identity assurance is vital to prevent fraudulent and criminal activity - such as high end financial transactions or at our borders - checks will always be made against the national identity register.
"The card itself will be protected against forgery by a number of security features. The Identity and Passport Service has issued more than 12 million ePassports to date and nobody has successfully cloned the chip," the spokesman said.
It has also been revealed the National Identity Register Number (Nirno) will now not appear on the card or its embedded chip. Director of Privacy International Simon Davies welcomed the removal of the Nirno, following concerns it could be cross referenced across multiple transactions - such as proof of age purchases or opening a bank account - to track a person's everyday activities.
"For five years we expressed concern about publishing the Nirno, it is amazing that it has taken all this time and £150m pounds for the government to decide to take this initiative," Davies said.
Yesterday the government began touting for high street businesses and other companies to install the equipment to take the 10 fingerprints, facial and signature scan that will be stored in the NIR. It named the Post Office as an example of possible contenders and said local authorities are also being considered as enrolment centres.
Critics say it will inflate the £30 (Actually £60 they said yesterday (Ed) it will cost for a card as the public also have to pay to have their fingerprints taken, with the Home Office estimating the scanners will generate between £120m and £280m per year for business.
Yes It's about Generating MORE money! A Stealth tax if you will..
Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve said: "We already know that ID cards will do nothing to improve our security but may make it worse. Now we see that the already substantial cost to the tax payer is going to increase. This is particularly outrageous given the current economic crisis."
These worries about whether government and the private sector could be trusted to handle and transfer scans of people's fingerprints, faces and signatures were echoed by the public, particularly in light of the recent spate of data breaches.
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The cost of buying an ID card will leap from £30 to £60 or more as applicants will have to pay hefty fees to private firms for the privilege of having their fingerprints and facial image scanned.
The astonishing leap in the price - which will also hit anyone applying for a passport - was revealed after Home Secretary Jacqui Smith claimed that contracting out the gathering of biometric data to the private sector would cut the costs of the controversial ID card scheme by a billion pounds.
In reality that means the Home Office hopes to slash its own spending by that amount by not setting up its own network of scanning offices.
Instead, millions of people applying for ID cards and passports will have to foot the bill from their own pockets. Continued
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Brown admitted the Government cannot promise to keep safe the millions of pieces of sensitive personal information it has gathered on the British public.
The Prime Minister's remarks came amid an urgent inquiry into how a memory stick with user names and passwords for a key Whitehall computer system was found in a pub car park.
The Gateway website allows members of the public to access hundreds of government services including self-assessment tax returns, pension entitlements and child benefits.
There are 12m people registered on it, and it had to be temporarily suspended. It is the latest in a string of similar blunders, including the loss of the details of 25m Child Benefit claimants, and information on tens of thousands of the country's worst criminals. Continued
Brown has said recent scandals to have hit the government, such as data loss and proxy donations, will be "quickly forgotten".
Really? Lets remind the people!
Ministers have been forced to order an emergency shutdown of a key Government computer system to protect millions of people's private details. The action was taken after a memory stick was found in a pub car park containing confidential passcodes to the online Government Gateway system, which covers everything from tax returns to parking tickets.
Information on a computer stolen from Communities Secretary Hazel Blears' office had been sent in breach of data security rules, it has emerged. The Communities and Local Government department admitted its officials had "not fully" complied with guidance on handling sensitive data.
The government has come under strong criticism after nine English NHS trusts admitted losing patient records in the latest public sector data lapse. Hundreds of thousands of adults and children are thought to be affected. Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley condemned the government for its "failure to protect the personal information which we provide".
The details of three million candidates for the driving theory test have gone missing, Ruth Kelly has told MPs. Names, addresses and phone numbers - but no financial information - were among details on a computer hard drive which went missing in the US in May.
The personal details of hundreds of directors and employees of failed companies have been lost in the latest instance of Government data loss. A laptop containing the names, addresses, names and in some cases dates of birth and National Insurance numbers of 486 directors and employees of 122 failed companies was stolen from an office at the Insolvency Service.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has admitted that more than 11,000 military ID cards have been lost or stolen in the past two years.
MPs have criticised continuing government incompetence over government data handling practices after it was revealed a missing Ministry of Defence (MoD) hard drive could contain information on as many as 1.7 million individuals.
A computer hard drive with the private details of 700,000 Armed Forces personnel and potential applicants is missing, The Ministry of Defence said today. The portable drive contains the names, addresses, passport numbers, dates of birth and driving licence details of around 100,000 serving personnel across the Army, Royal Navy and RAF, plus their next-of-kin details. It also has data on 600,000 potential services applicants and the names of their referees.
CDs containing the confidential personal details of 25 million child benefit recipients have been lost by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC).
A laptop storing data on around 100,000 pensioners has been stolen, it was admitted on Friday. Names, national insurance numbers and salary details were on the computer, which was in a handbag snatched last month from an employee of accounting firm Deloitte.
The government department responsible for ensuring standards in the UK's courts is investigating the loss of four CDs containing personal details.
A Ministry of Defence (MoD) laptop containing personal data about 600,000 people has been stolen in the latest security breach to hit the government. Names, passports details, national insurance numbers, drivers' licence details, information on family, doctors' addresses and NHS numbers were included on the laptop.
MPs have condemned the government over the loss of the personal information of more than three million learner drivers by the Driving Standards Agency (DSA).
The personal details of 6,500 customers belonging to a pension firm have been lost at an office of HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in Cardiff.
A Traffic cop has lost a computer memory stick containing top-secret information on ruthless Muslim terrorists. It contains details of every deadly terror cell currently being tracked by police in the West Midlands.
Thousands of prison officers may have been put at risk after a disc containing their names, dates of birth, National Insurance numbers and employee numbers were lost. The data was missing for a year before the Prison Service and ministers were told.
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Nine out of ten people are happy - and seven in ten optimistic about the future - a government survey suggests.
The National Social Marketing Centre's findings were published amid widespread fears of recession, falling house prices and rising unemployment.
The report says "in general Britain is a happy nation" with 70% expecting more positive than negative experiences.
It does note an "intensification of the global banking crisis" since the 1,994 people were surveyed in August.
At the time the Department of Health-funded survey was carried out the UK was riding high at the Olympics, picking up its best medals performance for decades.
Since it was carried out by the NCSM and University College London there has been a banking crisis and dramatic economic downturn.
Author of the report - Some Are More Equal Than Others - Alex Christopoulos, told the BBC: "It would be interesting to repeat it now."
But he added: "These sorts of surveys tend to stay fairly stable... but in August [the economic outlook] was less bad than it is now."
Recession uncertainty
"In a sense you need to have optimism for your mental health," he said.
"If you get too pessimistic about the credit crunch it is bad. If we are on the cusp of a recession, it's difficult for people to say whether it's going to go on for a long time." Continued
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Jacqui Smith says public demand means people will be able to pre-register for an ID card within the next few months.
The cards will be available for all from 2012 but she said: "I regularly have people coming up to me and saying they don't want to wait that long."
The home secretary made the claim as she unveiled revised ID scheme plans.
Opposition parties say they would scrap the ID card scheme. The Tories call it a "complete waste of money". The Lib Dems call it a "laminated poll tax".
They accused Ms Smith of backtracking on plans to issue ID cards in 2009 for all airside workers, by announcing they would pilot them at just two airports.
The first biometric cards are being issued to students from outside the EU and marriage visa holders this month, and it had been planned to make them compulsory for all 200,000 airside workers from 2009.
'Saving face'
But instead the government announced there would be an 18-month trial, for airside workers at Manchester and London City airports only, from late next year.
Campaigners No2ID said it was a "transparent attempt to save ministerial face" amid opposition from unions and airline bosses, who say it is unjustified and would not improve security.
Unions had argued airside workers were already extensively vetted and believe they would have to pay £30 for a card - although it is understood they would be free during the trial period.
Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve described the decision to trial ID cards at just two airports as "clearly a climbdown" and "just a gimmick" aimed at selling the scheme to the public.
Supermarket enrolment
In a speech to the Social Market Foundation Ms Smith said cards would be issued on a voluntary basis to young people from 2010 and for everyone else from 2012.
She added: "But I believe there is a demand, now, for cards - and as I go round the country I regularly have people coming up to me and saying they don't want to wait that long. Continued
Ahem' Yes Jacqui We believe you! Cough cough splutter!
Friday 7th November 2008
Last Sunday, responding to the latest catastrophic loss of sensitive data by a Government contractor, Gordon Brown admitted:
'It is important to recognise that we cannot promise every single item of information will always be safe, because mistakes are made by human beings.'
The Prime Minister could say little else, given the appalling record of those private firms paid by Whitehall to handle our personal information.
In August, PA Consulting lost a memory stick containing personal details of all 84,000 prisoners in England and Wales, along with information on tens of thousands of the country's most prolific offenders.
Weeks later, it emerged EDS had mislaid a hard drive full of information about 5,000 employees of the justice system, including prison staff.
And, on Sunday, a memory stick with user names and passwords for the Government's Gateway computer system, used by 12million people, turned up in a pub car park after being lost by an Atos Origin employee.
Yet rather than scaling back dealings with private firms, Jacqui Smith will today invite them to bid for hugely lucrative contracts to take the fingerprints of every adult in the UK for the national ID cards register.
The Home Secretary's logic is that by using the open market, she will be able to reduce costs. With the bill for ID cards creeping towards £5billion, this is vital.
The saving from using a private contractor could be £1billion, according to the Home Office. Miss Smith's officials also say convenience is a major factor.
The Home Office planned to use 80 Government offices to interview and scan millions of applicants joining the National Identity Register. But people in rural areas would have had enormous distances to travel.
If the Government can encourage Royal Mail or a firm with a presence in many towns to bid, such as Boots, these distances can be reduced. Continued
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The Royal Mail, shops and private firms are today being invited to bid for multi-million pound contracts to fingerprint millions of Britons for ID cards.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is placing the private sector in charge of gathering the biometric details of anyone who applies for a passport or the controversial new cards.
People will have all ten fingerprints and their face scanned.
The hugely sensitive biometric data will then be passed on to the Government's Identity and Passport Service for inclusion on the new National Identity Register.
Separately, the applicant will fill in a form to request a passport or ID card. They will undergo full identity checks and will only be issued with their card or passport once this is complete.
The card - being displayed by Miss Smith, right - will contain a microchip with an image of two fingerprints and the facial scan.
The Home Office said firms have to pass rigorous security checks to win a contract.
Fingerprints would be recorded using Government computers and would not be stored on memory sticks or sent in the post on CDs.
But it is unprecedented for members of the public to give all ten fingerprints to a private company. At present, the right to take fingerprints is largely restricted to the police.
The Home Office, which had planned to take fingerprints itself, says the move will cut costs by as much as £1billion.
In a report today, it admits the £4.5billion bill is creeping towards £5billion.
Introducing ID cards for foreign nationals will add to that.
ID cards and passports will contain the same information, but will exist side by side. The ID card could be used as a passport, but only in the EU. People travelling elsewhere will still need a passport.
But critics warned of the risk of personal data being lost by the private sector. In recent months, contractors have suffered a string of embarrassing losses - including memory sticks and hard drives containing the personal details of prison officers and tens of thousands of the country's worst criminals.
One of the firms involved, PA Consulting, is already working as a 'delivery partner' on the ID cards project.
Last night, Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: 'The Home Secretary's determination to press ahead with a project that will put the personal data of every citizen at risk is reckless in the extreme. Continued
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The cost of buying an ID card will leap from £30 to £60 or more as applicants will have to pay hefty fees to private firms for the privilege of having their fingerprints and facial image scanned.
The astonishing leap in the price - which will also hit anyone applying for a passport - was revealed after Home Secretary Jacqui Smith claimed that contracting out the gathering of biometric data to the private sector would cut the costs of the controversial ID card scheme by a billion pounds.
In reality that means the Home Office hopes to slash its own spending by that amount by not setting up its own network of scanning offices.
Instead, millions of people applying for ID cards and passports will have to foot the bill from their own pockets.
In a speech today Jacqui Smith let slip that an estimated seven million applications a year will 'create a market' in scanning fingerprints and facial features worth £200million for the firms who win contracts - allowing them to charge fees equivalent to around £30 a head.
High Street chains - expected to include the Post Office and Boots - will charge for their services over and above the £30 fee for the ID card itself, and the £72 cost of a passport.
Separate Home Office figures published today showed that the expected cost of ID cards to the public purse over the next 10 years has risen from £4.5billion earlier this year to around £5.1billion.
Opposition critics greeted the figures with dismay, urging the Home Secretary to 'stop kidding herself' and abandon the troubled project.Continued
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A Kosovan who was mistakenly shot in the jaw by a British soldier has been awarded £2.4million compensation.
The huge sum is more than 200 times the amount available to a UK soldier suffering a similar injury in a battle.
Muhamed Bici was shot by a paratrooper in the Kosovan capital, Pristina, in 1999 as he and his friends drove around a building which British soldiers were guarding.
There were five other men in the car with Mr Bici and some were firing guns into the air as part of wild celebrations to mark a national holiday. Two were killed when the soldiers opened fire.
The paratroopers were investigated by Royal Military Police but cleared of any crime because they believed themselves to be in extreme danger.
Mr Bici, then 24, was flown to Britain where NHS surgeons rebuilt his face. He was later granted legal aid to sue the Ministry of Defence in the UK courts at taxpayers' expense.
His £2.4million payout - £2,054,000 compensation and £346,000 legal costs - is around four times the sum paid to hero paratrooper Ben Parkinson.
He lost both legs, the use of one arm, the power of speech and much of his memory in a mine explosion in Afghanistan two years ago.
The award is an astounding 18 times the sum awarded to Royal Marine Mark Ormrod, 24, who was offered just £214,000 after he lost both legs and an arm to a mine.
If a British soldier suffered a similar wound to Mr Bici's, the MoD's Armed Forces Compensation Scheme would pay them just £11,000 under strict tariffs.
Relatives of severely-wounded servicemen voiced their astonishment and distress.
Ben Parkinson's mother Diane Dernie said: 'It is so difficult to understand how one person's life and body can somehow be worth so much more than another's.
'If a civilian's injury is due to negligence they can sue the MoD and get a huge settlement.
'But if a soldier suffers the same injury in combat they can't, and they get a fraction.'
The MoD argues that its compensation scheme is not directly comparable to payments in civil court cases, partly because troops who are medically discharged are entitled to a service pension for life as well as a lump sum.
For a junior soldier this typically amounts to around £15,000-20,000 a year.
A soldier receiving an AFCS pay-out can also sue the MoD if they believe an injury was caused by negligence.
A Ministry spokesman said: 'We take the duty of care of our personnel extremely seriously.
'The common-law cases cannot be compared with the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme, which provides a lump sum up to a maximum of £285,000 - soon to be doubled to £570,000 - and a guaranteed, tax-free income for life which can total many hundreds of thousands.'
The Bici case was the biggest single claim settled last year by the MoD, a report showed yesterday.
It also reveals that the Ministry paid out £3.7million to homosexual servicemen and women thrown out of the forces before 1999 - while it was illegal to be gay in the military.
The MoD was forced to scrap the ban after a successful challenge under human rights laws, and dozens of former personnel launched claims for compensation.
The final 57 cases were settled last year at a cost of £3.7million - an average payout of £65,000. News Source
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This is a pivotal moment in America's history and, therefore, that of the world. In a country that forced black people on to separate buses within recent memory, and drove them away from polling stations at elections, the advent of a black president has a resonance that should not be understated.
It is easy to be distracted by an event that proves, as the new president-elect said in his victory speech on Tuesday night, that in America anything is now possible, and old bigotries and barriers have finally been broken down. But that is not the sole, or main, significance of what has happened.
America is in economic turmoil. Its place as the world's superpower makes it a magnet for challenges by rogue and aggressive states, and more of these are certain to come - President Medvedev of Russia has already started squaring up to President-elect Obama.
Neo-conservatism tried, and largely failed, to deal with those and other lesser challenges over the past eight years. From January, a very different one will be applied. Barack Obama has come this far on a tsunami of rhetoric and charisma. Now he must undertake a responsibility for which those qualities will not necessarily qualify him. He must govern.
If the answer is the first contention, we may well be about to see the greatest era of radicalism in American politics since Roosevelt.
If America really is no longer an instinctively conservative nation, Mr Obama can proceed with tax increases, the extension of public services such as healthcare, the introduction of environmental legislation, the legitimisation of many millions of illegal immigrants, and the provision of federal funds to pay for abortions.
It is not beyond possibility that Mr Obama could even find himself taken prisoner by his own party, as Nancy Pelosi, as Speaker of the House, leads it through a radical programme that takes the new president at his word about "change".
Obama has now, with the help of the head of his transition team, John Podesta, to work out what his priorities really are. The nature of his two main challenges on the economy and foreign policy are that those priorities may be dictated to him. In the past year an extra 60,000 people a month have lost their jobs.
The rate at which this is happening is, if anything, increasing, as are business failures and house foreclosures. During the last phase of the campaign John McCain and Sarah Palin accused Mr Obama of talking like a socialist, and of preparing to be "the redistributionist in chief". It becomes less and less clear what there is to be redistributed. Continued
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David Miliband faced a backlash today after formally recognising Chinese sovereignty over Tibet.
The Foreign Secretary was accused of undermining the Dalai Lama's talks with the Chinese authorities by updating Britain's position on Tibet.
Britain's stance dates back to the Simla Accords of 1913 which laid down the boundaries between Tibet and British-ruled India.
At the time, London recognised China's 'suzerainty' over the Tibetan region, but crucially not its sovereignty.
Suzerainty refers to the power one nation holds over another country that nevertheless has some form of self-government. But the use of the word has left some Chinese leaders believing that Britain still secretly harbours a wish to break up China.
Mr Miliband said the customary terminology was hampering Britain's relationship with Beijing over the aim for greater autonomy for Tibet, as well as respect for human rights.
'Our recognition of China's "special position" in Tibet developed from the outdated concept of suzerainty,' he said.
'Some have used this to cast doubt on the aims we are pursuing and to claim that we are denying Chinese sovereignty over a large part of its own territory.
'We have made clear to the Chinese government, and publicly, that we do not support Tibetan independence.'
Lord Patten, former governor of Hong Kong, said the Foreign Office had abolished a 'quaint eccentricity', a move he believes was long overdue.
However, the timing of Mr Miliband's decision has sparked anger, especially following the crushing of anti-China protests in Tibet this year.
The Free Tibet Campaign accused the Minister of 'rewriting history' and urged people to write to their MPs demanding that the Government back a fact-finding mission to the region to investigate human rights abuses.
Robbie Barnett, a Tibetan expert at Columbia University in New York, claimed the Government had weakened the hand of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader.
He said: 'This is more than a bargaining chip. This is the entire legal and political foundation for these talks.'
The Tibetan spiritual leader says he is seeking autonomy, not independence, and the right for Tibetans to worship freely and maintain their culture. Continued
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America may have rid itself of physical slavery - but it has made all Americans the mental slaves of the media.
In this world there are diferent forms of slavery.
One of those forms is to be shackled and forced to work.
Another form is to be mentally enslaved and your opinions and perceptions inculcated into you via the conditioning systems of the media.
Th Left are well aware of the power of media conditioning.
One of the major leaders of the far left, Herbert Marcuse, wrote a book about it called One Dimensional Man ;
Marcuse wrote that in a media dominated society the individual is a slave.
The individual is so alienated by the technical nature of society and their roles in society that they have no perception of what is actually the reality of their society.
They get their ideas, perceptions, opinions, and values from the media. They have no idea of the real problems and issues in society - their opinions on such things are products of the media.
The media not only tells them what car to buy, what sort of house they should live in, where they should go on holiday, what they should be wearing, what they should be watching on TV but also what they think and who they should vote for.
Political propaganda is simply an extension of advertising.
Most human beings in advanced societies are mental slaves.
They are unable and unwilling, to either take the time to re-educate themselves from the grip of media conditoning or in most cases are unable to see that they are slaves. Continued - Please Read in Full
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A furious row has erupted after town hall officials made dozens of plane trips all over the world at taxpayers' expense.
Staff at Islington Council caught flights more than 100 times during the last year, new figures show.
Between May and September, taxpayers forked out £3,096 for several social workers to visit Ethiopia on a fact-finding mission.
They also paid to send social workers to the Caribbean to assess the suitability of relatives of children in care as well for trips to Barcelona, Amsterdam, Palma and Boston in the U.S.
Matthew Elliot, of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: 'This is a totally inappropriate use of taxpayers' money.
'People pay taxes for services in Islington, not for officials to gad all over the world at their expense.'
He added: 'It is impossible to imagine what benefit these trips could have brought to the way the council does things.'
Council officials have also taken internal UK flights instead of using a train - provoking fury among environmentalists.
Three times council officials have been flown to Newcastle at a cost of £900 - snubbing the much cheaper railway.
Green Party councillor Katie Dawson said: 'The train to Newcastle leaves from Islington for goodness sake.
'It is outrageous. Someone should lose their job for this.'
She added: 'People need to stop being so attached to these trips.
'There are few occasions when you can't find something similar in this country or use technology instead of travelling.'
Cllr Terry Stacy said: 'Air travel is not the norm for council officers. We're concerned about the environment but we need to provide value for money.
'When overseas travel is required, as it sometimes is to resolve child protection cases, it's cheaper and quicker to fly.
'I wish our officers could walk on water but they can't.'
He added: 'Staff guidelines are clear: for UK travel they should take the train when practical.' News Source
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Very Liberal!
A councillor at the centre of a furore over her job as a stripper
and kissogram has finally admitted defeat and stood down.
Myrna Bushell, a Liberal Democrat town councillor in Bideford, runs a phone sex line from her home and advertises herself on a website as 'Jessica - a very sexy auburn professional Devon lady, kissogram, strippergram and stripper entertainer'.
But she has decided to stand down from her council role because her colleagues no longer take her seriously, it emerged today.
The 35-year-old mother-of-one offers 'novelty party entertainment' including £85 for a kissogram, £95 for a strippergram or a £110 for a topless strippergram.
She offers to dress up as a French maid, waitress, schoolgirl, biker, nurse, headmistress, 'devil lady' or Catwoman.
She appears on two websites runs by the Xanadu Entertainment Agency and boasts she has appeared in Escort magazine and a Sky TV shows about the 'secrets of suburbia'.
Mrs Bushell was elected onto Bideford town council in Devon in May last year but three colleagues quit the party in protest two months later after her business was exposed.
At the time she defended her decision to continue with her chatline operation, saying: 'I've got to earn a living somehow.
'The reason I do it is to pay my bills and be able to spend quality time with my family. It's not incompatible with being an elected councillor and it's not illegal.'
The council said at the time that she had not breached the councillors' code of conduct because her business activities did not impinge on her duties.
But Mrs Bushell, who still runs a knick-knack shop in Bideford, now says she had no choice but to stand down as a councillor because she has lost the respect of her fellow politicians and because she is now a single parent.
'After the publicity of my personal life last year, I never really recovered and it made it virtually impossible to gain support or open lines of communication necessary to fulfil my duties,' she said.
'Some people within the council never gave me the respect as an equal and therefore my opinions were discredited before I even made them.'
Mrs Bushell stood for election along with husband Mel and both won a seat but the couple, who have a six year-old daughter, have since split.
She said: 'Being a single parent from the beginning of this year has meant I have been struggling to juggle my parental responsibilities, my business and the council.
'There just isn't enough time in the day and my daughter was not getting the time she needed as I have had to work more to make ends meet.'
She added: 'I look at the people within councils and realise it is impossible for someone like me to stay there without making huge sacrifices.
'Unless you are rich, unemployed or retired there is little possibility of being able to manage work, home life and the council.' News Source
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Winehouse, the singer, lashed out at photographers hours after her husband was released from prison.
The Grammy winning singer was pictured attacking the cameras outside her north London home. Her father Mitch was at her side as she tried to to grab the lens.
Earlier today, her husband Blake Fielder-Civil was released from prison. But he checked straight into rehab - believed to be part of the terms of his release, it has been reported.
Fielder-Civil, 26, was sentenced for helping to beat up a pub landlord and perverting the course of justice.
He admitted assaulting James King at the Macbeth pub in Hoxton, east London, in June 2006 and trying to force Mr King to withdraw his complaint with a £200,000 bribe.
The court heard Fielder-Civil was high on alcohol and cocaine when the attack took place.
He was jailed for 27 months at the hearing three months ago at Snaresbrook Crown Court. He had already spent nine months in jail on remand when he was sentenced.
The troubled singer was not at her husband's side when he was released from Edmunds Hill Prison in Suffolk.
Winehouse recently checked out of the London Clinic following treatment for a lung infection.
The singer has suffered from emphysema in the past, and was admitted to hospital after she collapsed at her home in June.
Mitch Winehouse said at the time: "It's in its early stages, but had it gone on for another month they painted a very vivid picture of her sitting there with a mask on her face struggling to breathe.
The doctors have told her if she goes back to smoking drugs it won't just ruin her voice, it will kill her." News Source
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A teenage thug who left a 5in blade embedded in a schoolboy's skull was given a life sentence today.
Shocking X-ray images revealed how 15-year-old 'Ahmed' was stabbed through his forehead as he tried to stop his friends being mugged.
The blade was plunged into his brain, removing five per cent of his total brain matter but miraculously the teenager survived and, ten months on, has enrolled for a college course.
If anyone had tried to pull the weapon out, the boy, who can only be identified by his first name, would have died. Yassin Elmansouri, 17, was today named as the offender responsible for the horrific attack.
He was also convicted of stabbing two other youths in the knife rampage outside Tesco in the Old Kent Road in South-East London in November last year.
A jury at Inner London Crown Court found Elmansouri guilty of attempted murder and two counts of inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent, charges he denied.
Today Judge Colin Smith sentenced Elmansouri to life and ordered he serve a minimum of seven years before he can be released. He will remain on licence for life.
Ahmed, who is now 16, had tried to stop his friends being robbed by Elmansouri and two other muggers.
He was stabbed in the forehead with the bendy kitchen knife and was admitted to hospital with the blade still lodged in his skull.
Only the skill of surgeons saved his life.
One of his friends was stabbed twice in the back and a second mate was knifed in the shoulder. Fortunately they have made good recoveries from their injuries.
Elmansouri was caught after forensic testing linked him to a mobile phone and a hat dropped at the scene. He was arrested at his home on December 1.
Sentencing him Judge Smith said: 'You were with a group of youths who confronted the three victims and another youth and attempted to rob one of them of a mobile phone in the street.
'When the victims resisted you produced a knife which was exhibited in the case. It was recovered from the head of Ahmed by the surgeon. Continued
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Liberal Democrat peer Lord Lester of Herne Hill has resigned as unpaid adviser to Justice Secretary Jack Straw.
A brief statement issued by the Lib Dem whips office in the Lords, said he was standing down because he did not agree with "the Government's current proposals for a Bill of Rights and Responsibilities, and with some aspects of its proposals for constitutional reform."
Lord Lester, a noted human rights lawyer, was appointed by Gordon Brown last year shortly after he became Prime Minister to advise on constitutional affairs. It was part of the GOAT plan - a government of all the talents.
Mr Straw said: "I am very grateful to Lord Lester for the expert advice he has provided over the last year on a range of subjects relevant to the Government's constitutional reform agenda. "The Government's consideration of these issues has benefited greatly from his involvement."
But Shadow Justice Secretary Nick Herbert said: "One by one the talents who were recruited into Gordon Brown's big tent are crawling out. Jack Straw's plans for adding yet more rights on top of the Human Rights Act are clearly in real trouble.
"His ideas will be a paradise for lawyers but as Jacqui Smith clearly recognises a disaster for the fight against crime.
"Ministers should be focusing on helping people during the recession. Instead they are wasting time fighting over muddled proposals which simply have no relevance to people's day to day concerns."
Lord Lester's resignation comes after the Government's plans were condemned as a "charter for expensive lawsuits".
The proposal for a "bill of rights and responsibilities" appears in disarray following a Cabinet revolt.
Several senior ministers have been reported to say the plans are unworkable. News Source
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So TRUE! But Rich coming from someone that is not in touch with 'REAL LIFE' herself!
Voters are being turned off politics by career politicians with no experience of "real life," a Cabinet minister has said.
Hazel Blears criticised the "deeply unhealthy" move towards politics being dominated by an elite whose whole careers have been spent in political jobs, a description that fits several of her Cabinet colleagues.
In a speech to the Hansard Society, the Communities Secretary, also attacked political bloggers and the media for fuelling a "culture of cynicism and pessimism" about British politics.
Miss Blears is a former solicitor who entered parliament in 1997 at the age of 41. In her speech, she said too many MPs and ministers have little or no wider experience before coming into politics.
"There is a trend towards politics being seen as a career move rather than call to public service,"
"Increasingly we have seen a 'transmission belt' from university activist, MPs' researcher, think-tank staffer, special adviser, to Member of Parliament and ultimately to the front bench.
"Now, there's nothing wrong with any of those jobs, but it is deeply unhealthy for our political class to be drawn from narrowing social base and range of experience.
Although she did not identify any career politicians by name, Miss Blears' "transmission belt" largely describes the career paths of several of her Cabinet colleagues.
David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, James Purnell, the Pensions Secretary and Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary, are all former advisers to Labour ministers who entered parliament in their 30s with little or no professional experience outside Westminster.
The same can be said of David Cameron, the Tory leader, and George Osborne, the shadow chancellor.
Miss Blears, who represents her home town of Salford, said the Commons is too middle class and needs more MPs with experience of hardship.
She said: "We need more MPs in Parliament from a wider pool of backgrounds: people who know what it is to worry about the rent collector's knock, or the fear of lay-off, so that the decisions we take reflect the realities people face."
Miss Blears also attacked the media including those who keep internet-based blogs for undermining trust in politics.
In other words she is condemning those who reveal failures of this Marxist Labour Party! And the mistrust is for good reason when we are constantly being lied to with impunity! (Ed)
She said: "Political blogs are written by people with disdain for the political system and politicians, who see their function as unearthing scandals, conspiracies and perceived hypocrisy."
People should know about scandals and the hypocrisy, by this statement alone she is attacking those who expose the corruption within the government. She would rather YOU the people didn't know their grubby little secrets so they can continue living off you like parasites! (Ed)
The minister named bloggers including "Guido Fawkes," the online identity of Paul Staines, a former financial trader.
Mr Staines is guilty of "vicious nihilism," she said.
In reply posted on his website, Mr Staines said it was politicians, not bloggers, who had made voters cynical.
He said: "What has deservedly brought about disengagement from and cynicism towards politicians is spin, triangulation, focus group derived policies, positioning purely for partisan advantage, vacuous slogans and meaningless promises." News Source
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Truancy levels have risen even though dozens of parents have been sent to jail and thousands more have been given criminal records because their children miss school.
Between 2002 and 2006, a total of 72 parents in England and Wales were sent to prison for failing to ensure their children went to school. In all, 24,553 parents were convicted of allowing their children to truant, according to official Government data.
The number of people being convicted and given criminal records rose by two thirds in four years, from 2,824 in 2002 to 4,771 in 2006. Most of them were fined, with the maximum penalty set at £1,000.
Despite the growing use of criminal sanctions against parents the number of pupils in England playing truant has risen by a around third since Labour came to power in 1997. Around 60,000 children play truant every day.
Under the Education Act, a parent found guilty of failing to secure a child's regular attendance at school without reasonable justification can be fined up to £1,000 or sent to prison for up to three months.
In 2002, Patricia Amos, a mother of five from Banbury, Oxfordshire, became the first person in the UK to be jailed for failing to send her children to school
In July this year, Christine Davison of Chester-le-Street, County Durham was jailed for six weeks for failing to send her two children to school. In June, a Devon woman was given a 28-day sentence after a court heard her teenage daughter had attended just seven times in 195 school days.
The number of parents being fined by the courts for their children's truancy rose from 1,772 in 2002 to 2,952 in 2006.
Thousands more parents have had to pay £50 penalty notices for truancy. Last year, 16,550 fines were handed out by local authorities – the equivalent of 87 for every school day and almost three times as many as were issued in 2005.
The figures for parents being jailed were obtained by Annette Brooke, the Liberal Democrat schools spokeswoman Continued
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By their own petard... They never learn!
An Indian playboy who was spared a jail term after agreeing to apologise to the woman he attacked is now suing UK immigration for 'trauma' after being detained at Heathrow over his criminal record.
Prashant Modi, who is the son of a millionaire oil tycoon, admitted sexually assaulting a sleeping student in his hotel room in London.
But 'geeky' Modi walked free from court after the Old Bailey gave him a six-month suspended sentence and ordered him to write a letter of apology to his 22-year-old Swedish victim.
The case generated controversy as it was the first time that such an order had been made in a case involving a sexual offence.
Now the 35-year-old businessman who lives in New Delhi, has launched a bid for damages of £5,000 from the UK Border Agency after being arrested on return to the UK for a business trip.
He has issued a High Court writ for compensation after being confronted by immigration officers who asked him about his sex conviction.
Modi says he was unlawfully held in custody in the control area of Heathrow for 13 hours and 45 minutes, before he decided the leave the UK and fly home on February 20 this year.
His application to the British High Commission in India for a new visa is pending, but the commission says his existing visa is still valid for travel, according to Modi.
He says that since his conviction he travelled to the UK nine times, and previously he had been granted leave to enter the UK as a business visitor.
But when he arrived at Heathrow from India on February 19 this year, he was held by immigration.
He claims that his detention for almost 14 hours was wholly unreasonable, and refusal to grant him leave to enter the UK has effectively put his business and UK investment on hold.
The move, which has angered campaigners, comes two years after he was convicted of sexual assault in August 2006. Modi had been facing 18 months in prison over the attack in January 2005.
But the Indian was given a six-month suspended sentence when the judge used new legislation to make an 'activity requirement' on the defendant. Continued
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First came the teabag tyrants, instructing office workers on how to boil a kettle.
Now into the nation's workplaces marches an even more interfering force - the packed lunch police.
A taxpayer-funded quango is trying to persuade workers not to buy a sandwich at midday.
Instead they are being told to raid the fridge every morning to make lunch from last night's leftovers.
The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) claims that throwing food away rather than eating it costs the public £5billion a year.
Officials at the £80million-a-year quango said if the food were not wasted it would also save 18million tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year, the equivalent of taking one car in five off the road.
But critics dismissed the campaign as a waste of public money.
Mark Wallace, of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: 'The last thing people need is a quango spending their money to dictate their lunch habits.
We all know how to make sandwiches without unelected busybodies telling us how to.
'If bodies like WRAP were under democratic control they would be abolished in a heartbeat for spouting rubbish like this.'
The attempt to stop staff buying sandwiches is the latest in a series of state-backed efforts to make families and workers more environmentally friendly at meal times.
This time last year WRAP encouraged families to drop Christmas pudding - said to produce too much waste - and eat ice cream after the turkey instead.
Earlier this week a separate taxpayer- supported body, Envirowise, called on businesses to appoint tea monitors to ensure that kettles are not overfilled and to use teapots rather than a teabag in every cup. But despite the critics, WRAP officials remain unrepentant.
Julia Falcon, from the sandwich campaign, said: 'Most of the time there is a packed lunch waiting in the fridge if only we noticed it.
'There really is such a thing as a free lunch when you take last night's leftovers with you.'
She also advised those office workers with access to a microwave to use it at lunchtime.
'As the days start to get colder a piping hot lunch made from last night's leftovers could be a welcome option for busy workers,' she said.
WRAP said a survey of 4,000 staff by YouGov found the average worker buys sandwiches or lunch out one-and-a-half times a week, at a cost of £3.33.
This amounts to £5.5billion a year spent at shops, cafes and coffee houses that could be saved, the campaigners said.
At the same time, food left at home in the fridge will be thrown away and end up in landfill, where it produces greenhouse gases. News Source
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A council that was criticised for holding a lavish residential conference costing thousands has done it again weeks later.
Derby City Council has organised the two-day conference for 80 primary school deputy heads, costing £305 per attendee.
The residential conference, to be held at Eastwood Hall, in Nottinghamshire, comes only a month after a similar event for head teachers was held at the Hoar Cross Hall Spa Resort, in Staffordshire, that cost £325 per teacher.
Parents and local councillors expressed "disgust" at the "huge amounts of money being spent on a jolly".
Councillors branded the decision "unacceptable" and said cheaper venues - like the council's own Assembly Rooms or even schools- were available.
Cllr Philip Hickson said: "At a time when people are facing financial constraints it really is not acceptable, it's a slap in the face to taxpayers.
"There has been a huge reaction by the public in terms of emails and letters by people who are disgusted.
"They are struggling financially and there's a huge amount of money being spent on a jolly," he said
Dave Wilkinson, Derby branch secretary of teaching union NASUWT, added: "It would be a lot cheaper to go there and back for the day. It's the residential aspect that is the waste of money."
The council defended the conference and highlighted that each school had paid for the trip out of its own budget.
Andrew Flack, Derby City Council corporate director for children and young people said: "Schools have complete autonomy over their budgets, we don't control the expenditure at all, they make decisions about what they spend.
"We put on the conference, they decide whether they want to come to it. This is not unique to Derby, there are many authorities that do this," he added. News Source
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Osama Bin Laden's son has claimed political asylum in Spain - after being refused entry to live in the UK with his British wife.
Omar Osama bin Laden, 27, is being held in Madrid's Barajas Airport after arriving in the Spanish capital on a Moroccan-bound flight from Egypt.
Omar, toyboy husband of a grandmother-of-five previously known as Jane Felix-Browne, is reported to be in the transit hall of the airport's newly-built terminal four.
He is expected to remain there while Interpol confirms his identity and officials consider his asylum claim.
Spanish newspaper El Pais said authorities had decided to process his case 'speedily.'
Omar's surprise asylum claim comes seven months after he was told his British visa application was being turned down at the British Embassy in Cairo because of suggestions he could still be loyal to his terrorist dad.
He is thought to have flown into Madrid without his British wife, now known as Zaina Alsabah-bin Laden.
The couple were planning to move to her £550,000 home in the village of Moulton, near Northwich in Cheshire, when he was refused a UK visa.
Mrs bin Laden, a member of the parish council in Moulton until recently, is severely visually impaired and said she needs access to medical treatment but refuses to be apart from her husband.
It was thought they were going to mount a legal challenge to battle for a UK visa. The nature of his asylum bid has not been made clear. Continued
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Spain's Interior Ministry says it has rejected an asylum request from a son of Osama Bin Laden.
A ministry official says the government determined that Omar Osama Bin Laden did not 'meet the conditions necessary for entering Spain'.
The official would not elaborate or discuss Bin Laden's reasons for seeking asylum upon arriving at Madrid's Barajas Airport from Egypt on Monday.
Bin Laden now has 24 hours to appeal and currently remains in an airport transit area.
The 27-year-old tried to claim political asylum in Spain after being refused entry seven months ago to live in the UK with his British wife - grandmother of five, Jane Felix-Browne.
He was told his British visa application was turned down at the British Embassy in Cairo because of suggestions he could still be loyal to his terrorist dad.
He is thought to have flown into Madrid without his British wife, now known as Zaina Alsabah-Bin Laden.
The couple were planning to move to her £550,000 home in the village of Moulton, near Northwich in Cheshire.
Mrs Bin Laden, a member of the parish council in Moulton until recently, is severely visually impaired and said she needs access to medical treatment but refuses to be apart from her husband.
Saudi-Arabian-born Omar, one of 11 children fathered by bin Laden with his first wife Najwa, has another wife and a two-year-old child.
The newly-weds set up home together in Cairo shortly after their marriage.
Mrs Felix-Browne, who has been married five times before, has insisted: 'I hope people don't judge me too harshly. I married the son, not the father.
'To me he is just Omar. I hope people will take a step back and think what it was like when they fell in love. He is the most beautiful person I have ever met. His heart is pure, he is pious, quiet, a true gentleman, and he is my best friend.' News Source
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Dr Annette Wood, TB lead for the Health Protection Agency (HPA) in the West Midlands, said that immigration is one of the factors led to the spread of the disease.
According to the latest report from the HPA, 50 per cent of the people affected by TB in the West Midlands are from a South Asian background.
And the study, released last week, shows that 32 per cent are from a Sub-Saharan background.
Dr Wood said: “Immigration has had a part to play in the spread of TB, but overall it is a complicated picture.
“The burden of TB exists mainly in high-risk groups such as the homeless and people involved in substance abuse.
“It is also more of a risk for our ageing population and prisoners who are exposed to it.
“But TB is more common in people who have families who come from places with high rates of TB, such as South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.”
The HPA figures also revealed that the spread of the disease appears to be stabilising after growing steadily for the last decade.
But experts in the region are warning the figures are still too high.
In total there were 928 cases of TB reported in the West Midlands in 2007. This compares with 941 in 2006 – a small decline of 1.4 per cent.
Nationally there were 8,417 cases in 2007, compared with 8,495 in 2006, a decrease of 0.9 per cent.
TB is a potentially fatal infectious disease caused by bacteria. It usually attacks the lungs but can also affect the central nervous system.
There have been several high profile outbreaks over the last year.
The Sunday Mercury revealed mum-of-four Sherronie Ferguson died from the disease after doctors allegedly failed to diagnose it.
The 27-year-old, from Wolverhampton, went to medics after falling seriously ill, but her family say she was sent home with simple antibiotics after diagnosing a chest infection.
The single mum was eventually diagnosed with TB in February, but she died in March.
Last week 750 pupils at Clough Hall Technology School in, Kidsgrove, Staffordshire were offered free screening for TB after their teacher was diagnosed with the disease. News Source
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Myth that failed Asylum Seekers can't get employment???
Two Norwich Union employees (failed asylum seekers) have been jailed for five-and-a-half years after stealing customers' personal details and using them to scam hundreds of thousands of pounds from policyholders.
Failed Zimbabwean asylum seekers Edward Dzingai, 27, and Gregory Maumbe, 26, both worked at Norwich Union's Pomona House in Pear Street, Ecclesall Road, Sheffield.
They used their positions to gain access to the personal insurance policy details of 28 customers or clients for whom the company had no current address.
The two insurance workers targeted 28 policies yielding more than £655,395, between September 2005 and October 2007. They also tried to steal a further £144,000 but failed.
Dzingai and Maumbe both pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to obtain money transfers by deception.
Maumbe admitted receiving up to £40,000 for his part in the operation, while Dzingai said he received between £1500 and £2000 for five different transactions.
They have both been sentenced to five years in prison for deception, with an extra six months for possessing fake passports.
David Gwyer, media relations manager of Norwich Union Life, said it was the company that had uncovered the scandal.
He said: "People might ask why we employed these people in the first place, but the fact of the matter was they were good enough to get past immigration.
"They had worked for us for a number of years and been in this country for a number of years."
According to Mr Gwyer, the pair had been working in an area that involved looking at unclaimed assets and had effectively pretended to be policyholders themselves to gain access to the cash.
He said: "We have tens of millions of pounds that we are currently and actively trying to reunite with the people that own it, we write to the last known addresses but as you will appreciate, a lot of the time we just come up against a brick wall.
"What they were able to do is step in at that point and present themselves as the people we were looking for." News Source
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Members of a gang of illegal immigrants who ran cannabis factories have been jailed.
They converted 11 houses in Hoylake, Wallasey, Prenton, Birkenhead and other parts of Merseyside to grow cannabis worth nearly £500,000.
In a raid on one of the houses, in King’s Gap, Hoylake, more than £85,000 worth of the drug was recovered.
Gang members who acted as “gardeners”, tending to the plants, were given shorter sentences, while more senior members got longer.
Dong Wang, 41, and Tian Li, 28, who were linked to more than one property and managed the operation, were jailed for three years. Zhi Wong, 53, Xiang Shi, 23, Xiao Liao, 51, and Letian Dong, 32, were given two-year sentences. Ng Leng, 46, was jailed for 28 months.
The men will be deported once they have served their time.
Judge Nigel Gilmour QC said: “You committed the crime so you could eat and support yourselves in a foreign country. “You know what you were doing was against the law.”
The court heard six of the illegal immigrants were smuggled into the UK from China. Most owed huge debts to people smugglers and claimed not to have been paid for their work in the drug factory.
At least two of the men had left China because they were persecuted for their religious beliefs.
The equipment used will be donated to local allotments. News Source
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This is the shocking image of a 15-year-old boy left fighting for his life after a brutal attack outside a teenage disco last week.
Gino Hargreaves was attacked in Blackburn last Thursday night after leaving the alcohol-free disco at a town centre nightclub.
As he walked home, a group of up to three young men forced the teenager to the ground and kicked him as he lay defenceless.
Onlookers described hearing a 'sickening sound' as Gino received a severe blow to the head.
The teenager is now in intensive care at Salford's Hope Hospital where he has been sedated into a coma. His family, who have been maintaining a bedside vigil, issued an emotional appeal for witnesses.
At a press conference, Gino's grandmother, Diane Campbell, said: 'This family are totally devastated and in a state of shock as we watch our son, grandson, nephew and cousin fighting for his life on a life-support machine.
'I would appeal to anyone who has any information to please come forward and contact the police for the sake of Gino. We have to stop this happening to another family.'
She added: 'There is no honour in this attack, just the opposite in fact. It brings great shame on our community who are producing such cowardly vindictive thugs, because who else other than a thug would treat a child in this way?'
Police believe three young men of Asian origin may have been involved in the assault.
Detective Chief Inspector Mark Gray of Lancashire Constabulary said the attack was 'extremely serious'.
He was seen on the ground and whilst on the ground defenceless one of the members of the group has kicked him with a severe blow to the head, giving off a sickening sound. Continued
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The boss of a Government agency charged with checking the background of security guards quit his £100,000-a-year job today after his own staff were themselves found not to have proper clearance.
Mike Wilson, chief executive of the gaffe-prone Security Industry Authority, was forced out within hours of the news being made public.
The Home Office, which oversees the SIA, has ordered an 'urgent' review of all decisions made by staff who had not been checked for criminal records or for their immigration status. There were seven staff working without clearance - at least one of whom has subsequently failed security checks.
The review is desperately trying to establish if any security guards - who hold posts doing everything from working on pub doors to protecting Government buildings - have been wrongly cleared. The Tories accused the Government of 'sneaking out' the bad news, which was released in a written statement to Parliament amid a 1.5 per cent cut in interest rates, and the aftermath of Barack Obama's historic US election triumph.
Questions were also raised over why the fiasco was not made public sooner. Ministers were informed there was an 'emerging issue' at the SIA - which last year was found to have cleared more than 7,000 illegal immigrants to work as guards - on October 30, and the Home Secretary was given a detailed briefing on November 3. More than two weeks passed between a temporary worker failing a security check, and the scandal being announced to Parliament.
Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve said: 'This is a major breach of one of the pillars of our security apparatus, and the second time it has happened on this Home Secretary’s watch. Continued
Thursday 6th November 2008
Oh yes' the EU Directive..
We should have guessed!
Jobless Eastern Europeans who return home are being paid dole money by the British taxpayer, it emerged last night.
Thousands who leave because they have lost their jobs in the economic downturn could benefit from the £60-a-week handouts.
They stem from a little-known EU directive which says that provided an unemployed worker is seeking a job in their homeland, they can continue to be paid benefits by the country where they were laid off.
Job centre managers in Poland are even holding workshops and seminars on how claimants can keep using the UK for unemployment handouts.
The criteria is that a person must have been claiming Jobseeker's Allowance here before they go home.
Around half of the one million citizens of other former Eastern Bloc countries who flocked to Britain after joining the EU in 2004 are believed to have now left.
Renata Cygan, of the regional job office in Opole, south-west Poland, said: 'We work on the assumption that if someone worked abroad, they should claim benefits there.
'Why should we pay? That's why we're organising information meetings about how to seek benefits abroad.'
Another job centre in Rzeszow says it has received more inquiries about unemployment benefits in one week than it had in the whole of the previous year.
The Government said British workers who lost their jobs in Poland could benefit under the same rules. But many more Polish workers came to the UK than the Britons who went to work there.
Mark Wallace, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: 'This is typical of crazy EU rules which put so much of a burden on British taxpayers. Continued
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Each asylum seeker in Britain gets a cash payout of £42.16 per week, the current National Asylum Support Service (NASS) rate - in addition to all the other benefits, which work out to a minimum of £200 per week.
Even this figure does not include the cost of translation services, NHS costs, prison and judicial costs and so on.
The cash payout figure has emerged into the public domain after Solihull Council refused to increase the level of payment it gives to failed asylum seekers - insisting that it is up to central government to fund the change.
The £42.16 per week does not include their rent, utility bills, TV license, items deemed ‘essential expenditure’ and a fortnightly travel allowance of £13.50.
Once all this is added up, the total amount paid out by taxpayers is well in excess of £200 per week.
There were 5,720 applications for asylum in the UK in the second quarter of 2008 (April to June) alone, according to the Office for National Statistics. This was 15 percent higher than the second quarter of 2007.
Including dependants, there were 6,840 asylum applications in the second quarter of 2008, 13 percent higher than the second quarter of 2007.
In 2002, there were 85,865 asylum applications to the UK - up 18 percent on the previous year.
Forty-three percent of those seeking asylum in the UK in 2002 came from Iraq (17%), Zimbabwe (13%), Afghanistan (9%), Somalia (9%) and China (8%). Other countries of origin of substantial numbers of asylum seekers include Sri Lanka, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
According to government figures, a total of 2220 failed asylum seekers were granted support between April and June this year instead of being deported. News Source
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So how many Asylum Seekers are GENUINE?
The following News Item from 2007 speaks for itself
Are these people afraid for their lives where handouts are concerned?
Or Economic Migrants simply posing as Asylum Seekers?
A total of £36 million has been paid out to failed asylum seekers to enable them to set up businesses back in their own countries, it was reported today.
More than 23,000 migrants have received payments of up to £4,000 each under the Voluntary Assisted Return and Reintegration Programme since it was set up in 1999.
It has enabled them to set up businesses from market stalls to clothes factories in countries as diverse as South Africa, China and Colombia.
Among the businesses set up as part of the scheme are ostrich farms, a vineyard and even a beauty salon. The details were contained in documents from the Geneva-based International Organisation for Migration, which administers the scheme on behalf of the UK Government.
The Home Office said that the programme - which is part-funded by the EU - offered good value for money compared to forcible returns, which cost £11,000 for each failed asylum seeker.
However, the payments were condemned by shadow home secretary David Davis, who told The Sunday Telegraph: "Now the price of the Government's failure to secure our borders is all too clear.
"Given their inability to deport illegal immigrants, they have had to resort to bribing them to leave - with the taxpayer picking up the bill."
The disclosure comes as the Government is preparing next week to announce new curbs on foreign visitors from outside the European Union coming to Britain.
David Davis has condemned the government over payments made to failed asylum seekers to set up businesses in their own countries
Immigration Minister Liam Byrne said that it was part of the "biggest shake-up of the immigration system in its history".
"Over the next 12 months, we'll see the biggest shake-up of the immigration system in its history. The final front, I believe, is foreign visitor routes where change is needed," he said. News Source
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Is this what they mean by Distribution of Wealth?
Your Taxes ploughed overseas whilst many of you loose your homes and find it hard to even feed your families?
This is the so called Marxist 'Fair Play'
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(Recap: Last Year July 2007)
Thousands of failed asylum seekers are being paid up to £3,500 taxpayers' cash to start their own BUSINESSES when they are sent home.
They are given the huge hand-outs with no questions asked — and the government has absolutely NO way of knowing what they do with our money, we can reveal.
Last year alone nearly 5,000 were sent packing with a wad of cash.
If a whole family is kicked out EVERY MEMBER can claim the state grant, meaning they walk away with a FORTUNE.
The great giveaway is part of the government's Voluntary Assisted Return and Reintegration Programme, for asylum seekers who agree to return to their home countries.
The cash is also freely dished out to be spent on education, training or housing.
We are not afraid for our lives anymore, we now have Taxpayer money
Home Office Minister Liam Byrne said three-fifths of asylum-seekers claim the hand-outs, with 87 per cent saying they want to start their own business.
But he admits there are no checks to verify that the ventures are genuine.
Mr Byrne added: "No criteria are used to select recipients for help with reintegration in their country of return as all those who return through the Voluntary Assisted Return and Reintegration Programme are eligible."
Even those who sneaked into Britain illegally can claim up to £1,000 each.
The handouts scandal has enraged critics of Britain's immigration policy.
Sir Andrew Green, of the Migrationwatch group, said: "It acts as a strong incentive for more asylum seekers to come here. If they succeed they get a meal ticket for life.
"And if they fail they go home with a very handy sum of money."
Tory backbencher David Davies said: "This is basically an advert to come over here and try your luck."
Blair Gibbs, of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "It is one thing paying these people's air fares to go home. But it is quite another to give them money to start a business.
"It is absurd to think we have an obligation to these people once they have left the country.
"Most people will think 'if we don't owe them a living while they are in Britain' we certainly don't owe them a living when they go home." News Source
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When you reach as far as you go within your abilities of your career
Shout, threaten and bring out the Race Card! The idiots will Pay Out!
Britain's highest-ranking Asian police officer is set to receive around £300,000 in compensation after threatening to air dynamite claims of racial discrimination at an employment tribunal.
Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, 53, is close to agreeing an out-of-court settlement after originally claiming £1.2million from Scotland Yard.
Negotiations between his legal representatives and Metropolitan Police Authority officials are understood to be at an 'advanced stage' and an announcement could be made within days.
Mediation talks have been taking place to reach an agreement before December 1, when Sir Ian Blair steps down as Metropolitan Police Commissioner. The payout to Mr Ghaffur is likely to intensify the debate about the compensation culture engulfing Britain's biggest force.
Insiders believe that one of the reasons for the deal is to avoid a potentially embarrassing public hearing at a tribunal next year - at which he may have levelled accusation that Sir Ian and other top officers were racist. A source said: 'The Yard wants to wipe the slate clean before a new man - or woman - takes over. Continued
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British aid to Pakistan has doubled to a record £480m over the next three years as part of the world's Millennium Development Goals to reduce poverty.
Some £250m of that is being used to boost mainstream education, including at religious schools, or madrassas.
A representative for the madrassas said the cash would help modernise teaching.
Although the UK's Pakistan Country Assistance Plan is separate from the two countries' counter-terrorism co-operation, the indirect effect is to steer students away from certain madrassas where they are at risk of being recruited by violent extremists.
'Contemporary subjects'
The chairman of Pakistan's Board of Madrassas, Wakil Khan, said British aid money was needed to pay up to 80,000 teachers working to a contemporary syllabus, as part of an ongoing programme to reform the country's estimated 15,000 madrassas.
He said the reforms were taking place in three stages.
Firstly, all the country's madrassas are being registered, with 9,400 so far officially contacting the government.
Secondly, the syllabus is being nationalised by introducing contemporary subjects.
Thirdly, madrassas are being made part of the mainstream education system. They will use computer hardware and software, with those leaving at the end of their studies eligible for further education.
Many Muslims say madrassas have acquired an undeserved reputation for extremism after it emerged that one of the four London bombers, Shehzad Tanweer, attended one prior to blowing himself and others up in 2005. Continued
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The grandmother of a Thurrock teen who was mugged by a gang of youths threatening to use knives has told of her fury that Essex Police did not interview him until four days later.
The grandmother, from South Ockendon, feels let down by the police as they first arranged to take her grandson’s statement nearly 24 hours after the mugging was reported, and then didn’t turn up at all.
The mother of the 15-year-old victim, whose phone was stolen, received an apology from the police when she queried why they hadn’t turned up the next day, but no explanation.
The police then said they would come on Monday evening to take the statement, but again the family received no visit.
The grandmother said: “When people are frightened, distressed or even hurt, they at least want some immediate reassurance, they don't want to have to wait hours.
"I'm fuming, what kind of message does this send to teenagers- that the police don't give a damn?
“Lets hear it for the boys in blue!”
She added: "I know they are under staffed and have a difficult job, but this is just gross incompetence.
"How many people does it take to get a statement?
"I heard on the radio Saturday that Essex Police claimed there were ‘100 less reported incidents than on Halloween last year’, Well that's probably because people are fed up with what appears to be a lack of urgency, perhaps the real reason is because people think - why bother?"
The police turned up to interview her grandson yesterday evening.
The mugging took place in Grays around 8pm on Halloween night, when three teenage boys, two aged 15 and one aged 14, were approached by a gang of youths at Blackshots.
One of the victims had his mobile phone taken, another was punched in the face, and a third boy was threatened before the gang made off.
Police have released descriptions of three of the attackers. One was a black man aged 17, of slim build, wearing dark clothing.
The second suspect was black, aged 15 to 16, slim, wearing a Nike cap, while the third was black, 17, 5ft 11, wearing a dark hooded top and of stocky build. Anyone with information is asked to contact Grays police on 0300 3334444. News Source
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Cambridge University was accused of being 'out of touch' after allowing an academic to keep his job despite being convicted of possessing sickening pornographic images of children.
Dr Nicholas Hammond, 45, was suspended on full pay as director of studies in modern languages last year after being caught with more than 1,500 vile images on his computers.
They included 30 in the most serious 'level five' category of pornography and other images involving babies as young as just two days old.
But he was controversially spared jail last month and has now been told by university bosses that he can return to work in April at historic Gonville and Caius College.
Alumni at the college, which was founded in 1348, include physicist Stephen Hawking, Francis Crick, who helped discover the structure of DNA, and former Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke.
In Hammond's role as a reader - one step below the position of professor - he gives lectures, provide supervision for students and conducts research.
Children's charity Kidscape yesterday condemned the university for closing ranks and sending out the wrong message.
Director Claude Knights said she was 'disgusted' by the decision. 'You would hope such an august body would consider the view of the victims,' she added.
'They are completely out of touch, considering the public feeling and outrage about these types of cases. 'The university has closed ranks - it's like when the Church goes behind closed doors.
'You can't help feeling that if this unemployed Joe Bloggs who had this nasty habit he would not get the same treatment.' Shaun Kelly, head of safeguarding for Action for Children, said: 'We view these as very serious offences.
'These are not victimless crimes. Somewhere there is a child being abused in the production of this image and their development is likely to be seriously affected.'
Zoe Hilton, policy adviser for the NSPCC, said: 'Every time someone downloads one of these images they support this vile trade and the abuse of real children, who have to live the appalling knowledge these pictures will always remain in circulation.' Continued
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Mourners have gathered to pay tribute to an Army cadet who was stabbed to death in a vicious gang attack outside a youth club.
Joseph Lappin, 16, was stabbed in the heart outside the Shrewsbury House Youth Club in Everton, Liverpool, on October 20.
He died shortly after the attack, in which his childhood friend Callum Naden, 17, suffered two serious stab wounds.
Joseph's family and friends gathered at St Oswald's Church in Old Swan, Liverpool, for a requiem mass in his honour. News Source
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Three more people were arrested Tuesday in connection with the murder of teenage army cadet Joseph Lappin.
The dawn arrests bring the total number detained in connection with the 16-year-old’s death to 15.
Police officers swooped at addresses in Everton and Kirkdale as part of their ongoing inquiries.
Two men, aged 22 and 23 from the Everton area, and a 17-year-old from Kirkdale were arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder.
They will be quizzed by detectives on Merseyside today.
Joseph, from Old Swan, was stabbed through the heart after a gang launched an unprovoked attack outside Shrewsbury House Youth Club, in Langrove Street, Everton, two weeks ago.
His friend, 17-year-old Callum Naden, was also knifed in the chest but survived.
Two teenage boys were arrested in the immediate aftermath of the stabbing after a police patrol saw them acting suspiciously near the scene. Continued
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A £330million training programme for firemen was criticised yesterday after it emerged that it is cheaper to send them to the U.S.
Hundreds of firemen have been sent on three-week residential courses in Texas, which fire chiefs believe to be superior to the British scheme.
Each course at the American centre costs £3,950 and includes up to date instruction on dealing with terrorist attacks, floods, earthquakes and fires.
An equivalent scheme, the New Dimensions programme, at the Fire Service College in Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, costs £5,500.
New Dimensions was launched in 2001 in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks. It cost £330million and boasts of providing firemen with the best and most modern tuition possible in post-disaster training.
Britain's 46 fire brigades are not required to use the Fire Service College and it is estimated that since 2003 they have sent 800 firemen the 5,000 miles to the Disaster City centre in Houston, Texas. The £3,950 price of each course includes transatlantic flights, accommodation, food and tuition.
A scathing 38-page report from the National Audit Office says: 'Based on course fees, accommodation and transport, it was cheaper to send firefighters to Texas than it has been to use the Fire Service College - though the UK has advantages in terms of less time away from duty.' Continued
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The three most powerful men in Britain's financial establishment were dragged before the Treasury committee this week, for the equivalent of a day in the stocks.
Instead of the usual polite interrogation by MPs, Chancellor Alistair Darling, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King and Financial Services Authority chief executive Lord Turner faced a barrage of hostile questions from the public.
In an unprecedented move, the committee had invited ordinary people to write or e-mail with questions they would like the three to answer, and 5,000 of them did so - in strong and simple terms.
'Where has all the money gone?' asked Ted Whitton. Why did Mr Darling not anticipate the looming crisis and take decisive action before the roof fell in, Gordon Walsh demanded to know. Gavin Elliot posed the killer question: 'Hasn't regulation failed utterly?' The three accused failed to come up with a straight answer between them.
The scenes in the committee room were eloquent evidence of why we must now hold, as a matter of urgency, a transparent and remorselessly probing inquiry into the credit crunch disaster that is going to cause countless Britons so much suffering.
More than £500 billion of taxpayers' money has been pledged to the British banking sector over the past 18 months. People are enraged. They deserve a full explanation and a cast-iron guarantee that the cash will not be squandered.
A public inquiry may provide clues as to how to deal with the current crisis. If nothing else it would help to ensure that such a catastrophe is not repeated. Continued
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Energy bills are rising more than twice as fast in the UK as in neighbouring nations, it emerged yesterday.
The figures raise fresh questions about foreign firms 'picking the pocket' of UK consumers.
Gas and electricity prices in Britain have risen by 29.7 per cent in the past year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development revealed.
This compares with the European average of 14 per cent and just 8.1 per cent in Portugal.
The OECD, made up of the world's 30 richest nations, is one of the most prestigious economic bodies in the world.
It found that Norway is the only other developed nation facing higher price rises than Britain.
Ed Mayo, chief executive officer of the new super-watchdog Consumer Focus said: 'The UK energy consumer is being clobbered faster and harder than those in Europe.
'Other countries may be doing more to keep their prices down and we should learn from them.
'The UK has a relatively free market, but the freedom to cut prices in the early years seems now to be the freedom to raise prices with impunity. Continued
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The European Parliament's employment committee is due to vote on whether Britain should keep its opt-out from EU rules which limit the working week elsewhere in Europe to 48 hours.
As you can see Government EU Guarantees don't mean squidly dick! (Ed)
Labour members on the committee back the scrapping of the opt-out from the Working Time Directive, despite Prime Minister Gordon Brown's opposition to the change.
Unions inflicted a defeat on Mr Brown at Labour's party conference in September by forcing through a motion calling for an end to the opt-out, negotiated by the former Conservative administration in 1993.
In June, the UK agreed with other EU members that Britain could remain outside the directive in exchange for boosting temporary workers' rights. But the continued opt-out must be endorsed by the European Parliament, and its employment committee is now considering an amendment that would end it in three years' time.
A final decision will be taken at a summit of leaders of the 27 member states, at which Britain will not have a veto.
Labour MEP Stephen Hughes, a member of the employment committee and the employment spokesman of the Parliament's Socialist group, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We are dealing here with a piece of health and safety legislation.
"It is wrong in principle to have an opt-out from health and safety law, it's as simple as that."
Mr Hughes said the amendment would allow weekly hours to be averaged over a year, which he said granted business "phenomenal flexibility" in stepping up working time during busy periods. Continued
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Quick Fix agenda for ID Cards
Jacqui Smith is set to defy union opposition and announce that the first Britons will have to apply for compulsory identity cards from autumn next year.
From Nov 25 this year, ID cards are compulsory for foreign nationals who come to Britain.
However, the Home Secretary will say in a speech to the Social Market Foundation tomorrow [thurs] that compulsory ID cards for "airside" workers will be introduced at two of Britain's airports from next autumn.
The plans will be phased in at Manchester and London City and then expanded to all airports after 18 months. The cards will cost £30 each.
Unions have fought the plans because they are concerned that their members will be used as "guinea pigs" for a national ID card scheme, which has been criticised by civil liberties groups.
The fact that the scheme will only be phased could be seen as a partial victory by opponents.
It also could delay any national roll-out of the scheme until well after the next general election, which must be held by May 2010. If the Tories win power, they have vowed to scrap the scheme.
A spokesman for white collar Public and Commercial Services Union said: "There are concerns among our members that they are being used as guinea pigs to push through a national ID card scheme.
"Added to this are unanswered questions about the security and integrity of the system and how their data will be held."
James Hall, chief executive of the Identity and Passport Service, said last night: "Confirming our plans for identity cards for airside workers is a major step in delivering the National Identity Scheme. Continued
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Internet "black boxes" could be used to record every email and website visit made by computer users in Britain, it has been reported.
Under Government plans to monitor internet traffic, raw data would be collected and stored by the black boxes before being transferred to a giant central database.
The vision was outlined at a meeting between officials from the Home Office and Internet Service Providers earlier this week.
It is further evidence of the Government's desire to have the capability to vet every telephone call, email and internet visit made in the UK, which has already provoked an outcry.
Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, has described it as a "step too far".
The proposal is expected to be put out to consultation as part of the new Communications Data Bill early next year.
At Monday's meeting in London representatives from BT, AOL Europe, O2 and BSkyB were given a presentation of the issues and the technology surrounding the Government's Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP), the name given by the Home Office to the database proposal.
They were told that the security and intelligence agencies wanted to use the stored data to help fight serious crime and terrorism.
One delegate at the meeting told the Independent: "They said they only wanted to return to a position they were in before the emergence of internet communication, when they were able to monitor all correspondence with a police suspect.
The difference here is they will be in a much better position to spy on many more people on the basis of their internet behaviour. Also there's a grey area between what is content and what is traffic. Is what is said in a chat room content or just traffic?" Continued
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Jacqui Smith was last night given a bloody nose by peers who want to help innocent people remove their details from the 'Big Brother' DNA database.
A Tory amendment to the controversial Counter-Terrorism Bill, passed by 161 to 150 in the House of Lords, will force the production of national guidelines on the deletion of records.
The defeat comes only three weeks after peers rejected the Home Secretary's plans to extend the limit on the detention of terrorist suspects from 28 days to 42 in the same Bill.
Lady Hanham, who tabled the amendment, said: 'There is no transparency in the current situation, and the dice is severely loaded against innocent people.'
The amendment would, she said, ensure that most personal details were not kept indefinitely.
The guidelines would establish procedures for people to find out what information was held on them or their dependants, how to ask for it to be deleted, and the circumstances where police chiefs could refuse.
Changes to the rules, forced through by Tony Blair, mean samples can be taken at the point of arrest. If a person is never charged, the case collapses, or they are cleared, police are still entitled to store the sample for the rest of their life.
A test case is currently before the European courts where two innocent men are seeking to have their sample destroyed.
There are more than 4.4million profiles, including 245,000 children, stored on the database - the biggest in the world.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights group Liberty, said: 'DNA retention is clearly out of control. If the Government wants a universal DNA database it should say so, not smuggle one in through the backdoor.' Continued
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A "deeply unhealthy" number of Government posts are being handed to career politicians, one of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Cabinet colleagues is set to warn
Communities Secretary Hazel Blears wants action to encourage the election of a new generation of working class MPs such as Labour's Dennis Skinner and Tory David Davis.
Some colleagues live on "planet politics", she will complain, blaming the lack of real-life experience - as well as the media and political bloggers - for leaving politics "in trouble".
"There is a trend towards politics being seen as a career move rather than call to public service," she will tell a Hansard Society conference on disengagement.
"Increasingly we have seen a 'transmission belt' from university activist, MPs' researcher, think-tank staffer, special adviser, to Member of Parliament and ultimately to the front bench.
"Now, there's nothing wrong with any of those jobs, but it is deeply unhealthy for our political class to be drawn from narrowing social base and range of experience.
"We need people from a range of backgrounds - business, the armed forces, scientists, teachers, the NHS, shopworkers - to make good laws.
"And we need more MPs in Parliament from a wider pool of backgrounds: people who know what it is to worry about the rent collector's knock, or the fear of lay-off, so that the decisions we take reflect the realities people face.
"In short, we need more Dennis Skinners, more David Davises, more David Blunketts in the front line of politics," she will conclude - calling on parties and trade unions to actively recruit them in the same way as they have women and ethnic minorities.
Ms Blears, who had a career as a local government solicitor before becoming an elected politician, will also complain about a "spreading corrosive cynicism" in political discussion. She will point the figure at political "bloggers" - accusing them of seeing their role as "unearthing scandals, conspiracies and perceived hypocrisy". News Source
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Once Again out comes the Race Card! After being Nabbed!
An Army interpreter who worked for Britain's top general in Afghanistan was today found guilty of spying for Iran.
Daniel James, who had access to the highest echelons of the Nato mission in Kabul, was caught betraying his country in a series of coded e-mails.
The Iranian-born corporal, 45, a flamboyant fantasist who styled himself 'General James', believed he had been denied promotion because of racism and jealousy, the Old Bailey heard.
He told one colleague: 'They will have their comeuppance.'
James also needed money. He was £25,000 in debt and had four mortgages on flats in Brighton - although he later claimed he would not give away secrets for a million pounds.
On his 2006 tour of duty in Afghanistan, he started to work alongside Lt-General David Richards, commander of the international forces in Afghanistan.
James made contact with the Iranian Embassy in Kabul and used his 'unique and privileged position' to pass highly sensitive secrets to a colonel there.
He told Colonel Mohammad Hossein Heydari by e-mail: 'I am at your service.'
His treachery could have cost the lives of British soldiers, the court was told.
'Something of a Walter Mitty character', he 'would no doubt find his new clandestine role something exciting and special', the jury heard.
The Old Bailey heard he was found with sensitive documents about troop movements and munitions, stored on a computer memory stick, when he was arrested.
Pictures of a Predator spy plane were found in his room, jurors were told, but James claimed the only "Predator" he had heard of was Arnold Schwarzenegger.
He said the emails were part of an attempt to set up a gas deal between Iran and Afghanistan - which he hoped would promote trade and peace between Washington and Tehran - while the secret documents were given to him to translate.
Prosecutor Mark Dennis QC said his actions were 'the height of betrayal'. Continued
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Even the Queen has been hit by the credit crunch, but until now she has maintained her usual royal silence.
That ended abruptly today when she branded the crisis 'awful' and demanded to know why no one had seen it coming.
With typical understatement, she asked how come, since the meltdown was so massive: 'Why did nobody notice it?'
With billions wiped off shares worldwide and household costs soaring - including her own at Buckingham Palace - the Monarch came as close as she ever gets to expressing frustration.
Last month it was revealed she is to ask the Government for more money to cover her rising costs as Head of State.
Today she revealed her concern during an academic briefing on the financial crisis at the London School of Economics where she opened its £71million New Academic Building.
Professor Luis Garicano, director of research at the LSE's management department, said: 'The Queen asked me: "If these things were so large, how come everyone missed them?"'
It is a question that will resonate with ordinary families baffled at why politicians, bankers and City experts all failed to spot the financial storm on the horizon.
Explaining the origins and effects of the credit crisis, Prof Garicano said he told the Queen: 'At every stage, someone was relying on somebody else and everyone thought they were doing the right thing.'
The Queen then described the situation as 'awful'. Continued
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Britons have seen their disposable income fall by nearly 30 per cent during the past two years, research showed today.
The average household has only 25 per cent of their salary - or £382 - left each month after paying all of their essential outgoings, such as their mortgage or rent, bills, food and transport costs.
The figure is 29 per cent below the £541 people had left to spend after meeting all of their bills two years ago, according to Abbey Credit Cards.
One in 10 people now spends 90 per cent of their pay on essential outgoings, leaving just 10 per cent for discretional spending, following recent hikes in the cost of living.
The survey comes as payments group VocaLink warned that people’s incomes were being squeezed by the combination of the rising cost of living and falling take home pay growth.
The group said the rate at which take home pay was rising fell for the third month in a row during October to 3.4 per cent, the lowest level since February.
Unsurprisingly, the Abbey research showed that people’s biggest month expense is their mortgage or rent, which takes up an average of 24 per cent of their take home pay.
Household bills now account for 17 per cent of people’s income, while 16 per cent goes on food, just over 8 per cent is spent on transport costs and 7.4 per cent is used for debt repayments. Continued
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Nearly 56,000 NHS staff were assaulted last year, new figures showed today.
There were 55,993 attacks on health service workers in 2007/08, representing a slight rise of 284 on the previous year's figures.
Of these, 39,934 attacks took place in mental health trusts. But 3,607 assaults were committed in GP surgeries, up 162 on the previous year.
The biggest rise in the number of attacks was against staff working in NHS acute and foundation trusts, which saw 10,983 assaults in all in 2007/08 - up 1,298 on the previous year.
The number of attacks in mental health trusts has actually declined by 1,635 on the previous year.
Figures released by the health service's security management service (SMS) also showed a rise in the number of Asbos and other sanctions made against people who attack health service staff - up 123 to a total of 992. And the number has rocketed since 2002/03, when just 51 sanctions were recorded.
NHS security chief Dermid McCausland said the statistics show staff are increasingly willing to report intimidation and violence, rather than a rise in the number of actual attacks.
'We firmly believe this rise demonstrates a shift in culture among staff who are saying they will not accept violence as part of the job and are demonstrating this by reporting rather than an actual increase in assaults,' he said.
The figures for individual trusts reveal how often staff can come under attack from patients and members of the public. Continued
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A young woman recently stoned to death in Somalia first pleaded for her life, a witness has told the BBC.
"Don't kill me, don't kill me," she said, according to the man who wanted to remain anonymous. A few minutes later, more than 50 men threw stones.
Human rights group Amnesty International says the victim was a 13-year-old girl who had been raped.
Initial reports had said she was a 23-year-old woman who had confessed to adultery before a Sharia court.
Numerous eye-witnesses say she was forced into a hole, buried up to her neck then pelted with stones until she died in front of more than 1,000 people last week.
Meanwhile, Islamists in the capital, Mogadishu have carried out a public flogging.
Mogadishu is nominally under the control of government forces and their Ethiopian allies, who face frequent attacks by Islamist and nationalist insurgents.
The BBC's Mohammed Olad Hassan in the city says the flogging was a show of strength.
He says two men accused of helping to kill a man and torture his mother, who they accused of theft, were each given 39 lashes in the north-eastern suburb of Suqa-hola.
The man who actually killed the alleged thief was released, after agreeing to pay his family 100 camels in compensation.
Before the flogging, hundreds of Islamist fighters performed a military parade, our reporter says.
Death threats
Cameras were banned from the stoning in Kismayo, but print and radio journalists who were allowed to attend estimated that the woman, Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, was 23 years old.
However, Amnesty said it had learned she was 13, and that her father had said she was raped by three men.
When the family tried to report the rape, the girl was accused of adultery and detained, Amnesty said.
Convicting a girl of 13 for adultery would be illegal under Islamic law.
A human rights activist in the town told the BBC on condition of anonymity that he had received death threats from the Islamic militia, who accuse him of spreading false information about the incident.
He denies having anything to with Amnesty's report. Continued
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The BBC is an 'out-of-control juggernaut' which is damaging competition in the media, MPs have been told.
Critics described the publicly-funded broadcaster as 'smug' and said it was in danger of driving many rivals out of business.
They complained that its commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, had made 'quantum leaps' into areas not connected to its core operations.
BBC Worldwide unveiled record profits of £117.7million in its annual review, published this summer, up 17 per cent on the previous year.
The BBC receives £3.5billion a year in licence fee money.
Critics singled out the corporation's involvement in launching Indian versions of Hello and Grazia magazines, and the decision to buy a 75 per cent stake in travel publisher Lonely Planet for an estimated £89.9million.
The BBC intends to launch the Lonely Planet brand as a monthly magazine.
Yesterday, giving evidence to the culture, media and sport committee at the House of Commons, the editor-in-chief of independent travel magazine Wanderlust accused the BBC of deliberately targeting her title.
Lyn Hughes claimed the new Lonely Planet publication would be launched on the same day Wanderlust celebrates its 100th issue.
She said: 'BBC Worldwide seems to be an out-of-control juggernaut at the moment.
'I would question why any travel magazine would be launching at this time. Our advertisers are finding it tough.
'I can only think that it's because they are smug, and have got deep pockets.'
She added that BBC Magazines is the third-biggest magazine publisher in the country.
Time Out chairman Tony Elliott also attacked the Lonely Planet deal. Continued
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Owners of fat cats and obese dogs could be fined or jailed under controversial Government rules.
New beefed-up codes of practice for pet owners published today state that overfeeding pets is a 'serious welfare concern' that can lead to unnecessary suffering.
People who refuse to put seriously fat pets on a diet could be prosecuted under the Animal Welfare Act - and face a fine of up to £20,000 or even 12 months' jail.
Environment Minster Hilary Benn said the toughened codes of practice were designed to remind pet owners of their responsibilities under the law and would protect animals from cruelty.
But Tories branded the guidance 'absurd' and warned that much of the advice was patronising.
The draft document, published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, gives detailed advice to dog, cat and horse owners about looking after animals - and tells them how to avoid being prosecuted for cruelty.
It also tells owners to provide 'entertainment' and 'mental stimulation' for pets, make sure upstairs windows are 'cat-proofed' to stop animals falling out and to avoid taking dogs for a walk in the hottest part of the day.
In addition, it points out the importance of giving animals a suitable place to live and ' somewhere to go to the toilet'.
The codes follow last year's Animal Welfare Act which introduced a legal duty on owners to ensure that pets are properly looked after. Continued
Wednesday 5th November 2008
Tessa Jowell in row over £10,000 trip to Brazil to watch Lewis Hamilton (and guess who paid for it?)
Tessa Jowell came under attack today for taking a trip to Brazil which included tickets to watch Lewis Hamilton in the Grand Prix at the weekend.
Ms Jowell and two government officials were at the Interlagos circuit to witness Hamilton becoming the youngest Formula One champion at the start of their five-day excursion funded by the British taxpayer.
Ms Jowell was the guest of Brazilian sports minister Orlando Silva.
Her private secretary and Nicky Roche, a director at the Government Olympic Executive, re-arranged their flights after the consul general in Brazil secured F1 tickets for them at short notice.
The excursion for three government employees to South America is thought to have cost at least £10,000 and has angered some MPs who say the Olympics minister should be more frugal during tough economic times.
Money still going Abroad despite financial crisis
After the race the trio flew to Recife in north-eastern Brazil to observe the 'International Inspiration' community sports project, a £9million scheme part funded by the British Government after it pledged during the 2012 bid to help developing countries.
Ms Jowell and her aides will fly to Rio de Janeiro later this week to advise executives running the city's bid to stage the 2016 Olympics, before returning to London on Thursday. News Source
See Also: Keep the money and hide
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Remember the 5th of November, Gun Powder, Treason and Plot
In 1605, thirteen young men planned to blow up
the Houses of Parliament. Among them was
Guy Fawkes that was branded a traitor.
Guy Fawkes, also known as Guido, was an Elizabethan nobleman, adventurer, and politician who became involved in the infamous Gunpowder Plot.
The Plot was intended to overthrow the government and assassinate the monarch by blowing up the Houses of Parliament. It failed and, although he was a relatively minor player, it was Fawkes who was to have lit the fuse but was instead caught in the act.
He therefore achieved notoriety and became, by association, the principal character of the Plot.
King James adapted an existing custom of celebrating the accession of a monarch with nationwide bonfires by passing a law making the festivities an annual event on November 5th. Although the law was repealed in 1859 the tradition remains.
The character of Guy Fawkes is inseparable from November 5th which is today known variously as Guy Fawkes Day, Bonfire Night or Fireworks Night.
Remember as you celebrate 5th November tonight
Today it's the UK Government committing Treason!
This can be proven with the Bill of Rights 1689 and the Lisbon Treaty, although the same can be said for the previous European Union Treaties.
Firstly, not only is the Bill of Rights 1689 still in force, it, by definition, cannot be removed, changed or signed away by anyone. Least of all Parliament, further details can be found here.
This section of the Bill of Rights is taken from www.statutelaw.gov.uk. It states the following;
And I doe declare That noe Forreigne Prince Person Prelate, State or Potentate hath or ought to have any Jurisdiction Power Superiority Preeminence or Authoritie Ecclesiasticall or Spirituall within this Realme Soe helpe me God.
In other words, we may not be ruled in any way, shape or form by any foreign entity.
Now to the Lisbon Treaty/ Constitution. Firstly;
The analysis finds that only 10 out of 250 proposals in the new treaty are different from the proposals in the original EU Constitution. In other words, 96% of the text is the same as the rejected Constitution. - Open Europe.
Within the Lisbon Treaty is Declaration 17 concerning Primacy. Download it here. (Pg 26)
The Conference recalls that, in accordance with well settled case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Treaties and the law adopted by the Union on the basis of the Treaties have primacy over the law of Member States, under the conditions laid down by the said case law.
So the European Union has supremacy over British Law. This is illegal. Not only that, but at this moment;
80 per cent of Britain’s laws are now made in Brussels and Parliament has no power to reject or amend them - Peter Lilley.
More information below.
The total scale of EU legislation is enormous. Last year, the EU passed 177 directives, which are more or less equivalent to our Acts of Parliament, and 2,033 regulations, which become directly enforceable in this place, not to mention 1,045 decisions. Even that huge tally ignores the extent to which our powers are diminished by our inability to do things that we would like to do because they would conflict with European law. When I was a Minister, officials would frequently say, “No, Minister, you can’t do that”, because something was within the exclusive competence of the European Union. - Peter Lilley, House of Commons, Daily Hansard, 3 Jun 2008, 3.35 pm.
A few recent regulatory charades actually came from Brussels;
Indeed, Ministers often end up nobly accepting responsibility for laws that they actually opposed when they were being negotiated in Brussels. They took the rap for costly and troublesome home improvement packs—which have added to the woes of the housing market—even though they were actually mandated by a Brussels directive. Similarly, they took the rap for fortnightly bin collections, hospital reconfiguration and a number of other measures, even though they had all been triggered by directives from Brussels. At first sight, it is odd that Ministers—who, in this Government, are not normally slow to blame others—should nobly defend and accept responsibility for Brussels’ legislative progeny, in whose conception they have often played little part. They prefer to claim paternity rather than admit impotence—the fate of the cuckold across the ages. - Peter Lilley, House of Commons, Daily Hansard, 3 Jun 2008, 3.35 pm.
Any member of Parliament who claims that the majority of Laws and Regulations imposed on the British do not originate from the EU are either ignorant or lying. Probably so they can continue to line their own pockets.
Credits for Treason Info to: Free Britain
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(Recap: 4 months ago)
Six months have passed since Tory MP Derek Conway was caught fiddling his expenses on a grand scale.
He was discovered diverting thousands of pounds of Parliamentary allowances to his son as payment for so-called 'research duties'.
But there was no official record of the Newcastle University student doing any work.
In private, many MPs from all parties claimed that Conway had done little wrong and was simply unlucky to be found out. Yet public outrage at the flagrant abuse of the Parliamentary expenses system forced action to be taken.
As widespread disgust grew ever more apparent, David Cameron - not a moment too soon - stripped the wretched Conway of the Tory Party whip.
Eventually, even Speaker Martin (reportedly a strong Conway sympathiser) had to admit that something had gone wrong and set up a special Members' Estimate Committee to consider ways of tightening MPs' notoriously lax expenses regime and make sure that such abuse would never happen again.
All the main parties were represented on the committee: by Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman, the shadow leader of the House Theresa May and Nick Harvey of the LibDems.
The results of their work were published last week and contained two key proposals.
First, it was suggested that every MP's expenses should undergo independent scrutiny.
Traditionally, MPs have been allowed complete freedom to make their own expense claims.
Unfortunately, this absence of control has meant that a very large number of politicians of all parties have regarded their Commons allowance as a gigantic slush fund.
The committee's second proposal called for MPs to submit receipts for all their expenditure.
Until very recently, they have never had to account for items that cost less than £250. It is well known that many MPs have taken advantage of this latitude to claim for money they have not spent.
(One notorious example was the former Conservative MP Michael Trend, who resigned after claiming a generous London housing allowance while, in fact, living at his Windsor constituency home.)
There was nothing unreasonable about the committee's demands. Even if put into effect in full, they would have meant that MPs would still enjoy a far laxer expenses regime than any other employee in the country.
Even so, I don't believe that the proposals are anywhere near strong enough to prevent the monstrous abuse which allows politicians to use taxpayers' money, in the form of second-home allowances, to speculate in the property market.
With terrible predictability, when MPs came to vote on the proposals on Thursday night, they were rejected.
Incredibly, they voted to keep the squalid and corrupt system of allowances that have enabled the Derek Conways of this world to get away with their thievery for so long.
The truth is that this episode was a wretched moment in British public life. For years, Parliament has played a great role in British history.
In the 17th century it stood for individual liberty against the tyranny of Charles I. In the 19th century it became the cockpit of British democracy and the scene of the epic debates on the great issues of the day between Gladstone and Disraeli.
Now, though, it is a sordid little place,
where seedy people put self enrichment above public duty.
Indeed, the letters 'MP' after a name are in danger of becoming a mark of shame and contempt.
Of course, certain honourable exemptions can be made. Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats all voted for reform, as did David Cameron's shadow Cabinet.
However, some 20 Tory MPs supported the old corrupt system - among them the dreadful Nick and Ann Winterton.
This married couple used taxpayers' money to enrich themselves over a period of years without breaking any Commons rules.
Much more disturbing, however,
was the conduct of government ministers.
Shamefully, 33 of them voted against the reforms, including five Cabinet members: Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, Culture Secretary Andy Burnham, Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward, Housing Minister Caroline Flint and Welsh Secretary Paul Murphy. Both of Gordon Brown's Parliamentary aides, Ian Austin and Angela Smith, were also opposed to the proposed changes.
Gordon Brown didn't vote either way, confirming the damaging impression that he is a ditherer.
This was a sad moment for the Prime Minister. When he entered Downing Street just over a year ago, Gordon Brown promised to restore the trust in politics which had been so badly damaged by the sleaze and greed of the Blair years.
Yet on Thursday night, he allowed members of his own government to vote down proposals which would have made the air cleaner at Westminster.
While it is impossible to be sure why the Prime Minister acted in the way he did, here is my informed assessment.
The key to understanding his position is the fact that Thursday's vote on expenses followed an earlier one which involved the equally controversial issue of MPs' pay.
Facing a backbench revolt from Labour MPs who were furious at what they saw as an insulting increase in their £61,000 salary, the Prime Minister was forced to concede them a free vote on the expenses issue in return for accepting the deal on pay.
Brown knew that defeat on this vital question would have been even more embarrassing and have had a catastrophic impact on the entire government economic policy of trying to keep a tight lid on public service pay awards.
In other words, Labour MPs were told that in return to agreeing to a very small rise in their official salary, they were free to carry on fiddling their expenses.
This shabby compromise proved acceptable to the rebels, and Gordon Brown's public sector wages negotiations remain on course. But I fear that he will pay a heavy long-term cost for such low and debased politics.
Although I continue to believe Gordon Brown is personally a man of integrity, his decision on Thursday night meant that he has allowed his Labour Party to condone sleaze in a Commons vote.
He has offered David Cameron a real opportunity. Until now, brilliantly though he has performed as leader of the Opposition, Cameron has been open to the accusation that he does not present a real alternative.
Cameron should now exploit the situation and put forward a series of tough measures that will eradicate the corruption and expenses fiddles that have tarnished British politics for so long.
If he can succeed in that, he will manage to differentiate the Tories from Labour, which this week showed it is almost suicidally corrupt. News Source
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(Recap: Six months ago)
How Convenient! Taking YOU ALL for IDIOTS!
Hundreds of Blair's expenses claims have been destroyed, but Westminster officials insist the documents were destroyed by mistake and did not realise they were the subject of a legal challenge
Hundreds of expenses claims by Tony Blair have been shredded, it has emerged.
The claims and receipts, relating to Mr Blair's final year in office, were destroyed even though there was an ongoing legal bid to have them published.
Westminster officials say the documents were destroyed by mistake, as they did not realise they were the subject of a legal challenge.
The revelation came as the Commons authorities were instructed to publish details of all MPs' household expenses by the end of the week.
MPs' expenses average £136,000 - more than twice their annual salaries.
It is already known that Mr Blair claimed £43,029 over a three-year period.But it was not known what the money was spent on.
Court papers have now revealed that files covering claims of Myrobella, his Sedgefield constituency home, were destroyed by Commons officials after they rejected a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
Expenses campaigner Norman Baker MP said: "How convenient that some of Tony Blair's expenses have been shredded.
"This is either incompetence or obstruction of the Freedom of Information Act and should be properly investigated."
Earlier this year it was revealed that the former prime minister is not the only MP to destroy his expenses.
Commons Speaker Michael Martin allowed officials to destroy claim forms and receipts up to April 2005 - meaning thousands of expenses have been secretly shredded. Continued
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(Recap: three months ago)
A group of MPs are campaigning to scrap their traditional oath of allegiance to the Queen, the Mail can reveal.
The declaration has been sworn by those joining or returning to Parliament for more than 500 years.
But 22 MPs from all three main parties say their 'principal duty' should be to represent the people who voted for them - not the monarch.
They want the Commons and the Lords to be allowed to swear allegiance to their 'constituents and the nation' instead.
The unofficial campaign yesterday triggered uproar among royalist MPs - one of whom said the change would amount to ' constitutional vandalism'.
It is also likely to cause dismay at Buckingham Palace.
Former Tory party chairman Lord Tebbit said: 'This seems to me to be an attack upon the State itself. The monarch is the one embodiment-of the State which is outside the political, partisan process.
'The people behind this campaign must either oppose the idea of anyone who is non-partisan having a role in the affairs of state, or they would rather be swearing allegiance to Brussels.'
Since the Middle Ages, all MPs and peers joining or returning to Parliament have been compelled to swear allegiance to the monarch of the day. Continued
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(Recap: 11 months ago)
The day the Queen dies will be a great test for all of us. Those who live to see it, and let us hope it is a long way off, will be forced to face many frightening truths, much as we do when a parent dies.
I expect that the enemies of Britain – mostly British themselves, expensively nurtured in our finest schools and universities and generously employed by our great institutions – will take the opportunity for a new and spiteful campaign against the throne.
We now know for certain that the BBC will be among them.
We know this thanks to the honest anger of the Left-wing playwright Sir David Hare, a decent man increasingly outraged by the many sicknesses of our cheap society.
Sir David revealed last week that he was approached by the Corporation hoping he would record something critical about the Queen, to be broadcast on the night of her death.
"They told me that everyone they had spoken to had, unsurprisingly, turned out to be an admirer and, in the fabled interests of balance, they needed the opposing point of view," Sir David recalled. He rightly refused.
Look at this carefully and you will see how bad it really is.
The BBC believed they needed to be "balanced" between the enormous majority who love and revere this dedicated and kindly old lady, and the embittered, sneering knot of permanent adolescents who think it terribly bold to be "republicans", whatever that means. This tells us most of what we need to know about the Corporation's true beliefs.
It has for years decided where the "centre" lies in British politics and has put its fat thumb on the scales to ensure that its governing elite's own views are portrayed as respectable and mainstream, whereas anyone else's are spittle-flecked and extreme.
Amazingly, people are still fooled by a crude trick that would get a greengrocer prosecuted by the weights and measures inspectors.
This has meant classifying rather more than half the population as either stupid or ill-intentioned and never allowing their opinions to be broadcast without some sort of implied health warning.
That's how it is.
How do these people justify their indefensible rigging of the national debate? They don't even try. They pretend they are not doing it.
They wield the absolute, unaccountable power of a medieval monarchy. And then they have the nerve to claim to be freedom-loving radicals.
Now they want a museum of Britishness. Well, of course they do. You have to keep things that are dead and gone somewhere, dusting the stuffed carcasses occasionally and bringing children to marvel at the strange creatures that walked the earth.
Britain ceased to exist politically on Thursday when Gordon Brown signed the EU Constitution, and ceased to exist in most other ways years before.
Now it is properly dead we might realise what we've lost and start figuring out how to bring it back. News Source
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(Recap: April 2007)
Labours destruction of UK? the TORIES / LIB-DEMS are no different..
The enemies of the People are the Lab Lib Con EU party
ConservativeHome.com has learnt of a secret CCHQ policy group that is drawing up radical plans to complete David Cameron's modernisation of the Conservative Party.
The group, which has been meeting over Petit Chablis in Notting Hill wine bars, is drawing up plans to ensure that Queen Elizabeth II is Britain's last monarch. "It will be the ultimate modernisation," one A-list member of the policy group told ConservativeHome, "proving beyond doubt that we are no longer the party of privilege but truly meritocratic."
Frank Luntz has found that a focus group of eight Liberal Democrat-inclined voters in marginal seats love the idea. Steve Hilton has drawn up an ideal list of candidates to become Britain's first directly-elected head of state. Half of the candidates are men, half women and 36.9% cycle to work.
Prince Charles was initially furious about the Tory idea and feared an abrupt end to his public life. David Cameron has apparently reassured the heir to the throne with a promise of a seat in his first Cabinet. Charles Windsor will sit as Secretary of State for the Natural and Built Environment. Prince Harry will head a new task force that will examine the success of the Government's deregulation of pub opening hours.
Edward Leigh is leading Cornerstone MPs against the move and Bill Cash yesterday told this website that he saw the plan as all part of Britain's surrender to the European Union and to the spirit of the French Revolution. Simon Heffer was said to be too angry to comment but will be writing 4,000 words about the decline of Britain in tomorrow's Daily Telegraph. News Source
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British National Party (BNP) leader Nick Griffin is expected to give a talk at a Kiveton club in December.
The proposed talk by the controversial, far-right party looks likely to be met with very mixed reactions.
Back in May, the BNP gained two seats on Rotherham Council in Maltby as well as seats in Brinsworth and Catcliffe.
But John Campbell, who is the chairman of Yorkshire Unite Against Fascism, is very concerned about the prospect of the BNP in Kiveton.
"The BNP are supremacists who want an all-white Britain and this can only be achieved by violence and crushing democracy," he said.
"Wherever they have established themselves, racism and division has increased."
"I'm not in favour of people abusing free speech when they want to abandon democracy if they get in power."
Tory leader David Cameron also spoke out against the BNP earlier this month, describing them as an 'appalling bunch of racist thugs.'
Wales Parish Council chairman Gill Shaw says she is concerned but not surprised by the news.
"It's a bit disturbing but I can see why people are leaning towards it," she said. "We do not like to involve politics in the way we do things at the parish council and prefer to concentrate on community issues."
A 34-year-old man from Kiveton, who does not wish to be named, said he wants to listen to the BNP and welcomes the idea of them giving a talk in the village.
"I went to a BNP talk in Sheffield a few weeks back and I am interested to see what they have to offer," he said.
"It's the only party that isn't avoiding talking about current issues. Immigration is a major issue and the BNP is talking about it."
BNP deputy leader Simon Derby told the Guardian that he thinks people have a right to know about their policies.
However, he was not prepared to confirm the venue and time of the talk for fear that opposition parties would try to stop the talk going ahead.
"People accuse us of being fascists but they don't extend the courtesy of letting us speak," he said.
"It speaks for itself really. We're accused of being extremist but we've already taken two seats in the area so how can we be described as extremists?"
There are already three groups set up on internet networking site Facebook which give details of the talk as taking place at the Proprietors Club on Station Road on Thursday 4th December. News Source
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A couple who told social workers they had the right to smack their adopted son have won the right to a re-hearing in a bid to adopt his sister, aged two.
Newham Council in east London told them they were unsuitable because of their attitude to corporal punishment, their finances and child safety concerns.
But the High Court in London quashed the council's decision as unreasonable.
Mr Justice Bennett said it contradicted the findings of an independent panel and was "bordering on the bizarre".
Outside court the parents, known only as Mr and Mrs A, said they were "absolutely delighted" by the decision.
The council said it will make a "fresh decision" on the case in the light of the court ruling.
Walked home
The court heard that Mr A admitted once smacking his adopted son for swearing.
He also threatened to use "the belt" to stop the boy from doing something, although he never actually used it.
The council said they were not suitable to adopt the boy's half-sister, known as K, because of their attitude to corporal punishment and their financial circumstances.
It also cited concerns about Mr and Mrs A's attitude towards child safety after they allowed their eight-year-old adopted son, known as S, to walk home from school on his own.
But the High Court ruled that the council, for no apparent reason, had rejected the conclusion of an independent review panel which recommended the adoption.
The judge said the panel had accepted the couple's reassurances regarding corporal punishment and other matters.
The panel found Mr and Mrs A to be experienced foster parents who could support the financial and emotional needs of children, he added.
Mr Justice Bennett said the parents had "understandable feelings that, to put it bluntly, the council was against them".
He told the council to reconsider Mr and Mrs A's general suitability for adoption and, if it found in their favour, to carry out a new assessment of their application.
Outside court the parents said: "We will continue our fight to adopt K but this was an important hurdle to overcome." They added: "For us this case is not about smacking but people being treated in the correct way by their local authorities."
Kim Bromley-Derry, Newham Council's executive director for children and young people, said decisions regarding adoption were "complex and challenging".
"As a result of today's court decision we will be making a fresh decision as to whether Mr and Mrs A are suitable to adopt children, and if so whether a further assessment needs to be carried out," she said. News Source
Reader Submitted Link. Thank You David
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We've had the bin police - now meet the tea bag Nazis.
In the latest initiative designed to make us more environmentally friendly, Government advisers are calling on businesses to appoint tea monitors to make sure staff don't overfill the kettle at work.
The quango Envirowise is also telling workers to use teapots when making rounds of hot drinks and is calling for a return of old-fashioned tea urns.
Envirowise - which gets £10million a year from taxpayers to advise businesses on being green - says the crackdown will cut greenhouse gas emissions and help beleaguered businesses save money.
Critics pointed out that in the current testing economic times, small firms had bigger problems to worry about than tea bags.
Susie Squire of the TaxPayers' Alliance said: 'This is yet another example of a taxpayer-funded quango doling out useless advice. People are sick of these quangocrats wasting our time and money.'
Envirowise - which is funded by the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs - estimates that more than 30billion cups of water are unnecessarily boiled each year.
In a statement, the quango tells businesses: 'Appoint a tea task force or tea monitor to make sure all your office hot drink-making facilities are as efficient as they could be.
Only boil the water you are going to use - this will avoid water and energy being wasted, and won't leave you standing at the kettle waiting for it to boil unnecessarily.
'Many kettles now come with double chambers that ensure you measure out exactly how much water you want to boil, saving electricity, water, money and time.'
Rather than using a tea bag for each cup, office workers getting rounds of hot drinks should use a teapot, Envirowise says.
'This allows you to measure the correct amount of water you will need, and often tastes nicer than making tea in the cup.'
It adds: 'Alternatively, bring back the urn so you can really control your water use - and make sure it has an energy-saving keep hot function for total efficiency.'
Mary Leonard, a director at Envirowise, described the tea-making advice as a 'resource-saving initiative' for small and big companies.
But Tory environment spokesman Peter Ainsworth said: 'You might have thought that in the current economic environment the Government would have higher priorities than appointing tea monitors.' News Source
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Labour has ordered John Prescott into an increasingly desperate fight to avoid defeat in Thursday’s Glenrothes by-election.
The former deputy Prime Minister will lead a last gasp effort to prevent what insiders fear is another humiliation at the hands of the Scottish National Party.
Gordon Brown's hopes of scoring a much-needed victory in the seat next door to his Fife constituency appeared to be fading. Friends fear he is on course to suffer a personal rejection in his Scottish backyard after he and his wife made high-profile visits to the constituency.
Until a few days ago Labour appeared quietly confident that it could defy the critics and pull off a win in Glenrothes. They hoped that Mr Brown's decision to make two campaign visits to the seat, coupled with frequent appearances by Mrs Brown, would galvanise voters in his favour.
But insiders say the mood has changed in recent days. Tonight there were suggestions that Labour could lose by 1,000 votes or more.
Defeat, will be received by MPs as an unwelcome reminder that despite the revival in his fortunes Mr Brown is still struggling to connect with the voters and shows no sign of being a winner for Labour. Continued
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Enough Already! Nationalist Government Needed that can say 'NO' Now!
The Farce has gone on long enough
An illegal immigrant who killed a brilliant young writer by driving into her at 60mph cannot be deported because it would breach his human rights.
Ahsan Sabri, 28, was unlicensed and not properly insured when he roared through a red light and ploughed into Oxford University graduate Sophie Warne.
The 30-year-old died instantly from a broken neck. She had published five books, was writing her first novel and was about to announce her engagement.
But the High Court overturned an immigration tribunal decision that Sabri - who had overstayed his visa - should be sent home to Pakistan.
The judge ruled that deporting him would breach his right to 'respect for family life' as he had married a British woman in 2003 and had a daughter, born last May, with her.
Lord Justice Sir Martin Moore-Bick said that if he left Britain, Sabri's wife, Laura Gleeson, 25, a graphic designer, from Essex, and their baby would probably follow and that would 'interfere with their private and family life'.
He accepted Sabri's claim that his wife may have trouble finding a job in Pakistan and could suffer ' broadly based threats and difficulties' as a result of being a Christian.
This section of human rights law also prevents Britain from deporting Learco Chindamo, the Italian-born killer of London headmaster Philip Lawrence.
Chindamo has lived in Britain since he was five and claims to have his strongest family ties here, but Sabri moved here when he was 18.
As such, the High Court's decision threatens to set a precedent in which anyone facing deportation simply needs to marry a British person to stay.
Damian Green, Tory spokesman for immigration, said: 'This is yet another reminder that Gordon Brown's claim to have brought in automatic deportation for criminals was just spin.'
Sabri came to Britain on a student visa in 1998. As he held a Pakistani driving licence, he had 12 months' grace before needing to take a new test.
But after a year, Sabri simply obtained a provisional licence. In October 2003, he was fined £150 for driving without learner plates. Eight months later, he killed Miss Warne.
She was a gifted student who started studying history at Pembroke College, Oxford, when she was just 16.
She went on to write travel books, including the highly-rated Bradt guide to the west African country of Gabon.
In her spare time, she was a Red Cross volunteer, helping refugees.
In June 2004, Miss Warne was hit by Sabri on a pelican crossing in central London as she made her way home to Brixton, South London, from a party.
In July 2005, he was found guilty of causing death by dangerous driving and jailed for three years.
Last year, an Immigration Tribunal ruled that he should be deported but Sabri, funded by legal aid, appealed.
Miss Warne's parents Peter and Louise Warne, both retired company directors, were unaware of his battle to stay in Britain until told by the Daily Mail. They declined to comment.
The Home Office is understood to be deciding whether to continue the fight to deport Sabri, who lives in Grays, Essex, or to admit defeat. News Source
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The Government has faced calls to clamp down on the growing number of illegal motorists as an alarming rise in the number of hit-and-run deaths was revealed.
In 2004, 145 people were killed in 23,714 hit-and-run incidents. There were 119 deaths in 18,357 such crashes in 1997 when Labour came to power. This is a 22 per cent increase in deaths and a 30 per cent rise in the number of hit-and-run crashes.
Earlier this month, the case of Abigail Craen, a medical student who was killed by Jaswinder Singh, an uninsured hit-and-run driver, again focused attention on the problem of banned and uninsured motorists tearing along Britain's roads.
It was the latest in a series of court cases involving hit-and-run deaths caused by illegal motorists who, to the dismay of victims' relatives, have then escaped with light sentences.
According to the newly released Department of Transport statistics, the number injured in hit-and-run accidents also rose by 31 per cent, from 21,574 in 1997 to 28,397 in 2004.
Meanwhile, as it emerged that rogue drivers are avoiding speeding tickets by using false addresses, officials were forced to admit that as many as 700,000 cars may be on the roads illegally because they are not properly registered with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency database.
A Department for Transport spokesman said that the DVLA database was only 97.5 per cent accurate" - that means that, with 27,520,000 cars on Britain's roads, 688,000 are unregistered.
Government figures also show that there are more than a million uninsured drivers on the roads, with many more using cars without a driving licence. Random police checks suggest the true number of uninsured drivers could be as high as five million. Uninsured drivers are 10 times more likely to drink and drive, six times more likely to drive an unsafe vehicle and three times more likely to drive without due care and attention.
Chris Grayling, the shadow transport secretary, said: "These figures are extremely concerning. We've had some horrendous incidents of hit and run and we cannot tolerate a situation where so many motorists are causing death and destruction and just running away. The Government needs to look at tougher penalties so we can stamp out this appalling behaviour.
"The Government has got the balance wrong in its approach to motoring offences, and is not doing enough to deal with those who are completely flouting the system." Continued
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Shocking police figures have revealed that 40 per cent of drink drivers in some areas of Britain are now immigrants.
The leaked statistics also show the vast amount come from Poland or Lithuania - fuelling fears that some foreigners ignore our breathalyser rules.
In Cambridgeshire, two in every five motorists caught over the legal limit or driving while banned are from overseas.
The county's Chief Constable, Julie Spence warned in April about the effects of rapid immigration to the area, which has seen a large influx of Eastern Europeans.
She said her officers were struggling to deal with increases in offences including knife crime and warned specifically that many migrants were drink-driving.
Chief Constable Spence said: 'The growth in our [migrant] population has brought about significant policing challenges, not least the time and effort we put into dealing with offenders whose first language is not English.
'We have seen an increase in specific offences such as motoring offences, sex trafficking, and worker exploitation - a form of modern-day slavery.'
Figures for Suffolk showed that seven per cent of drivers caught over the limit last year were Eastern European.
The leaked document was obtained by Tory immigration spokesman Damian Green.
He told the Sun newspaper: 'This is more evidence of the need for a limit on immigration.
'These figures underline the importance for anyone who comes here to know the basics of daily life in Britain.
'They need to know what the rules are so they can obey them.'
The figures have been given to the Government's Migration Impact Forum. News Source
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(Recap: 10 months ago)
The threat of jail was lifted yesterday from drivers who kill while at the wheel without a licence or insurance.
New rules for judges said that those among the army of illegal drivers on the road who cause death should normally escape with a community punishment.
Even repeat offenders - who have a previous conviction for going unlicensed or without insurance - can avoid imprisonment under the instructions for the courts on how to deal with drivers at fault in fatal accidents.
The ruling handed down by the Sentencing Guidelines Council, the body that sets punishment benchmarks for judges and magistrates, frees millions of illegal drivers from the risk of imprisonment if they kill.
The Council, led by Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips, made its decision despite carrying out a survey that found a big majority of the public think sentences for serious driving offences are too light; that families of victims of killer drivers are "deeply unhappy" about light sentences; and that most people believe driving without insurance or licence is a very serious offence.
The community punishment rule will apply to new motoring laws that for the first time introduce a charge of causing death by driving unlicensed, disqualified or uninsured.
The new law carries a maximum penalty of two years in jail. Yet the courts will be told that only those who kill while on the road while they are banned from driving will necessarily go to prison.
At least one in ten of all drivers - 1.4 million - are thought to go without insurance. Some estimates put the number at five million.
Most are poor, among them young men and new immigrants desperate to get on the road but unwilling to pay average costs of £400 for insurance. Continued
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Sunday, November 9th marks the tenth anniversary of Royal Assent to the Human Rights Act 1998, surely one of the most pernicious pieces of legislation ever passed by the mother of Parliaments.
The Human Rights Act (HRA) was intended to enshrine the European Convention of Human Rights in English law. The HRA’s proponents argued that it was invidious for complainants to be forced to travel to Strasbourg to obtain ‘justice’ in human rights matters, rather than having a remedy in the British courts.
The Left often seek to portray any opposition to the Human Rights Act as being synonymous with opposition to the very idea of fundamental rights, but of course that is just typical left-wing sophistry. In fact, the Human Rights Act has never had much to do with the protection of genuine rights and freedoms. At best, the Human Rights Act has been ineffective; at worst it has created a toxic culture of faux rights and impunity for the guilty and undeserving. It has also done much to undermine the foundations of the English legal system.
The ink was scarcely dry on the Human Rights Act in 1998 when Labour ministers began a crusade against ancestral British freedoms, which has succeeded in curtailing genuine rights and liberties in almost every walk of life. Even as Labour breezily twittered the language of human rights, they imposed the ‘surveillance society’, restricted traditional British free speech and subverted the democratic system.
Ten years after the Human