Archive 15
UkTabloid
The People's News Portal
Saturday 17th January 2009
A Family of 13 Saudis are housed in a £2million mansion at taxpayers’ expense — and have trashed it.
The Al-Ameri clan have spent four years at the plush six-bedroom home — at a total cost of more than £166,000.
They live on income support and a council pays the rent of £41,640 a year.
Hairdresser Marlene said: “It’s wrong, very wrong.
They have no respect.
I put the property for let with the council because I need to pay the mortgage. But they’ve wrecked the place. That home was my pride and joy.
“I really think that councils should make more enquiries when housing families.”
But landlords Marc and Marlene Roberts are desperate to see the back of the family — accusing them of causing £30,000 damage.
The 3,500 sq ft home boasts a Jacuzzi and huge kitchen with oak panelling and marble tops. The last tenant was a top diplomat.
But as these photos show, there are now SMASHED windows, BURST pipes caused by nails driven into the floor, doors RIPPED off their hinges, DAMAGED electrical sockets and ceilings COATED in cooking grease.
Marlene, 44, said the family — whose immigration status is not known — refuse to do repairs, claiming they have no money.
But a flash Mercedes S500 and Nissan Skyline are among four cars parked on the drive.
A woman in Muslim dress who answered the door in Hendon, North-West London, told The Sun: “We are very happy with the house. It is plenty big enough for us. We wouldn’t want to move.”
Marc, 42, said: “I’ll have to gut the place when they finally leave and I just don’t have the money.”
A spokesman for Barnet Council said anyone on income support was entitled to housing large enough for them.
A Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said: “The Government is committed to a fair system.”
He said housing allowance was capped at five bedrooms and the system was under review. News Source
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Labour-controlled Manchester City Council has organised a jobs fair at Manchester Town Hall on Tuesday January 20th.
According to the Manchester City council website, attendees can “obtain advice on employment related matters, training and educational opportunities.” Free workshops will also take place, offering “practical advice on completing application forms and interview techniques”.
The event will feature a range of employers including the Royal Air Force, Greater Manchester Police, HM Prison Service, and Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service and would surely have attracted a great deal of interest from desperate, unemployed local people thrown out of work by Labour’s disastrous economic and mass immigration policies.
The only slight catch is that this council jobs fair is only for members of “black and minority ethnic communities”.
Councillor Abid Chohan is quoted in the Manchester Evening News as saying: “This new jobs fair aims to ensure that all sections of Manchester’s black and ethnic minority communities are represented in the workplace.”
Here is yet more evidence of the rank hypocrisy of the Labour Party, which levels false accusations of “racism” at the British National Party for seeking to represent the political interests of native British voters, while Labour politicians themselves have no qualms about organising events designed exclusively for black and minority ethnic people.
Under Labour’s doctrine of Multiculturalism, it seems that the native folk of these islands must always be deprived of their own voice and treated as second class citizens in their own country. News Source
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A tougher Home Office test for immigrants wanting to become British citizens will not stem the massive flow of newcomers into the country, critics warned last night.
Ministers yesterday unveiled details of measures designed to ensure new arrivals who want to settle in the UK “earn” the right to citizenship.
Applicants will be expected to demonstrate a command of the English language and undertake an explicit commitment to obey the law. They will also be able to speed up the process by undertaking voluntary work.
The measures were unveiled when Labour published its latest Borders, Immigration and Citizenship Bill yesterday.
But critics pointed out that it will do nothing to limit the overall numbers entering the country each year or prevent the population soaring to 70 million by 2028, as some have forecast.
Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: “We need something quite specific – an annual limit on economic immigration from outside the EU.
“Until the Government recognises this, its immigration policy will continue to fail.”
Labour MP Frank Field and Tory MP Nicholas Soames, who co-chair the Commons Group on Balanced Migration, said the Bill would neither limit the soaring population nor ensure British-born unemployed got a fair chance on the jobs market.
In a statement the MPs echoed the Daily Express’s revelations this week that Labour plans to let in 130,000 non-EU jobseekers this year. despite lengthening dole queues.
They said: “There are two litmus tests for immigration policy. First, it needs to tighten up immigration controls so that British unemployed people are given a fair crack at getting jobs.
“Second, it needs to control immigration so that the UK’s population does not hit 70 million in 2028. This Bill passes neither of these tests.
“Can it be that the Government puts the interests of economic migrants before those of British workers and has scant regard for the impact that uncontrolled immigration will have on the fabric of our society?”
Under the proposed new rules, those wishing to apply for citizenship will have to live in the UK for at least five years and will then spend an additional year proving they deserve citizenship.
They will be expected to show they can support themselves financially, pay tax and speak English. They will also be able to help their case through volunteer work.
Anyone found guilty of minor crimes will see their applications delayed and those jailed for serious crimes will face deportation.
Home Office Minister Phil Wool as said all citizenship applicants should “speak English, work hard, and earn the right to stay here and only get citizenship once they have proved their commitment to the country.”
The measures will also mean air and ferry passengers travelling between Ireland and Britain. News Source
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What have they got to hide? Only Crooks and Thieves hide details!
MPs were accused of a 'new level of arrogance' last night as they launched a bid to keep secret full details of how they spend millions of pounds of taxpayers' money.
And they will further mock voters with a new rulebook allowing them to carry on squandering cash on furniture and home improvements.
With households and businesses cutting costs, the moves will be seen as more evidence that elected representatives are hopelessly out of touch.
Above the Law
The announcement that Ministers want to defy the High Court and block publication of receipts for MPs' expenses was buried on the day news was dominated by Government statements on Heathrow and Equitable Life.
The extraordinary move is in direct response to a High Court judgment upholding an Information Tribunal ruling that receipt-by-receipt breakdowns for how public money is spent by MPs must be published.
Speaker Michael Martin spent around £150,000 of public money unsuccessfully fighting the case.
A Parliamentary order has now been drafted to exclude MPs and peers from parts of the Freedom of Information Act.
If both Houses of Parliament back it next week it could become law within 24 hours, and no receipts need be published.
Oh Whoopie Doo
Yesterday Commons Leader Harriet Harman claimed the Government-would increase transparency by raising the number of published categories under which MPs say how they used their expenses, such as travel and accommodation.
But campaigners dismissed this because without the receipts there will be no opportunity to discover exactly how the headline spending figures, which will be released on an annual basis, are made up.
MPs' expenses and allowances last year cost taxpayers £87million. Their claims are on top of their £63,291 salary.
But Westminster has been alive with rumours throughout the expenses controversy that some MPs have milked the system to such a degree that full disclosure of claims would force them to quit Parliament.
Last night there was incredulity that MPs are to use valuable time in the shortest Parliamentary year on record to protect their pampered lifestyles.
Tory Shadow Cabinet member Theresa May said: 'In the middle of a recession the last thing people expect the Government to be worrying about is how much information is available on MPs' expenses.'
Information campaigner Heather Brooke, who battled for years to have the receipts released, said the developments showed a 'new level of arrogance'.
'Just when you thought MPs had understood the need to regain public trust they do something like this,' she said. 'This shows they have not learned a thing.
'It is what you would expect from a banana republic.'
Matthew Elliott of the TaxPayers' Alliance said: 'These desperate measures will only harm Parliament's standing by making people wonder what it is that politicians have to hide.'
In a separate development,
it emerged that despite promises of an end to the Westminster gravy train, MPs will still be free to use taxpayers' cash for extravagant items to furnish and upgrade second homes.
Parasites
Under revised expenses rules MPs will still be entitled to pick items from the so-called 'John Lewis list', the informal guidelines on how much can be spent on home furnishings.
As now, they will be able to charge for white goods, sofas, chairs, tables, beds, cutlery and crockery, security fittings, cleaners and decoration to kit out their second homes.
Mortgage interest payments or rent for the additional residences will also be met by the taxpayer as will utility bills and council tax payments. Receipts will not need to be submitted for any items under £25.
There will also be flat-rate 'subsistence' payments of £25 per day when a 'member spends a night away from his or her main home on Parliamentary business'. News Source
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Town halls, Whitehall departments and Government agencies could have access to an individual's most personal information under sweeping new powers to share data.
Information sharing orders would allow even the most sensitive of details to be exchanged between agencies, councils or Government departments without the need for new laws.
It sparked accusations of yet another expansion of the surveillance state and, if enough orders were approved, would act like a national database of personal information in all but name.
Currently, if public bodies want to share information not already covered by regulations then new legislation must be drawn up and taken through Parliament.
But under proposals contained in a wide-ranging Coroners and Justice Bill, a relevant Secretary of State would be able to lay an order in Parliament allowing the exchange of specified data between bodies.
It could be discussed and voted on within a matter of hours.
Such orders effectively sweep aside current data protection restrictions that require information to be used only for the purpose it was taken and an order could be put forward for "any relevant policy objective".
Ministers say it is aimed at making life easier for people to save them having to transfer details, such as someone moving house. They would benefit because they would not have to tell the council twice, once for the electoral roll and once for their council tax.
But, in extreme examples, bodies such as the DVLA could ask for access to medical records of drivers or school records could be handed to the Department for Work and Pensions to check social security claims. Even requests for access to the imminent National Identity database are not exempt.
It could also see town officials having access to a raft of personal information held in Whitehall, despite growing concerns over their ability to use such details securely or appropriately.
The Bill also revived plans to allow some sensitive inquests to be held behind closed doors.
Liberal Democrat justice spokesman David Howarth said: "It is indicative of this Government's approach that it is burying more building blocks of its surveillance state in a Bill to reform the coroner service.
"We'll be told it's vital to fight crime and terrorism, but soon local authorities will be asked to share our personal information with a range of public and private bodies for the most spurious of reasons.
"This is particularly troubling since the Government has already shown itself entirely incapable of keeping our personal data safe."
Under the proposal would allow a relevant Secretary of State could lay an order allowing the exchange of designated data between named public bodies or departments.
Even a council could ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to present such a request, although its merits would be considered on a national basis.
It raises the prospect of a raft of such orders being laid effectively allowing a wide range of personal information to be passed around with little scrutiny. Continued
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I’ve received some criticism for trying to figure out the ideological and historical roots of Multiculturalism.
Critics claim that it’s all about hate, about a desire to break down the Established Order at any cost. Many of the proponents don’t believe in the doctrine of Multiculturalism themselves, so we shouldn’t waste any time analyzing the logic behind it, because there is none. A desire to break down Western society is certainly there, but I do believe there are some ideas about the desired end result articulated as well.
On one hand, we’re supposed to “celebrate” our differences at the same time as it is racist and taboo to recognize that any differences between groups of people exist at all. This is hardly logically coherent, which is why Multiculturalism can only be enforced by totalitarian means. Perhaps it boils down to the fact there are no major differences, just minor quirks, all cute, which should be celebrated at the same time as we gradually eradicate them.
We are told to treat cultural and historical identities as fashion accessories, shirts we can wear and change at will. The Multicultural society is “colorful,” an adjective normally attached to furniture or curtains. Cultures are window decorations of little or no consequence, and one might as well have one as the other. In fact, it is good to change it every now and then. Don’t you get tired of that old sofa sometimes? What about exchanging it for the new sharia model? Sure, it’s slightly less comfortable than the old one, but it’s very much in vogue these days and sets you apart from the neighbors, at least until they get one, too. Do you want a sample of the latest Calvin Klein perfume to go with that sharia?
We should remember that this view of culture as largely unimportant is essentially a Marxist view of the world, which has now even been adopted by segments of the political Right, united with Leftists in the belief that man is homo economicus, the economic man, the sum of his functions as worker and consumer, nothing more. Marxism doesn’t say that cultures or ideas are of absolutely no consequence, but that they are of minor or secondary importance next to structural and economic conditions.
I have heard individuals state point blank that even if Muslims become the majority in our countries in the future, this doesn’t matter because all people are equal and all cultures are just a mix of everything else, anyway. And since religions are just fairy-tales, replacing one fairy-tale, Christianity, with another fairy-tale, Islam, won’t make a big difference. All religions basically say that the same things in different ways. However, not one of them would ever dream of saying that all political ideologies “basically mean the same thing.” They simply don’t view religious or cultural ideas as significant, and thus won’t spend time on studying the largely unimportant details of each specific creed. This is Marxist materialism.
The unstated premise behind this is that the age of distinct cultures is over. All peoples around the world will gradually blend into one another. Ethnic, religious and racial tensions will disappear, because mankind will be one and equal. It’s cultural and genetic Communism. Nation states who create their own laws and uphold their own borders constitute “discrimination” and an obstacle to this new Utopia, and will gradually have to be dismantled, starting with Western nations of course, replaced by a world where everybody has the right to move wherever they want to and where international legislation and human rights resolutions define the law, upheld by an elite of — supposedly well-meaning — transnational bureaucrats managing our lives.
What the proponents of this ideology don’t say is that even if it were possible to melt all human beings into one people, which is in my view neither possible nor desirable, this project would take generations or centuries, and in the intervening time there would be numerous wars and enormous suffering caused by the fact that not everybody would quietly allow themselves to be eradicated.
All aspects of your person, from language via culture to skin color and religion, are treated as imaginary social constructs. We are told that “all cultures are hybrids and borrow from each other,” that we were “all immigrants” at one point in time and hence nobody has a right to claim any specific piece of land as “theirs.”
Since “we” are socially constructed, we can presumably also be socially deconstructed. The Marxist “counter-culture”of the 1960s and 70s has been remarkably effective at attacking the pillars of Western civilization. It is, frankly, scary to notice how much damage just one single generation can inflict upon a society. Maybe it’s true that no chain is stronger than its weakest link. Our education system is now used to dismantle our culture, not to uphold it, and has moved from the Age of Reason to the Age of Deconstruction. Socialism has destroyed the very fabric of society. Our countries have become so damaged that people feel there is nothing left fighting for, which no doubt was the intention. Our children leave school as disoriented wrecks and ideological cripples with no sense of identity, and are met with a roar of outrage if they demonstrate the slightest inkling of a spine.
Codie Stott, a white English teenage schoolgirl, was arrested on suspicion of committing a section five racial public order offense after refusing to sit with a group of South Asian students because some of them did not speak English. She was taken to Swinton police station, had her fingerprints taken and was thrown into a cell before being released. Robert Whelan of the Civitas think-tank said: “A lot of these arrests don’t result in prosecutions – the aim is to frighten us into self-censorship until we watch everything we say.”
Bryan Cork of Carlisle, Cumbria in the Lake District, was sentenced to six months in jail for standing outside a mosque shouting, “Proud to be British,” and “Go back to where you came from.” This happened while Muslims were instituting sharia laws in British cities and got state sponsorship for having several wives.
Antifascistisk Aktion in Sweden, a group that supposedly fights against “racists,” openly brag about numerous physical attacks against persons with their full name and address published on their website. According to AFA, this is done in order to fight against global capitalism and for a classless society. They subscribe to an ideology that killed one hundred million people during a few generations, and they are the good guys. Those who object to being turned into a minority in their own country through mass immigration are the bad guys.
The extreme Left didn’t succeed in staging a violent revolution in the West, so they decided to go for a permanent, structural revolution instead. They now hope that immigrants can provide raw material for a violent rebellion, especially since many of them are Muslims who have displayed such a wonderful talent for violence and destruction. The Western Left are importing a new proletariat, since the previous one disappointed them.
A poll carried out on behalf of the Organization for Information on Communism found that 90 percent of Swedes between the ages of 15 and 20 had never heard of the Gulag, although 95 percent knew of Auschwitz. “Unfortunately we were not at all surprised by the findings,” Ander Hjemdahl, the founder of UOK, told website The Local. In the nationwide poll, 43 percent believed that Communist regimes had claimed less than one million lives. The actual figure is estimated at 100 million. 40 percent believed that Communism had contributed to increased prosperity in the world. Mr. Hjemdahl states several reasons for this massive ignorance, among them that “a large majority of Swedish journalists are left-wingers, many of them quite far left.”
I have personally read statements by leading media figures not just in Sweden, but all over Western Europe, who openly brag about censoring coverage of issues related to mass immigration and the Multicultural society.
The Muslim writer Abdelwahab Meddeb believes that as a result of French influence, the whole of the Mediterranean region “is suited to becoming a laboratory for European thought.” First of all, I don’t think Islam can be reformed, and even if it could, France currently lacks the cultural confidence to lead such an effort. Behind their false pride, they are a nation deeply unsure about themselves, and still carry psychological wounds from their great Revolution of 1789. And second: A bridge can be crossed two ways. Will France be a bridge for European thought into the Islamic world or for Islamic thought into Europe? Right now, the latter seems more likely. And finally: I greatly resent seeing tens of millions of human beings described as a “laboratory.” Unfortunately, Mr. Meddeb is not alone in entertaining such ideas.
Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt has said: “Belgium is the laboratory of European unification.” What kind of confidence does it inspire in citizens that their supposed leader talks about their country as a laboratory? Are their children guinea pigs? Apparently, yes.
In 1960, 7.3% of the population of Belgian capital Brussels was foreign. Today the figure is 56.5%. Jan Hertogen, a Marxist sociologist, can hardly hide his excitement over this great experiment in social engineering, and believes this population replacement “is an impressive and unique development from a European, or even a world perspective.” Yes, it is probably the first time in human history that a nation demographically has handed over its capital city to outsiders without firing a single shot, but judging from trends in the rest of Europe, it won’t be the last. The European Union and the local, Multicultural elites will see to that.
The Dutch writer Margriet de Moor provides another example of why Multiculturalism is a massive experiment in social engineering, every bit as radical and dangerous as Communism. Ms. de Moor lives in some kind of alternate reality where “Europe’s affluence and free speech” will create an Islamic Reformation. But Muslim immigration constitutes a massive drain on the former, and is slowly, but surely destroying the latter:
“When I’m feeling optimistic I sometimes see the Netherlands, a small laconic country not inclined towards the large-scale or the theatrical, as a kind of laboratory on the edge of Europe. Now and then the mixture of dangerous, easily inflammable substances results in a little explosion, but basically the process of ordinary chemical reactions just continues.”
What kind of person refers to her own country as a laboratory? Ms. de Moor sounds like a scientist, dispassionately studying an interesting specimen in her microscope. I’m sure Theo van Gogh would be pleased to hear that he was basically a lab rat when he ended up with a knife in his chest for having “insulted” Islam, along with that of the “racist” Pim Fortuyn the first political murder in Holland for centuries. What was once one of the most tolerant nations in the world is now being ruined by Muslim immigration. But hey, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, right? These murders were an unfortunate business, no doubt, but one mustn’t call off the entire Multicultural experiment because of a few minor setbacks.
We all told that Arabs triggered the Renaissance in Europe. Michelangelo was commissioned by the Pope to paint the ceiling of The Sistine Chapel within the Vatican. He painted God creating Adam. Did any of the Caliphs or Sultans ever commission an artist to pant the image of Allah in Mecca? Why not, if all cultures are one and the same? Likewise, the political works of the ancient Greeks were never translated to Arabic, as they presented systems such as democracy where men ruled themselves according to their own laws. This was considered blasphemous to Muslims. The same texts were later studied with great interest in the West.
Far from being irrelevant, culture is a massively important factor in shaping a society. Islam’s hostility to free speech is why Muslims never had any Scientific or Industrial Revolution, for instance. If you believe in evolution, isn’t it then also likely that some cultures are more evolved than others? That kind of blows Multiculturalism away, doesn’t it?
British PM Tony Blair is stepping down after having ruined his country more in one decade than arguably any other leader has done before him. He ran on the platform of New Labour, but as it turned out, his party was still wed to the same old ideas of international Socialism.
According to the writer Melanie Phillips, “He is driven by a universalist world view which minimises the profound nature of the conflicts that divide people. He thinks that such divisions belong essentially to a primitive past. (...) Hence his closely-related obsession with ‘universal’ human rights law. Hence also his belief that national borders no longer matter, that mass immigration is a good thing and that Britain’s unique identity must give way to multiculturalism. This is the way, he thinks, to eradicate conflict, prejudice and war, and create a global utopia. What a profound misjudgment. It is, instead, the way to destroy democracy and the independent nations that create and sustain it.”
Marie Simonsen, the political editor of the Norwegian left-wing newspaper Dagbladet, wrote in March 2007 that it should be considered a universal human right for all people everywhere to migrate wherever they want to. This statement came just after a UN report had predicted a global population growth of several billion people to 2050.
It doesn’t take much skill to calculate that unlimited migration will spell certain death for a tiny Scandinavian nation — not in a matter of generations, but theoretically even within a few weeks. Ms. Simonsen is thus endorsing the eradication of her own people, and she does so almost as an afterthought. Her comments received no opposition from anyone in the media establishment, which could indicate that most of them share her views, or at least have resigned themselves to the fact that our death as a people is already inevitable.
Karl Marx has defined the essence of Socialism as abolishing private property. Let’s assume for a moment that a country can be treated as the “property” of its citizens. Its inhabitants are responsible for creating its infrastructure. They have built its roads and communications, its schools, universities and medical facilities. They have created its political institutions and instilled in its people the mental capacities needed for upholding them. Is it then wrong for the citizens of this country to want to enjoy the benefits of what they have themselves created?
According to Marxist logic, yes.
Imagine you have two such houses next to each other. In House A, the inhabitants have over a period of generations created a tidy and functioning household. They have limited their number of children because they wanted to give all of them a proper education. In House B, the inhabitants live in a dysfunctional household with too many children who have received little higher education. One day they decide to move to their neighbors’. Many of the inhabitants of House A are protesting, but some of them think this might be a good idea. There is room for more people in House A, they say. In addition to this, Amnesty International, the United Nations and others claim that it is “racist” and “against international law” for the inhabitants of House A to expel the intruders. Pretty soon, House A has been turned into an overpopulated and dysfunctional household just like House B.
This is what is happening to the West today. Europe itself could become a failed continent by importing the problems of Africa and the Islamic world. The notion that everybody should be free to move anywhere they want to, and that preventing them from moving into your country is “racism, xenophobia and bigotry,” is the Communism of the 21st century. And it will probably lead to immense human suffering.
One of the really big mistakes we made after the Cold War ended was to declare that Socialism was now dead, and thus no longer anything to worry about. Here we are, nearly a generation later, discovering that Marxist thinking has penetrated every single stratum of our society, from the universities to the media. While the “hard” Marxism of the Soviet Union may have collapsed, at least for now, the “soft” Marxism of the Western Left has actually grown stronger, in part because we mistakenly deemed it to be less threatening.
Ideas about Multiculturalism and de-facto open borders have achieved a virtual hegemony in public discourse. By hiding behind labels such as “anti-racism” and “tolerance,” Leftists have achieved a degree of censorship they could never have achieved had they openly stated that their intention was to radically transform Western civilization and destroy its foundations.
According to the French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, “the lofty idea of ‘the war on racism’ is gradually turning into a hideously false ideology. And this anti-racism will be for the 21st century what Communism was for the 20th century: A source of violence.”
Alexander Boot, a Russian by birth, left for the West in the 1970s, only to discover that the West he was seeking was no longer there. This led him to write the book How the West Was Lost. Boot believes that democracy, or in the words of Abraham Lincoln, the government of the people, by the people and for the people, has been replaced by glossocracy, the government of the word, by the word and for the word.
In a culture where language is power and words are used as weapons, those who control the most fearsome of these weapons control society. In the West, where equality in all walks of life is the highest virtue and “discrimination” is a mortal sin, the “racist” is the worst of creatures. Those who control the definition of “racist,” the nuclear bomb of glossocracy, have a powerful weapon they can utilize to intimidate opponents. The mere utterance of the word can destroy careers and ruin lives, with no trial and no possibility of appeal.
Currently, the power of definition largely rests in the hands of a cartel of anti-racist organizations dominated by the extreme Left, often in cooperation with Muslims. By silencing all opposition to mass immigration as “racism,” they can stage a transformation of society every bit as massive as that of Communism, yet virtually shut down debate about it.
Boot totally rejects the claim that Marxism has been misunderstood:
“Any serious study will demonstrate that Marx based his theories on industrial conditions that either were already obsolete at the time or had never existed in the first place. That is no wonder, for Marx never saw the inside of a factory, farm or manufactory. [...] Whatever else he was, Marx was not a scientist. […] Marx ideals are unachievable precisely because they are so monstrous that even Bolsheviks never quite managed to realize them fully, and not for any lack of trying. For example, the [Communist] Manifesto (along with other writings by both Marx and Engels) prescribes the nationalization of all private property without exception. Even Stalin’s Russia of the 1930s fell short of that ideal. In fact, a good chunk of the Soviet economy was then in private hands [...] Really, compared with Marx, Stalin begins to look like a humanitarian. Marx also insisted that family should be done away with, with women becoming communal property. Again, for all their efforts, Lenin and Stalin never quite managed to achieve this ideal either. So where the Bolsheviks and Nazis perverted Marxism, they generally did so in the direction of softening it.”
The former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovksy, who has warned that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union, thinks that while the West won the Cold War in a military sense, we lost it in the context of ideas: “Communism might have been dead, but the communists remained in power in most of the former Warsaw bloc countries, while their Western collaborators came to power all over the world (in Europe in particular). This is nothing short of a miracle: the defeat of the Nazis in 1945 quite logically brought a shift to the Left in world politics, while a defeat of communism in 1991 brought again a shift to the Left, this time quite illogically.”
Bukovksy is right: We never had a thorough de-Marxification process after the Cold War, similar to the de-Nazification after WW2, and we are now paying the price for this. Many Marxist ideas have been allowed to endure and mutate, such as the notion that culture is unimportant or that it is OK to stage massive social experiments on hundreds of millions of people. The Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm has stated that had the Soviet Union managed to create a functioning Socialist society, tens of millions of deaths would have been a worthwhile price to pay. But Marxist ideals of forced equality can only be enforced by a government with totalitarian powers, and will thus inevitably lead to a totalitarian society. There is no “enlightened Marxism,” and the idea that there is has ruined more lives than probably and other ideology in modern history.
Marxism is an organized crime against humanity.
The Australian writer Keith Windschuttle warns that the consequence of cultural relativism is that if there can be no absolute truths, there can be no absolute falsehoods, either, which explains Western weakness when confronted with Islamic Jihad. Our sense of right and wrong has been deeply damaged by Marxist thinking. Windschuttle praises Greek historian Thucydides’ writings about The History of the Peloponnesian War from the 5th century BC:
“Rather than being impelled by great impersonal forces, political history reveals the world is made by men and, instead of being ‘absolved of blame’, men are responsible for the consequences of their actions. This was the very point that informed Thucydides’ study of the Peloponnesian War: the fate of Athens had been determined not by prophets, oracles or the gods, but by human actions and social organisation.” News Source
Ideas matter. Individuals matter. Cultures matter. Truth matters, and truth exists. We used to know that. It’s time we get to know it again, and reject false ideas about the irrelevance of culture. We are not racists for desiring to pass on our heritage to future generations, nor are we evil for resisting to be treated as lab rats in social experiments on a horrific scale. We must nip the ideology of transnational Multiculturalism and unlimited mass migration in the bud by exposing it for what it is: A Communism for the 21st century. News Source
Disclaimer: This News Item has been duplicated in its entirety to serve as public information (Ed)
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While attention was focused on Heathrow, ministers acted to protect members from scrutiny of their claims.
Ministers faced condemnation last night after announcing plans to block publication of a bill-by-bill breakdown of MPs' expenses.
MPs will vote next week on an order that would prevent up to one million pages of receipts being released, despite having last year lost a long-running freedom of information battle.
Under the plans, released quietly yesterday alongside major announcements on Heathrow and Equitable Life, MPs' expenses will be exempted from the Freedom of Information Act – thus preventing the public from seeking a full breakdown of legislators' taxpayer-funded allowances.
Officials had planned to release a full breakdown of MPs' expenses, down to the last receipt, after the Commons authorities lost a three-year legal battle over FOI requests demanding disclosure of a receipt-by-receipt breakdown of MPs' spending on second homes.
However, the autumn deadline for publication passed, with officials complaining that the process of scanning and redaction – expected to cost about £1m – was proving even more complex than first thought.
Under the new plans, the full expenses will remain secret. Instead, the House of Commons will publish MPs' expenditure under a series of headings, although officials will increase the number of categories used from 13 to 26. Yesterday, campaigners attacked the decision as a "disgrace", while the Conservatives said the decision did not go far enough.
Commons leader Harriet Harman told MPs: "The public will have more information than they ever had before, and we will take it back to 2005 so that, for all Members each year, their allowances against 26 headings will be made public.
" Officials angrily denied that they had tried to bury bad news, insisting the announcement had been long planned. But Matthew Elliott of the TaxPayers' Alliance said:
"It is an absolute disgrace that the Government are going to such absurd lengths to keep MPs' expenses secret from the very people who pay the bills.
"This is taxpayers' money, these are elected representatives, and the people have a right to know how their money is being spent.
Freedom of Information Campaigner Heather Brooke, who won a legal battle to secure the publication of a full breakdown of expenses for 14 high-profile MPs, condemned the decision as "outrageous". She told the BBC:
"This is the problem with the Parliamentary system – if they don't like the law, they can just change it, unlike the rest of us. It's a way to change the law without having a public debate."
A Conservative spokeswoman welcomed the commitment to publish more details of expenses, but said the Government should allow people to apply for full details of claims.
The decision came as MPs published a new guide to their expenses and allowances.
This "Green Book" shows they can still claim for white goods, furniture, electrical goods and cutlery for second homes. Maintenance, utility bills and decoration costs can also be claimed. The document gives details of a new flat-rate £25-a-night allowance for MPs' staying away from home.
But it details new internal audits for claims, and warns MPs that "claims must be above reproach. MPs must consider "How comfortable do I feel with the knowledge that that my claim will be available to the public under freedom of information?" it said. News Source
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State agencies, boards, commissions and quangos spent more than £1billion on spin last year, new evidence has indicated.
The huge amounts of public money lavished on attempts to sway opinion were revealed by freedom of information requests.
State-run organisations admitted raising their spending on 'communications' - much of it devoted to lobbying and public relations puffs - by almost a quarter in 2008.
The 32 public bodies which answered questions from the Tax-Payers' Alliance together paid out more than £50million on ' communications' staff and the material they produced
If all 1,162 unelected and unaccountable Government-funded organisations were spending at the same rate, the cost to the taxpayer would have reached almost £2billion. Communications budgets are certain to have passed the £1billion point.
The bills were disclosed at a time when recession is eating deeply into private sector jobs.
The figures showed that the number of people working in 'communications' jobs in quangos went up by 11 per cent in the financial year ending last March - the 32 bodies surveyed employed 537 communications staff.
The revelations follow an admission by local councils that only one in eight have shed staff because of the economic slowdown while eight out of ten are still recruiting - some for jobs attacked by critics as bizarre or useless
TaxPayers' Alliance analyst Ban Farrugia said: 'Quangos should spend less time talking about what they are doing and more time doing the job they are paid to do.
'Some have legitimate reasons to spend on communication, but far too much goes on expensive public relations and spin. Given the size of the quango state, the UK taxpayer is footing an enormous and unnecessary bill for PR.'
Tory spokesman Eric Pickles said: 'Given that most of these quangos are remote, unaccountable and bureaucratic it isn't surprising they would want to improve their PR.
'However, all the spin doctors in the world won't turn these ugly sisters into Cinderellas. At a time when businesses are having to make economies, they should be trying to offer better services and value for money, not PR and spin at the taxpayers' expense.' One of the biggest spin bills was run up by the British
Council, the organisation set up to spread knowledge of Britain abroad, which is headed by former Labour leader Neil Kinnock.
The Council spent £682,000 on its 'press and parliamentary affairs' department alone, a rise of just over 30 per cent in a year.
The big spenders on communication included the Rural Payments Agency, which has been mired in scandal over delayed subsidy payments to farmers.
The Charity Commission's overall running costs rose by seven per cent last year, but its communications budget rose by 34 per cent.
However, a third of the public bodies questioned by the Alliance had managed to reduce communications budgets.
The report said: 'Some public bodies have legitimate reasons for spending on communication - public health campaigns and advertising services, for instance.'
But it said there was evidence that large sums go on self-promotion, disguised in categories like ' stakeholder engagement' and 'informal publications'. News Source
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Labour's Minions Kill Pensioner
A Pensioner collapsed and died from a heart attack after being taken to a cashpoint by a bailiff to pay an overdue speeding fine.
Justice Minister and Blackburn MP Jack Straw has ordered court bosses to launch an investigation into the death of retired pub landlord Andy Miller.
The family of Mr Miller, 78, of Accrington, have told of their anger that a bailiff was sent to his house, saying it would have put him under ‘incredible duress’.
Mr Miller had been released from a two-month stay in hospital a fortnight before after suffering a heart attack at Ewood Park before a Blackburn Rovers game.
His son, Mick, 48, said the family had written to the court to explain why Mr Miller had not paid the overdue £60 speeding fine for an offence committed on the M55.
But Blackpool magistrates still gave permission for the bailiff to go to his home in India Street, Accrington.
The court also added on £290 to what Mr Miller owed in court costs.
The official went round on January 7 and asked Mr Miller, a former landlord of the Cabin End pub in Knuzden, to visit a cashpoint and pay the fine, his family said.
Father-of-five Mr Miller was driven to Accrington town centre. The bailiff parked up and waited for Mr Miller, but he collapsed in Union Street before he reached a cashpoint.
Coroner Michael Singleton has ruled out an inquest, because tests had found Mr Miller died of natural causes as a result of heart problems, officials said.
His son Mick said he wanted answers from court bosses as their letter told them his father was suffering from memory loss and confusion.
Mick, who lives in Lower Darwen, said: “Bailiffs should not be allowed to behave like this.
“Dad was put under incredible duress.
“I know how nervous he had been and what a strain this would have been on him.”
Mr Miller’s nephew Steve Flanigan, 61, added: ”He was by himself when it happened. I can’t help but think that if I had been there it would have been a very different story.
“The visit must have been such a shock, because most people don’t know what their rights are. When someone is there on your doorstep, can you just tell them to go away? Do you have to do what they say? Most people just wouldn’t know.” Continued
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Two people have been jailed for robbing a pensioner at his own home.
Imran Arif, aged 21 of Vale Drive, Oldham and Leanne Twist, 23 of Densmore Street, Failsworth were both charged with robbery and sentenced at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court.
Arif was sentenced to five and a half years in prison and Twist was jailed for five years.
The charges relate to a robbery at a flat in Oldham on 5 September 2008.
The pair managed to get into the gated apartment complex and forced open one of the doors.
The flat belonged to an 81-year-old man who was in at the time of the robbery.
The man, who sadly died a short time after the robbery, had only a small amount of cash in the flat, so Arif and Twist only managed to steal £10.
Inspector Paul Hatton of Oldham division said: "I am glad these individuals have today had to face the consequences of their disgraceful behaviour, I am only sorry their victim is not here to see it." News Source
Reader Submitted Link. Thank You Welshie
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A Pensioner has died shortly after being robbed in a London street.
Molly Morgan, 81, was attacked from behind in Harrow and her shoulder bag - which contained just a few personal items including an umbrella and a supermarket carrier - snatched.
Her house keys and her purse were found in her coat.
During the assault, at about 8pm yesterday, it appears that she fell to the ground and suffered a head injury.
Mrs Morgan, who lived near to where the attack took place, was taken to Northwick Park Hospital but her condition deteriorated during the night. She died shortly before 4am.
Scotland Yard said she had been on her way to Kenton Library to attend a lecture on historic London buildings when she was attacked. Police appealed for witnesses saying the mugging took place in a busy residential street.
Detective Chief Inspector Jessica Wadsworth, who is leading the murder inquiry, described Mrs Morgan as "very active" and said she was able to give brief details about the attack to police from her hospital bed before her condition worsened. She said: "What is absolutely appalling is that the thief got away with virtually nothing and Mrs Morgan lost her life for nothing."
Mrs Morgan, who lived alone, was a widow and was the last surviving of three sisters. Ms Wadsworth said: "The force of the snatch dragged her to the ground. Unfortunately she could not describe her assailant as the attack was from behind."
She added: "Her daughter has told us how active she was in the community, working as a volunteer. She had an allotment and a lively sense of humour." So far there have been no reported witnesses to the mugging and no description of the attacker.
Linda O'Sullivan, who lives a few yards from the scene, said: "It's so shocking because this is such a busy road - especially at that time of night."
She said police searched the road outside and the front gardens of the houses looking for a weapon. A post mortem examination is due to be held to establish the cause of death.
Anyone with information should call 020 8358 0300 or ring Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. News Source
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Two men have been charged with assault, causing grievous bodily harm and possession of an imitation firearm following an incident in Maybury in which a man was stabbed.
Uchechuku Valentine Madubuike, 28, from Maybury Road and George Irvine Mangwiro, 24, of no fixed abode appeared at Woking Magistrates Court following the incident in Walton Road on January 8.
Both men were remanded in custody and are due to appear at Guildford Crown Court on February 27.
Madubuike was back in court on Friday to appeal against the decision to not grant him bail but the hearing was adjourned. News Source
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A 16-year-old who was caught smiling and laughing after stabbing a schoolboy to death was given a life sentence for murder today.
David Idowu, 14, died on July 7 last year, three weeks after being stabbed in the chest at a football pitch in Southwark, south London.
The schoolboy, the youngest stabbing victim in the capital in 2008, had been due to give a speech condemning knife culture at a public-speaking competition just days after the attack.
Elijah Dayoni, 16, was found guilty of murder following a trial last month and was sentenced at the Old Bailey today to be detained for life, serving a minimum of 12 years.
Police said Dayoni approached the schoolboy who had been taking part in an organised football match on an artificial pitch. Without warning, he stabbed him in the heart.
He then chased Idowu as he tried to escape and was caught on CCTV laughing and smiling.
Idowu collapsed on a nearby street and passers-by helped to restart his heart after it stopped twice. He was flown to hospital by air ambulance but never came out of a coma.
When Dayoni was arrested two days later, he was wearing a T-shirt which forensic tests showed had his victim's blood on it. News Source
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A Thug who ‘wrecked’ a man’s life when he stabbed him in the back in an unprovoked attack has been jailed for four years and four months.
Unemployed Shumuz Ullah, 21, was sentenced for plunging a knife into the back of Hugh Parker from behind in a Haslingden street.
It left Mr Parker, who had been walking home with his partner, “millimetres” from paralysis and needing emergency surgery to remove the blade which snapped off in the attack.
Doctors said Mr Parker has since made an astonishing recovery but he said Ullah, of Pine Street, Haslingden, has ruined his life, leaving him needing counselling for the trauma.
Burnley Crown Crown was told the attack had ‘homophobic undertones’.
Ullah had been drunk and on cocaine when he knifed Mr Parker, before throwing the broken weapon into the graveyard, court heard.
Mr Parker, 30, who lives with partner Anthony Bradshaw, 41, in the town, said: “We had been out for cigarettes at the shop.
“We were walking back up Church Street and then all of a sudden I felt as if I had been thumped in the back. That’s all I thought it was.
“Then I saw Ullah run off down an alleyway.
“I could feel something really cold in my back and I realised it was a blade. It was still lodged in my back and I couldn’t move it.”
Mr Parker was taken to the Royal Preston Hospital and stayed in for five days while doctors performed emergency surgery. Continued
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A 28-year-old man admitted killing Luton policeman Jonathan Henry when he appeared in the dock at the Old Bailey today, January 16 - but he denied murder.
Tennyson Obih, 28, of Winsdon Road, Luton, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of the dad-of-one on the grounds of diminished responsibility, blaming schizophrenia. But he pleaded not guilty to murder.
Obih also pleaded not guilty to two charges of attempted murder, as well as one count of wounding and one for aggravated burglary in another unrelated incident.
PC Jon Henry, aged 36, was stabbed in Luton town centre while on duty on June 11, 2007, after responding to a 999 call that there was someone in George Street brandishing a knife. He later died at Luton & Dunstable Hospital.
Obih, who is currently being held at Rampton Special Hospital, will now go on trial for murder at Luton Crown Court on March 9. News Source
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A Family say they lived in fear of convicted killer Pascal Simpson for five years after he repeatedly threatened them.
Simpson, 25, was convicted yesterday of the manslaughter of Mark Beard in Caldon Green, Bulwell Hall Estate, last July.
Mr Beard, 25, was stabbed four times. One wound was ten inches deep and pierced his lung.
Now a 20-year-old man, who is too afraid to be named, says his family fled their home of 16 years to escape Simpson.
He says threatening gestures were made towards his six-year-old brother in a school playground and his disabled mother was threatened in a supermarket.
"When I saw he was in court for stabbing someone, I just thought 'that could've been me'," he said.
"Five years ago I told the police that man was going to kill someone one day.
"Reading about what has been said in court every day has been bringing it all back."
Simpson, of Fradley Close, Bulwell, was cleared of murder. He will be sentenced on February 6. News Source
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A Teenage illegal immigrant who took part in 23 terrifying knife-point gang robberies in just three days has been put behind bars for three and a half years.
South African-born Terashiya Chiloane, 19, of Maw Street, Walsall, was also told he would be deported when he had completed his prison sentence.
Recorder Andrew Lockhart told Chiloane the gang targeted vulnerable young people aged between 12 and 21 in Walsall and took mobile telephones, jewellery and money.
“Some of you wore disguises while others carried knives,” the Recorder said.
“You all knew what was going on and you lent your support to what was frightening and despicable behaviour.”
The Recorder went on: “It was planned, it was concerted and it must have been incredibly frightening to your victims. It was prevalent offending and these people were put in fear by what was organised gang activity.” Chiloane admitted seven charges of robbery and asked for 16 other robberies to be taken into consideration at Wolverhampton Crown Court.
Mark Rees, prosecuting, said the robberies all took place in seven separate incidents, with the gang threatening their victims with knives before stealing property.
Chiloane, a student at Walsall College of Art, was arrested after he was recognised by a number of victims. Continued
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'An Englishman's home is his castle': Britain's top judge warns burglars they face tougher sentences
Burglars must face stiff punishments for violating the 'precious' security of people's homes, Britain top judge declared yesterday.
In a hard-hitting ruling, the Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge urged the courts to impose harsh sentences on thieves who target vulnerable victims, steal irreplaceable sentimental items or terrify residents during break-ins.
He said: 'There is a long-standing, almost intuitive belief that our homes should be our castles The concept suggests impregnability and defiance against intrusion.'
His strongly-worded guidance - calling for a renewed focus on the often terrible impact on victims, particularly the elderly - marks a significantly tougher approach to burglary following years of mounting concerns over 'softly-softly' punishments, and police forces treating the offence as a low priority.
Lord Judge, sitting with two other senior judges at the Appeal Court, yesterday threw out attempts by six convicted burglars to have their jail terms reduced - and took the opportunity to issue formal guidance for all courts in England and Wales calling for a robust approach to punishing domestic break-ins.
In unusually emotive terms, the Lord Chief Justice stressed that domestic burglary must always be treated as a 'serious criminal offence', and called on judges and magistrates to deliver 'consistent' sentencing, recognising the scale of victims' trauma and loss.
Writing just weeks after he called for tougher sentences for knife crime, he added: 'The principle which must be grasped is that when we speak of dwelling house burglary we are considering not only an offence against property, which it is, but also, and often more alarmingly and distressingly, an offence against the person.'
Lord Judge quoted the 17th Century English judge and Attorney General Sir Edward Cooke's description of an Englishman's home as his 'safest refuge - where above all we should enjoy secure tranquility and untroubled peace'.
Noting that police recorded more than 280,000 domestic burglaries in England and Wales last year, he added: 'Something precious is violated by burglary of a home, and those who perpetrate this crime should be sentenced and punished accordingly.' Continued
Friday 16th January 2009
Up to 275,000 UK passports could be handed out to foreigners every year under Government plans unveiled yesterday.
All except the worst criminals will be eligible. By becoming citizens, they become entitled to the full range of state benefits, including housing.
They will be merely expected to spend longer as probationary citizens under the scheme of 'earned citizenship'.
The maximum they will be expected to wait is ten years.
The plans are part of the Government's Immigration and Citizenship Bill, which was published yesterday.
Ministers say it is no longer acceptable for foreigners to live here but not adapting to the British way of life.
They will abolish the immigration status of 'indefinite leave to remain'. In future, migrants will be told to apply for a passport or go home.
Officials say only 60 per cent of those given ILR ever apply for citizenship. In 2007, that led to 164,635 passports being handed out.
Winning citizenship will take at least six years from arrival, a year longer than at present because of the new probationary stage.
Full access to benefits will not be granted until applicants have completed their probationary period. But...
This will last only 12 months if they take part in community activities such as volunteering, fund-raising or running a sports team or playgroup.
Migrants who fail to take part will have to spend three years on probation.
Migrants who have served a jail sentence will be barred altogether.
But minor offenders will still be allowed to obtain a passport, in a process that could take up to ten years. News Source
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Migrants coming to Britain will have to pay an"immigration tax" to help communities cope, but it could be as little as £20 each, as part of plans to make newcomers earn their stay.
A small price or penalty to pay to qualify for Benefits, Housing and Healthcare don't you think? (Ed)
The levy will be put on visa fees for foreigners as a contribution towards the schools, hospitals and other services they use but critics warn it will make little difference.
Tens of thousands of migrants who want to be British citizens each year will also be "fast tracked" to settlement if they carry out voluntary or community work, under the Borders, Immigration and Citizenship Bill .
The so-called "earned citizenship" scheme will even see some foreign criminals get a British passport and full access to benefits within a decade of first arriving here.
The moves could see up to 250,000 extra foreigners handed a passport every year as Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, signalled she wants every migrant looking to settle tin the UK to apply for citizenship.
The levy was first announced last year and is expected to come in to force from April.
Anyone entering the country on a visa will have to pay an extra fee that will go in to a "transitional fund" for which bodies dealing with the impact of immigration, such as local authorities and police, can apply for support - but the fee is likely to be just £20 per foreigner.
Ministers claim the move will raise "tens of millions" of pounds but the Local Government Association has already warned it will not raise anywhere near their estimate that as much as £250 million is needed each year to cope with the influx.
The Bill will also introduce the notion of "probationary citizens" for those migrants who want to settle in the UK.
Currently anyone who is here for five years can apply for settlement but under the new rules, they will enter a probationary period of up to five years after that point.
The length of the probationary period will depend on what contributions they make to society and those who carry out voluntary work such as fundraising or running a children's sports team will be "fast-tracked" and gain citizenship after just an extra year.
Those who do little may have to wait an extra three years but even some criminals will be able to get a passport after five years.
Only those convicted of an offence carrying a prison term or already liable to deportation will be barred.
Lesser criminals will simply have to wait a little longer than other migrants before being able to apply for citizenship and gain full access to all state benefits.
But one of Labour's favourite think-tanks, the Institute for Public Policy Research, warned the move could put migrants off coming to the UK.
Tim Finch, head of the ippr migration team, said: "Migrants become easy targets at times of economic difficulty but introducing yet more tough measures to exclude people could damage our prospects for economic recovery.
"As it stands, the Borders, Immigration and Citizenship Bill could deter migrants who are in high demand and who are essential for our economy
"Not all migrants will want to settle in the UK, but some will and so it's important that the over-complicated process of "earned citizenship" is made more clear and fair."
Last year Ms Smith said she expected anyone who is looking to settle in the UK to apply for citizenship rather being here "in limbo" and staying on some form of leave to remain remain.
Officials say only 60 per cent of people given the right to settle here permanently apply for citizenship. If everyone else applied it could lead to an extra 250,000 passports for foreigners each year.
Critics have warned it will result in a "passports for all" policy. News Source
Nothing has changed then! See Also:
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Romany gypsies from countries including Romania and Bulgaria could be invited to Lincolnshire to take jobs previously filled by Eastern Europeans.
Gypsies and travellers currently suffering from persecution in their countries of origin could be persuaded to flee their "squalor" and step into jobs left by Poles returning home.
In Lincolnshire they have predominantly filled jobs in agriculture.
Peter Robinson, portfolio holder for social cohesion at Lincolnshire County Council, told colleagues this week: "If, because of the downturn, we start to see fewer Eastern European migrant workers from Poland and so forth, it's my personal view we could get replacements from Romania and Bulgaria."
He said Lincolnshire could extend a friendly hand to them saying "come to us and get a better deal".
"The main problem of course, whether we like it or not, is that gypsies and travellers are extremely unpopular people to have in the county," he added.
Coun Robinson was speaking during a meeting of the council's local community development and partnerships policy development group, which held talks on a new pilot project to deliver extra housing-related support to gypsy and traveller communities already living here.
But in a written response issued via the council's press office after the meeting, Coun Robinson said it only "might be the case that gypsies and travellers could take up the jobs that Eastern European migrants used to hold". News Source
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A council is planning to spend up to £500,000 of Taxpayers money to build a noise barrier beside a dual carriageway after a group of travellers complained about the sound of passing vehicles and abuse from motorists.
Around 50 people who have moved onto the camp beside the A14 near Milton in Cambridgeshire say their lives are being made a misery by the constant rumble of traffic.
They also claim they are being victimised by passing lorry drivers who are beeping their horns, flashing their lights and shouting obscenities.
The barriers could be installed when the dual carriageway is improved during a major project beginning next year.
But Tory-run South Cambridgeshire District Council insist the travellers shouldn't have to wait that long in such an 'uncomfortable place to live'.
The TaxPayers' Alliance yesterday branded the plans 'a farce'.
Spokesman Mark Wallace said: 'Given that the residents of this site are self-declared travellers, it is amazing that they do not simply move on somewhere else if they don't like the fact they are living next to a dual carriageway.
There is very little reason why taxpayers should bear a massive bill because of the surroundings people have chosen for themselves.
'If you choose to buy a house next to a dual carriageway then you know what to expect. It should be no different in this case.'
The camp, known as Blackwell, was opened as a transit site for travellers in the 1970s but became an official council-run facility in 1993 and home to a settled community.
The A14 is situated on a grassy embankment above the site.
The council has already secured a £15,000 grant to widen and improve the entrance to the camp but is applying to the Government for more money to build the barrier.
Nick Wright, the councillor responsible for planning, said: 'It's such a noisy place to live. When you go down there it's almost a job just to have a conversation.
'Their homes obviously don't have any double glazing or sound proofing. The travellers hear everything as truckers hurl abuse from their windows and blow their horns.
'They can't always distinguish what is being shouted but they know it's negative.
'I just hope this publicity does not encourage the lorry drivers who do not blow their horns to start hooting them as they pass.'
Squandering of Taxpayers Money
Sebastian Kindersley, the leader of the Lib Dem opposition, admitted if the noise barrier was installed this year it would only be a temporary measure until the start of the A14 redevelopments.
And he hinted the council would dip into its own reserves if it failed to win a grant for the project.
'If the Highways Agency says our demands are impossible we will tell them to get knotted,' he said.
'The travellers live between a motorway and a rubbish dump - it must be pretty desperate and something should be done urgently. They are entitled to their privacy.'
The National Romani Rights Association(CORR) blamed the council for choosing a poor site in the first place.
Chairman Basil Burton said: 'As far as I'm concerned it's disgusting that the local authorities have placed a gypsy site next to a busy motorway in the first place. But this barrier should be better than nothing.'
Three years ago it emerged South Cambridgeshire District Council had spent close to £1million on attempts to evict travellers from Smithy Fen in Cottenham, one of the country's biggest and most notorious illegal camps.
Homeowners in the area have complained of soaring crime, threats and anti-social behaviour. News Source
Don't moan or grumble, just keep paying your taxes...
OR You will be branded a Racist!
Residents who opposed plans for nearby traveller camps over fears of increased noise and rubbish or reduced property prices have been accused of racism by their council.
The homeowners, who were among 3,500 respondents to mid-Bedfordshire district council's Gypsy and Traveller Consultation, received letters rejecting their contributions on the grounds that their comments were racist.
The Government has issued a decree to local Councils to provide more caravan pitches for gypsies. Their argument seems to be that people have a 'right' to be gypsies and that if councils provide more authorised sites there will be less of a problem with gypsies occupying land illegally.
This is a policy of appeasement of lawlessness. If people want to spend their lives travelling around in caravans then they must operate within the law. They should also rely on finding people willing to accommodate them - not expect special favours from the state.
This politically correct initiative is not only flawed in principle but, like so many of these diktats issued from Whitehall, it allows little room for local flexibility.
Homeowners are facing the prospect of being forced to sell their own land to make space for gypsy campsites under orders from the government.
Desperate to build permanent sites for travellers and gypsies, the Government is launching what has been described as a 'land grab', which could see fields and even private gardens converted into pitches for mobile homes.
One local authority is now warning its residents that their land could be brought under compulsory purchase if they refuse to sell up to make way for hundred of travellers setting up home in their town.
A £1million 'luxury' gypsy camp funded by taxpayers has been virtually empty since it was built seven years ago, it was claimed yesterday.
Just three groups of travellers have used the site's facilities this year, with only five in 2007 and only four in 2005. Campaigners claim the plot on the outskirts of Bristol drew a total of fewer than 30 travellers in the four previous years.
A Royal Navy Veterans Association is being kicked out of its clubhouse by a council to make way for a travellers camp. Former serviceman are furious at the decision which they fear signals the 'death knell' for their 76-year-old club.
But Conservative-run Gravesham council claims it is compelled by government guidelines to find a suitable site for the travellers who are currently on an illegal camp built on green belt land.
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The government is held an emergency meeting yesterday to assess the impact of the Gaza conflict on its campaign to prevent violent extremism in Britain's Muslim communities.
Three departments - the Home Office, the Foreign Office and the Department for Communities and Local Government - had invited more than 80 people from around the country to the meeting in London, where they will be asked to relay what effect the government's position on the crisis is having on its £90m programme, Prevent. Participants are likely to represent local authorities or organisations engaged in the Prevent agenda.
The justice minister, Shahid Malik, told the Guardian this week that there was "immense anger" in Britain's Muslim communities over developments in the Middle East: "There is a real feeling of helplessness, hopelessness and powerlessness among Britain's Muslims in the context of Gaza and the sense of grievance and injustice is both profoundly acute and obviously profoundly unhealthy."
Last week prominent Muslim groups and individuals wrote to Gordon Brown warning him that Britain's stance could push young people towards violent extremism, and the head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, has also said Israeli attacks on Gaza could give extremists in Britain more ideological ammunition. News Source
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The pastor of Zion Baptist Church has expressed his disappointment after vandals daubed anti-semitic graffiti on the church wall.
An insult aimed at Israeli Jews as well as the words ‘Free Gaza’ were painted in metre high letters on the outside wall of the Milkstone Road church in Rochdale.
The word Israel was partially written onto the side of the church itself, while the rear of the building was daubed with slogans, and a graffiti ‘tag’ thought to be that of a local gang.
Pastor Dennis Rigg discovered the graffiti on Friday morning after being alerted by the Observer, who were contacted by a concerned resident.
The graffiti was painted over within hours and later removed by the council’s environmental management service.
Mr Rigg says he believes the church’s name made it a target for those upset by the current situation in the Middle East. He said: "We were disappointed that the people who have committed this offence have no consideration for other people’s property. It shows a poor mental attitude and is just another act of contempt and lack of respect."
The incident has been condemned by several high-profile figures in the Muslim community.
Mohammed Shafiq, the chief executive of the Rochdale-based Ramadhan Foundation, said: "I am appalled at the attack. Islam totally forbids this sort of evil and we offer our support to our Christian friends."
Ghulam Rasul Shahzad says he intends to raise the issue at the next meeting of the Ruet-i-Hilal committee, an association of all Rochdale Mosques.
Mr Shazad said: "At this critical time when feelings are very high, we should maintain unity among our communities whatever the circumstances or situation in Gaza is."
Mr Rigg added: "I was pleased Councillor Angela Coric arranged to have the graffiti covered over and removed so quickly, as the last thing we want is retaliation for this."
The attack has ignited calls for CCTV to be installed in the area. News Source
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A Muslim teacher divorced his severely disabled wife without her knowing so that he could still have access to her £1million compensation, a court heard.
Khalil Kazi, 39, allegedly married again under Islamic law in Morocco while his original wife, Meimuna, thought he was still her husband.
Mrs Kazi only learned that her marriage to the former imam at Armley jail in Leeds had been dissolved when she applied for a divorce, Leeds Crown Court heard.
David Hall, prosecuting, said Kazi falsified divorce papers and perjured himself by falsely swearing a witness statement for a grant of divorce.
His scam allegedly collapsed after four years, in 2006, when Mrs Kazi visited Dewsbury County Court to apply for a
decree of judicial separation.
Giving evidence wearing a veil, wheelchair-user Mrs Kazi told the court on Tuesday how she reacted when she was told she was already divorced.
She said: “My solicitor went to speak to Mr Kazi’s solicitor and she came back with the news. I was very shocked.
“I trusted my husband and never expected he would do this to me.”
She added: “I felt very guilty he had lived with me for one year living in adultery. He never told me at any time that he had divorced me. ”
Mrs Kazi’s said her decision to file for a divorce followed her husband’s admission that he had married while in Morocco.
She said she had been 16 when she and Kazi married in 1995. A year later they had a son and two years later Mrs Kazi sought treatment for back pain.
Mr Hall said Mrs Kazi visited Dewsbury hospital, where she was advised her problem was a minor one and should be dealt with by her GP.
“It turned out she was suffering from an epidural abscess,” Mr Hall said.
“It was traced back to the birth. By the time it was diagnosed Mrs Kazi had been rendered paraplegic.
“She sued Mid-Yorkshire Hospital Trust for negligence, a case that was settled with a payment of £1million.”
At that time, Mr Hall said, Mrs Kazi was still living with her husband in Batley Carr.
He said a specially adapted home had been provided for her but her husband did not want to move, so she stayed at the family’s home.
Kazi purchased the property under right to buy legislation but Mrs Kazi thought he had used her compensation money without her permission, Mr Hall said.
Kazi denies perjury and perverting the course of justice. News Source
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A Muslim woman responsible for promoting racial and religious diversity within the UK's largest police force has withdrawn a claim of discrimination.
Yasmin Rehman, 42, a senior civilian manager at the Metropolitan Police, lodged employment tribunal papers alleging racial and sexual discrimination last year.
But it emerged today that she has withdrawn the claim and stepped down from her role at Scotland Yard.
After joining the Metropolitan Police in March 2004, Ms Rehman became the force's most senior Muslim woman employee.
The director of partnerships and diversity within the force's territorial policing unit was a driving force behind a series of sensitive issues.
She helped refine and implement many of the force's policies concerning work with minority ethnic groups as well as tackling forced marriages and honour killings.
But as news of her claim was made public it emerged she had been on sick leave for more than a year with stress-related problems.
In legal documents she claimed to be so marginalised because of her colour, religion and sex that she was not even allowed to make the coffee, it was reported.
Ms Rehman's case fuelled a simmering Scotland Yard race row in the wake of high-profile claims made by former Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur.
She sought advice from the Met's Black Police Association, which also supported Mr Ghaffur and Commander Ali Dizaei in their race claims against the force.
Mr Ghaffur eventually reached an out-of-court settlement after agreeing to withdraw allegations of racism against then Commissioner Sir Ian Blair.
Mr Dizaei has lodged employment tribunal papers but remains suspended pending the outcome of a separate inquiry into alleged misconduct.
The news came as members of the Metropolitan Police Authority prepare to meet tomorrow to discuss the progress of a race inquiry.
London Mayor Boris Johnson announced the £100,000 review of race and faith within the force last October.
Independent Police Authority member Cindy Butts was leading the inquiry which is focusing on the experiences of black and ethnic minority officers.
A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: "We are pleased that Ms Rehman has withdrawn her employment tribunal claim. Ms Rehman has decided to leave the Metropolitan Police."
An Employment Tribunals Service spokesman said Ms Rehman formally withdrew her claim on December 18. Ms Rehman and her solicitor Nighat Sahi were not available to comment. Continued
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Gordon Brown insisted Labour is not complacent about the economy today after one of his closest advisers claimed she could already see 'green shoots' of recovery.
Business Minister Baroness Vadera was ridiculed after repeating the gaffe made by then chancellor Norman Lamont during the recession of the early 90s.
Even Mr Lamont himself condemned her comments, which came as stocks plunged and thousands more jobs were slashed.
The Prime Minister, in Germany for talks about the economic crisis, tried to repair the damage today after forcing the minister out onto the airwaves last night to apologise.
'We are vigilant in every respect about the economy, never complacent,' he said before his meeting with German chancellor Angela Merkel.
He stressed that there was more action to come from the Government to try and ease the effects of the worst downturn in decades.
'Where real help is needed for businesses and families, we will not stand by on the other side. We will be ready to help,' Mr Brown said.
Deputy Labour Leader Harriet Harman also sprang to Lady Vadera's defence in the Commons when the Tories asked: 'What on earth was the Business Minister thinking of?'
'I would say that five minutes of Baroness Vadera's time is worth a lifetime of the judgment of the leader of the Opposition or the shadow chancellor. What we have in our ministerial team is we have serious people for serious times,' she said.
The Government is painfully aware that any sign of Government complacency could have a toxic effect at a critical time when Labour is already weakening in the polls.
Mr Brown's embarrassment was compounded because Lady Vadera is one of the chief architects of his economic recovery plan.
Her rose-tinted view of the crippling recession, delivered in a television interview yesterday, was spectacularly badly timed on another day of dire news.
- The FTSE-100 of Britain's top companies dropped almost five per cent, closing at 4,180, its 17th-worst percentage fall in history, as bank shares took a caning.
- Another 4,000 British jobs were lined up for the axe including more than 2,000 at Barclays, whose boss called on the Bank of England to print more money.
- In the US, the Dow Jones fell off a cliff, pushed by a dire set of retail figures showing the worst Christmas trading period for 40 years.
Lady Vadera told ITV: 'It's a very uncertain world right now globally ... I wouldn't want to be the one predicting it. I am seeing a few green shoots but it's a little bit too early to say exactly how they'd grow.'
Her comments were acutely politically embarrassing because the phrase 'green shoots' brought damaging echoes of Mr Lamont's fateful remarks in October 1991.
The then Chancellor was lambasted for claiming that 'the green shoots of economic spring are appearing once again'.
He argued that Lady Vadera's comments were even more embarrassing than his own today as he joined in the criticism against her.
The Tory claimed his prediction in October 1991 had been 'pretty accurate' because Britain had pulled out of recession in the summer of 1992.
'When I said it, we had been one year in recession. She is claiming the recession is over before it has formally been announced,' he said. Continued
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Defence Secretary John Hutton has given his strongest hint yet that thousands more British troops may be sent to Afghanistan to bolster the fight against the Taliban.
In a stinging attack on Nato allies who have refused to commit more troops, he said Britain 'had to prevail' against the Taliban or else face more terror attacks on the streets of the UK.
Challenged whether this meant it would be left to Britain to fill the gaps by sending reinforcements, Mr Hutton 'refused to speculate', adding that 'Parliament will hear first'.
It is understood the Ministry of Defence has drawn up contingency plans to send as many as 3,000 more UK troops. Currently there are 8,000 serving in the country.
His comments coincided with news that two more Royal Marines died in an explosion in Helmand Province on Wednesday, taking Britain's death toll to 141.
British ministers and their Washington counterparts have become increasingly frustrated at the refusal of most Nato allies to commit significant troop numbers to Afghanistan, where the resurgent Taliban have stepped up attacks and tightened their grip on wide swathes of the country - including closing in on the capital Kabul.
Barack Obama is expected to announce a 'surge' of 20,000 more American troops to Afghanistan once he is sworn in as President next week, almost doubling the U.S. presence in the country.
The war in Afghanistan cost 50 British lives last year - and £2.3billion of UK taxpayers' money.
But many European countries have ignored repeated pleas from London and Washington to send more of their own combat troops, helicopters and other assets.
Britian is already the second largest troop contributor in Afghanistan after the U.S. Continued
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The Gaza conflict could drive British Muslims to radicalisation and the risk of more home-grown suicide bombers, the Home Office fears.
Constant images of the devastation caused by the Israeli bombardment is likely to fuel anger in the UK and turn some to extremism, an aide close to the Home Secretary warned.
Jacqui Smith and Communities Secretary Hazel Blears met with Muslim groups and local council representatives yesterday to hear their concerns and reinforce the need to calm growing anger in towns and cities.
It echoes fears from the head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, who warned extremists are likely to use the conflict as ammunition to radicalise young people here.
Last week a group of Muslim organisations warned Gordon Brown that the situation in Gaza had reached "acute levels of intensity" that could have repercussions for national security.
The Home Secretary's aide said: "Awful images are beamed back on TV every night and we know that could well lead to radicalisation.
"A lot of the hard work we have already done with the Muslim community could be undone."
Mr Evans said: "There is concern in the Muslim community about the rights and wrongs of the attacks and extremists are able to take those issues and use them for their own purposes in order to reinforce their own narrative as they have with Iraq, Kashmir and Palestine in the past.
"It is quite likely that extremists will use the issue to radicalise individuals for their own purposes."
Speaking after her meeting, Ms Smith said: "I know that concerns are particularly acute for some communities in Britain, which is why the Government has been maintaining a regular dialogue with both members of the British Muslim community and representatives from the Jewish community.
Meanwhile, religious leaders in Britain have spoken out against a rise in anti-Semitism triggered by the conflict in Gaza.
More than 20 prominent Muslims have signed a joint letter, which is being sent to every mosque in the country, denouncing attacks on Jews and synagogues. News Source
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Why do they refer to them as Ex
when they are not at the time of the committed crimes?
Is it to take the emphasis off the council?
A (now former) Worcestershire council leader has pleaded guilty to stealing tens of thousands of pounds from a charity.
Ex-leader of Redditch Borough Council David Roy Cartwright, 52, admitted stealing at least £24,695 from local homeless charity Step Out Drop In.
He also admitted making false claims for the charity totalling £63,467 between June 1997 and April 2001.
Cartwright, of Donnington Close, Redditch, will return to Hereford Crown Court for sentencing on 27 February.
The Step Out Drop In charity has since collapsed.
The court heard how Cartwright, who served as a Labour councillor on three separate occasions between 1986 and 2007, had made false claims to the borough council, a charitable foundation and a government department.
Fake invoices
Police were called into investigate the former council leader after Worcestershire County Council's adult services department became suspicious.
Between June 1997 and June 1998 he claimed £21,118 from the Department of Environment, Transport and Regions after saying Step Out Drop In was eligible for a grant to employ an extra member of staff when he knew it was not.
He submitted two invoices between February 2000 and July 2001 for £17,106 and £20,243 to Redditch Borough Council for payments that he knew were fake.
Cartwright, who was leader of the council on three separate occasions between 2002 and 2003, 2004 and 2005, and May 2005 to October 2005, also claimed £5,000 from the Eveson Charitable Trust after sending it a fake builder's invoice.
Det Con Andy Moseley, of West Mercia Police, said: "People often refer to fraud as a victimless crime. It never is.
"In this case, the victims are those homeless and vulnerable people who stood to benefit from this charity but who found themselves looking elsewhere for support and assistance when Mr Cartwright's criminal activity finally and inevitably led to its collapse." News Source
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MPs were branded "disgraceful" after launching yet another bid to avoid publishing details of their generous expenses.
Under proposals tabled by Commons Leader Harriet Harman, Parliament will get key exemptions from the Freedom of Information Act.
The move will be backdated to nullify rulings by the High Court and Information Tribunal that receipt-by-receipt breakdowns for how public money is spent must be published.
To compensate, the Commons is set to issue slightly more information than before about how MPs use their allowances.
The plans, slipped out amid the furore over expanding Heathrow Airport, constitute the latest stage in the Commons authorities' rearguard action to avoid full disclosure. They come despite the House already having spent up to £1 million scanning and redacting around a million receipts - which could now never see the light of day.
Outlining the changes to MPs, Ms Harman made no reference to the FOI rulings or receipts. She insisted that in future their expenses would be listed under twice as many headings, but disclosure had to be "affordable and proportionate".
"The public will have more information than they ever have before and we will take it back to 2005 so that for all Members, each year their allowances against 26 headings will be made public," she said.
There will also be tighter auditing of the controversial £93 million-a-year parliamentary allowances system, according to Ms Harman.
But Matthew Elliott, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said people would ask what their elected representatives had to hide.
"It is an absolute disgrace that the Government are going to such absurd lengths to keep MPs' expenses secret from the very people who pay the bills," he added. "This is taxpayers' money, these are elected representatives and the people have a right to know how their money is being spent." News Source
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Once again the Fascist EU flexes it's Muscles
They forced their way into every aspect of lives and continue to gnaw bit by bit until there will be NOTHING left to gnaw at!
Four millions anglers have united to fight EU rules that will impose quotas on recreational fishermen limiting the number of fish they may catch.
The newly formed Angling Trust will represent more people than the membership of all the main political parties combined, the Anglican church and the National Trust.
The lobby group has been set up to fight for one of the UK's most popular sports by protecting the environment and ancient fishing rights.
Its most immediate fight is against EU proposals for recreational fishermen to register their boat as a fishing vessel and record their catch as part of the UK's annual quota for certain species.
The new body will replace current organisations representing sea, coarse and game fishing and has already gained the support of many celebrity anglers including broadcaster Jeremy Paxman.
The agenda includes controlling sand and gravel extraction from rivers and the seabed, preventing pollution and campaigning to stop farmed fish being allowed to escape into the wild.
It will also press for increased funding to get young people interested in fishing as a way of controlling anti-social behaviour.
Mark Lloyd, head of the new body, said it was needed because the pastime was represented by fragmented groups when what was needed was one powerful voice.
Mr Lloyd said the trust has already had meetings with the fishing minister to discuss the matter.
He said: "This is a barmy proposal that does not take into account the UK's specific circumstances. In Europe there are a lot of anglers fishing commercially but in the UK we do it for fun. It is a rule that is being brought in because it is appropriate for the Continent but it's not appropriate for the UK." News Source
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Cumbria County Council’s efforts to help local businesses ride out the recession are being hindered by a European directive.
The council – which spends £134 million a year on goods, works and services – prefers to place contracts with Cumbrian companies wherever possible.
More than half of its suppliers are already based in the county.
But Alan Ratcliffe, head of strategic and commercial procurement, said it was unlawful to award contracts to local suppliers as a matter of policy.
The European directive also applies to construction contracts but only those worth more than £3,497,313.
The council’s purchasing needs include electricity, gas, oil, furniture, books, venue hire, consumables, food, staff uniforms and professional services.
The spend on food in schools and residential homes is £5m a year.
Of this, a quarter is spent on foods grown, reared or manufactured in Cumbria.
An estimated 1,000 people are employed in Cumbrian businesses that supply the authority.
The council’s cabinet agreed last week to “support further actions to promote procurement from the local economy”, but with the rider that it must abide by the European directive and meet Government targets to make annual efficiency savings.
Officers have, however, found one way around the European rules.
Cumbria is one of only five local authorities piloting a Treasury and Cabinet Office initiative to allow “social clauses” in procurement policies. These require bidders for contracts to show how their bid would contribute towards social, economic and environmental sustainability. This can give local suppliers a competitive edge. The council is also encouraging Cumbrian firms to tender. News Source
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A former senior Government minister has told a committee of MPs that the civil service could be halved and still provide value of money to taxpayers.
Ex-trade minister Lord Digby Jones said he was 'amazed' how many civil servants 'deserved the sack'.
'Frankly the job could be done with half as many, it could be more productive, more efficient, it could deliver a lot more value for money for the taxpayer,' Lord Jones told the public administration committee
'I was amazed, quite frankly, at how many people deserved the sack and yet that was the one threat that they never ever worked under, because it doesn't exist.'
However he insisted having specialists within the civil service was an excellent idea, saying that many employees were 'honest, stuffed full of decent people who work hard'.
In another attack, the former head of the Confederation of British Industry, said when he was a junior minister it was 'one of the most dehumanising and depersonalising experiences' anyone could have, it was reported by the BBC.
The colourful Lord Jones spent a year as a minister as part of Gordon Brown's original 'government of all the talents' before he stepped down during October's reshuffle.
It's not the first time Lord Jones has challenged the Government. Earlier this month he branded Mr Brown's flagship VAT cut ' pointless', 'fatuous' and doomed to failure from the start.
He said it had always been obvious that the VAT cut would not boost the economy. News Source
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A Fire bomb was hurled into the premises of a cafe and coffee bar in London’s East End in the early hours of yesterday morning.
It was one of a series of ‘hate’ incidents in Whitechapel which have included anti-Semitic graffiti, believed to be linked to protests over Israel’s operations in Gaza.
The thugs hurled the petrol bomb through the front glass door of Starbucks in Whitechapel Road, 300 yards from Brick Lane, at 1am.
The manager was trapped in the office at the back and saw the intruders smashing their way into the premises on the CCTV and had to stay hidden.
A senior fire brigade officer told the East London Advertiser: “The manager feared for his safety and kept out of sight when the firebomb was hurled.
“Then he managed to get out through the fire escape at the back to raise the alarm.”
The fire damaged the carpet, tables and several glass panels.
But firefighters managed to prevent flames spreading to the rest of the building.
Police forensic experts later sealed off the cafe. The CCTV footage was also being examined in the hunt for the fire-bombers.
No-one was hurt in the attack and there were no customers in the premises which had already closed for the night.
Scotland Yard said one line of inquiry was that it was “racially motivated” following the fighting in Gaza.
Starbucks, whose American chief executive Howard Schultz is Jewish, confirmed the attack in a statement today, saying none of its staff or customers were affected and they we’re co-operating with the investigations.
Just four hours earlier, a gang of youths hurled a brick at a Tesco delivery van half-a-mile away, then attacked the driver as he drove through Canon Street Road. The 45-year-old driver was later treated for a head injury and needed seven stitches.
Cops said the youths were Asian, who were wearing dark tops and may have been seen outside a fast food restaurant earlier.
The new Tesco Metro supermarket in Stepney’s Commercial Road was targeted at the weekend when several windows were smashed and the words ‘kill Jews’ was daubed in paint.
The same slogan was daubed on the wall of a children’s playground on Whitechapel’s Chicksand housing estate last week. News Source
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Wow! Heaven on Earth! No doubt that now it's been brought the public attention it will soon be over run! Furthermore the Greedy Elite will too destroy this little bit of heaven on earth and it will become like the rest of Britain! (Ed)
This must be the strangest - and, arguably, the finest - pub in Britain. It is open 24 hours a day and yet the police have not been summoned to a fracas here since 1871. The only 'crime' in recent years across the entire neighbourhood has been a missing fishing rod.
While law and order is not an issue, you won't hear much talk of, say, celebrities either for the simple reason that there are no televisions round here. And there is no traffic to moan about. So what on earth do they find to grumble about over a pint in these parts? Credit crunch? What credit crunch?
Doom and gloom may enshroud mainland Britain, but it has yet to reach the thundering shores of Lundy Island, 11 miles out to sea where the Bristol Channel meets the Atlantic.
This place has been resolutely detached from the real world through the centuries, which is why it has attracted various pirates, outlaws and even a spectacularly crooked MP in its time. And these days, it is proving similarly robust in the face of the economic onslaught afflicting the rest of us.
In fact, life has seldom been rosier here. This year, they will be celebrating 40 years since Lundy was bought and opened up by the Landmark Trust.
Anyone can now make a day trip from the North Devon coast, pitch a tent or book one of 23 holiday homes, ranging from a medieval castle to a converted pig sty for one.
And now it has just been announced that the occupancy rate for Lundy's 95 beds set a record last year, a staggering 90 per cent.
It is a figure which puts many of the world's finest hotels to shame, particularly since Lundy is one of the most inaccessible spots on the British Isles. What is even more impressive is that bookings for the year ahead are not merely holding steady. They are significantly up - six per cent on the same stage last year.
'We've already sold 53 per cent of what's available all year,' says Derek Green, 45, Lundy's general manager. A former manager for Hotpoint appliances, he is now, among other things, a fireman, coastguard, churchwarden, air traffic controller and licensee of the Marisco Tavern. 'You have to keep a lot of plates spinning here,' he laughs.
Well, it's certainly unusual to meet the landlord of a pub which never closes. 'We do stop serving at 11pm,' Derek explains, 'but we never lock the door as there could always be someone needing shelter at any time of night. When the bar's closed, people can bring in their own booze.'
It's the Lundy way. But what is the secret of its success in this climate? It's not in the Eurozone, of course - it was once, briefly, in the 'Puffinzone' until Parliament banned the Lundy puffin as a currency - but then nor is the rest of the ailing British tourist industry.
Nor has Lundy been subjected to a great makeover. Nothing much has changed here for years, apart from the new fire truck and a rat eradication programme. Neither of those can explain such a healthy boom on a lonely rock, though.
Derek Green points out that an improved winter helicopter service has helped (the regular ferry service does not start until March). But there is much more to it than that.
It is, surely, the simple fact that nothing has changed, which explains Lundy's growing popularity in these dismal times. With no traffic, no telly and no need to lock your doors, it is the perfect place for bracing solitude and free-range children.
In fact, it's probably the last place in Britain where the Famous Five could still have a decent adventure without any drugs, casual sex and a spot of knife crime.
Indeed, if it weren't for dishes like 'Lundy venison terrine' on the Marisco's menu, I could be in Coronation Britain.
This is the land that health and safety forgot. There are no guard rails, no 'No Entry!' or 'Warning!' signs, even though a wrong turn could send you tumbling off a 300 ft cliff. 'If you put up railings, people lean over them,' says Derek. 'If they see a precipice, they take care.'
In fact, I can only spot two signs on the entire island. One says 'Gents' and leads to a very basic but spectacular loo (no roof but a superb view from Wales to Cornwall). The other says 'Shop'. Continued
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The NHS is to pay fat people up to £425 to lose weight.
Overweight men and women will get the handouts for meeting personal slimming targets.
Ministers are backing the scheme amid warnings that the obesity epidemic could bankrupt the health service through soaring cases of heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
But critics blasted the idea as representing the worst excesses of the nanny state.
An obesity expert said it could put people at risk of heart attack and stroke by encouraging yo-yo dieting and an MP said the idea would enrage patients who struggle to get funding for life-saving treatments.
There were also questions over whether the 'bribe' would have to be returned if the patients put the weight back on.
The ' Pounds for Pounds' scheme is being run by Eastern and Coastal Kent primary care trust in conjunction with Weight Wins, a private company which runs incentive schemes for firms to persuade staff to lose weight.
If successful, it could be expanded across the country.
The Kent trust wants 300 people to sign up and have their targets set in a tailored scheme. The size of the reward grows as the targets become more challenging.
Participants could win £70 if they lose 15lb, a further £90 for losing 30lb and another £265 to shed 50lbs - a total of £425.
Weights are checked once a month by a nurse in a GP surgery or an assistant at a pharmacist.
There is no time limit but patients will get only half the money for losing the weight. The rest is handed over if they keep it off for six months. Continued
Thursday 15th January 2009
Liebour the party of Lies, Deceit and Spin
A councillor came under fire today for using a pseudonym to praise his own work.
Ben Grower posted comments under several aliases on the Daily Echo's website.
But the newspaper in Bournemouth, Dorset, decided to name and shame the councillor after he posted praise for himself under the name Omegaman.
In one post about plans to build Europe's first artificial surf reef in Boscombe, the Labour councillor wrote: "At least two councillors seem to be concerned about this mess. Well done Cllrs Ratcliffe and Grower."
Other comments praised him for fighting a housing plan and, concerning the expansion of a dentist's surgery, he wrote: "Just shows that the area does have councillors who care about their residents.
"Well done Ted Taylor, Ben Grower and Beryl Baxter."
Mr Grower refused to comment on the allegations but sent an email to colleagues admitting he had been writing under aliases for some time.
He said many other councillors did the same thing and that he had never written anything offensive but only did it to have "a good laugh online".
How do you have a laugh praising one self? (Ed)
The long-standing councillor said in his email: "As far as I am concerned this has and always will be a legitimate means of making comments.
Hmn' Comments praising Labour where in fact they are responsible for most of today's ill's and situations that we are in, which also makes you wonder how often this type of underhanded tactics are used to attack opponents and smear other parties? (Ed)
"It is perfectly legitimate to use pseudonyms as indeed many others do."
Investigations showed Omegaman was registered with an address containing Mr Grower's name.
He initially denied being the author, saying it could be anyone, even Santa Claus, but later admitted it to the newspaper and said he would carry on but would use a different pseudonym.
Leader of the council's Liberal Democrats, Claire Smith, said it was deceitful.
"It's a little bit sad to say the least but it does have serious connotations," she said.
"Things like this cannot happen or the trust breaks down between councillors and members of your ward."
The Daily Echo said in a statement online: "The Echo does respect its readers' right to anonymity but we felt that when a councillor pretends to be somebody else to improve his reputation that it is of sufficient public interest to tell people about it." News Source
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Labour are ALL at it!
The husband of Jacqui Smith, has been unmasked as the author of letters to a local newspaper defending the work of the Government.
Richard Timney has written a series of letters to the Redditch Advertiser, in the Home Secretary's constituency, defending controversial plans for ID cards and attacking the Conservatives.
In the letters, Mr Timney fails to declare that he is married to Ms Smith or that he is paid £40,000 a year to act as her Parliamentary assistant. Ms Smith has kept her maiden name .
The Home Secretary only has a majority of 2,716 in her Redditch seat and the constituency is a key target by the Conservatives and the local newspaper is seen as crucial.
Mr Timney's latest letter to the local paper on December 8th attacks the Conservatives for failing to back his wife's controversial plans for ID cards. He wrote: "If the Tories were serious about protecting Britain's borders, they would be supporting ID cards - not standing on street stalls campaigning against them…The Conservatives have made the wrong decision again!"
In another letter, he defended his wife over a controversial local road scheme. He wrote: "Jacqui Smith has always supported the need for a bypass for Studley - she still does. In 1996, the Conservatives decided to pull the plug on the scheme."
The Labour Party attracted controversy during the last general election campaign after it emerged they were directly targeting local newspaper letter pages. The Party allegedly drew up model letters which could be sent by local supporters attacking the Conservatives. Campaign material sent out by Labour stated that "more people trust the letters page than any other page of their local newspaper."
Ms Smith's husband gave up his job as a civil engineer to help bring up the couple's two children when his wife became an MP in 1997.
A spokeswoman for the Home Secretary said: "Richard is very proud of Jacqui and he is well known in Redditch. He has never concealed his connection to her."
The Redditch Advertiser said it was happy to receive letters from Mr Timney. News Source
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The Independent... Not so independent!
Financially-troubled newspaper, the Independent, perhaps the most anti-British newspaper in the country has resorted yesterday morning to its tried and tested formula of providing political pornography to the liberal hordes in order to boost circulation.
Unfortunately for them, as I told the BBC this morning, people are worried about their jobs and mortgages, not this kind of self-loathing nonsense, which is at least five years out of date.
Not much of what I told the reporter actually made it on to the BBC website, however at least there was a trace of the conversation that took place.
I had tried to tell her that this was a non-story and that a large proportion of the staff and the newspaper were probably Labour members.
Explaining that a national media organ trying to pass itself off as some bastion of mainstream ideology and opinion whilst in effect being nothing more than a nest of liberal, multicultural fanatics was a far more serious matter, I could sense that I was wasting my breath.
Yet if the Independent want to bang their drum about "racism" and "Macpherson" utilising the notorious Labour MP, Diane Abbott as a makeshift amplifier that's fine by me.
Front page headlines and consequent saturation coverage in follow up coverage in virtually every newspaper in the country is a most satisfying way to end the week.
The point being that far from being hostile to the fact that there might be BNP members employed in the immigration service, public opinion now dictates that such niceties as "asylum processing" are somewhat surplus to requirements.
At the very least I would think that most people would believe that in the role of guarding illegal immigrants, seemingly genetically programmed to abscond, BNP membership should almost be a prerequisite.
In any case you can see the BBC's take on the matter here, which included the following additions from yours truly:
Simon Darby, deputy leader of the BNP, said he could not confirm that the two workers were party members.
Mr Darby said he did not know how many members' jobs had been under threat since the publication of the list,but the party was offering legal support to those affected.
In the process of compiling this blog I see that whilst all of the ethnomasochistic titles are banging on about BNP "probes", "enquiries" and "crackdowns" the Daily Mail has picked up on this now global story and furnished their readership with the following:
The BNP wants immigration halted, all 'criminal and illegal immigrants' immediately deported, and for all others 'a system of voluntary resettlement ... to their lands of ethnic origin'.
Its policy states: 'We will also clamp down on the flood of "asylum-seekers", all of whom are either bogus or can find refuge much nearer their home countries.'
As a consequence, we'll end on a charitable note with a plea for all readers to buy a copy of today's Independent - they scratch our backs and we'll scratch theirs. News Source
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The Labour Party paid a sex offender convicted in the United States more than £2,500 to help it with its 2005 election campaign, the BBC has learned.
Activist Tim Russo, 41, was a visits co-ordinator in the East Midlands but did not have a UK work visa.
The Labour Party said it was unaware of Russo's past. It said it had not hired him but only paid expenses.
Russo was convicted in 2002 of trying to arrange sex with someone he thought was a 13-year-old boy.
The person he met online was in fact an FBI officer investigating internet paedophiles.
Russo had sent him pornography and was eventually found guilty of importuning (harassment) and attempting to disseminate matter harmful to juveniles. He was sentenced to a community service order and a year on probation by a county court in Cleveland, Ohio.
Russo told the BBC's Inside Out East Midlands programme that he had since worked to rehabilitate himself.
His work involved arranging visits to the region for senior Labour party figures, including the then Home Secretary Charles Clarke.
When asked by the BBC if he thought it was incredible that a sex offender was arranging campaign visits for the British Home Secretary, Russo said: "At the back of my mind was, 'God, I hope nobody find out about this'."
In a statement the Labour Party said neither the party nor any MPs were aware of any convictions involving Russo at the time, "and if we had known of this conviction then the offer of his help would have been refused".
'Criminal convictions'
Spending declared by the East Midlands Labour Party after the 2005 campaign revealed that Russo received £2,560 from the party for his "consultancy services", despite having neither a work permit or a work entry visa.
Russo also helped the Labour Party in two earlier general election campaigns in 1997 and 2001.
Ghuffar Usman, a Nottingham solicitor specialising in immigration cases, said he believed Labour had acted illegally.
"They should have applied for a work permit in the first place, having secured a work permit, then Mr Russo would have been free to apply for a visa allowing him to come to the UK to undertake work in accordance with that work permit for the Labour Party."
He also believes the visa application process could have revealed Russo's convictions and prevented his entry to the UK.
"On the visa application form he would have been required to disclose any criminal convictions, including motoring offences. That would have flagged up his previous convictions."
Russo said he would have declared the convictions if asked.
He said: "I would have - I am not in the business of lying about this."
The Labour Party said: "The Labour Party, especially at election times, along with all other major political parties, have volunteers helping in campaigns and volunteering their consultancy services. Sometimes reasonable expenses are provided in these cases.
"The Labour Party had taken legal advice and the party's view is that in Mr Russo's case and on the separate issue of paid consultants the party has always acted within the law. Any suggestion otherwise is entirely false."
There is such a thing as morals and ethics that Labour always seem to ignore when it's to their advantage! (Ed)
Defeated Conservative candidate Anna Soubry, who ran in the 2005 campaign in the Gedling constituency, said Labour's action has sent out the wrong message to voters.
She said: "You can't ask and tell people to abide by rules, regulations and laws if you don't actually abide by laws, rules and regulations yourself.
Otherwise it looks hypocritical and indeed it could be argued that it is hypocritical." News Source
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Liebour MP's and Councillors just can't help themselves.. It comes Naturally! The grass is green but they would insist it's blue.
A Government minister said today that she could see a few 'green shoots' of economic recovery - on the day that 3,000 people lost their jobs and bank shares plummeted.
Business Minister Baroness Vadera was asked on ITV today when she believed the UK could expect to see things begin to turn around.
She replied: 'It's a very uncertain world right now globally... I am seeing a few green shoots but it's a little bit too early to say exactly how they'd grow.'
In 1991 then chancellor Lord Lamont was much criticised for saying he detected 'the green shoots of economic spring', which was regarded as premature.
But shadow business secretary Alan Duncan claimed the minister had over-stepped the mark
Mr Duncan said: 'Shriti Vadera's comments go to show how out of touch and insensitive Gordon Brown's ministers are.
'The person who dismissed Railtrack shareholders as grannies in blouses has just advertised her own unsuitability for addressing the difficulties that the victims of Gordon Brown's recession are facing.'
A Downing Street spokesman said the minister had been 'underlining that there is a great deal of uncertainty in the economy at the moment'.
Asked what were the 'green shoots' she was referring to, he went on: 'It's not for me to give a detailed view on that - that's probably for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Department ministers.
But these are uncertain economic times, there are pressures on jobs and businesses and families; at the same time you are seeing some businesses that are expanding their workforces.'
It came as Barclays announced it was to cut 2,100 UK jobs, Jaguar Land Rover said it was cutting 450 staff and Zavvi announced it would close a further 18 stores, with the loss of 353 jobs.
Lord Hunt of Wirral, the shadow business spokesman in the Lords, said Baroness Vadera's view of the economy was extremely 'rose-tinted'.
And Business Secretary Lord Mandelson said he believed the UK was 'some way from the end of the road' in dealing with the economic fallout from the banking crisis.
Before becoming a government minister, Baroness Vadera advised Gordon Brown when he was chancellor.
She began her career working as an investment banker for UBS Warburg.
Elsewhere, bank shares plunged, prompting rumours the Government may be forced to set up a 'toxic bank' as part of a second bid to rescue the stricken financial sector.
There are growing fears banks could be forced to make huge write-downs in their annual results, completely wiping out the first £37billion bail-out of the industry.
The concern spread to the markets today as shares plunged deeper into the red, with HSBC and Barclays - two banks not yet part-nationalised - suffering hefty falls.
HSBC shares plunged eight per cent after market experts suggested it may need to raise fresh capital to bolster its balance sheet.
And Barclays' fell seven per cent in value as it announced its second round of job cuts in less than 24 hours, taking its losses to more than 4,000 this week alone.
Gordon Brown is now said to be seriously considering creating a state-run bank to house the bad debts in the hope of boosting confidence and kick-starting lending.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg today demanded he act quickly to put the bank in place instead of putting more taxpayers' money at risk. Continued
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The Arrogance of Labour's Fascists! - Democracy? What Democracy?
A Labour minister provoked outrage yesterday after claiming that Ireland had no right to block the EU constitution.
Lord Malloch Brown questioned the legitimacy of the referendum result last year during a debate in the House of Lords, and suggested that the vote should be ignored.
The intervention challenges diplomatic protocol that foreign Governments should not comment on another country's domestic political issues.
Ireland derailed the ratification process when voters rejected it by 53 per cent to 47 per cent in June last year.
You either live in a democracy or you don't. No exceptions!
But Lord Malloch Brown said: 'With 24 countries having approved the Treaty, I am not sure whether the voters of Ireland should have a right of veto over the aspirations of all the other people of Europe. I am not sure whether that is or is not democracy.'
He also admitted that Ireland will be deciding on the exact same text as they had last time, despite claims by the Irish Government that it has somehow been modified to address voters' concerns.
Ireland's Prime Minister Brian Cowen claims that securing deals on retaining Ireland's EU commissioner, its military neutrality, abortion, workers' rights and taxation laws means a re-run referendum is necessary.
But the peer insisted: 'These do not change the Lisbon Treaty'. He said that the constitution had not been 're-opened' during Brussels negotiations to offer the Irish sweeteners, adding: 'In that regard, it is a referendum on the same Treaty as before.'
However, it was his comments on the result of the initial referendum which triggered greatest anger.
Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague said: 'Labour denied the British people any say over the renamed EU constitution and now they claim the Irish people don't matter either. Lord Malloch Brown's message could not be clearer: voters' views on Europe don't matter.
'We have an unelected minister appointed by an unelected Prime Minister trying to ram through an EU Treaty which the British people have never voted for and the Irish people have already voted against.
'Labour's position on the EU could not be more arrogant and undemocratic. Instead of bullying the people of Ireland, the Labour Government should let the British people have their say.'
Lorraine Mullally, of eurosceptic think tank Open Europe, called Lord Malloch Brown 'unbelievably arrogant - and a hypocrite'.
'Unelected British politicians have no right to dismiss the democratic will of the Irish people,' she said. 'If he wants to talk about a lack of democracy, then maybe he should start by remembering that the British people were promised a referendum on this Treaty - but Gordon Brown’s Government failed to give us one.
'Ireland was the only country allowed a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty - it said no, and now it is going to be asked to vote again on the exact same text. Surely, even Lord Malloch Brown doesn't honestly believe that this is democratic?'
Last month EU leaders offered a series of 'bribes' designed to persuade Irish voters to reverse their rejection of the EU constitution in a second vote later this year.
It means the re-jigged constitution could be in force by the beginning of 2010, despite being rejected by voters three times. And Britain will be fully signed up to it without the referendum Labour promised. The Tories have vowed to hold a national vote if they come to power before the Treaty is passed.
All 27 member states must ratify it before it comes into force.
The 'new' treaty, signed in Lisbon in December 2007, was drawn up to replace the EU constitution, thrown out by voters in France and the Netherlands in 2005. Critics say that the two documents are virtually identical with crucial powers handed over from member states to Brussels.
The EU insists that it is needed to help ease decision-making within the expanding bloc. News Source
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Councils across Britain look set to cut tens of thousands of jobs this year as the recession bites deep.
A survey of 40 councils has revealed plans to make 7,000 public-sector workers redundant.
Unions predicted today that few of the 442 local councils in England, Wales and Scotland will be unscathed - and that services may suffer as a result.
The warning comes two days after the Local Government Association said one in seven of England's 388 councils were already planning redundancies.
Council officials say the scale of the job losses - mostly through 'natural wastage' among backroom employees - dwarfs the cuts previously made in the past 10 years.
Today's survey in The Times shows for the first time that Britain's six million-strong public sector is not going to be immune to the recession - despite Gordon Brown's plans for job-creation.
Councils planning cutbacks include Nottingham City Council and Buckinghamshire (more than 400 jobs apiece), Oldham (850), Northumberland (up to 800), Newcastle (500 including 200 upper- and middle-echelon posts), Bristol (400) and Westminster (200 jobs, permanent or temporary).
Nottingham said today it was planning to axe 400 jobs to save more than £12million in a bid to balance its budget.
Vacancies will be trimmed where possible, staff will be encouraged to reduce their hours and volunteers will be sought for redundancies.
Council leader Jon Collins said: 'As we are unwilling to add to residents' financial pressures and want to keep council tax at around the rate of inflation, this is unfortunately the only way of balancing the council's budget.'
'This year is exceptional,' he said. 'Every effort will be made to reorganise teams while minimising impact on frontline services.'
Unison said it believed the council was actually planning to cut 780 posts, including 300 compulsory redundancies and 275 jobs which were already vacant.
General secretary Dave Prentis said: 'This will have a devastating effect on individuals and the local economy. It is economic and social madness.
'We call on the council to think again and for the Government to take action to ensure that council workers are not added to the dole queue.'
Union officials warned that the job losses would be particularly damaging now because council staff provided key services to those in financial need. Continued
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Big Brother Flexes it's muscles
Controversial new powers for a super database storing millions of pieces of personal information about every person in Britain were outlined by the Government today.
A new bill published today will allow the bulk transfer of data between government departments, agencies and local authorities.
The measures will re-ignite fears of 'Big Brother' Britain as details of ordinary people's lives are accessed - and passed around - by the authorities.
Information-sharing orders, which will allow ministers to move vast amounts of personal data around Whitehall, were outlined in the Coroners and Justice Bill.
The orders remove data protection restrictions that require information to be used only for the purpose it was taken.
Justice Minister Jack Straw said the orders came with 'very strict controls' on who could be given the data and what they could do with it.
Safeguards written into Bill mean the orders will be handed to the Information Commissioner for approval within 21 days and then considered by Parliament.
A code of practice, written by the Commissioner, will set out rules on how data should be shared.
Mr Straw said people moving house would benefit because they would not have to tell the council twice, once for the electoral roll and once for their council tax.
'I think all members of the public as I am are in two places on this. Data relating to you and your family should be protected and that is an absolute imperative.
'But you don't want personally to give the same information again and again if it can be safely held and safely transferred.'
Civil liberties campaigners complained that the Bill would allow data to be shared for any "relevant policy objective" and not just terrorism or tackling crime.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty said: 'There is a nod towards public concerns but it doesn't go anywhere near far enough.
'This allows serious intrusion to be dealt with by secondary legislation which spews out of government like confetti.
'This is no way to rebuild trust in personal privacy in Britain.'
The Bill also contains reforms to the coroners system in England and Wales which will allow inquests to be conducted in secret and without juries.
But the measures are a watered-down version of those dropped from counter-terrorism legislation before Christmas amid outcry from military families.
They include judicial review of the decision to conduct proceedings in secret. All such inquests will be conducted by a High Court judge. News Source
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AARGH! As if one of them wasn't enough, Peter Mandelson is being cloned in cyberspace. A cartoon-like image of him will soon appear on a new website.
The computer-generated Mandy, called an avatar, is - believe it or not - designed to give him a more human image and will use his real voice. Since his real voice sounds as if it has been generated by a computer, how will anyone be able to tell?
Cyber Mandy will debut on Second Life, the virtual world created for people who don't have a real life, and is the brainchild of his former sidekick Dolly Draper - aka Mr Kate Garraway – another member of Labour's Living Dead now back in the fold.
According to Mandelson's blog, the project is designed to 'embrace and engage' voters in the age of the internet. In the past, he admits, 'sometimes we were our own worst enemy'. Not while I draw breath, you're not, petal.
Yesterday, I tried to log on to the new website, without success. If Labour has a door policy in cyberspace, I'm barred.
Maybe they're creating this online Fantasy Island to distract us from what is actually happening back here on Earth. Then again, life on Earth - at least that distant colony inhabited by Labour - is difficult to distinguish from virtual reality.
Gordon Brown lives in his own time/space continuum, rarely touching down in the real world. For all we know, he may be an avatar. Think about it. What was his leadership 'election' if not an elaborate exercise in virtual smoke and mirrors?
He allegedly toured the country, addressing virtual audiences of computer-generated Labour loyalists.
Since no one from outside the bubble was ever admitted to any of these rallies, how can we be sure they actually happened? Then there was the general election that never was. Was that an illusion, too?
Here, in the real world, sterling has suffered its sharpest fall in history, the economy is a basket case, millions are facing unemployment, the housing market has collapsed, bank lending has atrophied and shops are being boarded up all over Britain.
Yet in the parallel universe of Labour's La-La Land, Gordon continues to insist he's a superhero who has saved the whole world from financial ruin and pumps billions of virtual pounds into a black hole of his own creation. Turn on the news bulletins and he's everywhere, making speeches boasting of his brilliance.
I've become convinced that there are several computer-generated Gordon Browns doing the rounds, otherwise he could never keep up such a punishing schedule. The speech patterns are a dead giveaway. For all the advances in computer graphics, voice recognition software hasn't progressed much beyond Dalek level.
Virtual Gordon, like all avatars, has a limited vocabulary, which he is forced to repeat over and over again - 'global', 'began in America', 'right decisions', 'whatever it takes', 'do-nothing Tories', 'global', 'began in America' . . . 'exterminate, exterminate, exterminate. . .'
Actually, careful observation of Labour's entire front bench suggests they may all be avatars. The Miliband Twins look and sound like Vulcans. There is little sign of human life on Alistair Darling. Every time he opens his mouth, he manages to suck all the oxygen out of the room.
Caroline Flint is obviously an early prototype gone wrong of Lara Croft, Tomb Raider. Yvette Cooper could be Sonic The Hedgehog's annoying kid sister.
Jack Straw looks a bit like Yoda from Star Wars.
But I suppose it was inevitable that Mandelson would be the first to have his own official online, carefully-airbrushed persona - a sort of computer-generated picture of Dorian Gray.
Like a PlayStation villain, no matter how many times he's zapped, he's impossible to kill. And now Little Lord Cyberspace sits at Virtual Gordon's right hand, while the rest of us are destined to be marooned in the real world wasteland they are leaving behind.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mork and Mandy. News Source
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A Yorkshire MP has warned of growing tensions and anger in Britain's Muslim communities over Israel's continued attacks on Gaza in Palestine.
Dewsbury MP and Justice Minister Shahid Malik, pictured, warned of "a real feeling of helplessness, hopelessness and powerlessness among Britain's Muslims" as the death toll in the densely populated strip of land rises.
At the same time campaign groups are planning further protest events across the Yorkshire region – including a demonstration outside a US military base to coincide with the inauguration of Barack Obama as US President next Tuesday.
Mr Malik, whose constituency has a large Muslim population,said: "There is a real feeling of helplessness, hopelessness and powerlessness among Britain's Muslims in the context of Gaza and the sense of grievance and injustice is both profoundly acute and obviously profoundly unhealthy.
"It's crucial we re-double our efforts to communicate with the public about the UK government actions if we are to dent the level of entrenched cynicism that exists, especially among British Muslims.
Equally, we should be under no illusion that faith and patience in the peace process is running out and it is in our own interests to help deliver a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and its Arab neighbours."
Supporters of the people of Palestine will join peace campaigners outside Menwith Hill, the US intelligence-gathering base outside Harrogate at 1pm on Tuesday. The base is linked to satellites gathering military, political and economic information from around the world.
The demonstrators plan to hand in a protest letter to Menwith Hill's commander Mary O'Brien as Barack Obama is sworn in as US President.
Lindis Percy, joint co-ordinator of Otley-based Campaign for Accountability of American Bases, said: "While it would be naive to believe that Barack Obama alone can put the past to rights, this is a unique opportunity for us to communicate our hopes that he will implement policies that will not only restore the credibility of the US as a force for good, but also urgently address the ongoing Israeli siege and bombardment of Gaza." News Source
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This column's support for Israel is well-known. I dug out what I wrote at the time of the war in Lebanon a couple of years ago. Substitute 'Gaza' for Lebanon and 'Hamas' for Hezbollah and nothing has changed.
I'm not going to revisit all the arguments. This has less to do with the Palestinian cause and everything to do with the global jihad and Iranian-sponsored terrorism aimed at wiping Israel off the face of the Earth.
Yet where are the violent demonstrations outside Iranian embassies in London and around the world? Precisely. Israel will do what it has to do to defend itself from the Hamas and Hezbollah death cults. What has always concerned me is the impact on the Jewish community in Britain.
Since Israel invaded Gaza, there has been a marked increase in attacks on Jewish targets in this country, from assaults on Jews wearing traditional clothes, to vandalism and firebombs at synagogues - not that you'd be aware of it from watching the BBC.
Yet again, the hatred is coming from the hard-Left and militant Islamists - the same virulent anti-Semitism, disguised as condemnation of Israel, which I uncovered when making a documentary on the subject for Channel 4.
Much of the violence in London has involved people who couldn't point to Gaza on a map and think the West Bank is a subsidiary of Northern Rock. It's the usual crowd of Trotskyite boot boys, Saddamites and bussed-in wannabe jihadists, spoiling for a fight and an excuse to kick a few coppers.
The situation is inflamed by home-grown rabble-rousers like Galloway and Livingstone, and dopey birds like Tony Blair's sister-in-law claiming that the tunnels between Egypt and Gaza are used for nothing more sinister than transporting food and medicine.
Contrast the mayhem outside the Israeli embassy with the restrained, dignified pro-Israel rally in Trafalgar Square. So far, it has cost the Met £1million to contain the violence. It's bad enough that there's war in the Middle East, without it being fought on the streets of London. News Source
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A Conservative candidate, from Buckinghamshire, who was contesting a marginal seat at the last general election conspired with five other men to 'rig' the result, a court has heard.
Haroon Rashid hoped to win the West Bradford seat by using bogus postal vote applications, Leeds Crown Court was told.
The jury was told the conspiracy failed and the sitting MP was re-elected by just over 3,000 votes.
Prosecuting, Mr Gordon Cole QC, told the jury the plan was 'very simple, illegal and dishonest.'
He said: 'Had the conspiracy continued on through to the end, had it been successful, Haroon Rashid may very well have been elected as Member of Parliament and been sitting in the House of Commons.'
Rashid, 38, of Richings Way, Iver, Mohammed Sultan, 51, of Toller Lane, Bradford, Mohammed Rafiq, 68, of Cecil Avenue, Bradford, Reis Khan, 39, of Whetley Hill, Bradford and Jamshed Khan, 64, of Russell Street, Bradford, all deny conspiracy to defraud the electoral registration officer of Bradford City Council.
Another man, Alyas Khan, has admitted the charge, the jury was told.
Mr Cole told the jury the case involved Postal Vote Applications and a conspiracy to submit fraudulent applications.
Mr Cole said the defendants falsely registered individuals to vote on the electoral register, using the names of people who did not live at the addresses to which they were registered.
The plan was to 'harvest' the bogus votes, he added.
He said they hoped to 'rig' the system 'so that Haroon Rashid could and would get elected'
The trial continues.. News Source
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Questions still need answering over the homes-for-officers scandal which saw the sacking of a £62,000-a-year council officer, it was claimed today.
On Friday, the senior official at the centre of the scandal, Kristine Reeves, head of neighbourhood and strategic housing, was sacked for gross misconduct.
Steve Morphew, Labour leader of the city council, issued an apology and said the actions of Ms Reeves were unacceptable and an abuse of power, but opposition councillors said they were still not satisfied.
Following an internal disciplinary hearing, 38-year-old Ms Reeves was dismissed for gross misconduct after moving into £47-a-week sheltered accommodation after 25 elderly tenants were moved out - and allowing other council staff to do likewise.
While the city council executive had approved a policy to allow new council staff relocating the city to live in the homes after elderly people were moved out ahead of a redevelopment, they were unaware Ms Reeves and other officers who already lived in the county had moved in.
Dubbing her decision to move into the property in Greyhound Opening - and to allow other council officers to do likewise - as "an abuse of her power", Mr Morphew apologised to the people of Norwich.
But people who have called for a fully independent inquiry into what went wrong today said they did not want the sacking to draw a line under the affair.
Pauline Walton, chairman of the Norwich Leaseholders' Association, said: "It's by no means the end of it and should not be. "As far as I'm concerned there are real problems at City Hall. You just have to look at how many of the top people have left recently."
Simon Wright, Liberal Democrat parliamentary spokesman for Norwich South, said: "I welcome the apology but what I want is a guarantee that this will never happen again. I feel we can only get that if there's an independent inquiry that answers all the questions which people still have."
The council has launched an independent review of its internal inquiry, headed up by Phillip Watson, local government consultant and former chief executive of Blackburn with Darwen council.
Adrian Ramsay, leader of the opposition Green Party, added: "The external review is still going on and I hope that will get to the bottom of the outstanding questions and the councillors will have to judge whether enough has been done to stop this happening again."
Chloe Smith, Conservative parliamentary candidate for Norwich North, said: "As I have always said, the officials involved should have been sacked straight away.
"Finally the council recognises that Kristine Reeves has committed a gross abuse - but the fact is the council cannot bury this scandal here."
But Mr Morphew said the point of the independent review was to show the council had carried out its internal investigation properly.
He said: "What they know is the results will be made public and appear before the executive and the scrutiny committee and from there will then be a process reviewing what changes need to be made." News Source
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MPs are set to help themselves to even more lavish pensions using taxpayers’ cash.
New figures have revealed that an extra £2.2million was poured into their scheme last year compared with 2003 – a rise of almost 25 per cent.
They already enjoy pensions described by one expert as “probably the best in the world”.
Extra cash was poured into the MP-only scheme because the Treasury had not provided enough in the past.
Tory leader David Cameron has promised that he will reform MPs’ pensions so they receive unpredictable “defined benefit” schemes like most taxpayers.
Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury Philip Hammond said last night: “We need to end the pensions apartheid that exists between the public and private sectors. Moving new MPs on to a defined-contribution scheme is a crucial first step in any wider reform of public sector pensions.”
An MP with just 20 years’ service can now expect to receive an index-linked payout of £30,000 a year when he or she retires.
The revelation that more money has been paid into the MPs’ scheme came as it emerged that pension plans for ordinary workers are facing their biggest crisis in decades.
Pensions campaigner Ros Altmann yesterday also said it was time to end the unfair system. “MPs are the ultimate example of the public sector pensions aristocracy. Their scheme is the most generous in the land,” she said.
Liberal Democrat Work and Pensions spokesman Paul Rowen, who obtained the figures, said: “Many private sector pensions have lost up to 30 per cent of their value in the last few weeks yet those of MPs are copper-bottomed and guaranteed regardless of the state of the economy.
“This extravagance is an insult to hard-pressed taxpayers and should be reviewed. MPs need to tighten their belts.”
A total of £12million in taxpayers’ money was paid into the MPs’ scheme last year, compared with £9.8million in 2003. MPs were only asked to contribute an extra £700,000.
Figures released last year showed that Gordon Brown now has a personal ministerial pension pot of £274,000, worth £19,000 a year when retires.
The Justice Secretary Jack Straw’s pension pot is worth £294,000, which would pay out £20,520, while Chancellor Alistair Darling’s is worth £235,000, paying out £16,400.
The average private sector pension is worth just £25,107.
Senior Whitehall mandarins do even better than MPs.
The permanent secretary at the Department for Work and Pensions, Leigh Lewis, has a pension pot worth £1,881,000, up from £1,567,000 last year.
His counterpart at the Home Office, Sir David Normington, has seen his increase from £1,541,000 to £1,785,000.
Yesterday’s figures showed that overall “employer” contributions to MPs’ salaries are worth almost 27 per cent of their pay.
Even the best private sector final salary schemes rarely reach 14 per cent.
It also emerged yesterday that £253,000 out of £402,000 in pension overpayments to 177 MPs who had received too much money had been written off.
Chris Bryant, deputy leader of the Commons, said overpayments of less than £500 would be too expensive to recover.
A spokesman for the leader of the House of Commons, who oversees MPs’ pensions, said: “The Government is bound to follow the advice of its actuaries department on funding MPs’ pensions.”
Away from Parliament, a new set of figures showed that nine out of 10 defined-benefit pensions faced a funding shortfall totalling more than £200billion at the end of last year.
The Pension Protection Fund – which provides a safety net when companies go bust – said 6,914 schemes hit by the falling stock market had a deficit in December, against 6,690 in November.
Virtually all private sector final salary schemes have closed to new members. Many have also been shut to new contributions from existing members. But public sector staff still have access to schemes that promise guaranteed payouts on retirement at 60 or 65.
The total deficit that now faces the schemes is an astonishing £209.6billion – equivalent to 20 per cent of the value of the entire British economy.
The big falls are likely to mean trouble for household names with big pension liabilities.
Consultants Watson Wyatt said firms would now have no choice but to close their schemes to existing members.
John Ball, the firm’s head of consulting, said: “It is a trend that is likely to pick up this year.
“Resistance from employees, unions and trustees is likely to be lower in an economic downturn, especially if presented as an alternative to job cuts. If a few more household name companies take this step, there could be a snowball effect.” News Source
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Caught on yet? It's all about Money:
Government turning all types of crime into money making schemes!
Drug users caught with cannabis will be given £80 on-the-spot fines and will not get a criminal record or have to appear in court under government plans.
The use of controversial fixed penalty fines - originally created to deal with minor 'nuisance' offences - is being expanded to take in 21 new crimes.
These include stealing petrol from a filling station, making threats to destroy property and drunken and yobbish behaviour on trains.
Magistrates attacked the plans at a crisis meeting with Justice Secretary Jack Straw last night. They warned that public confidence in the justice system will be seriously undermined if ministers insist on diverting more and more criminals away from the courts.
The 'Penalty Notice Disorder' or PND was introduced in 2001, originally to give police a quick and simple tool for dealing with what ministers described as minor 'nuisance' offences.
But the Government has repeatedly expanded the scheme and added more serious crimes, including shoplifting up to a value of £200. Critics claim such fines have become little more than an occupational hazard for hardcore thieves.
The latest dramatic expansion of the powers is due to come into effect on January 26.
Cannabis possession will become punishable with an £80 fine - just as ministers have supposedly toughened the law by reclassifying cannabis from a Class C to a Class B substance.
That increases the maximum punishment for possession to five years in jail.
But giving police the option of an instant fine will make it far less likely that offenders will face prosecution.
Tory justice spokesman Nick Herbert said: 'Handing out the equivalent of a parking ticket for cannabis possession makes a mockery of restoring cannabis to a Class B status and effectively amounts to a downgrading of the drug by stealth.
'Justice should be seen to be done, but if offenders only receive a penalty notice and no criminal record then victims can receive no compensation. What the Government calls "summary justice" is too often actually soft justice.'
The Magistrates Association said in a letter to MPs: 'The singlingout of possession of cannabis for disposal through a PND sets it aside from the other Class B drugs and sends an unacceptable signal to those who use it.'
They also claimed that many of the crimes on the list ' cannot be a minor offence, as there is a human victim'.
The row will fuel accusations that Labour has gone 'soft on crime', in part because of the lack of space in Britain's jails.
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: 'It is not always necessary for an offender to be taken to court for an offence to be dealt with effectively and to the satisfaction of the victim.' News Source
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Caring for our elderly under Labour!
This is the picture that shames the NHS. An elderly Alzheimer's patient is treated in a squalid bathroom due to a chronic shortage of beds at a hospital.
In what her family describe as 'an affront to human dignity', Gladys Joynes, 79, was shunted into the bathroom for several hours.
The grandmother was left next to an overflowing bin, a commode and a foulsmelling walk-in bath.
And with no power point in which to plug in her saline drip equipment, she swiftly became dehydrated and unresponsive.
Horrified that an elderly patient could be subjected to such indignity, Mrs Joynes's daughters took this photograph.
Mrs Joynes was taken to the Royal Liverpool University Hospital last Friday after falling ill with pneumonia-like symptoms at the nursing home where she is a resident.
She arrived at the hospital's emergency department in the early hours but was not examined by a doctor until around 7am.
Medical staff were unable to find a bed for her and at 10am she was placed in the bathroom.
At 2pm her family arrived and were led to the bathroom. One of her three daughters, Sharon Huxley, 55, a company director, said: 'I was so shocked. It was a smelly bathroom with an overflowing bin and we had to put a tray of food on the floor and feed her ourselves from that.
'I just can't believe that staff are so desensitised and complacent that they didn't think it would be a problem.'
Mrs Joynes's eldest daughter, psychologist Kathleen Huxley, 57, said: 'It is a total affront to human dignity for her to be treated this way and the Government should ensure it does not happen again.
'We believe she was cynically chosen because she is an Alzheimer's sufferer and as such would not complain.
'What if an elderly patient or Alzheimer's sufferer hasn't got a family to stand up for them?'
Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: 'It is extremely concerning if patients are not being treated with the respect and dignity they deserve.
'I know that the hard-working staff of the NHS will do everything they can to stop this from happening, but unfortunately their hands have been tied by Labour's complacent approach to the extreme pressures placed on our hospitals during winter.
Years of bungling by Labour ministers have created a terrible legacy for NHS patients.'
The Daily Mail has consistently highlighted the plight of the older generation through its Dignity for the Elderly campaign. In recent weeks, our readers have also raised tens of thousands of pounds for Alzheimer's sufferers.
Mrs Joynes, 79, ran a milliner's shop in Liverpool before marrying Merchant Navy seaman Frank Huxley. After his death in 2002 she married Stewart Joynes, a musician, who also later died.
She developed Alzheimer's symptoms about four years ago.
Last night Tony Bell, chief executive of Royal Liverpool University Hospital, said the hospital was dealing with an ' unprecedented' number of cases and said an extra ward with 17 beds had been opened to cope with the strain.
Mr Bell said: 'I would like to offer the patient and her family our sincere apology. It is not acceptable for a patient to be put into a bathroom.
'We are now conducting a full investigation and will identify measures to prevent it happening to other patients.'
The hospital denied that Mrs Joynes had been 'earmarked' for the bathroom because her condition meant she was less likely to complain.
Mrs Joynes was last night feeling a lot better and was about to be discharged. She was diagnosed with a chest infection. News Source
See Also
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Police will be able to ban young thugs from wearing 'gang colours' by obtaining court orders, ministers have said.
Jacqui Smith promised new laws to help police forces and local councils stamp out gang activity through the use of court injunctions - which require a lower burden of proof than criminal charges or ASBOs and can be based on police intelligence rather than hard evidence.
Civil liberty campaigners condemned the planned orders as 'ASBO-lites', warning that suspects would be stigmatised based on little more than 'gossip' instead of real evidence.
Birmingham City Council took a similar approach in 2007, using court orders to ban alleged gang members from meeting each other, entering certain areas or wearing the group's trademark green clothing. The pilot was seen as a success by the council.
But the Appeal Court stamped out the initiative, accusing council officials of overstepping their powers.
Today Jacqui Smith said she backed such tactics and would introduce new laws to make them legally watertight in future.
The pledge came in response to a report by the Policy Exchange think-tank which claimed such powers would be a vital step in tackling gang violence.
Anti-Social Behaviour Orders already require a lower burden of proof than criminal charges, with courts making orders 'on the balance of possibilities' instead of the tougher 'beyond reasonable doubt' test applied in criminal courts.
The new legislation is expected to go further still, allowing councils to seek court orders even without the evidence required for an ASBO.
The wearing of gang colours in British cities copies an American trend. Some schools in London now ban the wearing of bandanas in gang colours.
Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve accused ministers of 'resorting to practically unworkable and legally dubious gimmicks that have become the hallmark of this Government'.
Shami Chakrabarti, Director of the Liberty campaign group, said: 'It is hard to see how a new ASBO-lite could be tough on crime or its causes.
'If you make more injunctions on the basis of gossip not proof, you risk stigmatizing innocent kids whilst gun-toting criminals evade criminal sanction.’ News Source
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A 15-year-old boy battered a man to death and tried to kill a woman after claims his personality changed a month after he began taking Prozac, a court heard.
Defence lawyers for the unnamed boy will argue that he was driven to club the man more than 30 times after taking the popular anti-depressant.
Chelmsford Crown Court in Essex will hear scientific evidence in an attempt to prove the drug, also known as Fluoxetine, can cause 'violent impulses' which can drive someone to kill.
But prosecutor Martyn Levett said the factors leading to the brutal killing of 59-year-old Gary Belben and the attempted murder of his wife Tania, 49 were more complicated.
He said the schoolboy, now 16, from Colchester, Essex, had got into a bad crowd, was being led astray by his young girlfriend and had taken a cocktail of street drugs, including cannabis, cocaine, crack cocaine, ketamine and amphetamine in the years leading to the attack.
Mr Levett told the court the boy had put together an 'armoury' of weapons, including a crow bar and a hammer from the garden shed and a carving knife and sharpener from the kitchen.
He then tricked the 59-year-old man into coming to him on December 17, 2007, before first smacking the hammer into his head and then battering his skull 30 times. Later, he plunged a knife into his brain.
The boy has admitted manslaughter but denies murder, claiming diminished responsibility because his mind was altered by Prozac.
He also denies one count of attempted murder, the court heard.
The jury were told the boy had gone to a GP in September before the killing, claiming he was depressed and was prescribed citralapram.
But he stopped taking the pills, saying they left him in a dreamlike state, the court heard.
He went back to the doctor on November 17 - exactly a month before the killing - and was given Prozac.
Prosecutor Mr Levett said: 'He was prescribed that because he went to the doctor saying he felt depressed.
'The defence say this killing was caused by the side effects of that medicine.
'The prosecution say the science about all this which tries to make a link between the medication and violent impulses causing a person to kill is so remote, it can't be said to be the cause.'
Mr Levett added: 'We say it is more to his background, his unhealthy drug taking and his relationship with his girlfriend we need to look.
'These factors are much more important and the medication can be excluded as being the cause.'
The court heard how the defendant had made a 'careful plan' to carry out the killing.
The prosecutor said: 'The defendant took the hammer and hit him on the top of the skull, fracturing it and then with either the hammer or crow bar or both continued to hit him on top of the skull about 30 times.
The skull fractured so seriously bits of brain fractured off onto the weapons and also the defendant's clothing.
'After using the weapons to kill the man, experts believe the defendant then plunged the carving knife into his brain.
'He then covered the body with a duvet.'
The defendant then took the crow bar, hid it behind his back and approached Mr Belben's wife saying he had a 'surprise'.
Mr Levett said: 'She knew something happened and when she asked him, he held out his arms, holding the crowbar, putting it on his other hand and saying, "what do you think's happened?".
'She was so scared, she tried to get past and he hit her with the crow bar, it seems to have been aimed at her head.
'You might think that is a significant area to aim.
'She blocked one blow with her hand, it may be said that without that defensive action, she may have been fatally wounded.
'He punched her about the face, struggled to get the crow bar from her, in the process, he picked up a pair of scissors and tried to stab her in the front of her head. She pleaded with him to stop, I don't want to die.
'The defendant said, "just shut up and sit down".'
Mrs Belben eventually managed to escape and raise the alarm. The defendant fled to a pal's house, ditching his bloodied top and trainers, but was later picked up by police. News Source
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A primary school teacher tried to cover up her boss's arrest on child pornography charges by ordering a janitor to buy all copies of a local newspaper.
Head teacher Andrew Melville was yesterday ordered to carry out 150 hours of community service and placed on probation for three years after admitting the offences.
But parents voiced their anger after it emerged that a teacher at the school organised a mass purchase of local papers to try to prevent parents finding out about the scandal.
Council education chiefs said the attempted cover-up was 'extremely regrettable' and insisted the unnamed staff member at Whitecraig School in Musselburgh, East Lothian, had acted 'on her own initiative'.
Melville, 48, of Gullane, East Lothian, appeared at Edinburgh Sheriff Court for sentencing yesterday after earlier admitting possessing and distributing indecent photographs of children between 2004 and 2005.
The former head teacher, who has been placed on the sex offenders' register, was suspended last April when the council was made aware of the allegations against him and sacked in July after a disciplinary hearing.
Parents yesterday branded the decision to try to hide the truth about Melville from them as 'a disgrace'.
Angry mother Tracey Doran, 35, said: 'Rumours were rife that the janitor had gone to the local shop and bought all the newspapers reporting about Melville when it was first announced.
'I don't know what they were thinking because the story was all over the television and radio that day, so they were wasting their time and money.
'But to try and dupe us all like that is a disgrace. Someone should be reprimanded for making that awful decision.' News Source
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Who better to 'tackle the class divide' and move Britain 'towards a new social order' than Harriet Harman, pictured, who is both the most upper class and the most hypocritical member of the cabinet.
Some of her colleagues were educated privately but Harman had the smartest education of all, at St Paul's Girls School in London.
But that wasn't surprising, because she comes from a very grand family. Her father was a Harley Street doctor and her mother a lawyer. Her aunt married the left-wing social reformer the fifth Earl of Longford, and her cousin is Lady Antonia Fraser, the author who was married to the playwright Harold Pinter.
No doubt she would acknowledge that she had a fine start in life, but she could have put all that behind her when she married the left-wing firebrand and political agitator Jack Dromey.
But it seems that Harman, while determined to iron out class privilege for others, was not prepared to subject her own children to the local comprehensive.
Her eldest son was sent to the selective Roman Catholic secondary school, the Oratory, where Tony Blair also educated his children.
At the time she dismissed the accusation of hypocrisy by claiming it was because her husband was a Catholic.
Next, however, she sent her second son to St Olave's - an Anglican selective grammar school in Orpington, Kent, a good long way from her deprived South London constituency.
There was a huge row of course, as not everyone in the Labour party understood how Harman was able to square this with her class-warrior opposition to selective education.
But that didn't worry the woman who is now Labour's deputy leader, nor did it stop her sending her daughter to Grey Coat school, yet another selective grammar in Westminster.
So this child of privilege, who has been determined to give the same gilded start in life to her own children, now wishes to instigate a class war pogrom across the public sector, requiring every state institution to take class background into account in all of its decisions.
It's hard to know which is more exasperating. The stupidity of wasting huge amounts of time and money on a political crusade that would have been out of date in the Seventies or the hypocrisy that this appalling policy has been suggested by Harriet Harman.
This is, after all, the politician whom her late colleague Gwyneth Dunwoody once called 'one of those certain, particular, women who are of the opinion that they had a God-given right to be among the chosen'. News Source
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A Schoolgirl was shot in the face with a ball-bearing gun during a violent robbery.
The 14-year-old, who is recovering from surgery to remove a pellet from her chin, was also beaten with a metal pole during the attack.
The youngster was at the back of a petrol station at Gordon Street, Bolton, with two friends on Friday night when three men approached them.
The victim and her friend walked away but the men surrounded them and one shot the girl. Another of the gang tried to grab the teenager's bag and as she struggled with him she was shot in the face again and hit with a metal pole.
Cowardly
The men, all Asian and in their late teens, ran off with the bag. The girl was taken to hospital for treatment.
Det. Insp. Simon Davies, of Bolton CID, said: "This is a truly horrific incident, where a young girl has been attacked and left injured by these malicious and cowardly individuals.
"It is extremely lucky this girl was not more seriously injured, although the trauma of going through something like this will stay with her long after her wounds have healed.
"If anyone knows the identity of the men involved or saw three men running off with a handbag near to the area please get in touch. We need to find the people responsible so they can face the consequences of their atrocious behaviour."
Anyone with information is asked to contact police on 0161 856 5740 or call the Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111. News Source
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A Schoolgirl was shot in the face with a ball-bearing gun during a violent robbery.
The 14-year-old, who is recovering from surgery to remove a pellet from her chin, was also beaten with a metal pole during the attack.
The youngster was at the back of a petrol station at Gordon Street, Bolton, with two friends on Friday night when three men approached them.
The victim and her friend walked away but the men surrounded them and one shot the girl. Another of the gang tried to grab the teenager's bag and as she struggled with him she was shot in the face again and hit with a metal pole.
Cowardly
The men, all Asian and in their late teens, ran off with the bag. The girl was taken to hospital for treatment.
Det. Insp. Simon Davies, of Bolton CID, said: "This is a truly horrific incident, where a young girl has been attacked and left injured by these malicious and cowardly individuals.
"It is extremely lucky this girl was not more seriously injured, although the trauma of going through something like this will stay with her long after her wounds have healed.
"If anyone knows the identity of the men involved or saw three men running off with a handbag near to the area please get in touch. We need to find the people responsible so they can face the consequences of their atrocious behaviour."
Anyone with information is asked to contact police on 0161 856 5740 or call the Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111. News Source
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A patient died after a hospital registrar injected her with adrenaline despite being warned not to by three colleagues, a court has heard.
Patricia Leighton, 51, had been taken into Staffordshire District General Hospital suffering from septic shock when she died there in July 1998.
Dr Priya Ramnath, 40, denies the manslaughter of Mrs Leighton by gross negligence.
Birmingham Crown Court heard Dr Ramnath returned from the US to face trial.
The court heard how Dr Ramnath also failed to speak to a consultant anaesthetist before injecting Mrs Leighton, of Burntwood, near Cannock, Staffordshire, with the drug.
Michael Burrows, prosecuting, said Dr Ramnath went "against the express instructions and advice from her colleagues there".
He added that the effects of adrenaline were "unpredictable and can be fatal".
'Going to die'
Mr Burrows said: "Within moments of the injection Mrs Leighton jerked forward and sat bolt upright in her bed.
"She shouted out, 'What's happening to me? I am going to die'."
The court was told the patient then lost consciousness and her heart stopped.
Dr Ramnath and other colleagues tried to resuscitate Mrs Leighton but failed.
The jury was told that Mrs Leighton had suffered from arthritis and had been admitted to hospital in Cannock on 20 July after a wound on a bunion on her foot became infected.
She suffered side-effects to antibiotics and was transferred to the intensive care unit in Stafford with septic shock.
Mr Burrows told the hearing that Dr Ramnath, who had been on a nine-week placement at the hospital, was told by two other doctors and a sister not to give the injection.
The court was told that Dr Ramnath had given the adrenaline thinking it was necessary to prevent the patient going into cardiac arrest.
The trial continues. News Source
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An 84-year-old war veteran who foiled sledge-hammer wielding robbers raiding a jewellers has told Sky News he does not think he is a hero.
William Grove is to receive a commendation for his bravery in tackling the balaclava-clad teenagers as they smashed their way into a Ernest Jones store in Richmond, south west London.
Mr Grove was the only person to intervene as the daytime raid unfolded in front of more than 50 shoppers and office workers.
Using lessons he learned with the RAF, Mr Grove grabbed one of the teenagers as he stretched through the broken window to reach some of the jewellery.
The robber was so stunned as Mr Grove tore off his balaclava that he and his accomplice dropped their sledge-hammers and fled.
While grappling with one of the robbers, Mr Grove pulled his balaclava off - taking with it DNA evidence that proved crucial in catching and convicting the criminals.
One of the 17-year-olds, who came from Sydenham, was found guilty after denying burglary at Richmond Youth Court. He will be sentenced at Camberwell Youth Court later this month.
The second 17-year-old has already been jailed for six months, having pleaded guilty on December 5.
The grateful jewellers offered to give Mr Grove a Rolex watch.
But the widower, who had recently lost his wife following a long battle with Alzheimer's, refused the gift, and instead asked them to pass on a donation to charity.
Mr Grove told Sky News crime correspondent Martin Brunt that he did not think of himself as a hero, but preferred the term "responsible citizen".
Asked why it had been left to him to intervene, he said it was perhaps because he knew a technique to control and restrain the robbers, whereas others may not have.
"I just had that technique in the back of my mind there - it's like when you learn to ride a bicycle, you never forget," he said.
He added that he had not had time to worry about his own personal safety.
"I was surrounded by people surely people would have come to my aid if I had been attacked," he said.
Det Con Patrick Flanagan, who led the investigation, described Mr Grove, who lives in Twickenham, as "extraordinary". News Source
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A family have expressed their fury after the death of their disabled 91-year-old mother who 'was forced to take out a second mortgage to foot an unnecessary £16,000 council bill' .
The family of bed-ridden grandmother Dorothy Hacking blame Thanet Council for 'disgusting treatment' after the pensioner became over stretched trying to pay for work to meet government regulations to reduce CO2 emissions.
They say she was beset by stress and health problems after being left with no option but to take out a second mortgage for the stone-cladding repairs to make her home compliant with the Home Energy Conservation Act in Ramsgate, Kent.
The law requires councils to reduce their CO2 emissions by almost a third within the next decade.
Her local paper took up Mrs Hacking's case but sadly she died last Friday - the day the story was published.
Daughter Rosemary, 53, said: 'I think it is disgusting that a disabled 91-year-old should be faced with the fear of negative equity when the council insists on doing work over which she has no control.
'She was financially stretched to the limit, worried about putting the heating on in case she couldn't pay the bills and had no idea what to do if another big bill arrived from the council.
'The council maintained the work was essential to comply with the Home Energy Conservation Act which requires it to reduce its CO2 emission by 30 per cent within 10 years.
'As Mum was no longer a tenant, she had to find the money - under their agreement with Thanet council, leaseholders are responsible for a variable annual service charge which can include larger sums for major works.'
Age Concern said: 'If only we had known we could have tried to help. 'It's such a shame - pensioners 30 years ago never had all these pressures. 'There's no care now, no heart.' Continued
Wednesday 14th January 2009
Immigrants to Britain in the past four decades have acted like hotel guests who 'do not belong', the Archbishop of York said today.
Dr John Sentamu said the failure of migrants to integrate had contributed to the collapse of a common British culture and the lack of a national sense of direction.
He called for recognition of the Christian heritage which once bound the nation together and for a revival of the civic values once represented by a myriad of local clubs, societies, associations, churches and trade unions.
The Archbishop's powerful attack on uncontrolled immigration and on 'multiculturalism' - the left-wing doctrine that encouraged migrants to ignore traditional British values - was made in a speech to Gordon Brown's think tank, the Smith Institute.
Dr Sentamu, who is a trustee of the Institute, has in the past criticised multiculturalism and official neglect of the importance of Christian thinking and history.
But his speech today was the first admission from a senior Church of England figure that large-scale immigration since over the past five decades has brought serious problems as well as benefits.
Ugandan-born Dr Sentamu, who came to Britain in the 1970s, said that the loss of empire had damaged Britain's vision of itself after the 1940s.
He added: 'As the winds of change were blowing the British Empire away, the United Kingdom was rapidly becoming what has come to be termed a multicultural society.'
The Archbishop said it was important to remember that Britain had always provided refuge and help for economic migrants.
He said 250,000 Jews had come before the First World War, and had integrated and been accepted.
'What happened after the Second World War was a different phenomenon,' Dr Sentamu said.
'For the first time, significant numbers of immigrants from a non Judaeo-Christian background came to settle in the UK.'
He referred to the view of Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks that until the 1950s immigrants were like guests in a country house, who were expected to assimilate British values and to belong to the existing society.
But, Dr Sentamu said, with the decline of empire and the growth of Commonwealth immigration, the pattern had become less like a country house and more like a hotel.
'Guests are entitled to stay if they can pay their way, are free to choose their hotel and receive basic services in return for their payment.
But they are guests - they do not belong,' he said.
The Archbishop added: 'In the same way, migrants to Britain from the 1960s onwards have made their home with their cultural rights protected under legislation framed under a multicultural perspective.
'Consequently, any sense of a shared common culture is eroded risking increasing segregation.'
Dr Sentamu said that since 2001 there have been no fewer than five 'major government reports on social cohesion' all attempting to 'address the problems of a multicultural approach'.
But he said, few aims had been achieved. This was, Dr Sentamu said, because the Government has been wedded to cental control and had been reluctant to see local communities have power.
And, he said, 'there has also been a reluctance to acknowledge the strong Judaeo-Christian heritage which has shaped our language, our laws, our education and our hard-won civil rights.'
The Archbishop, who is second in the hierarchy of the Church of England, was speaking to the Smith Institute at a time when Mr Brown and his ministers have been increasingly prepared to acknowledge problems linked to immigration.
Communities Secretary Hazel Blears has said since the New Year that many poorer white people feel betrayed and ignored by authorities and that they fear losing out in the share-out of public benefits. She has also admitted that Labour allowed a 'free-for-all' in immigration since it took power in 1997.
Dr Sentamu's speech, however, appeared to have little sympathy for the views of Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, who said last year that Islamic sharia law should have a place in British legal codes and that people should be able to choose the legal framework they liked best.
The Archbishop lamented the collapse of the vision of Britain developed in the 1940s that underpinned the creation of the welfare state.
'It is a tragedy to me that we have increasingly lost this big vision,' Dr Sentamu said. 'Memory loss has made Britain sleepwalk on streets supposedly paved with gold, but sadly littered with promissory notes whose cash value is the credit crunch and the economic downturn as well as becoming a country that is not at ease with itself.'
The Arcbishop lamented Britain's loss of the empire that once included his home country Uganda. 'Whilst Britain had an empire, a large merchant navy, a large manufacturing industry and commerce, and significant numbers engaged in armed forces, and an expatriate civil service in the colonies, it encouraged an outward-looking perspective,' he said.
Dr Sentamu praised Mr Brown's view of Britishness but warned that the Prime Minister's vision 'flounders if it does not allow for participation, involvement and commitment from individuals and communities.'
He also blamed leaders of the Church of England for failing to speak out over the future of the nation as well as ignoring 'the voiceless and the unheard in the market square'. News Source
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A major increase in taxpayer-backed lending to firms is being considered by ministers, it emerged today.
Schemes to underwrite up to £20billion of loans to struggling firms could be unveiled in a bid to get the banks lending again.
It could release billions of pounds through high street banks to companies battling to survive because of the credit crunch.
Ministers have reportedly already met to draw up proposals for a massive extension of the loan guarantee scheme unveiled in Alistair Darling's Pre-Budget Report last year.
It effectively means the Government would insure banks against any firms defaulting on the loan agreements, leaving the taxpayer with the bill if they are not repaid.
The plans follow feverish work at the Treasury to work out how to use the £250billion credit line offered to the banks last year to pump more cash into the credit market.
A senior Treasury source said the scale of the lending boost had not been decided yet and plans could take another week or two to finalise.
They emerged after fresh evidence that Mr Brown's 'bounce' in the polls as the economic crisis started has been punctured.
A poll for today's Times gives the Tories a 10 point lead - 43 per cent to 33 per cent for Labour - a sharp upturn on last month which put the parties just four points apart.
Dire new research, showing businesses are being hit by a 'frightening deterioration' in the economy with unemployment set to soar to 3.1million, was another blow.
The survey from the British Chambers of Commerce recorded the worst set of results since its records began in 1989.
It described its findings as distressing and ominous. When asked whether it was possible to find anything positive in the survey, director general David Frost said no.
Brown told a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party last night that further action in relation to banks and small businesses was imminent.
The move is similar to one endorsed by the Tories - although they were calling for a £50bn commitment.
Shadow chancellor George Osborne claimed this proved the Opposition were now setting the policy agenda for the recession.
'We have been calling on Gordon Brown to introduce National Loan Guarantee Scheme for two months and while the Prime Minister has dithered, dozens of businesses and thousands of jobs have been lost,' he said.
'Let us hope that they will properly implement this Conservative policy rather than a pale imitation, or else they run the risk of repeating the mistakes of their expensive temporary VAT cut and achieving nothing.'
Despite a £37billion bail-out of the banks last autumn, credit markets have remained almost completely blocked leaving firms without the money they need to stay afloat.
Banks have been desperately trying to shore up their own balance sheets and remain reluctant to lend despite being propped up by the Government.
Only yesterday, construction equipment giant JCB axed workers while Land of Leather and the maker of Findus frozen foods joined the list of corporate casualties.
Brown has also hinted that 'non bank institutions' in the public sector could be given a role as lenders to fill the credit gap left by banks.
The Liberal Democrats claim the Government would be better off using its stakes in the high street banks to force them to start lending again.
Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said he was 'sceptical' about whether the loan scheme was needed and warned of the 'vast' risk it placed on the taxpayer.
'We know from past experience that with credit guarantee schemes the taxpayer ultimately finishes picking up the bill,' he said.
'We have already put £37 billion into the banks as capital. Why are the banks not honouring their obligations?'
He called on the Government to be far more explicit about state ownership of the banks who were confusing at being told to lend more but also hoard capital.
Mr Brown was meeting with US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke in Downing Street today to discuss the global economic crisis.
He will also hold talks with the French and German leaders this week.
In the UK, he has been unveiling a blizzard of policy initiatives aimed at easing the recession even as more companies fail and thousands more jobs are lost.
His efforts to curb the surge in employment yesterday were overshadowed by yet another jobs bloodbath, with more than 5,000 further posts on the line.
JCB blamed its latest round of 684 redundancies on the failure of the Government's attempts to ease the banking crisis.
Chief executive Matthew Taylor said: 'Customers are still struggling to buy machines because of a lack of available credit.'
Despite cutting its working week from 39 hours to 34 hours, the Staffordshire-based firm has now had to axe around 1,700 jobs since July.
Wincanton, the distribution company, yesterday said 865 jobs were at risk from its merger with rival Culina.
The cuts will hit depots in Gloucester and Trafford Park, Manchester, which are likely to close.
And Land of Leather, which has 109 shops, went into administration which puts 850 jobs at risk, along with 200 in head office and distibution. It also puts in danger customer deposits paid before Christmas.
Another casualty was Newcastle Production, which makes and distributes all Findus products.
One of the fish fingers and crispy pancakes maker's key backers was the failed Icelandic bank Landsbanki.
Newcastle-Production drop into administration threatens around 420 jobs.
Waterford Wedgwood also revealed 367 redundancies. And book chain Waterstone's said it was shedding staff. It is feared around 200 workers could be affected.
Builders' merchant Travis Perkins has said it will cut more than 1,400 posts. The 130-strong workforce of DeVries Honda is also braced for cuts.
In a further blow, the high street suffered its worst Christmas in 14 years.
Sales through stores open for more than a year were down by 3.3 per cent in December against the same month in 2007, according to the British Retail Consortium. News Source
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Savers suffered another blow in December as interest rates on their investments plunged to a new low.
Average returns on savings fell to less than one per cent, meaning more belt-tightening for millions of pensioners who rely on savings to boost their income.
After the deduction of tax and inflation many accounts now offer practically no return.
This means that families who put money aside in order to live off the interest will have to dip into their savings to cover day-to-day expenses.
The interest paid last month on notice accounts, ISAs and bonds was the lowest since records began in 1995, while the average return on instant access accounts was just 0.81 per cent, according to the Bank of England.
The rates look set to fall further, as banks typically pass on any reduction in the Bank of England’s base rate on the first day of the following month.
This means that last week’s 0.5 per cent reduction has not yet been factored in.
Many banks and building societies have already slashed savings rates to zero per cent for the first time.
West Bromwich, the country’s seventh-largest building society, cut the underlying rate on its Bonus Saver account to 0 per cent this month.
Welsh bank Julian Hodge also pays 0 per cent on its easy-access account. The Bank of Ireland pays 0.001 per cent on its Card Saver account – and charges £2 for withdrawals. Continued
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Councils are spending hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money sending homeless eastern European immigrants back to their own countries, it emerged yesterday.
The councils and charities have received Government grants to fund one-way bus and air tickets.
London’s Westminster City Council alone received £100,000 last year for costs including coach tickets and extra police and interpreters.
Now a charity is getting money from the Communities and Local Government Department - initially of £60,000 - specifically to help homeless eastern Europeans in London who want to leave the UK.
As well as providing fares home, Thames Reach will fly in workers with Polish and other languages to help its work and will contact authorities in people’s home countries to arrange support including work, training, housing and healthcare when they get back.
Up to a fifth of London’s estimated 3,000-a-year [correct] rough sleepers are from Eastern Europe, mainly Poland. The problem is concentrated in London and has grown since 2004 when eight eastern and central European countries of the old Soviet bloc joined the European Union.
Hundreds of thousands of their citizens came to the UK when Britain said they could work as well as enjoy the right to travel around Europe which comes with EU membership. While the vast majority find work, a minority end up sleeping rough because they have not found jobs.
The latest developments underline the strains put on Britain by Labour’s failure to control immigration.
Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, commented: “In the interests of the British people and the wellbeing of migrants themselves, the Government should look at requiring proof that people are able to support themselves if they are coming here without a job offer.”
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of MigrationwatchUK, backed funding for destitute migrants to go home but said their countries’ authorities must not be let off the hook.
Sir Andrew said: “One free ticket home, but only one, would be both humane for the migrant worker and sensible for the British taxpayer.
“But we must not take over from the consulates of Poland and the other eastern European countries their responsibilities for their own citizens.”
A spokesman for Thames Reach said the cost of returning homeless immigrants to their own countries was small compared to the “huge gain” which the UK economy made in taxes from the vast majority of Eastern European immigrants.
“We’re talking about support for some of the most vulnerable people in society. They are in a difficult and quite dangerous situation. Especially at this time of year when it is so cold, it’s a life and death matter,” he said.
Councillor Philippa Roe, of Westminster City Council, said the council had a duty to assist vulnerable people. “We are lobbying the embassies to provide more support for their own nationals while they are in the UK and when they return home.” News Source
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Thousands of British workers faced fresh job fears today as the crippling recession claimed yet more businesses.
Two companies went into administration while four others announced plans to make massive job cuts.
Furniture retailer Land of Leather and frozen food maker Findus were both forced to call in administrators as the credit crunch claimed more casualties, putting the future of more than 1,270 jobs
Logistics giant Wincanton also announced plans to axe around 1,000 jobs after it was forced to close two sites in Manchester and Gloucester.
Machinery giant JCB added to job woes by revealing it will cut 684 jobs because of the lack of credit available from banks to fund machine purchases and continuing low confidence, while booksellers Waterstone's said it will make redundancies after moving to a new distribution system.
And troubled china and crystal maker Waterford Wedgwood, which entered into administration last Tuesday, has cut more than 300 staff as it continues to fail in the wake of the credit crunch.
The news adds further gloom to an already desperate 2009, which has seen many of Britain's best-loved stores fail as a result of falling consumer spending, the credit crunch and soaring costs.
In recent weeks the high street has already witnessed several big names such as Woolworths and music retailer Zavvi falling prey to the battered economy.
Kent-based firm land of Leather saw the future of 850 of its staff put at risk after the company suspended its shares today before calling in administrators Deloitte.
The sofa retailer has been crippled by a slump in demand for “big-ticket” goods as consumers come under pressure and the property market continues to dwindle.
A spokesman for the firm said today: “The company has made every effort to reduce costs and conserve cash, but market conditions have continued to be difficult and the results from the January sale have been very disappointing."
The firm said it had taken “all the necessary steps” to ensure customers who have paid deposits for furniture were protected, but its funding efforts failed due to the “exceptionally difficult trading conditions and the lack of liquidity in the banking system”.
The group, which has 109 stores, is debt-free but was unable to secure working capital to keep the business going.
Newcastle-based frozen food maker Findus was also revealed as another casualty of the recession, as it announced around 420 staff have their jobs hanging in their balance.
The maker of frozen ready meals, including crispy pancakes, called in administrators Zolfo Cooper after suffering cashflow problems.
Administrators are hoping to secure a buyer for the business as a going concern, but the factory has been closed since Tuesday due to a fire.
Nick Cropper, joint administrator and partner at Zolfo Cooper, said: “Newcastle Productions is a well-established local business and produces a range of high-quality frozen food products in the UK, under the Findus brand - a popular and long-established food label.
“We remain confident that there will be interest from potential buyers to secure the future of this business and will need the support of all parties to achieve this.”
Newcastle Productions reportedly hit financial difficulty with the collapse of one of its main backers, the Icelandic bank Landsbanki.
The firm, headed by managing director Vidar Engen, opened in 1983.
Elsewhere, high-street bookshop chain Waterstone’s announced today it will make cuts in its workforce as it
introduces the cost-cutting system for delivering books to its stores.
The retailer would not put a number on the job losses, but said a "number" of redundancies were expected as its centralised distribution hub in Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, comes into full operation.
The news comes at a time of difficult trading for Waterstone’s, which blames poor non-fiction demand for a drop in sales. News Source
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Disadvantaged women and children in India and Ghana will be helped by National Lottery grants to two Cambridgeshire-based charities.
In Ghana, 40,000 children are to get better education and a safer school environment after a £459,623 award to Camfed International in Cambridge.
The Village Service Trust in St Neots is to get just over £308,000 to help oppressed women in southern India.
Camfed International was established in the UK in 1993, and is dedicated to the education of girls and young women in rural areas of Africa in order to improve their circumstances.
Working in Ghana's deprived northern region, the lottery grant will provide funding for uniforms and stationery to disadvantaged children in danger of dropping out of school.
The Village Service Trust was founded 30 years ago to tackle poverty, injustice and poor health in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu where the status of women is extremely low.
Sir Clive Booth, Big Lottery Fund chair, said: "These UK-based charities charities are making a significant impact in some of the world's most disadvantaged areas.
"We're pleased that today's funding will help them tackle poverty and deprivation across the developing world, helping those who are desperately in need of help." News Source
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The new chairwoman of media regulator Ofcom has revealed she will draw a £200,000 salary - more than the Prime Minister - for just a three-day week.
Colette Bowe, appearing before MPs in a hearing before she takes up the post later this year, came under fire for earning the high sum while continuing to hold positions on the boards of four companies.
She insisted she would devote at least 60 per cent of her time to the role.
The generous pay-packet dwarfs the £187,000 earned by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Dr Bowe told MPs on the cross-party Business and Enterprise and Culture, Media and Sport select committees that she sat on the boards of three financial services companies and a transport firm.
Tory Nigel Evans said: 'A lot of people out there will think "good grief, she is earning £200,000 a year, shouldn't she be concentrating on one role and nothing else?"'
Dr Bowe told him she had looked at the time her predecessor Lord (David) Currie had spent on the role and insisted it was 'do-able'.
She added that Lord Currie was paid £206,000, a salary set by ministers, and 'I would not regard it as appropriate to expect my remuneration to be less than my predecessor was getting for doing the same job'.
But Labour's Lindsay Hoyle said the role was a 'major job' and should be five-days a week, and questioned whether Dr Bowe 'can fit three in with all the other work you have got'.
Dr Bowe replied she 'certainly will not be giving less' than 60 per cent of her time to the job.
She was also pressed on the furore over the Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross prank call to Andrew Sachs, and language on TV and radio generally, amid claims Ofcom's Broadcasting Code amounted to a 'charter for profanity'.
When questioned, she said she did not know when Ofcom's report into the affair would be produced, adding there was a long process to go through.
John Whittingdale, Tory chairman of the culture committee, said the incident highlighted concern about bad language being 'gratuitously thrown about' on TV and the radio.
Dr Bowe said the key factor in the Broadcasting Code was the context in which potentially offensive language was used - including the time of the broadcast and the likely audience.
'Core to the discussion of standards in there is context,' she said.
But Mr Evans said the code 'sounds like a charter for profanity, quite frankly'.
Bowe told the MPs: 'People need to know what they are going to encounter. People are entitled not to be taken horribly by surprise ... but at the same time all of us would accept that (with) different kinds of programmes on different kinds of channels, one has different expectations.'
Ofcom is set to publish a review into public service broadcasting, and Bowe refused to comment on potential tie-ups between the BBC and commercial rivals to help them beat the economic downturn.
But she acknowledged it was a 'very difficult moment' for public service broadcasting in the UK.
During a wide-ranging hearing, Dr Bowe also supported the possibility of Ofcom taking over regulation of the Post Office.
She also called for a 'universal service obligation' to get broadband internet in all homes and businesses. News Source
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Immigration officers’ lives are made easier if they grant visas rather than refuse them; illegals are freed and given maps to make their own way to detention centres and use false passports to get government jobs.
These are but some of the almost unbelievable catastrophes which daily strike Britain’s so-called ‘immigration system’, which is the product of decades of Tory- and Labour-induced soft-touch Britain policies.
A recent report by the Commons Homes Affairs Select Committee has warned that while the reasons for a visa refusal are regularly reviewed, and therefore subject to detailed scrutiny, those for an approval are not.
Immigration staff must provide far less evidence as to why they have approved an application to come to Britain than they do if they want to reject it, leading them to potentially approve more than they should.
The warning comes less than two months after a watchdog said around 300,000 foreigners who should not be granted visas are allowed into Britain every year.
Evidence submitted to the select committee indicated that around 15 percent of short-term visas were wrongly approved because it was easier than rejecting applications.
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said: “This is a very serious issue. There is strong pressure on entry clearance officers to grant visas rather than refuse them. This will lead to an even greater number of visitors overstaying their visa and becoming an illegal immigrant in Britain.”
Those illegal immigrants who are picked up, are more often than not given photocopied maps and told to report by themselves to detention centres.
Instead of detaining them, police routinely hand them a what has been described as a “barely legible” map and told to make their own way to an immigration centre.
Currently, when police stop illegal immigrants who have just arrived in Britain, they are required to notify the UK Border Agency.
But the agency advises police not to lock them up if they are not deemed an immediate risk to public safety.
The agency says it has no records of how many illegals are released into society by police on their advice.
Meanwhile, an illegal immigrant from the Congo found work as a cleaner at the DVLA in Swansea using a false passport, it has emerged.
The man, who had been refused asylum in this country, used a false passport as identification when seeking a job with a cleaning company.
The disgraceful situation was revealed when Samy Ludiha appeared before Swansea Crown Court to admit possessing a false identity document.
The 54-year-old entered the UK illegally in 2002 and claimed asylum, prosecutor Nicola Powell told the court. He was granted temporary admission by the Home Office while his claim was looked into.
Ludiha, who lives in Queens Road, Sketty, was provided with accommodation and benefits by the National Asylum Seekers Service. His application for asylum was refused but he did not leave voluntarily and continued to live, unauthorised, in asylum seeker accommodation until his arrest early last month.
Because he does not have a genuine passport, he cannot be returned to the Republic of Congo.
Ms Powell said in 2005 he obtained from a friend what he believed to be a genuine Belgium passport. The friend put a photograph of Ludiha into the passport, which was in the name of John Adame.
Ludiha, a French speaker, assumed that identity and presented the passport as evidence of his identity to OCS Cleaning and Environmental Services at the DVLA site when applying for a position there in June 2007.
He got a job and worked as a cleaner until his arrest in December 2008. The judge imposed a 35-week prison term suspended for 18 months and ordered him to do 150 hours of unpaid work for the community.
In thanking the judge, Ludiha said, in French: “I swear I will never commit another offence in my life as long as I live in the UK.” News Source
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Ukraine has blocked the transit of gas to Europe just hours after Russia resumed deliveries.
A spokesman for Ukraine's state gas company Naftogaz said that it had blocked the transit of gas to Europe after it was turned back on because of "unacceptable transit conditions" imposed by the Russian energy giant Gazprom.
European Union monitors confirmed that "little or no" Russian gas was flowing to Europe despite the resumption of deliveries by Gazprom a week after it turned off the supply in a dispute over prices.
Gazprom, which is controlled by allies of the Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin, accused the US of orchestrating Ukraine's actions. "We believed yesterday that the door for Russian gas was open but again it's been blocked by the Ukrainians," said Alexander Medvedev, the deputy CEO of Gazprom, who also claimed that Kiev and Washington had signed an agreement to the detriment of Russia.
"It looks like ... they are dancing to the music which is being orchestrated not in Kiev but outside the country," he added.
Millions of people in 18 European countries have faced almost a week of suffering bitterly cold winter temperatures without any heating or amid severe energy shortages.
The order to start pumping gas to Ukraine pipelines was issued at the Moscow headquarters of Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom at 07:00 GMT on Tuesday morning.
Gas supplies were expected to take up to three days to get through to Europe but the latest move by Kiev will crush hopes of an imminent end to the dispute, which has coincided with one of the bitterest winters for decades.
Russia provides a quarter of Europe's gas supplies and the latest energy crisis over a Moscow dispute with Ukraine, the third in four years, has damaged relations with the European Union.
Gazprom cut off supplies to the Ukraine on Jan 7 because a 2008 contract had expired and Russia has accused the country of stealing gas meant for Europe, a charge angrily denied by Kiev.
Relations between Moscow and Kiev are also tense amid deep Russian hostility to Ukraine's ambitions to join Nato. News Source
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The UK’s trade deficit widened to a record level in November as a weaker pound failed to boost exports at a time when world demand for goods is collapsing.
The trade gap ballooned to £8.3bn from £7.6bn in October, the highest level since records began in 1697, reflecting the fact that Britain is importing more from other countries than it is exporting. Economists had expected the deficit to narrow to £7.5bn because of sterling's sharp slide in the final few months of 2008.
The gap was largely driven by falling exports to non European Union countries, mainly the US, the Office for National Statistics said.
The figures are likely to come as a blow to the Government which is putting together a new package of measures to prevent a deep recession turning into a slump.
Policymakers at the Bank of England have been among those to argue that a weaker pound would help the UK through the recession by making its goods more competitively priced and therefore attractive to foreign buyers.
The hope has been that an increase in exports would provide a much needed boost to the economy, helping to limit the scale of decline in 2009.
“The impact of weaker sterling is being completely dwarfed by a collapse in world demand, but given the extent of the depreciation in the pound in the past few months, today’s figures showing such a significant widening of the trade gap are hugely disappointing,” said Hetal Mehta, senior economic advisor to the Ernst & Young ITEM Club.
However, demand is diminishing in the UK’s major export markets which are also struggling with a severe downturn at home.
“One thing is for sure, the UK can’t rely on the global economy or the fall in the pound to drag it out of its deepest recession since the early 1980s,” said Paul Dales at Capital Economics.
The pound fell by 27pc against the dollar during the course of 2008, and 23pc against the euro. As a result, the Centre for Economics and Business Research said there are already signs that the UK is readjusting to less favourable trade terms, with imports from the three biggest eurozone economies, France, Germany and Italy, all falling sharply in response to a weaker pound. News Source
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Another half a billion pounds this morning - not a bad figure to notch up before lunch.
When it comes to spending like an uncapped fire-hydrant, Gordon Brown can see off any oil sheikh's wife flexing her husband's plastic along Brompton Road.
Forget policy and politics: this is an addiction. Gordon's manic expenditure (of our money) is no longer a response to an economic downturn, it is a psychosis.
The latest ploy is £2,500 "golden hellos" to bribe employers to take on workers they do not need.
Only a politician like Gordon, who has spent his life cocooned in government offices, with no experience of actual markets, could imagine this would work.
Most probably he knows perfectly well it is a non-starter, but it gets him headlines and these days you have to talk in billions or the reporters will not get out of bed.
He needs to brush up on his clichés, though. This morning he said, anticipating criticism of his latest profligacy, that "the biggest cost of all would be the cost of doing nothing".
Tsk, tsk! The correct phraseology is: "Doing nothing is not an option." He returned to the script, however, when he intoned that people would not lose their jobs for long "on my watch".
Gordon's gateway drug was his £20 billion squander package in late November. To get a high these days he has to spend in billions - it is months since he thought in humble millions, now small change.
Already he craves the T-word and he is successfully heading towards it: while government borrowing will be a mere £120 billion this year (on present estimates), by 2013 it will be a glorious, life-affirming £1 trillion.
Gordon is assured of his place in the history books. He has single-handedly turned a serious recession, against which we would have had to batten down the hatches and work our way through, into the total meltdown of the British economy.
The Tories are publishing posters of babies burdened with £17,000 of debt: they may have problems revisiting them daily to update the figure, while the printers may be too busy producing banknotes to handle less important work.
If history were still taught intelligibly in schools, people would recognise the inescapable pattern of Labour - New, Old, whatever - the unchanging agency of national bankruptcy.
By 2011 Gordon plans to charge 800,000 people earning more than £150,000 a tax rate of 45 per cent. Is he wholly confident they will still be resident in Britain? Or that £150,000 will be a meaningful figure? Or that such receipts will go any distance towards paying off the mountain of debt he has incurred? No return to boom and bust, eh? News Source
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Two lorries containing nearly 40 suspected illegal immigrants were found in King's Lynn today.
Police and ambulance services were called to the Palm Paper site in Saddlebow at 11:50am after the driver of one of the Detmers-Transporte lorries heard a noise in the back.
They found 39 men crammed inside containers believed to have travelled to the UK from Germany aboard the vehicles.
Thirty-nine men are currently undergoing medical attention by paramedics and receiving food at the Mill and Fill Café on site. Some were feared to be suffering from dehydration, after spending three days aboard the lorry.
Insp Paul Durham, of Norfolk police, said: “We have had a fleet of ambulances and they've all been checked by paramedics but we are feeding them and giving them water and basic comforts while we await our colleagues in the Immigration Service to come down.”
Dozens of lorries travel to and from the Palm site every day. The German-owned company is building a giant paper mill, which will employ 300 when production begins later this year. News Source
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Prisoners at one of the country's top security prisons are converting to Islam for protection because of a rife gang culture, an inspection report says.
Inmates at Long Lartin prison said some were "becoming Muslim" because it is a "bigger gang".
Radical cleric Abu Qatada, once described as Osama bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe, was held at the prison last year before being released on bail - which he went on to breach.
Similar concerns were raised in an inspection report in to Whitemoor Prison in Cambridgeshire last year, in which prison officers warned extremist Muslim prisoners are ganging up on others in an attempt to radicalise them
Inspectors at Long Lartin, in Worcestershire, were told gang culture us widespread.
One inmate said: "Yes there is a gang culture here which is becoming an issue. A lot of people are becoming Muslim just because it's a bigger gang."
Another said: "There are issues with Muslim gangs wanting to overpower others."
One added: "Muslim gangs; if you have a problem with one, you have a problem with them all," while a fourth said: "People are converting to Islam for protection."
The report, for chief inspector Anne Owers, also found drug debts have led to violence among prisoners.
Inmates use phones to organise sales of class A drugs such as heroin, it said.
Phil Wheatley, director general of the National Offender Management Service, said: "The Governor and senior management team are committed to ensuring that all prisoners feel safe, and the strong personal officer scheme at Long Lartin continues to be developed to offer support to prisoners.
"A new programme to improve engagement, led by the Muslim Chaplain, will develop support specifically for Muslim prisoners. " News Source
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More than a few commenters, such as Johnton, have claimed that the UK's Muslim communities have largely remained silent on the other catastrophes and atrocities to have affected their brethren in recent times.
Two years ago, at a press conference, I asked Fareena Alam of the Muslim magazine Q News why Muslims were so quick to condemn western governments for their involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet appeared to show little heartbreak or anger over suffering in Darfur.
She replied that it was "shameful" the way British Muslims had responded to the humanitarian crisis in Sudan: "We can get hot and bothered about Iraq. There is a lot of information about Darfur.
There is no doubt this is Muslim-on-Muslim violence. In this situation where are these values we talk about, that killing one life is about killing humanity?
It is a huge embarrassment to us. We need to have a very big conversation about this."
It was a subject I explored in a podcast about attitudes towards the ummah, the global family all Muslims are supposed to belong to.
In reality people only refer to it when it suits them.
I remember talking to Iraqis in London who said they were criticised by fellow Muslims for having allowed western soldiers into their country. They also said they had little or no social contact with the more prosperous and established Muslim communities in the UK and that they were seen as outsiders. That they were Shia Muslims further increased their sense of isolation. So much for solidarity.
Another case of a pick-and-mix approach to the ummah involves members of the Afghan community in Birmingham. They didn't have access to local mosques or community centres where they could meet or pray. Birmingham has a larger-than-average Muslim population and you would have thought someone could give them room hire at a reduced rate.
I appreciate that conflict in the Middle East has long been a lightning-rod issue for Muslims, but Muslims don't have a monopoly on this outrage.
Besides, if you believe in the ummah then be consistent – not just when you believe there to be a western enemy.
Here's another thought, instead of crying foul when it's just Muslims who are suffering, why not react this way when anyone is affected, regardless of what they believe?
When there's a hurricane, a cyclone or civil unrest that leaves people dead, homeless or in the grip of oppression? It is your duty to protest and react, not because you're Muslim, but because you're human.
Looking after your own – and only your own – gives the lie to the idea that Islam is a religion of compassion.
In fact, it says Islam is a religion of self-interest. News Source
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Britain has fewer hospital beds per head of population than almost any other European country, with half as many as Lithuania and Hungary, according to official figures.
Other European countries, including Germany, also have more than twice as many beds per 100,000 population as Britain, the statistics show.
The Conservatives, who compiled the figures, accused the Government of leaving the NHS ill-equipped to deal with pressure, including flu outbreaks.
A number of hospitals have had to divert patients to other units in recent weeks because of the strain of dealing with large numbers of flu cases and the winter vomiting bug, norovirus.
The figures show that while Britain has 389 hospital beds per 100,000 people, Germany has 829, the Czech Republic has 817, Lithuania has 801 and Hungary has 792.
Across the European Union the average rate is 590 beds per 100,000 inhabitants.
Britain is ranked 25th out of 32 European countries, and only Cyprus, Portugal, Denmark, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and Malta have fewer hospital beds.
Over the past three years, the number of NHS beds has been cut by 20,699, around 11 per cent of the total, despite a pledge by the Government in 2000 to increase the number in England by 7,000.
However, the official figures show that the health service is still working at below 85 per cent bed occupancy, the level recommended to prevent unnecessary hospital acquired infections.
Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, said that it was "madness" that the number of beds had been cut under Labour.
"The objective of the NHS is to deliver world-class healthcare, not to maintain a certain number of hospital beds," he said.
"But it is madness to cut beds when wards are overcrowded, when there aren't enough isolation rooms to control hospital infections and patients are still placed in mixed sex accommodation.
"Labour's complacent assumption that there would not be any more winter crises is now having disastrous consequences for patients.
"In 2000 Labour said that bed numbers needed to increase, but these figures demonstrate again how badly they have failed.
"The Government needs to explain why our hospitals have so many fewer beds than hospitals in other European countries."
Ben Bradshaw, the health minister, said: "Given that the Conservatives are pledged to cut NHS funding, we await with interest a commitment by Andrew Lansley to increase expenditure on this or any other aspect of the work of the NHS that he frequently criticises."
A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “Bed numbers have fallen because people are being treated much more quickly - spending less time in hospital - and for many conditions medical advances mean they do not need to go to hospital at all.
“Detailed analysis of the last three years MRSA and bed occupancy rates has shown no correlation between the two and latest figures show that as well as having halved MRSA infections since 2003/04, C. difficile infections are down 35 per cent on the same quarter last year” Continued - Bed Stats for other countries
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A drunken district judge had to be escorted from court after she forcibly kissed a solicitor and swore at a prosecutor, a tribunal heard today.
Esther Cunningham, 54, caused uproar when she drank brandy before appearing as a lawyer to represent a member of her family.
She demanded to know the names of people in court and refused to sit down, the Solicitors' Disciplinary Tribunal heard.
Cunningham interrupted as magistrates gave a ruling and had to be led from the court by a security guard.
She told an usher to '**** off' when he refused to give her the names of the magistrates and referred to the CPS lawyer as 'a ****wit.'
Cunningham later said the solicitor 'has been called worse things in his time.'
She claimed migraine drugs made her sway in court and that she suffered from an illness that made her breath smell as though she had been drinking.
Cunningham represented her cousin at Grantham Magistrates' Court in Lincolnshire on November 8, 2006.
Mr George Marriott, for the Solicitors' Regulatory Authority, said: 'The respondent forcibly kissed another solicitor and aggressively demanded to know the identity of other people within the court room.
'She behaved as if drunk and refused sit down until encouraged to do so by her assistant.
'She interrupted the magistrates whilst they gave their ruling and was escorted out of the courtroom by a security guard.'
Mr Marriott added: 'The respondent also referred to the CPS prosecutor, Mr C, as 'f***wit.
'This, the respondent claimed, was not meant to be offensive, but was intended to be derogatory.'
When she was asked to explain her conduct the lawyer wrote: 'I realise I should not have attended court as my behaviour was likely to be somewhat robust.'
Mr Marriott continued: 'The respondent also denied being drunk and told the Solicitors' Regulatory Authority she had migraine, which explained her swaying and the need to hold on to the bench to steady herself.
'The respondent further told the SRA that she suffered from a medical condition which can make it smell as if she has been drinking.'
Cunningham went on to wrongly claim she did not appear before the court in her capacity as a solicitor and had popped in 'to see what was going on.'
Six months later Cunningham was drunk again when she taught students on a legal training course, the tribunal heard.
A delegate from the Solicitors' Regulatory Authority attended the course in May 2007 and said Cunningham looked drunk on both days.
Cunningham twice suggested to the SRA member that she should hold down the chief executive of the firm sponsoring the course so she could punch him.
Staff at the hotel where the course was held said Cunningham had been 'rude, threatening and abusive.'
Asked to explain herself, Cunningham told her governing body she had an 'outgoing personality' and 'bold' teaching style. She denied being drunk.
Cunningham is a deputy district judge and adjudicates largely on civil matters in Lincolnshire.
She has practiced since 1980 had run her firm from her home at in Grantham.
Cunningham admitted that she impaired and her integrity and compromised the good repute of the profession, failed to act in the best interests of a client, bought the profession into disrepute and failed to provide a prompt response to the SRA.
Her solicitor Mr Richard Nelson told the hearing Cunningham now accepts she had a drink problem.
Cunningham dabbed tears from her eyes as he added: 'She is embarrassed, ashamed and very apologetic.
'This is the beginning of the final stage of her humiliation.'
Mr Nelson said Cunningham had a distinguished career as a deputy district judge but had personal problems and had been in an abusive relationship.
He added that, on the day of the court case, Cunningham had been 'emotional.'
'She acknowledges that in order to fortify herself she had some brandy.
'The forcible kissing of a solicitor is something that has been difficult to accept. The solicitor concerned is a friend of over 30 years standing.'
Cunningham had been attending counselling and no longer teaches.
'These events are an aberration during a period when she was not in control,' Mr Nelson said.
Suspending her for six months, tribunal chairman Andrew Boyd Holmes said: 'This has not been an easy case for the tribunal to determine the correct sanction.
'Mr Nelson urges leniency. However, the tribunal must look carefully at the circumstances in which the respondent finds herself today.
'The conduct was simply not acceptable and cannot go unpunished.'
She was also ordered to pay £6,200 costs. News Source
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A Man dragged a struggling teenager into a house by her wrists, locked the front door and raped her, Exeter Crown Court has been told.
Amos Moobeng was found crouching in a nearby alleyway by a sniffer dog after police arrived at the house in Farm Hill, Exwick.
He went on the run to Scotland while on bail, shaving off his dreadlocks, and later told police that he fled because he was an illegal immigrant.
The 35-year-old pleaded not guilty to falsely imprisoning and raping the 18-year-old from Mid-Devon when his trial began yesterday.
It is claimed he raped her after he met the woman and a female friend at the Manor House pub in Cullompton in August 2007.
They drove to the Arena nightclub in Exeter with some of his friends, but went back to his house after they were refused entry because the woman's friend was wearing trainers.
Prosecutor David Evans said the alleged victim was "utterly terrified" during the rape and only escaped because somebody sleeping in a nearby bedroom heard the noisy struggle, rescued her and unlocked the front door.
The alleged victim, giving evidence, said that she did not like the way that Moobeng, a South African national, was kissing her friend while touching her at the same time.
"I didn't want to go (to Exeter) as I felt uneasy with him," she said.
"I had a gut feeling something would happen. I told my friend and she didn't listen."
She added: "I didn't want to leave my friend on her own so I decided to go with them." Continued
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A yob accused of robbing a driving instructor walked free from court after a judge ruled his alleged victim was 'too believable' to give evidence.
Mother-of-two Denise Dawson, 36, was praised for being 'honest, utterly decent and brave' when she testified against Liam Perks, 20.
But the trial was stopped on the first day because Judge Jamie Tabor QC ruled her good character may unfairly sway the jury against the defendant.
He decided that her solitary, split-second identification of the man accused of robbing her was simply not enough.
Judge Tabor said he feared the upstanding member of the community might just sway the jury in a case where the evidence fell short.
He told Bristol Crown Court: 'Denise Dawson was a particularly impressive witness because she showed courage, clarity of thought and was undoubtedly honest.
'The jury may lend more weight to her evidence than her facts allow. You cannot be sure she got it right.
'Had this been the Archbishop of Canterbury's son, would I have allowed (the trial) to go on? The answer is no.'
Mrs Dawson was furious after the ruling, which she branded a 'kick in the teeth', and said she is terrified because her alleged assailant is still walking the streets.
She added: 'The whole incident was a nightmare and I felt sick when I was told the trial had collapsed. What more can I do?
'I positively identified someone from a video ID parade and was prepared to risk everything in going to court but it's still not enough.'
The driving instructor was attacked by a gang of yobs as she was teaching a pupil on an estate in Bristol in December 2007.
They were practicing hill starts when the gang surrounded the car and smashed the rear window with a brick before reaching in and grabbing a laptop.
Mrs Dawson chased him and asked for it back but he refused. When she returned to her car, she found another man rifling through her glove box.
She managed to grab him and have a good look at his face, later identifying him as Perks at an identity parade. He denied to police that he had taken part in the robbery.
In court, the judge ruled her evidence alone was not enough and that she could influence the jury in her favour because of her good character.
Her pupil was unable to identify anyone who took part in the robbery.
Despite calling a halt to the trial, Judge Tabor then offered her a £250 bravery award for her actions.
Perks, from Henbury, Bristol, had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to burgle for his role in the thefts of motorcycles and prestige cars, the jury was told at the end of the case.
He will be sentenced for that offence at a later date.
Judge Tabor gave Yvonne Godwin, from Cheltenham, a 12-month suspended sentence after she admitted trying to poison her husband after he cheated on her.
She put rat poison in a cake baked for him but the judge said she should not be jailed because she was not a 'criminal in any shape or form'. News Source
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Teenagers are demanding tougher sentences for those caught carrying knives.
A compulsory jail term was backed by 57 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds polled.
Those in support of toughening current sentencing policy, which allows yobs to escape with a caution in some cases, include young offenders in jail for knife attacks.
In the general population, 62 per cent think those caught with a knife should always go to jail.
The findings - which come ahead of an inquiry by MPs into the police's handling of knife crime, due to take place today - are an embarrassment to Ministers, who have repeatedly fought shy of introducing compulsory prison sentences.
Instead, they have carried out changes such as increasing the maximum sentence for carrying a knife from two to four years, and instructing prosecutors that a caution should not normally be a sufficient punishment.
The poll suggests that, in the public's mind, this does not go far enough.
Sixty-one per cent of those questioned disagreed when asked if the current law is enough to stop under-16s carrying a knife. In the 16-24 age bracket 59 per cent disagreed.
Forty-three per cent thought an automatic jail term was appropriate even for under-16s caught for the first time. Some 42 per cent of 16-24 year-olds agreed.
The survey was conducted for Panorama, shown by the BBC last night, which spoke to five inmates in young offenders’ institutions, three of whom were there for killing and two for causing grievous bodily harm with a knife.
They said the best deterrent would be an automatic custodial sentence, and called for the maximum term of four years to be rigorously applied.
One young convict said: 'I've seen people come in and out of here three or four times since I've been in jail for a knife or GBH - 18 months. It should be a sentence that's going to get through to them, not this in and out of jail business.'
The poll follows a series of alarming statistics on the scale of knife crime in Britain.
Last month it was revealed that knife killings have increased by almost 40 per cent since Labour came to power – to five per week. The 277 fatal stabbings recorded last year was the highest number since records began in 1977.
The Freedom of Information requests submitted by the Tories showed the average number of deaths over the last decade has been 241 a year, compared to 203 in the years 1988 to 1997, when the Tories were in power.
In the last year alone fatal stabbings recorded by the Metropolitan Police increased by a quarter, from 68 in 2006-07 to 86.
Stabbings recorded by both West Yorkshire and Northumbria police last year increased from 10 to 15 in each force. The number recorded by Lancashire constabulary trebled, from four in 2006-07 to 13 in 2007-08.
Yet no offenders have received the new maximum sentence for knife possession, and just one in six offenders were sent to jail last year.
Thirty four teenagers died as a result of knife attacks in the UK last year. There has also been a significant increase in the number of people sentenced for carrying a knife.
In 1996, 890 people were sentenced for possession of a knife in a public place. In 2006 the total was 6,284. In the same period the number of those under the age of 18 sentenced went from 114 in 1996 to 1,226 in 2006. News Source
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A Gang who deliberately ran a man over before subjecting him to a savage beating are being hunted by police.
The 36-year-old victim was on Market Place, Oldham, shortly before 6pm on Saturday when his attackers reversed into him in their car.
The man scrambled to his feet and ran away, but the gang caught with him outside Primark and battered him senseless before fleeing in their car.
The victim was left with a bleed on his brain and three skull fractures. He is being treated in hospital where doctors describe his condition as stable.
So far the victim has been too poorly to describe his attackers or the car they used.
Detective Sergeant Darren Grafton, from Oldham CID, said: "The level of violence used was frightening. The victim suffered three skull fractures but it could have been a lot worse and we could easily have been dealing with a murder inquiry.
"The attack happened at a busy time on a Saturday so there would undoubtedly have been a lot of pub-goers and shoppers out at the time. I would appeal to anyone who saw what happened to call us."
Anyone with information is asked to call DS Grafton at Oldham CID on 0161 856 8951 or Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111. News Source
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A Drugs mule died when a cocaine package he had swallowed split inside his stomach.
Athumani Bitege, 31, was found dead on a Leeds living room floor by partner Barbara Mbabazi after suffering a massive overdose. Their five-year-old son, Brooklyn, had been asleep upstairs.
An inquest in Leeds heard that Mr Bitege lived on benefits at a council flat on Alexandra Road, Horsforth but his passport showed frequent trips to Africa.
A week before his death he had returned from Amsterdam and was due to travel again to Africa.
Speaking after the inquest, Miss Mbabazi said Mr Bitege had been caring for Brooklyn and her adopted baby daughter Evelyn at her home in Farnley while she stayed at a friend's for the night. She returned home just before noon on March 30 to find him dead.
The 28-year-old scientist said: "He was on the floor. I thought he was asleep. I went to touch him and he was cold and I couldn't move his arm. It was heavy and cold, and I knew." She said the children were still upstairs, unaware of the scene below.
Miss Mbabazi said she and Mr Bitege had been together, on and off, for almost 10 years and although they didn't live together they saw each other every day. Continued
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A student was left battered and bruised after he was attacked by teenagers after leaving a bar.
Police believe the unprovoked assault on 20-year-old law student Kristian Fenwick might have been racially motivated.
He suffered a black eye and a bloody lip in the early morning attack, but today said it would not put him off walking through the city at night.
Mr Fenwick had left the University of Leicester students' union, in University Road, Leicester, after a night out with friends.
He said his friends had walked ahead when a couple of Asian teenagers approached him and began harassing him. Mr Fenwick said: "The two guys just started on me, verbally abusing me, and I tried to walk away."
But as he entered Kimberley Road, in Highfields, they attacked him.
Mr Fenwick said: "I'm 6ft 2ins and maybe that's why they picked me out.
"They were trying to goad me and they had a sort of teenage gang mentality.
"One took his belt off and was hitting me on the back with it.
"I thought they had gone, but as I walked around the corner, somebody jumped on my back and somebody punched me in the face and ran off. I took a few punches before it was over.
"It was all pretty quick. I'd had a few drinks and they obviously didn't like the look of me. Maybe I should have run, but I didn't.
"They were just looking for a fight and I didn't want to give it to them. I don't even know if it was racially motivated, but it was completely unprovoked.
"It's not stopped me going out. I've never had any trouble before, but I suppose you get people everywhere who act like that."
Police are treating the incident as a racially aggravated assault.
The attack happened at around 2.30am on Saturday, December 6. Details have only just been released by police. The first suspect is aged around 17 or 18, and 5ft 10in tall.
He had facial hair along his jaw line and was wearing a white shirt. The second suspect is aged around 16 or 17, 5ft 10in tall and was wearing a black T-shirt.
Pc Anil Chauhan said: "We know there were a group of girls in the area at the time of the incident and it is possible they saw what happened. If this was you, please get in touch. You could have information which could help with our investigation.
"We are also keen to speak to anyone else who was in the area at the time and saw anything suspicious. Any information could help."
Anyone with information is asked to contact Pc 2175 Anil Chauhan on 0116 222 2222. Alternatively, witnesses can contact Crimestoppers, which is free and anonymous, on 0800 555 111. News Source
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Police are investigating the rape of a 14-year-old girl who did not report the attack because she did not want to ruin her family's Christmas.
The teenager was attacked by three youths on Christmas Eve in Hattersley, Greater Manchester, as she walked home.
Police want to speak to a woman who was walking her dog nearby at the time.
Det Con Barbara Offord, of Greater Manchester Police, said: "The people who did this are little more than animals."
The attack took place at the back of Torkington Drive and Silverton Close at about 1700 GMT.
Witness appeal
"This poor schoolgirl was flung to the ground and raped by three youths," Det Con Offord said.
"She has had to live with this all over Christmas and New Year before telling us about it over this weekend.
"We can only imagine the horrors that have been replayed over and over in her mind since then.
"We now want the public's help. The victim told us she saw a woman walking her dog nearby, so we particularly want to hear from her."
The first youth was under 5ft tall, fat, dark-skinned and about 13 or 14-years-old. He was wearing a black tracksuit with the hood up and black woolly gloves.
The second man was aged about 18, 6ft tall and skinny and was wearing a grey jacket with the hood up and black tracksuit bottoms and a black scarf pulled up over half of his face.
The final attacker was aged 15 or 16, about 5ft tall with a skinny build. He wore a black tracksuit with white trainers and a black woollen balaclava. News Source
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A Morbidly obese thug was handed a soft sentence because he was too fat to survive in prison.
Peter Owens – who weighs a whopping 40 STONE – was fit enough to batter two men with a baseball bat but deemed too fat and unhealthy to serve a full jail term.
Owens, 38, suffers from diabetes, angina, incontinence, septicaemia, tumours and ulcers – conditions which he previously claimed earned him £2,000 a month in benefits.
Despite using a wheelchair to get around, he attacked two men with a bat after bursting into their home – leaving one needing stitches for a head injury.
Nonce
Teesside Crown Court heard that Owens attacked Leslie Surtees and James Thornton in a house in August 2007, screaming: “You called my son a nonce.”
Mr Thornton suffered an injury to his arm after being hit with the bat and Mr Surtees needed stitches to repair a gaping head wound.
The punishment for his crime usually attracts a sentence of anything from a two to a four-year stretch in jail.
He had also breached a suspended sentence which would ordinarily have led to a four-month sentence.
But judge Peter Armstrong showed Owens mercy when he reduced the sentence to just 15 months because of his health problems, related to his obesity.
Owens also suffers sleep apnoea, a condition which means he could stop breathing in his sleep.
Judge Peter Armstrong said: “You present a sentencing problem in that these are serious offences, and have to result in a custodial sentence.
“I am going to reduce the sentence considerably because of what I have read about you.”
The court heard Owens – a father-of-three and stepfather-of-four, from Hartlepool – has dozens of convictions on his record dating back to 1987. News Source
Tuesday 13th January 2009
You did? No Never' Err what's changed?
Labour allowed a ‘free-for-all’ on immigration during its first years in power, a Cabinet minister has admitted.
Large numbers of economic migrants were let into the country claiming they were asylum seekers, Communities Secretary Hazel Blears said.
It was the first confession from a senior Labour figure that Britain’s liberal asylum laws were abused after Tony Blair came to power.
Mrs Blears’ criticism came amid a campaign by ministers to reassure white working-class voters that Labour was listening to their fears over migrants.
On Saturday, immigration minister Phil Woolas questioned the 1951 UN convention
that underpins asylum rules and added: ‘A significant number of people who claim asylum are doing so for broadly economic reasons.’
The number of asylum seekers arriving in Britain peaked in 2002 at just over 100,000 a year. Around 2.5million foreign citizens are believed to have moved to Britain since Labour came to power in 1997. Mrs Blears said management of immigration was ineffective during Labour’s first years in power.
‘Initially it was a kind of free-for-all,’ she added, with ‘a lot of people coming as economic migrants, but through the route of asylum seeking’.
On Saturday, the Mail revealed research by the House of Commons Library showed in
the year ending September 2008 that British-born workers fell by 46,000, while the non-UK workforce rose by 175,000.
Today rebel Labour MP Frank Field will highlight how the system is undermining Gordon Brown’s promise to create 100,000 new jobs.
In a letter to No 10, also signed by Tory MP Nicholas Soames, Mr Field will say
efforts to help the unemployed are being hindered by the Government’s policy of handing out 130,000 work permits a year to non-EU citizens. News Source
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Labour’s decision to allow more migrants into Britain when dole queues are at their longest in decades was branded “unbelievable” last night.
Former Labour minister Frank Field said that Gordon Brown could not be “taken seriously” on plans to safe-guard British jobs if ministers let in at least 130,000 non-EU jobseekers this year.
The total number of work permits due to be handed out is 30,000 higher than the number of jobs Mr Brown has promised to create as part of his “anti-recession” plan.
Mr Field’s devastating attack comes with unemployment standing at 1.84 million and forecast to hit two million within weeks – and as Mr Brown prepares to host a “jobs summit” in London today.
But Mr Field said the Prime Minister’s intentions were being “completely undermined” by his immigration policy.
He said: “I welcome the Prime Minister’s pledge to create 100,000 new jobs at a time when so many people are becoming unemployed.
“But the Prime Minister’s good intentions are completely undermined by his Government’s immigration policy. In one of the worst recessions in living memory, it is unbelievable that we allow non-EU economic immigrants to come to look for work, or to take up jobs for which British unemployed people have not had the chance to apply.”
In a letter to Mr Brown – also signed by his co-chairman of the Cross Party Group on Balanced Migration, Tory backbencher
Nicholas Soames – Mr Field writes that under Labour’s new points-based system, tens of thousands of “highly skilled” migrants from countries such as India are free to enter the UK to look for work.
Employers are free to bring in foreign workers for thousands more jobs without having to advertise for British workers first.
They write: “We believe that, in a recession, this cannot be allowed to continue.
“We should not be allowing non-EU economic immigrants to come to look for work, or to take up jobs for which the British unemployed have not had the chance to apply. We urge you to review this work permit system so that British unemployed have a first crack at all jobs that become available.”
Mr Field’s challenge is the latest blow to Mr Brown’s boast that he wants “British jobs for British workers”.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The points system means only those with the skills Britain needs can come – and no more.
“Tough criteria mean that employers must prove they cannot fill a post with a resident worker before they can bring in someone from outside Europe.
“The new shortage list is tighter than ever before, reducing the number of jobs available to migrant workers through this route.”
It emerged a week ago that the number of migrant workers in Britain increased by 175,000 to 3,723,000 as the country was descending into economic crisis and British-born people were losing their jobs.
Other figures have claimed that out of 1.34 million new British jobs created between 2001 and 2008, foreign workers took 1.08 million of the posts.
Many forecasters claim another million people are due to lose their jobs before the economy starts to improve and unemployment could hit three million. News Source
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Labour's Social Engineering: The consequence
We said for many years that the majority of asylum Seekers were Fraudulent and in fact nothing more than economic migrants, but the Do-Gooders and Marxists condemned anyone who questioned Asylum / Immigration and were branded Racists!! See: Exclusive from 21st Century British Nationalism (Right Column) NUJ Reporting Rules on BNP Revealed Anyone and everyone Smeared!
An Asylum and immigration “free-for-all” that could spark racial tension had been created by Labour, a senior Government Minister has admitted.
The comments by outspoken Communities and Local Government Secretary Hazel Blears are the first time that a senior Labour figure has made a clear admission that it had mishandled the immigration issue since coming to power in 1997.
“Initially it was a kind of free for all,” Ms Blears said. “We had a big surge of asylum seekers – a lot of people coming as economic migrants, but through the route of asylum seeking.”
The Tories last night said they welcomed Ms Blears’ shock admission that Labour had botched asylum and immigration.
But Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said the Government had no idea now how to fix the system.
“Labour have no new ideas. We would introduce an annual limit on non-EU immigration which would take into account its impact on the economy, public services and community cohesion.
“We would also establish a dedicated UK border police force.”
Ms Blears also warned that the economic downturn was likely to mean people were on the look-out for scapegoats.
Increasingly hard times can give rise to “myths” about immigrants’ entitlements, she said.
“It could go either way. You either end up as a fragmented society, or you come out of it stronger.”
She added: “The evidence is that where resources are scarce, then unless you make positive attempts to bring people together – to get information out, for people to understand entitlement and who gets what – then these myths can grow up and become received wisdom,” she said. “The far Right use it to get divisions between people.”
Again we refer you to See: Exclusive from 21st Century British Nationalism (Right Column) NUJ Reporting Rules on BNP Revealed Anyone and everyone Smeared! (Ed)
It was the second time in little more than a week that Ms Blears had strayed on to such territory. Earlier she claimed white working-class people on council estates felt their concerns about immigration were ignored.
Ms Blears said most migrants had to find private sector housing, but some councils did not have “transparent” housing policies.
She warned white working-class people “sometimes just don’t feel anyone is listening” and have an “acute” fear of immigration.
Ms Blears also voiced concern yesterday that Labour had allowed generations of people in parts of the country to live on benefits while simply no longer interested in work.
“What worries me is that some people are no longer active participants in their own lives,” she said.
“We’ve done a lot of the physical regeneration, estates have changed, and things have improved, but it’s the people bit.
“I just worry that the sense of ambition that people had is not there.”
Ms Blears added: “I’ve knocked on the door, and they’re in their pyjamas, and I’ve said to them: ‘Have you thought about going to work?’.
“And they look at you as if you’re completely mad, because it’s not even on their horizon.”
She said: “I think you’ve got to be very clear that there are advantages to work.
“We’re doing it now, but in some ways, you know, I wish we’d have made a bit more progress earlier.” News Source
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More than two thousand fresh redundancies have been announced as the Prime Minister hosted a jobs summit aimed at helping the growing army of unemployed.
He announced a series of measures, including a so-called "golden hello" of £2,500 for firms recruiting people unemployed for more than six months, extra apprenticeships and "intensive" support aimed at helping up to 500,000 people over the next two years.
But the relentless toll of redundancies, which is cutting deeper into British industry by the day, continued with almost 700 job cuts at heavy machinery giant JCB, almost 1,000 at logistics firm Wincanton and almost 400 at troubled china and crystal maker Waterford Wedgwood.
A further 420 jobs were under threat at Findus frozen food firm Newcastle Productions after the firm went into administration, while there were fears for the future of 1,000 jobs at furniture retailer Land of Leather after the company suspended its shares.
Hull-based Honda dealership deVries, which employs 130 workers, said it had appointed receivers after being hit by a fall in sales.
Meanwhile, leading auction house Christie's, which employs 2,100 staff around the world, announced a reorganisation expected to lead to job cuts.
The scale of the cuts, with waves of job losses being announced on an almost daily basis, make it certain that unemployment will soon pass the politically sensitive two million mark.
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of JCB, said he would rather see the Government spend money on trying to stop workers losing their jobs in the first place.
"We are making some very good employees redundant and that hurts."
He contrasted the position in JCB's German factory, where employees are on a two-day week, with the Government making up wages to avoid any lay-offs.
The Prime Minister told an audience of 150 business, union and voluntary sector leaders at the jobs summit that the Government aimed to help 500,000 people into work or work-focused training over the next two years.
"We will do everything we can to prevent the global recession turning into a global depression, prevent short-term unemployment turning into long-term unemployment, and to prevent losing your job meaning losing your home.
"My message is simple - we won't give up on you, but in turn you must not give up on work, on skills and on training."
Mr Brown said anyone losing their job will be able to access help and support on the first day.
But Mr Brown faced a series of questions from union and business leaders about what should be done to tackle growing unemployment.
Tony Burke, assistant general secretary of Unite, said the level of redundancy pay should be increased to help those losing their jobs and added that it should be easier to gain access to training funds.
Dave Prints, leader of Unison, called on the Prime Minister to halt job losses in the public sector and expand apprenticeships in areas such as local government, where he warned of fresh redundancies being planned.
John Wright, chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, said 86 small firms were going out of business every day, highlighting the urgent need for extra help such as reductions in regulations and cuts in payroll taxes.
The Engineering Employers' Federation said even though the proposals were laudable, they were "missing the mark".
Chief economist Steve Radley said: "The main priority for manufacturers is to keep the skilled workforce they already have and maintain cash flow."
Paul Kenny, leader of the GMB union, said: "Summits such as this will do nothing unless the Government can tackle the fundamental issue which everyone here is talking about - that the banks have to be brought to book.
"They are holding money back and are squeezing businesses badly.
"Banks are the biggest threat and I fear an implosion of job losses unless the Government can take action."
Shadow work and pensions secretary Chris Grayling said the latest job losses were a "further worrying sign" that the Government's policies on the recession were not working.
Supermarket giant Morrisons lifted some of the gloom by unveiling plans to hire 5,000 new staff through its previously announced store expansion programme this year.
Mr Brown will hold talks on the European response to the economic downturn with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris on Wednesday, before travelling to Berlin to speak to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday.
His visit to Berlin comes as Ms Merkel attempts to push through a large-scale fiscal stimulus package of investment and tax cuts to help the German economy through the recession. News Source
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Britain is now "bankrupt" following the sharp increase in Government borrowing, the Conservatives claimed.
At the launch of a nationwide advertising campaign to highlight the sharp increase in public debt under Gordon Brown, George Osborne, the shadow Chancellor accused Labour of having "bankrupted Britain again".
David Cameron, the Conservative leader, raised the spectre of Britain being forced to turn to international bodies for financial assistance. He pointed out that expected Government debt would soon be identical to the level in 1976 - when Britain infamously had to borrow emergency funds from the International Monetary Fund.
The comments are likely to be seized upon by Labour who have previously accused Mr Osborne of seeking to undermine the British economy. Labour ministers have also been angered by Conservative claims that British society is "broken".
However, the Conservatives believe that the language is appropriate and that the British public have the right to be warned. Mr Osborne points to the doubling in the national debt and the "junk" status of insuring British Government debt as evidence that the economy is "bankrupt".
"Under Labour, our national debt is set to double to over one trillion pounds in just five years," he said. "Britain's debt burden will not be paid off by unspecified people at an unspecified date. It will be paid by us and by our children. It means families will have to work longer. It means, if Labour get their way, we will all pay higher taxes.
"We want to offer people a choice between a Labour Government that has lived beyond its means, and a Conservative one that will live within its means. A choice between a Labour Government that has bankrupted Britain again, and a Conservative Government that will build confidence in Britain's future."
The Conservatives are aggressively focussing on the debts being run up by Mr Brown to fund tax cuts and increases in public spending during the recession. The issue is set to be the key battleground at the next election with Labour alleging that the Conservatives are not acting to avert the impact of the economic downturn.
Mr Cameron said: "Every child born in Britain this year will be staggering along under Gordon Brown's debt…I believe there is something morally repugnant about this Labour Government sacrificing tomorrow for the political convenience of today. And, I believe, so does the vast majority of this country. For the first time in generations, parents are looking at their children and questioning if they will have a better life than they themselves had." News Source
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More black people than white or Asian are on the police’s DNA database, and they are seven times more likely to be stopped and searched — so the police are “racist”, the government’s chief race Gestapo organisation has concluded.
Blacks are seven times more likely to be stopped and searched than whites, while 30 percent of all black males are on the National DNA database, compared with about 10 percent for white and Asian males, according to the Government’s Orwellian-named “Equality and Human Rights Commission” (EHRC).
Instead of drawing the logical conclusion — that there are higher rates of offenders amongst certain groups — the Race Gestapo has immediately blamed white policemen for the problem.
“Policing still suffers from a Life on Mars-style ‘canteen culture’ of racism, sexism and heavy drinking,” a new report from the EHRC has said.
The report then went on to confirm that forced anti-white recruitment policies, which favour nonwhite applicants over whites based simply on a quota system have been successful.
Calling the anti-white discrimination “positive action,” the EHRC says “The study . . . finds many positive changes including increases in the proportion of ethnic-minority officers, achieved through tactics such as ‘positive action’.”
For all staff, both civilian and sworn officers, the police have exceeded the Home Office target for ethnic minorities to make up at least seven percent of the service in England and Wales by 2009. In 2007 the total was eight percent.
Nonwhite Crime in Britain: A Brief Survey (extracted form the Book: The Immigration Invasion)
“Official figures from the Justice Ministry in Britain show that at least 11 percent of all prisoners in jail in mid-2008 were Muslim - a striking indication of that community’s grossly disproportionate participation in crime in Britain.
In May 2003, Chris Fox, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) told The Observer that “the mass movement of people around the world had brought new levels of organised crime, with drug dealing, gun offences, prostitution and kidnapping.”
“Mass migration has brought with it a whole new range and a whole new type, from the Nigerian fraudster . . . to the Jamaican concentration in drug dealing . . . if you go into some of the cities, looking at the North, Bradford simmers, Blackburn simmers. It doesn’t take much to disturb the balance, and I think we’ve got to be very careful to make sure that we’re not overwhelming our current infrastructure.”
After the conviction of Danny and Ricky Preddie, the Jamaican murderers of black youth Damilola Taylor, an article by Minette Marrin in The Sunday Times of August 2006 pointed out that: “The government has been either unwilling or unable to control, or even to estimate the vast numbers of new arrivals.
“Only now is it beginning to wonder whether this influx was an entirely good thing. At the time of Damilola’s death the ethnic composition of north Peckham in Southwark, where the estate (where he died) lies, was 43.4% white, 15.9% black Caribbean, 26.6% black African, 4.1% black other, 7.9% Asian and 2.2% other . . . Southwark today is still considered a high crime area by the Home Office and a high youth crime area . . . Violent crime there has risen from 10,000 incidents in 2000-01 to 12,500 in 2005-06, even though huge sums of money have been thrown at the problem.”
In the second edition of The Oxford Handbook of Criminology (1997), David J. Smith writes: “The rate of imprisonment for drugs offences was 10.8 times as high among blacks as among white men.”
The high crime rate among black immigrants in Britain has traditionally been ‘excused’ by allegations of ‘discrimination and police bias.’ This is, of course, nonsense. David Smith dealt with the topic this way: “Although some bias against black people has been demonstrated at several stages, and although some apparently neutral criteria have been shown to work to the disadvantage of black people, the magnitude of these effects seems small compared with the stark contrast in rates of arrest and imprisonment between black and white people.”
The Third Edition of the Handbook of Criminology (2002) shows Home Office statistics of the male prison population by ethnic group, 1985-99. In 1999, the number of white males in prisons was 49,961, the number of black males was 7,355, the number of South Asians was 1,895, and the number of Chinese and other was 2,081.
In the same handbook, Coretta Philips and Ben Bowling make the following observation: “Ethnic monitoring data on Britain’s prison population have been available since 1985. The first statistics revealed a marked over-representation of West Indians, Guyanese, and Africans within prisons among both males and females.”
North African, African, and Caribbean youth gangs are responsible for the rising incidence of group rapes. The victims are overwhelmingly white women. Scotland Yard reported: “Suspects of African and Caribbean appearance were identified in 49 percent of attacks. A further 13 percent were committed by men of Indian/Pakistani appearance.”
In England, gang rapes and “jack rolling” (gangs of youths in cars block off streets and rape every woman caught in their net) were introduced into Britain by young blacks from Jamaica and South Africa.” News Source
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Football games in the park could be banned under barmy guidance issued to council chiefs by Hazel Blears.
Organisers have been told to carry out risk assessments before allowing matches.
They can call off events if they fear fighting.
Footie fans last night warned the rules could wreck the game with political correctness.
The guidance is in a 53-page booklet sent to councils by Communities Secretary Hazel Blears.
It said: “If not planned properly, football can be divisive and trigger conflict. Passions can get high and physical contact can easily lead to confrontations.”
It told organisers to check if teams were ready to compete or if they had scores to settle.
Soccer fan Michael Rufus, of Golders Green, North London, called the guidance “patronising”, adding: “Football is about high passions — there is always the risk of a bust-up.”
The Tories attacked the document.
Shadow communities secretary Eric Pickles said: “This will give a green light to jobsworths to ban competitive sport.
“Football has potential to promote community spirit and keep young people out of trouble.”
But a Communities Department spokesman said: “This is about encouraging people from different backgrounds to interact, not about banning activities.” News Source
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Britain has "disappeared from the map" of Europe in a controversial modern art installation unveiled by the Czechs in Brussels this morning.
For once a Euro public art work is actually attracting attention rather than a bored lack of interest. The usual practice is to design such projects with the express purpose of not interesting or offending anyone.
The Czech Republic, current holders of the EU presidency, has commissioned a large scale "provocation" taking the form of a giant jigsaw map representing the "clichés and stereotypes" of each of the EU's 27 member states, executed by different national artists.
As EU energy ministers arrive in the drab Justus Lipsius buiding for crisis talks on the Russia-Ukraine energy crisis it has everyone talking. A first in my experience.
Conservative Roman Catholic Poland is depicted by a sculpture of priests raising the rainbow flag of the gay movement, subverting the iconic image of the American soldiers planting the Stars and Stripes on Iwi Jima. "A surreal vision of the interconnection of that which can not be interconnected," claims the artist Leszek Hirszenberg.
France, despite the efforts of President Nicolas Sarkozy to reform its labour laws, is represented as by a map of France draped with a protest banner inscribed "Strike!". "As result of the global and local political, economic and cultural situation, the GRAA group (the artists) has gone on strike indefinitely," says the blurb.
The Netherlands is shown as having sunk beneath the sea in the aftermath of climate change and all that appears above the waves are the minarets of mosques, an explosive reference to the country's high levels of Islamic immigration. When the sculpture is "switched on" this Thursday "sounds of singing muezzins" will be heard.
Britain is not to be seen at all because the British artist Khalid Asadi has sought to highlight Britain's "uncertain" relations with the EU by cutting the country out altogether.
The various images are here - Britain is not included on the "Airfix" style Europe kit and there is a fine piece of pseud's corner babble accompanying the UK entry.
Alexandr Vondra, the Czech Deputy Prime Minister, said, in a statement: "Sculpture, and art more generally, can speak where words fail. In line with the Czech Presidency motto a 'Europe without Barriers', we gave the 27 artists the same opportunity to express themselves freely, as a proof that in today's Europe there is no place for censorship. In return we got an uncommon, yet common piece of art. I am confident in Europe's open mind and capacity to appreciate such a project."
Po-faced EU officials have instantly expressed concern.
"This is very provocative for an official building and does not seem to have been properly discussed in the appropriate forum," said one official.
"This might all be very 'fun' for some people but shocking art is not going to help get things done," said another hissy official.
Mr Vondra is going to get a shock.
The Czechs, who really do have subversive streak, are very idealist if they think EU-types have an "open mind and capacity to appreciate such a project".
Brussels officialdom would rather people just bow their heads and accept the EU. They are deeply suspicious of any attempts to get debate going because real debate rapidly becomes independent of the control freakery world of consensus politics.
The EU is very much about censorious attitudes to public debate (just look at the reaction to referendum No votes).
The Brussels ring is defined by an entrenched prejudice that ordinary people are incapable of making up their own minds about anything (in fact it is considered very dangerous to let them do so).
The installation, a 16 metre square jigsaw puzzle weighing between six and eight tonnes, is the privately funded brain child of David Cerný, a Czech artist who has won international fame for his provocative work such as a nearly naked and bound Saddam Hussein in a tank of formaldehyde. News Source
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Almost two-thirds of voters want a significant loosening of Britain's ties with the European Union including an end to the supremacy of the European Court of Justice, a new opinion poll reveals, according to The Daily Telegraph.
The YouGov survey for the TaxPayersAlliance and Global Vision, the Eurosceptic pressure group, shows that voters remain antagonistic towards the EU in the wake of the Lisbon Treaty, which increased the powers of Brussels at the expense of national governments, as well as towards the euro, despite recent falls in the value of the pound.
The survey – released exclusively to The Sunday Telegraph – also spells out the threat posed to the Tories by the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in elections to the European Parliament which take place on 4 June. Ten per cent of those who would vote Tory in a general election will back UKIP in the euro-election, the survey suggests.
David Cameron has been trying to "close down" Europe as a political issue amid fears that traditional Tory divisions on the subject could resurface with the possible return of Ken Clarke, the strongly pro-Brussels former Chancellor, to the shadow cabinet.
Overall, 16 per cent of voters want Britain simply to withdraw from the EU, while 48 per cent would like to see a much looser relationship, with the government taking back powers from Brussels and ending the supremacy of the European Court of Justice over British law.
Added together this makes 64 per cent in favour of weakening Britain's ties with the EU, compared with just 22 per cent in favour of keeping the UK's current full membership including the Lisbon Treaty, which was passed by parliament without a referendum.
Asked if they favoured joining the euro, in the wake of the slump in the value of the pound which at one stage brought it close to parity with the single European Currency, 64 per cent said No, with 24 per cent backing euro membership, a finding broadly in line with a BBC opinion poll earlier this month.
In the first study of voting intentions for the European parliamentary elections in June the Tories are on 35 per cent, six points ahead of Labour on 29 per cent with the Liberal Democrats on 15 per cent and UKIP on 7 per cent. Then come the Greens (5 per cent), the British National Party (4 per cent) and nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales (also 4 per cent).
Significantly, 10 per cent of Conservative voters at a general election would switch to UKIP in the euro-election, compared with 2 per cent of Labour voters and 1 per cent of those backing the Lib Dems. Conservative support could fall still further if Mr Clarke makes a front-bench return, using his position to make high-profile interventions on European matters.
Some 45 per cent of voters, meanwhile, believe none of the three main political parties adequately reflects their views on Britain's future relations with the EU, while 59 per cent of the population believes ministers should disregard the EU's VAT rules if they feel a further cut in VAT is necessary in this year's Budget. The current rate of 15 per cent is the lowest permitted by Brussels.
Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayersAlliance, which with Global Vision has launched a campaign to propel European issues up the political agenda in the coming weeks, said: "The main political parties have let people down by avoiding or fudging the EU issue, but it has such a big impact on our day-to-day lives that it must be dealt with." News Source
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Rapidly-rising Government debt means every baby born in Britain starts life with £17,000 worth of debt, it was claimed today.
Tory leader David Cameron said the Labour government's 'debt crisis' and heavy borrowing meant Britain's future children would be paying the price. At the launch of a new publicity campaign today Mr Cameron unveiled a hard-hitting poster designed to highlight the country's 'debt crisis.'
The poster, which will be shown at 260 billboard sites across the country, features a photograph of a baby and the slogan: 'Dad's nose, mum's eyes, Gordon Brown's debt - Labour debt crisis: Every child in Britain is born owing £17,000. They deserve better.'
Mr Cameron said that with national debt set to top £1 trillion in several years' time, the interest payment alone amounted to more than was spent on educating the nation's children.
He said the campaign had a powerful message and that his party was trying to get the debt message across to the nation. 'Labour are getting it wrong. It's easy for politicians to talk about tax rates and borrowing as if there was no tomorrow, but there is a tomorrow and it is going to be paid for by our children,' he said.
'And every child born today is entering the world with £17,000 of Labour debt hanging over them. 'I want this poster to be the start of something - I want it to be the start of our country changing it and putting it right.'
He added that the Government's attempt to stimulate the economy by cutting VAT was 'plain foolish' because it had not only failed to work in the short term but would also further increase debt. He also warned that Labour was set for another spending and borrowing splurge in the next Budget.
'We have got to turn this picture of despair into one of hope. We've got to show that there is a different way: that we can have an economy built on saving rather than debt; we can have a government that lives within its means rather than beyond its means; we can have real tax cuts that last, not tax cons that just buy you a headline,' he said.
Mr Cameron accused Prime Minister Gordon Brown - who today announced measures to tackle rising unemployment including a so-called 'golden hello' of £2,500 for firms recruiting people unemployed for more than six months - of stealing Conservative ideas. News Source
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EXCLUSIVE from 21st Century British Nationalism (Lee Barnes)
I have been sent a copy of the National Union Of Journalists Code on reporting the BNP that all media companies have to adopt ;
Media Rules Of Engagement For Reporting On The BNP.
- 1) Never report on the BNP in a way that can be regarded as impartial. Impartial reporting equates to supporting the BNP. Reporting of the BNP must be negative at all times, as any impartial reporting will be read by the public as equating to support of the BNP. If the truth is not bad enough, then make up lies.
- 2) If mention of the BNP are made in the media then the BNP acronym must be followed by phrases such as ' Nazi, Racist, Extremist' or phrases such as ' local people are opposed to the BNP'. If you cannot find a member of the Labour Party, Tory Party or Liberal Party to make a negative comment about the BNP then ring G