Archive 16
UkTabloid
The People's News Portal
Wednesday 18th February 2009
A former spy chief last night accused Labour of turning Britain into a 'police state' by cynically exploiting the public's fear of terrorism.
Dame Stella Rimington, the first female head of MI5, warned the Government was playing into the hands of extremists by eroding our civil liberties.
The extraordinary attack adds to growing concern over how ancient freedoms have been relentlessly undermined by draconian new laws.
Dame Stella said: 'It would be better that the Government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties - precisely one of the objects of terrorism: that we live in fear and under a police state.'
Last week, a House of Lords committee demanded a drastic curtailing of the state's Big Brother surveillance powers.
In recent years, Labour has brought in plans for ID cards, the detention of terror suspects for 28 days without charge, control orders, and powers to stop and search individuals without reason.
Dame Stella, head of MI5 from 1992 to 1996, has become a powerful critic of the Government.
In November 2005, she warned ID cards would be 'absolutely useless' unless they were immune to forgery.
Her latest intervention is particularly embarrassing for the Government as she is a member of the security 'establishment' with firsthand-experience of dealing with terror-related intelligence.
In the interview with the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia, she also criticised the U.S. policy of detaining and torturing terror suspects.
She said: 'The U.S. has gone too far with Guantanamo and the tortures. MI5 does not do that. Furthermore it has achieved the opposite effect: there are more suicide terrorists finding a greater justification.'
Her comments last night found support among opposition MPs and civil rights groups.
Tory security spokesman Dame Pauline Neville-Jones said: 'Stella Rimington is right to argue that security measures must be proportionate and adhere to the rule of law. The Government has presided over an erosion of our civil liberties.'
Isabella Sankey, of the pressure group Liberty, said: 'When you sacrifice our age-old liberties you hand terrorists the victory.'
A Home Office spokesman said: 'The key is to strike the right balance between privacy, protection and sharing of personal data.'
Dame Stella also spoke of her experiences as a spy during the Cold War and the amazing range of gadgets she was able to employ.
'The only things I haven't used are a gun and those James Bond cigars that launch missiles,' she said.
She said: 'My husband knew but my daughters had no idea, so when they named me director general and it was published in the press they were very surprised.
In the world of espionage there are scientists working continuously to create technological gadgets, and those I know about have already been overtaken.
'But microphone pens, cameras that are impossible to detect, tiny sophisticated communications systems, I have used a lot.'
Her broadside came as a report by a powerful panel of lawyers and judges warned that the UK's anti-terror laws were illegal and counterproductive.
The three-year study by the International Commission of Jurists also warned that Governments were using the public's fear of terrorism to introduce measures such as detention with trial, illegal disappearance and torture.
Last week, a powerful committee of Lords also demanded a drastic curtailing of the state's 'Big Brother' surveillance powers.
In recent years, Labour has brought in a raft of new legislation under the guise of protecting Britain from terrorist attack.
This includes controversial plans for ID cards, the detention of terror suspects for 28 days without charge, control orders and new powers to stop and search individuals without reason.
In November 2005, Dame Stella warned identity cards would be 'absolutely useless' unless they could be made unforgeable.
She said she did not believe her former agency was pressing for their introduction.
Dame Stella has also criticised Tony Blair's claims that the war in Iraq did not radicalise Muslim youth in the UK.
Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said: 'Dame Stella is absolutely right to warn that the erosion of civil liberties merely reduces us to the same level and moral standing as the terrorists, which is precisely what they want. 'We must never become what we are fighting.
'As soon as we lose the high ground we begin to lose the fight against terrorism, as we horribly proved with the internment of the innocent in Northern Ireland.' News Source
See Also
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ARK is the main charity overseeing the introduction of seriously pseudo-psychological systems into the education system.
From another angle we have Common Purpose installing their graduates as teachers, Headteachers and helpers of all kinds including most importantly, the governors. Advisors to the schools are also highly skilled operatives from within ARK and Common Purpose charities, but there are many more charities acting within this network pushing for the same outcome.
ARK having now modified its website, used to state: 'Ark schools has no religious affiliation and is committed to non-selective education.' Rather different in the funding agreement below.
Note In the following summary of the ARK Academies Funding Agreement, where ever 'the Company' is mentioned, this refers to ARK. All text in [ ] is my emphasis.
[...]
ARK is an international charity, whose purpose is to transform children’s lives.
Keyword being ‘transform’. It works across Europe especially Eastern European countries such as Bulgaria and Romania. For the full story of what went on in these two countries : HERE. Interestingly Princess Beatrice has been doing the rounds in Romania and I have it on good authority so has Prince Charles. And Fergie : HERE. ARK claims :
ARK is developing a range of ALTERNATIVE CARE SYSTEMS to ensure the best care for each child.
In its INTRODUCTION, ARK claims: ARK is closing detrimental institutions across Eastern Europe, moving children into family focussed environments and preventing more children from entering institutional care. So what is really going on here is child trafficking. Placing children into the homes of paying couples using the extreme situations found in the eastern European orphanages to drive their fundraising and expanding their profile as do gooders, when in many cases these children were not at any point real orphans. Let us not forget the recent French 'ZOES ARK' operatives jailed in the Sudan for kidnapping children and claiming they were refugees from Darfur. This is all about trafficking children to the newly formed NATO underworld capitol of Europe, Kosovo.
Let us now look at a few very dubious characters involved with ARK.
Ark is the charity which controls BurlingtonDanesAcademy in Hammersmith and Fulham, London, and is looking to control at least five more. They are currently looking at sponsoring an Academy school at the Wembley Sports Ground in Brent, London. The chairman of ARK is Arpad Busson, who is also chairman of EIM Group. Busson has affiliations with the following individuals : Arpad Plesch :
Plesch was a mentor to Giovanni Agnelli. Arpad Plesch was Busson’s step-grandfather and Busson is named after him. Giovanni Agnelli : HERE.
HEDGE FUND BUSSON AND HIS HEDGE FUND ARK :
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Absolute_Return_for_Kids_(ARK)
FBI Question Arpad Busson over bin ladin finances : HERE.
QUOTE FROM ABOVE LINK :
After amassing a personal fortune estimated at £100m by making hedge fund investments for his wealthy associates, including, at one point, members of the Bin Laden family. Mr Busson has decided it is time to give something back. He has established a charity called Absolute Return for Kids (Ark) whose mission is "to transform the lives of children who are victims of abuse, disability, illness and poverty".
After amassing a personal fortune estimated at £100m by making hedge fund investments for his wealthy associates - including, at one point, members of the Bin Laden family - Mr Busson has decided it is time to give something back. He has established a charity called Absolute Return for Kids (Ark) whose mission is "to transform the lives of children who are victims of abuse, disability, illness and poverty".
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The estranged husband of Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell was today convicted of corruption by an Italian court and sentenced to four-and-a-half years.
David Mills, 64, accepted a £400,000 bribe from the country's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in exchange for giving favourable evidence in two previous trials.
The company lawyer was not in court and will not serve any time behind bars before the case goes before two appeal courts.
After the verdict Mills said: 'I am naturally very disappointed by this verdict. I am innocent, but this is a highly political case.
'The judges have not yet given their reasons for their decision, so I cannot say how they dealt with the prosecutor's own admission that he had no proof.
'I am hopeful that the verdict and sentence will be set aside on appeal and am told that I will have excellent grounds, and have every faith in my excellent lawyer, Federico Cecconi.
'The sentence does not become effective for any purpose until two levels of appeal have been concluded. I have been advised not to make any further public comment on the case until it has finally come to an end. Meanwhile, I am getting on with my professional life.'
Prosecutors said Mr Mills used the money on a joint mortgage with Ms Jowell to obtain a property in north London, when details of the case emerged in 2005. Continued
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Six in ten people the Home Office claims to have removed never entered the country or left of their own accord, the Daily Telegraph can disclose.
Ministers boast that the UK Border Agency removes a failed asylum seeker, illegal immigrant or foreign criminal every eight minutes.
That is based on more than 63,000 people who had no right to stay in the UK and were removed or left in 2007, the most recent figures.
But almost half of those were turned back at a port of entry and one in ten left voluntary.
The Daily Telegraph can also disclose that up to a quarter of a million failed asylum seekers who should have been removed under Labour are still here.
Figures slipped out to MPs in a parliamentary written answer show in 2007 some 63,365 people were removed, left voluntarily or took advantage of the assisted returns packages.
As a result ministers continually defend the work of the UK Border Agency by claiming it removes someone every eight minutes.
But 31,145 – or 49 per cent - of those were refused at a port of entry, either here or at points abroad, and never officially entered the UK.
A further 6,885 – 11 per cent – were in the UK but left of their own accord without informing the immigration authorities.
A separate investigation by this newspaper shows at least 227,000 failed asylum seekers who should have been removed since 1997 may still be here.
The vast number does not even include those involved in the 450,000 backlog cases the Home Office is desperately trying to clear, which is likely to throw up tens of thousands more.
It follows a scathing report by Government auditors last month which widely criticised performance in the asylum system.
There were just over 750,000 claims for asylum, including dependants, between 1997 and 2007, based on the Home Office's own statistics.
Of those, just over 541,000 were refused.
The National Audit Office estimates seven in ten refusals go to appeal, of which between 20 and 25 per cent are overturned.
Based on that estimate just over 87,000 more would have been allowed to stay during the period, plus around 92,000 who were granted stay under effective short term amnesties to clear backlogs.
That leaves just over 362,000 but the research shows only around 136,000 were removed during the ten year period.
Some will also have left of their own accord but the Home Office has no way of knowing and it means up to at least 227,000 may still be here.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: "These figures make a mockery of Labour's claim to be getting a grip on the asylum system.
"Far from making inroads into the numbers of failed asylum seekers who are in this country, the number looks set to get bigger."
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, added: "Asylum applications are now only ten per cent of net foreign immigration but that is no excuse for such a dismal performance."
The Home Office insisted the latest research does not represent a "full picture" because it does not account for who leave the country voluntarily or have outstanding appeals and figures for the number of dependants removed were unavailable for 1997 to 2000.
On the one in eight removal claim, a spokesman added: "Britain now has one of the toughest borders in the world and these figures are proof that our juxtaposed controls are working – in 2007 we stopped 18,000 people getting into the UK, and last year we barred even more.
"We will not tolerate anyone who seeks to abuse the system, which is why we moved our border controls to France. This means we can turn people away before they even step foot on British soil." News Source
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Hundreds of asylum seekers have pushed a city’s housing into meltdown after a Home Office blunder.
They were granted full citizenship in Birming-ham because their files were left to gather dust.
The local council was then forced to house them while 800 British families are living in expensive B&Bs and more than 30,000 are on the waiting list for homes.
Hundreds of properties in the city are also packed with new immigrants still waiting for Home Office decisions.
The city’s housing chief Cllr John Lines said: “We are being forced to find homes for people from the other side of the world who have not put a penny into the system, but have the same rights as a British citizen. Their numbers have grown as others have arrived from abroad to join them.
“It has got to the point where the waiting list for council accommodation has grown beyond belief, and it is getting worse by the day.
“It is down to disgraceful neglect by the Home Office and a Government that does not care about its own people.”
Three hundred families were granted full citizenship by default because the Home Office failed to clear a backlog of cases.
The foreign nationals have all been in the city for seven years or more after lodging their applications.
Many have been joined by scores of relatives, placing even more strain on the overburdened system.
A council source said: “It’s crazy. There are British people who have been on the waiting list for nearly 10 years.”
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migration-watch, said: “This is the result of a scandalous failure by the Home Office.”
A Home Office spokeswoman insisted officials had visited Birmingham earlier this month to address the situation.
She added: “We are now resolving a large number of cases every month.” News Source
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Meaning of Peace - Means Giving in.. to your Oppressors!
American officials have privately backed Pakistan's "Sharia law for peace" deal with Taliban militants in the Swat Valley despite publicly criticising it as a "negative development".
The deal, under which Sharia law will be introduced in the Malakhand and Kohistan districts of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province if Taliban militants end their armed campaign in the Swat Valley, has been met with alarm by Nato chiefs and British and American officials.
Nato fears the deal would create a new "safe haven" for extremists, said a spokesman on Tuesday night, while a statement from Britain's High Commission in Islamabad said: "Previous peace deals have not provided a comprehensive and long-term solution to Swat's problems. We need to be confident that they will end violence, not create space for further violence."
President Barack Obama's special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan voiced the greatest concern about the strength of Taliban militants in Swat as he ended his first visit to the region since taking up his post.
"I talked to people from Swat and they were, frankly, quite terrified. Swat has really deeply affected the people of Pakistan, not just in Peshawar but in Lahore and Islamabad," he said, while a Defence Department official described the deal as a "negative development".
On Tuesday night however, US officials in Islamabad privately backed the deal as an attempt to drive a wedge between Swat's Taliban, which is focused on its demand for Sharia law, and the al-Qaeda-linked Taliban led by Baitullah Mehsud, the notorious commander who controls much of North and South Waziristan and other tribal areas along the Afghan border.
While they expressed fears that the deal might yet be sabotaged by some Swat Taliban militants who support al-Qaeda, they said that if successful, the deal would break up the alliance between the two groups, which has caused alarm throughout Pakistan and in Washington.
Of the two Taliban groups, Mehsud's is the most feared – he has been accused of masterminding the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and trained Osama bin Laden's son as one of his commanders – but it is the alliance with Swat Taliban leader Maulana Fazlullah which alarmed Pakistanis in the country's main metropolitan centres.
Swat is less than 100 miles from Islamabad, just a few hours from where Fazlullah's men have bombed girls' schools and murdered opponents and those who have defied its fatwas against "immoral behaviour". They included a popular dancing girl whose body was dumped in the main square of the valley's largest city, Mingora, last month.
Fazlullah, who is known as "Maulana Radio" for the illegal FM stations he uses to broadcast his latest fatwas and justify recent Taliban murders, is the son-in-law of Maulana Sufi Muhammad, the leader of Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), who once led thousands of militants to fight US forces in Afghanistan. Mr Muhammad has negotiated the Sharia law deal with local government officials and was on Tuesday night meeting Maulana Fazlullah to finalise their ceasefire.
Some senior Pakistan People's Party leaders have privately condemned the deal as "surrender", but government sources last night said it needed to bring peace to the valley, so that girls could return to school and business return to normal.
The valley had a long history of Sharia law, and its introduction was a popular measure among Swat's long-suffering people, they said.
American officials in Islamabad said they hoped it would divide Fazlullah's Swat Taliban and his father-in-law's TNSM from Baitullah Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
"The strategy has to be to divide the two groups. The TNSM and Baitullah's TTP found some common cause briefly, but a peace deal will separate them," said one US official, who explained that while Mehsud's TTP is part of the global jihad, Maulana Radio is regarded as more focused on local issues and the campaign for Sharia law.
One source suggested it reflected the "smart power" thinking outlined by Hillary Clinton in her Senate confirmation hearing as secretary of state.
Mehsud's Taliban on Tuesday night appeared unruffled by the prospect of a peace deal in Swat.
"If a true Sharia was enforced, we shall fully support it," said Maulvi Omar, a spokesman, adding that the group backed the involvement of TNSM chief Maulana Sufi Muhammad in any deal. News Source
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Earlier today, I sounded a note of scepticism below about the claim made on Panorama that British policy towards Islamic radicalisation was about to get a lot tougher.
The government having apparently realised its catastrophic error in identifying extremism with violence and thus ignoring the conveyor-belt of extreme Islamist ideas which is radicalising ever rising numbers of young British Muslims and turning them against their home country of Britain. Today’s Guardian ran with a similar story, claiming that the new strategy would classify Muslims as extremists if
- They advocate a caliphate, a pan-Islamic state encompassing many countries.
- They promote Sharia law.
- They believe in jihad, or armed resistance, anywhere in the world. This would include armed resistance by Palestinians against the Israeli military.
- They argue that Islam bans homosexuality and that it is a sin against Allah.
- They fail to condemn the killing of British soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan.
All these things sound pretty extreme to me (although some traditional Christians also believe homosexuality to be a sin, the crucial difference is that unlike the Islamists they believe in the separation of religion and state, and so do not repudiate the fact that homosexuality is legal). Indeed, as I have argued over and over again, it is astounding that until now such attitudes are not considered to be extreme, a blindness which largely accounts for the mess Britain is now in over home-grown Islamic radicalisation.
But what I have been picking up on the grapevine leads me to suspect that this new strategy is far from settled. As was noted on Panorama, there has long been a debate within the security world about whether it should be targeting extremist ideology as well as terrorist activity, or – as is currently the case – using ideological extremism as a supposed antidote to terrorism and thus attempting to draw ideological extremists in by ‘engaging’ with their agenda.
My understanding is that the global hysteria and incitement to Jew-hatred unleashed by the (mis)reporting of the Israeli action in Gaza, resulting in violent jihadi demonstrations on British streets with the police running away under a hail of insults and flying bollards, has made the security world even more anxious than ever before to appease Islamist rage and so even less likely to want to challenge such beliefs. I guess therefore that these stories that have appeared represent a desperate attempt by those in that world who do grasp that radicalisation will never be halted unless the state starts belatedly to hold the line for British and western values to bring the argument into the open and thus force Britain’s jittery government into making such a strategic change.
But can anyone really imagine, for example, ministers who forbid even using the term ‘Islamic terrorism’ ceasing to throw money in the direction of Tariq Ramadan (pictured), the charismatic but slippery poster-boy for ‘modernising Islam’ whose real agenda is actually the Islamising of modernity -- and who is such a favourite within Britain’s security establishment because of his Pied Piper appeal to young British Muslims? Are ministers really intending to treat the Muslim Brotherhood as beyond the pale -- where indeed they belong -- instead of as now seeking their help to counter the extremism they themselves exemplify? Just to pose such questions is to illustrate quite how seismic the proposed change from the current madness would be. As I said in the wee small hours, I’ll believe it when I see it. News Source
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New plans to widen the definition of who is an extremist in the eyes of the British government could include Muslims who object to homosexuality.
A revised counter-terrorism strategy is to be published next month.
The Guardian reports that a range of beliefs held by many Muslims could be classed as extreme under the new definition, among them the promotion of Sharia law, which punishes homosexuality with the death penalty, advocating a pan-Islamic state or supporting jihad.
The new strategy "would widen the definition of extremists to those who hold views that clash with what the government defines as shared British values," the paper reports.
"Those who advocate the wider definition say hardline Islamist interpretation of the Qur'an leads to views that are the root cause of the terrorism threat Britain faces."
An in-depth survey in 2007 into the attitudes of Muslims living in London revealed that less than 5% thought homosexual acts are "acceptable," compared with more than 65% of the general population.
The previous year Sir Iqbal Sacranie, Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, was investigated by police over comments he made on BBC radio.
He called homosexuality, "a practice that in terms of health, in terms of the moral issues that comes along in a society, it is not acceptable.
"Each of our faiths tells us that it is harmful and, I think, if you look into the scientific evidence that has been available in terms of the forms of various illnesses and diseases that are there, surely it points out that where homosexuality is practised there is a greater concern in that area."
In September Channel 4 screened Dispatches documentary Undercover Mosque: The Return.
It features a female reporter attending prayer meetings at an important British mosque which claims to be dedicated to moderation and dialogue with other faiths.
She secretly filmed sermons given to the women-only congregation in which female preachers recited extremist and intolerant beliefs.
One preacher called for adulterers, homosexuals, women who act like men and Muslim converts to other faiths to be killed, saying: "Kill him, kill him. You have to kill him, you understand. This is Islam.""
The original January 2007 Undercover Mosque documentary showed preacher Abu Usamah at Green Lane Mosque in Birmingham calling for gay people to be executed.
"If I were to call homosexuals perverted, dirty, filthy dogs who should be murdered, that's my freedom of speech, isn't it?" he told followers.
A scene also showed a preacher calling for people to "take that homosexual and throw him off a mountain." News Source
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Will the C of E Be classed as extremist too
with their stance on homosexuality?
I. Scriptures pertaining to homosexuality
? Gen. 19:1-11 -"we may have relations with them" (inhospitality? sexual obsession for strangers?
homosexuality? - cf. Ezek. 16:49; II Peter 2:6; Jude 7
Lev. 18:22 - "You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female"
Lev. 20:13 - "If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a women, both of them
have committed a detestable act; they shall be put to death"
Deut. 22:5 - "a woman shall not wear man's clothing, nor shall a man put on a woman's clothing" (transvestitism)
? Judges 19:22 - "bring out the man who came into your house that we may have relations with him"
I Kings 14:24 - "there were male cult prostitutes in the land"
I Kings 15:12 - "he put away the male cult prostitutes from the land"
Rom. 1:26,27 - "women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the
same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire
towards one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own
persons the due penalty of their error"
I Cor. 6:9 - "do you not know...effeminate, nor homosexuals...shall inherit the kingdom of God" (Greek malakos - passive, effeminate, soft homosexual partner; Greek arsenokoites - active, aggressive homosexual partner)
I Tim. 1:10 - "immoral men and homosexuals...whatever else is contrary to sound teaching"
[...]
VI. Christian attitude toward homosexuality and those engaging in such behavior.
A. Compassion, love, grace toward persons being misused and abused by Satan.
B. Firm stand that homosexual behavior is sin.
C. Clear witness that those engaged in homosexuality can overcome such
1. Repentance - change of mind that leads to change of action
2. New creature in Christ - II Cor. 5:17
3. "Such were some of you" - I Cor. 6:11
D. Unwilling to tolerate continued homosexuality among Christians - Eph. 5:7,11; II Thess. 3:14
E. Encouragement and counsel for those who continue to be tempted with homosexual desires
II Thess 3:15
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The attitude among Britain’s establishment towards Britain’s creeping Islamisation becomes ever more surreal.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, who betrayed British Muslim women, Christian values and British national identity when he said that Britain had nothing to fear from embracing sharia law in personal status issues and other disputes, has used the anniversary of those infamous remarks to opine that more people now agree with him. The Telegraph reports:
On the anniversary of the interview in which Dr Rowan Williams said it ‘seems inevitable’ that some parts of sharia would be enshrined in this country's legal code, he claimed ‘a number of fairly senior people’ now take the same view. He added that there is a ‘drift of understanding’ towards what he was saying, and that the public sees the difference between letting Muslim courts decide divorces and wills, and allowing them to rule on criminal cases and impose harsh punishments.
Well if he’s right, there’s going to be an enormous drift of misunderstanding between the establishment and the rest. There may be an increasing number of ‘fairly senior people’ who are taking up residence with the Archbishop on Planet Cringe, but among ordinary folk there is a steady buildup of positively volcanic fury at the way the UK is being offered up in salami slices to the Islamists.
Maybe Michael Wachtel is the kind of chap who has drifted into the Archbishop's universe of understanding. The current edition of The Lawyer magazine features an interview with Wachtel, a partner at London law firm Watson Farley & Williams. When asked ‘who’s your hero and why?’ he replies:
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, not because of his politics or his ideology, but because he refused to be intimidated by a much stronger foe, and he won.
Just to remind ourselves – Hezbollah are the irregular army of Iran, pledged to wiping out Israel, the defeat of the west and the imposition of Islam upon the world. Nasrallah is a terrorist leader with the blood of untold innocents on his hands. Yet this London lawyer regards him as a hero because he got the better of Israel, a tiny country that has been fighting for its life without remission since it was born against the hostile millions who surround it and want it destroyed. But hey -- we're all Hezbollah (and Hamas) now.
Still, all may not yet be totally lost: BBC One’s Panorama last evening claimed that, within government, a rethink was now under way of its catastrophic strategy for combating Islamic terrorism and radicalisation. As I described in my book Londonistan and elsewhere, this strategy is based on the staggeringly stupid belief that Islamist radicals bent upon the non-violent takeover of Britain can be used against Islamist radicals bent upon using terror to achieve the same ends.
The disastrous effect has been that, while there has been considerable success in thwarting terror attacks, radicalisation of British Muslims has continued to go through the roof. Worse still, the government has been throwing money at Islamists bent on establishing an Islamic state in the UK – and has even brought them into government -- on the absurdly self-defeating grounds that such individuals can help combat Islamist extremism.
According to Panorama’s reporter, Richard Watson, the ‘hawks’ in the intelligence community who think this approach is crazy have now won the argument, and government policy is about to shift from targeting violent extremism to targeting extremism. It was gratifying to hear unnamed intelligence operatives reportedly using the image I myself have used of a 'conveyor belt' of radicalisation which leads from religious extremism to terror. But will they now really grasp the nettle of religious indoctrination? I'll believe it when I see it.
It will be interesting to see what this new approach makes of the conference to be held in London next month by 'Islam for the UK' to discuss the re-establishment of the Islamic state, and ‘how its inevitable establishment will illuminate human life in the future’. And there’s more good news for the Archbishop of Canterbury on the 'Islam for the UK' website: even though he cavilled at its use in criminal justice which he seemed to think could be kept quarantined from other issues, sharia law in Britain will apparently cut the rate of crime a treat. Eg:
- ..2. Burglary - Burglary is extremely common in Britain. No doubt, you are afraid that your house may get burgled if you are away for any period of time.
- The British Legal System: The sentence is discretionary, depending on the crime, but is commonly punished with imprisonment.
- The Islamic Judicial System: Burglars will have their hand cut off, provided they fulfil the seven conditions for this punishment. They are not permitted to have it surgically replaced.
- ...5. Fornication & Adultery - With the emphasis in our society placed on relationships and sexual freedom, you would be justified in fearing for the conduct of young or indeed older Muslims who are subject to its influence.
- The British legal System: Both of these are legal, whether done between members of the opposite sex or the same sex (i.e. homosexuality). In fact, if you were to criticise these you would be blamed for intolerance and discrimination.
- The Islamic Judicial System: Fornication is punished by flogging 100 lashes. Adultery and homosexual fornication are both punished by public execution.
- ... The justice which the Islamic State's Judicial System proffers will offer you peace of mind, security and confidence that your rights will not be abused. After the checks and balances of personal taqwaa (fear of God) and the effect of public opinion, the last level of regulation - the Islamic Judicial System guarantees that the world will be free from the exploitation and corruption of man-made law, and the rising tide of crime that complements it.
Can’t you just feel the ‘drift of understanding’ of ‘very senior people’ in Britain towards this? News Source
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The 'This is Our Land' website (www.thisisourland.info) is provided as an information resource specifically for indigenous people of the British Isles - and for the English people in particular.
It has been produced independently, as the author's own personal contribution to the resistance against a treasonous State. However it includes links to the valuable work of many others involved in this same struggle.
The work is a celebration of our ancient roots and cultural traditions. But, most importantly, it is a website dedicated to resisting the treason - and to honouring those whose sacrifices gave us the means to assert our rights and liberties, and provide a future for our children.
This website is about to become a rich resource for information. Please make use of and visit (Ed)
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The ruling class is now engaged in an increasingly vicious war against our traditional British culture and values.
Filled with authoritarian zeal, Labour now openly talks about creating "a new social order". In this Orwellian world, our history is forgotten, our identity traduced and our liberties destroyed.
At the centre of this remorseless campaign against our national heritage is the growing persecution of Christianity by the Labour state machine.
The transformation in the standing of our national religion has been truly remarkable.
Only a decade ago the Christian faith was still seen as one of the central parts of the fabric of our civilisation. But 12 years of socialism have changed all that.
Driven by the twin Marxist ideologies of equality and multiculturalism, our political masters regard Christianity as a threat to their creation of a diverse society where the state is all powerful and Britishness an anachronism. So they are determined to marginalise the faith.
Like all bureaucrats whose existence depends on submission to reigning political orthodoxy, the commissars of the modern British public sector have proved only too keen to do the Government's bidding.
As a result, symbols of Christianity disappear from public life, while believers have been hounded and isolated.
Recently two cases have highlighted this mood of deepening intolerance from state officials towards Christians.
In one, an experienced community nurse, Caroline Petrie, was suspended from her job in Somerset after offering to say a prayer for an elderly patient.
Such a gentle act of compassion is now regarded by the state as a disciplinary offence.
Only after a public outcry was Mrs Petrie reinstated.
Just as disturbing is the second case, where Jennie Cain is now facing the sack from her job as a receptionist at a Devon primary school after being caught up in an outrageous row about her faith.
Ms Cain had privately sent an e-mail to some Christian friends asking them to pray for her five-year-old daughter Jasmine who has been scolded by a teacher after discussing the existence of heaven and hell with a classmate.
Somehow, headmaster Read got hold of a copy of the e-mail, probably through an eager little sneak who, like spies in communist Romania, are all too common in modern British life.
Now Ms Cain is facing an investigation for professional misconduct. So many aspects of this episode are appalling: the contempt for Ms Cain's privacy, the ridiculous bullying by the school and the bizarre reaction to a young child's interest in philosophical questions about the afterlife.
Worst of all was the comment of the headmaster Gary Read saying that he "wasn't happy about Jasmine making statements about her faith". Those grim words sum up the bigoted attitude that now prevails.
Tragically, other sectors are taking their cue from the Stalinist jobsworths who want to airbrush Christianity out of public life.
Recently the producers of the ITV soap Coronation Street were filming a wedding scene in a Cheshire church. Without any sense of irony, they asked the vicar to remove the cross from the altar because "it might offend viewers".
The vicar told them it was bolted down so, in their determination to keep the dangerous symbol off our screens, they covered it up with flowers and candles.
What is so sickening are the double standards. While agents of the state discriminate against Christianity, they show craven submission towards the demands of militant Islam.
Christian symbols are outlawed, Muslim rituals celebrated.
Nurse Petrie is suspended for offering prayers, yet in mid-Yorkshire in 2007 nurses were told to move the beds of Muslim patients five times a day so they would face Mecca.
When Channel 4 made a programme exposing the activities of Islamic hate preachers in Birmingham, the producers found themselves investigated by the police and Crown Prosecution Service for stirring up racial hatred.
Another graphic illustration of the state's willingness to collude with the Islamic fundamentalists was provided by the experience of Julia Robinson, the popular headmistress of a Sheffield primary school.
When she took up the post two years ago, she tried to promote integration among the pupils by abolishing separate assemblies for Muslim and Christian pupils.
Instead, she introduced one multi-faith assembly. A tiny group of Muslim parents objected to Ms Robinson's move towards unity, demanded the continuation of their separate assembly and then accused her of "racism".
To her dismay, Ms Robinson was forced out and the school was left in chaos, broken by a lethal mix of dogma and pusillanimity.
The Government pretends surrender to Islam is a sign o f religious tolerance. This is nonsense. The acceptance of the Islamification of Britain is unprincipled, pathetic cowardice. Instead of upholding our freedoms, the State caves in.
That was evident last week, when the Home Secretary banned Geert Wilders, the Dutch MP and fierce critic of Islam, from entry to Britain.
She took this decision because she was terrified of the reaction of Muslim extremists. Once more, bullying triumphed over democracy.
That is the story of our times and it is why Christianity suffers badly in this once great country it helped to build. News Source
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A growing number of young British men are seeking to join Islamic radicals in Somalia, it has been disclosed.
A 21-year-old student from Ealing, West London has blown himself up as a suicide bomber in the war-torn country in the first reported incident of its kind.
Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, voiced his concerns over increasing numbers of young men travelling to the East African country in an interview with the Daily Telegraph last month.
He talked of "networks that help individuals go and take part or provide support to extremist gangs in Somalia" and may return to attack Britain.
Michael Hayden, the outgoing head of the CIA, has said that the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia has "catalysed" expatriates around the world.
An audio message from Osama bin Laden last month urged Muslims to send money or go to Somalia to fight.
The student abandoned a course in business studies at Oxford Brookes University to join up with al-Shabaab [the Youth], an Islamic militia fighting the Somali government, according to Channel 4 news.
He crossed the border from Kenya and blew himself up at a checkpoint in the southern town of Baidoa in October 2007.
Ali Mohamed Ghedi, the Somali Prime Minister was staying at a hotel nearby and escaped unharmed but jihadi websites claimed that 20 Ethiopian soldiers were killed.
The man left a suicide video in which he said: "Oh my people, know that I am doing this martyrdom operation for the sake Allah.
"I advise you to migrate to Somalia and wage war against your enemies. Death in honour is better than life in humiliation."
Sheikh Ahmed Aabi, a moderate Somali leader in north London, said he knew of the case and had heard of other young men travelling to Somalia to join radical groups.
"I'm hearing it from parents," he said. "They say [their children] are joining the jihad. I am hearing there are a lot of people.
"This is a big problem facing our community."
Peter Neumann, a terrorism expert at King's College London, said: "The numbers I hear [going from Britain to Somalia] are 50, 60, or 70 but in reality we don't know.
"You don't need big numbers for terrorism. Somalia will never become another Pakistan but that does not mean it is not a threat."
One young man outside a west London mosque was adamant it was his right to go to Somalia to fight.
He said: "If American troops can go from Arizona to Iraq then someone can leave this area and go to Somalia."
While travel to and from Pakistan remains the major concern for the security services, Britain is also home to the largest Somali community in Europe, estimated at over 100,000.
Two of the failed July 21 bombers, Yassin Omar and Ramzi Mohammed, arrived in Britain from Somalia as refugees although they were radicalised after their arrival.
Ethiopian troops invaded in December 2006 to oust a government formed by the Islamic Courts Union and withdrew only last month.
Al-Shabaab, designated as a terrorist group in the US, aims to introduce sharia law to Somalia and took control of Baidoa last month. News Source
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Mandelson today appealed to Labour to keep a "steady nerve" and not be driven into a panic by the deepening recession.
His call came amid fresh signs of unease among ministers fearing election defeat next year.
There are also reported to be stirrings of leadership manoeuvring within the Cabinet.
Harriet Harman is being accused of positioning herself for a future leadership contest by putting herself at the head of critics of the City over big bonuses and sexism.
A report today said Children's Secretary Ed Balls had gone "on manoeuvres" to sell his own leadership credentials in speeches to party branches.
At the same time, it is claimed the Government's authority is being undermined by civil servants "pulling back from the Labour administration" in the expectation that the Conservatives under David Cameron will take power in 2010.
A ministerial aide complained that officials were dragging their feet on policies they disliked and that some ministers have had difficulty recruiting high-flyers to man their private offices. "It's as if they're playing for time until the next lot get in and that creates some tension," the aide told the Times.
Lord Mandelson used a speech in New York on the banking crisis to urge the party to stay calm and to appeal to the public to show patience in the face of massive political and economic challenges.
The Business Secretary said the Government was in an "uncomfortable place", but warned against over-reacting to the pressures it was under.
In particular, he warned against "trying to create frenzy" - interpreted by some as a criticism of Downing Street for rushing out too many announcements to appear busy.
"The political dilemma for us is that we need high-level meetings and action, which generate big expectations, which, in turn, trigger disappointment and market reaction when immediate results are not produced," he said.
"In government, we do not complain of this, but it needs handling.
"The fact is, recovery is going to be a complex process and... there is no value in trying to create frenzy."
Mandelson said there were no manuals or blueprints to say when recovery would begin. But he urged: "As nations, we must keep a steady nerve and cool judgment." News Source
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Children have been used as 'lab rats' in GM rice trials that were carried out in breach of ethics rules drawn up in response to the medical crimes of Nazi Germany, it is claimed.
Youngsters aged 6-10 were fed so-called Golden Rice, which has been modified to contain enhanced levels of beta carotene or vitamin A.
The rice is being developed to combat Vitamin A deficiency, which is linked to damage to the sight, poor brain development and immune system failure.
However high consumption can also have harmful toxic effects and cause birth defects. Critics are furious that the GM rice was not put through animal feeding trials to ensure it was safe before being given to children.
The decision to use the children has been condemned as 'completely unacceptable' by a group of 22 scientists - all GM critics - from Britain and around the world.
They claim it is indicative of moves by the biotech lobby, led by the USA and biotech firms, to force GM food into the mouths of the world without proper assessment.
The project was financed and run through the US National Institutes of Health and involved children in China and America.
The scientists have written an open letter to the team behind the experiments, condemning the way they were conducted.
It states: 'We are writing to express our shock and unequivocal denunciation of the experiments being conducted by your colleagues which involve the feeding of genetically modified Golden Rice to human subjects.'
The letter says there has been 'woefully inadequate pre-clinical evaluation' of the rice.
The scientists argue there is a large body of evidence showing GM food production can trigger gene mutations which 'can result in health damaging effects when GM food products are fed to animals'.
The letter adds: 'Our greatest concern is that this rice, which is engineered to overproduce beta carotene, has never been tested in animals'.
It says there is evidence that certain chemicals derived from beta carotene 'are both toxic and cause birth defects'.
Critics of the GM experiments says the Nuremburg code states that children under 10 are not considered legally capable of giving consent to participation in such experiments.
They say the code also requires that human guinea pigs should not be used if scientists have an alternative experimental method.
Thirdly, experiments on humans should not be conducted until tests with animals have identified potential hazards.
Among the leading bodies behind the GM Golden rice project are the biotech company Syngenta, the Rockefeller Foundation and the charitable foundation set up by Microsoft boss Bill Gates.
The list of signatories to the protest letter includes Malcolm Hooper, emeritus professor of medicinal chemistry at Sunderland University, who said: 'This type of experimentation is frightening - children as lab rats - it is not on.'
Another is Prof David Schubert, of the Salk Institute of Biological Studies, San Diego, who said: 'It is completely immoral to feed this rice to children without proper safety testing...It's like putting a new drug on the market with no toxicology or safety trials.'
Other signatories include Prof Carlo Leifert, director of the Tesco Centre for Organic Agriculture at Newcastle University; and Dr Stanley WB Ewen.
Dr Ewen was involved in rat feeding trials in Scotland in 1999 which linked GM potatoes to harmful toxic effects.
Dr Brian John, of GM Free Cymru said: 'These irresponsible and dangerous trials must be stopped immediately, and the Golden Rice Project team must put its much-vaunted product through a full and transparent testing process before it is allowed to pass the lips of any other human being.'
Project manager at the Golden Rice Organisation, Dr Adrian Dubock, denied that the Nuremburg Code has been breached. He said the feeding trials had been approved by independent ethical review panels.
'Parents were not given financial rewards for their children’s participation - to avoid undue pressure on poor families - but children were rewarded with school bags and pencils and paper as a thank you for participating,' he said.
Dr Dubock said 6,000 people around the world die every day due to illnesses related to failing immune systems where Vitamin A deficiency is a factor.
'The Golden Rice contains the food colours found everywhere in coloured natural foods and the environment...There is no possible way the trials could do any harm to the participants.'
Dr Dubock said animal experiments would not have helped. 'As humans are the designed beneficiaries of Golden Rice, animal testing could not answer the questions posed,' he said.
This appears odd as all GM foods, which are designed to be eaten by humans, are required to go through animal testing by food safety authorities in many countries. News Source
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Olympics chiefs are spending nearly £2million to requisition a travellers' camp and rehouse its inhabitants.
The travellers are being moved into luxury homes on an exclusive gated development with driveways big enough for a car and caravan.
Their camp is needed to build a handball arena for the 2012 Games in East London. It is the latest example of how the Olympics budget has spiralled to £9.3 billion, four times the original estimate.
The move has outraged locals in Clapton, some of whom live in cramped accommodation overlooking the development of three-bedroom bungalows.
One resident, Patricia Chin, 64, said: 'The council is trying to charge us to park outside our homes and yet travellers are being given ready-made homes with their own driveways to park on.
'We pay huge sums in council tax but don't get this kind of special treatment.
'We are told they had to be moved on for the Olympics but the houses they are building for them are huge. It's not fair.
'I would move away but who would want to buy a house opposite permanent travellers' homes?'
Mother-of-two Katrina Gorse, 29, complained: 'My children have to share a room in our flat and they [the travellers] get all that space.
'I thought the whole idea of being a traveller was that you lived in a caravan and travelled - not lived in a bungalow paid for by taxpayers.'
Gregory Marciniak, 59, said: 'I'm a council tenant and when I look at what they are getting it just doesn't seem fair.'
When the travellers move in they will pay rent of £104.66 a week for each property plus £91.23 for parking a caravan on the drive. All the homes have gardens.
The TaxPayers' Alliance said building the six homes was 'ridiculous'.
'There are tens of thousands of empty houses in London, so it is simply not necessary to build luxury homes from scratch,' said Matthew Elliott, of the pressure group.
'The cost of this project suggests yet again that the people running the Olympics are happy to spend taxpayers' money like water.'
The travellers had occupied the land at a council-owned site in Hackney Wick for 17 years. They launched a taxpayer-funded legal battle but were ordered to move by the High Court.
In addition to the bungalows, plots will be made available for two other traveller families to live in static caravans.
The London Development Agency - which answers to London Mayor Boris Johnson - is behind the travellers' move to their new homes at a total cost of £1.85million.
The agency has already come under fire for spending £3million building an upmarket camp for seven traveller pitches nearby.
A spokesman said: 'There were no existing sites to accommodate these families so the new travellers' site was selected in consultation with Hackney Council following an extensive search of the local area.
'Over the last two years the LDA has worked with the local community over the planning application.'
Earlier this month, the Daily Mail revealed that a Government report has raised the threat level of an overspend on the Olympics from 'amber' to 'amber-red' as a result of the recession.
Problems include the cost of venues leaping by almost £100million, with the projected bill for the stadium, aquatics centre and velodrome rocketing since last July. News Source
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The Australian public has turned to the internet to voice its fury against alleged arsonist Brendan Sokaluk, the former volunteer firefighter who has been accused of lighting a brush fire that killed at least 21 people in West Gippsland.
Dozens of pages have sprung up on social networking sites including Facebook, with vigilantes calling for the man accused of lighting one of the fatal fires to be "burned at the stake" after a judge at Melbourne Magistrates' Court lifted a suppression order on Monday on his identity. Mr Sokaluk, 39, was charged on Friday with arson causing death in relation to the deadly Gippsland fire, which devastated 39,000 hectares in the Latrobe valley, east of Melbourne, and remains out of control. The arson charge relates to 11 of the 21 deaths. He was also charged with deliberately lighting a bush fire and possessing child pornography.
Angry Australians have published the man's photograph and address in online calls for justice, in defiance of a court order prohibiting such details from being made public. Helen Spowart, the defence lawyer, argued that Mr Sokaluk's name should stay a secret because of an unusual level of public anger over the case. But while Magistrate John Klestadt agreed to ban publication of photographs of Mr Sokaluk or his address in order to protect him and his family from revenge attacks, he would not suppress Mr Sokaluk's name.
"Those suspected of vigilantism would not be prevented from behaving in an abhorrent way simply by suppressing his name," he said. On Monday, the government announced that the death toll from the Black Saturday bush fires that swept south-eastern Australia last week had climbed to 189, and was likely to rise again. In the fire zone, survivors were furious.
Mr Sokaluk was moved from Morwell, where he was questioned by police, to a cell in Melbourne for his own safety. As the van carrying him pulled out of the town, enraged locals pounded on the doors and yelled abuse. Mr Sokaluk joined the Churchill brigade of the Country Fire Authority in the late 1980s, before volunteers had to undergo a police check, according to reports. It is believed he left the brigade in the 1990s and attempted to rejoin twice, but was rejected.
Mr Sokaluk, who failed to appear in Melbourne Magistrate's court on Monday for a scheduled hearing, is alleged to have "intentionally and without lawful excuse" set fire to a timber plantation in southeastern Victoria state on Feb 7 and "did thereby commit arson causing the death of another person," according to a police document presented to the Melbourne Magistrates' Court. He is due back in court for a committal hearing on May 25.
Arson carries strong penalties in Australia. The charge of arson causing death carries a 25 year maximum penalty and the charge of lighting a bush fire carries a maximum of 15 years. Kevin Rudd, the prime minister, last week said anyone guilty of lighting one of the Black Saturday bush fires had committed "mass murder".
The Churchill fire killed 12 people in the town of Calignee, four in Hazelwood and Koornalla and one in Jeeralang. Two teams of Churchill firefighters were almost lost in the inferno, according to The Australian newspaper. Police are also investigating whether the fire that razed the town of Marysville, to Melbourne's north, was deliberately lit. The authorities have said there is no other explanation for the fire, which is feared to have killed 100 people.
There has long been a link between volunteer firefighters and arsonists in Australia. In 2002 a volunteer firefighter was convicted of lighting a blaze in the Hunter Valley north of Sydney. Once he had started the fire in grassland close to the town of Pokolbin, he rushed to rejoin his fire brigade so he could help them contain the fire. News Source
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The justice system has been condemned as a circus after relatives of a family killed in a road crash by a foreign lorry driver were told he will be free in a year.
David Statham, 38, his wife Michelle, 33, their three sons, Reece, 13, Jay, nine, Mason, 20 months and ten-week-old baby daughter Ellouise died when the HGV smashed into the back of their car on the M6.
Portuguese-born Paulo da Silva, 46, was arrested at the scene and charged with six counts of causing death by dangerous driving. The judge called the crash 'one of the most serious offences of its kind'.
But da Silva was convicted of the lesser charge of causing death by careless driving and sentenced to just three years - although the maximum term is five years.
As he has spent time on remand and must serve only half his sentence under parole laws, da Silva will walk free in a year.
Relatives of the victims and road safety campaigners condemned the sentence.
Mrs Statham's father Peter Hagans, 56, said: 'From the night of the accident when Mr da Silva butchered our family it was not possible for us to get justice in a British court. In our opinion what we sat through this week was no more than a circus.'
Road safety charity Brake said: 'For the judge to say that this was one of the most serious offences of its kind begs the question of why the sentence given was not nearer the maximum, especially when multiple deaths have occurred, which must, at the very least, act as an aggravating factor when taking sentences into account.'
Michelle Owen, of Speed Kills, said: 'This is a total disgrace. The family have every right to be angry.
What is the point of changing the law if you fail to use it as a deterrent. Six people were killed in this horror show so how many people need to be killed in a crash for the maximum sentence to be given?'
The collision happened in Cheshire, last October, as Mr Statham, a chef, his wife and their children, returned home to North Wales after spending the weekend with family in the Midlands.
Their Toyota Previa was hit by the lorry as it slowed to a stop in a traffic jam. The impact forced their car into the back of another lorry and the family died before emergency services could reach them.
Chester Crown Court heard that da Silva may have taken his eye off the road to study a satellite navigation system on his laptop computer.
Andrew Thomas QC, prosecuting, said: 'Officers who searched the interior of his cab found a laptop computer fitted with a GPS (Global Positioning System) on the console alongside his seat, with the screen turned to face the driver.
'Only the defendant knows the truth about why he did not see a queue of traffic which would have been visible to him for a about a mile or so before point of collision. The use of the laptop to work out a new route would explain it.' Continued
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When father-of-three Peter Drummond discovered that a drug dealer had sold heroin to a member of his family he decided to take matters into his own hands.
He stormed into pusher John Nellies' home and confronted him - before flushing the dealer's heroin down the toilet.
But yesterday it was Drummond - not Nellies - who found himself in court.
And to the despair and anger of his family, Drummond, whose children are all under five years old, was jailed by a sheriff for his actions.
Drummond, 26, shook his head in disbelief as he was ordered to serve two months in prison for breaking the peace by barging into Nellies' home and threatening him.
Perth Sheriff Court was told that Drummond, of Blairgowrie, Perthshire, had reached the end of his tether after watching his family being 'torn apart' by heroin abuse.
He decided to visit Nellies on Sunday after learning that his brother-in-law had gone to his Blairgowrie flat to buy heroin earlier in the day.
Depute fiscal Janine Bates told the court: 'Nellies and his girlfriend are habitual drug abusers and Nellies is also known as a dealer in heroin.
On Sunday at 5.30pm, the accused, who was under the influence of alcohol, went to the address and demanded entry. He was allowed into the hallway and began shouting and swearing at Nellies.
'He continued to shout and swear and threatened to kill Nellies if he continued to supply heroin to members of his family. 'He recovered five bags of heroin from the living room and flushed it down the toilet in order to prevent other persons from obtaining it.'
The court heard that drug addict Lesley Brown then turned up to buy heroin and was told to get out and sworn at by Drummond. She left and reported him to the police.
After his arrest, Drummond was detained in custody until yesterday's court hearing.
Steve Lafferty, defending, asked for his client's punishment to be limited to a fine due to the 'quite unusual' circumstances of the case.
He said Drummond had no other criminal charges pending against him, adding: 'He appreciates he went about it the wrong way and should have gone to the police.'
But Sheriff Robert McCreadie told Drummond: 'If you were concerned about matters you should contact the police, not enter a house and threaten to kill someone. You can't take matters into your own hands the way you did.'
Drummond yesterday admitted a breach of peace, telling police heroin abuse had torn his family apart. Last night, Drummond's younger brother Mark, 22, said: ' I can't believe that he has been jailed for this. He's not the criminal here.
'Peter is a real family man. He loves his wife and kids and would do anything to help out his sister and brother-in-law.' The court heard Drummond had told police: 'Over the last six or seven months my family has been in hell.
'My brother-in-law is on smack and he is getting it from the people there. 'It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I shouldn't have done it but these people are ruining my family by supplying heroin.
'Things have been so bad that I lost it and decided to try and stop the drug dealing going on. 'I know I have done wrong. I'm sorry. I know I went about things the wrong way, but things just got on top of me.'
Last night at her flat in Blairgowrie, Drummond's distraught wife Elizabeth, 27, said that her husband had previously tried to reason with the drug dealers.
She said: 'He asked the boys, pleaded and begged them to stop dealing to his sister and brother-inlaw. But they carried on doing it.
'Peter was sure the police would not do anything about it if he told them about the dealers. He doesn't like to see his family being hurt so it was the last straw for him.
'Peter has had a really tough time of it lately. We lost a baby in December. It came early, after five-and-a-half months. That hit Peter really hard.
She explained she would be lost without the support of Peter, who is her full-time carer. And she depends on him to help look after their three children, Megan, four, Peter, two, and one-year-old Dylan.
Elizabeth said: 'I have no idea what I'm going to do. I suffer from severe depression and Peter looks after me and the kids. 'He has also seen the effects heroin has on people and he couldn't bear his younger sister and her partner to go through the same thing.'
Outside court, Thomas Brown, a family friend, said: 'Heroin is killing the community and I know for a fact that it has been tearing Peter's family apart.'
It remained unclear last night whether Tayside Police were taking any action against Nellies. News Source
Tuesday 17th February 2009
Foreign workers are pricing out British builders by working for as little as £2-an-hour, the Daily Express can reveal today.
Desperate migrants – often in the country illegally – are asking just £25 for a 12-hour shift, undercutting British tradesmen who are struggling to find work.
The economic downturn has seen a sharp drop in demand for builders and it is feared immigrants prepared to work on such low rates will take many of the jobs that remain.
Yesterday one Romanian labourer told the Daily Express: “We will work all day for £25. The money is not right but we’ve not had any work for days and we’ve no money.”
Last night the Government was accused of letting down UK workers by allowing an immigration “free for all”.
Tory MP Philip Davies said: “It’s understand-able that British workers, who pay tax and national insurance are getting increasingly frustrated when they are being undercut by migrants working illegally.
"They cannot compete with these rates.
“It’s a recipe for disaster which has real potential for further protests and unrest. This is why it is so important that we have control over our borders so we can allow only the number of people in that we need at any one time and stop this free for all.”
Tradesman Radini Caushillari, who runs Plastering London Ltd, said: “This is no good for anybody.
"My rates are £140 per day plus tax. But if these men are working for just £40 a day or less then they will take work away from registered workers.”
Tory immigration spokesman Damian Green said: “No one should work in this country for below the minimum wage, and employers who pay these wages should be caught and prosecuted.
“That’s why the Conservatives propose a specialist border police to stop this illegal use of immigrant labour.”
Stephen Alambritis, spokesman for the Federation of Small Businesses, urged ministers and law enforcement agencies to intervene.
He said: “We would urge foreign workers not to go over the top with their pricing as it makes a mockery of the national minimum wage. Foreign workers must respect our laws.”
Hundreds of foreign craftsmen line the streets of London before dawn every morning touting for work in Britain’s once booming building trade.
Those who are offered work accept as little as £25 for a 12-hour day – little more than a third of the £5.73 minimum wage.
The migrant workers, mostly from Romania, Bulgaria and Albania, also work cash-in-hand to avoid paying any tax or national insurance.
Romanian plaster Claudio Roman told the Daily Express: “British workmen are paid £110 a day but we work for £60.
“Now there is no work we must work for less. Most of the time people take work for £40 a day – plasterer, electrician, bricklayer – but some take even less.”
Some workers are registered with the Home Office and have told how they had done well out of Britain’s building industry.
But now they are struggling to work more than one day a week due to the dramatic effects that the credit crunch has had on house building.
Claudio, 21, said: “I came to Britain in 2007 and I found a job straight away. But now I get work one or two days a week. It is very bad. Many people have gone back home to Romania but it is even worse there.”
He is one of up to 100 migrant workers who stand on a street corner in Cricklewood, north-west London, every morning waiting for British builders to offer them work.
In other parts of the country migrant workers are even pestering local tradesmen and home owners buying supplies at DIY stores.
At Wickes in Seven Sisters Road, Tottenham, north London security guards have had to be called in to stop Eastern European labourers harassing their customers. Continued
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British workers are being robbed of jobs by migrants willing to earn just £2 an hour.
An investigation by the Daily Star found foreign labourers doing 12-hour shifts for £25.
Britain’s building industry is being plagued by black market workers happy to undercut wages.
The UK minimum wage is £5.73 but migrants – many from eastern Europe – will accept well below half.
And skilled British craftsmen are furious that they are being priced out of the market – especially now work is so scarce because of the recession.
One Romanian labourer said: “We will work all day for £25. The money is not right but we have not had any work for days.” Another Romanian, plasterer Claudio Roman, 21, said: “British workmen are paid £110 a day but we work for £60.
“Now there is no work we must work for less.”
Claudio is one of up to 100 migrant workers who stand on a street corner in Cricklewood, north-west London, waiting for builders to offer work.
In other parts of the capital, migrant workers pester tradesmen buying supplies at DIY stores. At the Wickes store in Haringey, north London, security guards have had to be called in stop the east Europeans harassing their customers.
Soon after arriving at a north London store, a Daily Star reporter was pounced upon by migrants seeking work.
A UK Border Agency spokesman said: “We are cracking down on illegal working because it leads to the exploitation of vulnerable workers and undercuts UK businesses.”
And last night the Tories claimed the scandal provided further evidence of the need for a specialist Border police farce.
Shadow Immigration Minister Damian Green, 52, said: “No-one should work in this country for below the minimum wage and employers who pay these wages should be caught and prosecuted.” News Source
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A Lithuanian labourer told today how he is considered a 'local' by bosses of the 2012 Olympic site as pressure mounted over jobs for London workers.
Arturas Normanths, 22, earns £50 a day as a concrete sprayer building the Stratford stadium after applying for a job online and travelling from Lithuania to work.
But he qualifies as a 'local worker' because his home address is a bed and breakfast in Leytonstone.
The disclosure comes amid growing concern that too few local people are being employed on the project.
The Olympic Delivery Authority defines local workers as those who have their main address in one of the five Olympic boroughs - Newham, Greenwich, Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Waltham Forest.
Newham council is set for a showdown with Olympics chiefs, questioning the official figures published by the Olympic Delivery Authority which state that 23 per cent of the 3,000 site workers are 'local'.
But there is no measure for how long local workers have lived in the area and Newham is concerned that the 2012 project is making minimal improvements to its long-term unemployed despite promises during the bid.
Concerns that the Olympic infrastructure would be built by a migrant labour force were heightened last year when it emerged that Newham have had 20,000 applications for new national insurance numbers in the previous 12 months.
Newham mayor Sir Robin Wales has raised concerns that migrant workers could outnumber local people and has campaigned for skills training. The council's leaders meet the ODA this month to push for further clarification.
Unions are NOT on your side
'Sources say the true picture could emerge if names of site employees were given to the council for a check against the electoral roll but Olympics chiefs say data protection laws mean that is not possible. Unions also oppose such a move.'
Mr Normanthsis is typical of the influx of migrant workers to the London Olympics site.
The Evening Standard found people from various eastern European backgrounds employed at the Stratford site, as well as workers of Indian, Pakistani and Nepalese origin.
About a third of those there are said to have travelled from overseas with about 50 ex-Gurkhas employed by Group 4 Securicor to guard entry points.
But the argument that too few local people have jobs is rejected by Mr Normanths.
He said: 'There are many local people working here. There are many more than people from outside. It is a job that I need. I found out about it on the computer [internet] and was very happy to come.
'I live in a bed and breakfast. I miss my family and the money I earn is not very much. At home in Lithuania, there is no work. I am pleased to be given this job, but it is hard.'
Polish labourer Michael Rzawociz, 23, said: 'It is good that many people come from foreign places. These are the Olympics from the start as it represents the whole world. There is a lot of work to be done and our skills are needed.'
A Plaistow driver, who asked not to be named, said: 'With the economy in such trouble, there are a lot of people in this area who could do with the work.
'There is no dispute with the foreign workers, who are hard workers, but if there is going to be more work dished out, it needs to be directed to the job centres in Newham and not on the internet.'
Latest site employment figures, published in December, show that of 3,046 workers, about a third were officially from overseas.
ODA figures showed 23 per cent, or 688, were local and 56 per cent were from London.
The workforce is expected to reach 10,000 next year. News Source
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(Recap: 4 months ago)
In the midst of one of the greatest financial crises to strike the world since the Great Depression, the Tories have announced that David Cameron would allow the minimum wage to “melt away” if he became PM — meaning that millions of first-time job entrants and young people would be exposed to the sort of rampant exploitation which has caused the current crisis.
Senior Tories made the admission in a newspaper report, and were quoted as saying “(T)he minimum wage won’t be scrapped but it will be allowed to wither on the vine.”
Bizarrely, Cameron’s logic is that the minimum wage rate increase “cannot be allowed to continue to rise annually in line with the rate of inflation” — in other words, that young people in particular who are the beneficiaries of the minimum wage, will not be compensated for any hyper inflation. Such market vagaries are highly possible, given the Tories’ multi-millionaire city bankrollers, who have already created the credit crunch disaster now engulfing much of the world.
The Tories originally opposed the introduction of the minimum wage, using the flawed “logic” that it would lead to “massive job losses”. Of course, nothing of the sort happened, and the only job losses which have been incurred were caused by the expansion of the EU and mass immigration - policies which the Tories wholeheartedly endorsed.
* At least Cameron knows how to protect his own: He has announced that he will not sack his embattled party chairman Caroline Spelman. The Tory leader will delay a decision on her fate until a sleaze probe is over — Spelman is facing allegations she used taxpayer-funded parliamentary allowances to pay for her nanny. News Source
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(Recap: 4 Days ago)
Unemployment has soared to a 12-year high after a record number of redundancies and job vacancies slumped to a new low, official figures have revealed.
The overall jobless total, including people not eligible for benefits, rose by 146,000 in the three months to December to reach 1.97million.
This is the worst level of unemployment
since Labour came to power in 1997.
Meanwhile, the number of people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance, rose by 73,800 in January to 1.23million.
It has now increased for 12 consecutive months and is at its highest for almost a decade.
The figure confounded experts who had predicted that unemployment would surge over two million today following a spate of job losses in recent months.
The jobless total has now increased by 369,000 over the past year and is expected to top three million as a result of the current recession.
Almost 260,000 people were made redundant in the last three months of 2008, the highest figure since records began in 1995 and an increase of 104,000 over the previous quarter.
Job vacancies fell by 76,000 to 504,000 in the three months to January, the lowest since records began in 2001, according to today's data from the Office for National Statistics.
Meanwhile, the number of people in work dropped by 45,000 in the latest quarter to 29.36 million, the lowest total since the autumn of 2007.
Manufacturing jobs continued to be lost, down by 101,000 in the three months to December to 2.8 million, the lowest since records began in 1978.
The UK's unemployment rate is now 6.3 per cent, an increase of 1.1 per cent over the past year.
The number of unemployed men increased by 106,000 in the three months to December to 1.18 million, while 790,000 women were out of work, a rise of 40,000.
The number of people unemployed for more than a year was 453,000, up by 18,000 from the previous three months, while unemployment among 16 to 24-year-olds was 616,000, up by 38,000, and the highest total since early 1995.
Average earnings increased by 3.2 per cent in the year to December, unchanged from the previous month, although the figure was 4 per cent in the public sector.
There were 1,000 days lost through industrial disputes in December from just four stoppages, the lowest figure since 1931.
But as experts warned it was now 'inevitable' that the jobless total will reach three million before the economy starts to recover, jobcentres are pointing Britons to posts in Europe paying as little as 31p an hour.
The Jobcentre Plus website is advertising almost 200,000 posts in Europe - many paying paltry wages - compared with only 61,905 jobs in the UK.
A job as a sous chef in Greece, for instance, is advertised at 31p an hour, while auxiliary jobs in Poland are going for 77p an hour.
Meanwhile, a job as a housemaid in Portugal pays £2.45 per hour.
The search by the Daily Mail follows Business Secretary Lord Mandelson's suggestion this month that those protesting against foreign workers could go and work in Europe.
Paul Kenny, general secretary of the GMB union, said: 'What a bleak day for our economy and for the workers and families of those now jobless. Continued
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The slogan ‘British jobs for British workers’ has split opinion between those who agree with the phrase, and those who believe it smacks of racism, a politics.co.uk poll has revealed.
Thirty-six per cent of respondents thought ‘British jobs for British workers’ - which appeared on picket lines nationwide in support of workers at Total’s Lindsey refinery and was used by Gordon Brown in a speech at the Labour party conference in 2007 - represented xenophobic views.
Roughly the same number of respondents agreed with the statement.
Critics of the slogan have argued it was lifted straight from the copybook of the British National party (BNP).
The slogan provided a vehicle for the party as it leapt into the fray, posting its supporters at the impromptu protests and helping to organise angry strikers in the hope of luring away disgruntled Labour voters.
Over a third of respondents condemned the phrase as racist, the exact same number as said British workers should have preferential access to British jobs.
Even among those who disagreed with the language of the protest, there was a strong perception that current EU laws give foreign businesses an unfair advantage.
Almost half the respondents to our poll agreed with strikers who accused the EU of allowing foreign workers to work for less than their British rivals, forcing UK workers onto the ever-growing unemployment lines.
Employees at the Humber refinery downed tools in January to protest against jobs for a British contract being filled by Italian workers. Solidarity strikes broke out all over the UK.
Seventy-three per cent of respondents supported the strikers, and the majority - 54 per cent - condemned Mr Brown’s government for its poor handling of the industrial action.
The Tories failed to capitalise on Labour’s failure, however. Almost 60 per cent of those polled thought David Cameron’s party reacted just as poorly to the crisis. Continued
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A British university student who became a suicide bomber in Somalia is believed to be the first in an outbreak of Islamic terrorism.
The 21-year-old from Ealing reportedly blew himself up at a military checkpoint killing up to 20 soldiers in the southern Somali town of Baidoa.
Raised in Britain, the bomber dropped out of a business studies course at Oxford Brookes University to travel to his country of origin in October 2007.
A member of al-Shabaab, a youth militia fighting to impose Islamic Sharia law, the man recorded a martyrdom video before his trip imploring fellow British Somalis to follow his example.
In the video he says: "Oh my people, know that I am doing this martyrdom operation for the sake of Allah. I advise you to migrate to Somalia and wage war against your enemies. Death in honour is better than life in humiliation."
The bomber, whose family still lives in London, is the first reported case of a Somali based in Britain carrying out terrorist acts in the east African country.
However it is unclear whether British security services are aware of the case, which happened when the Somali prime minister was staying at a hotel near the checkpoint.
Jihadist websites claimed more than 20 Ethiopian soldiers were killed. The same group was reported to have killed six aid workers in December.
The killings come amid warnings that dozens of Islamic extremists have returned to Britain from terror training camps in Somalia.
MI5 director-general Jonathan Evans has raised concerns that Somali-trained militants could be plotting to carry out attacks in Britain or attempting to attract new recruits.
Yassin Omar and Ramzi Mohammed, two of the four men convicted of the failed 21 July 2005 London Underground bombings, came to Britain as asylum seekers.
The Somali community in Britain numbers around 250,000, the largest in Europe, with the bulk of those coming to the country as refugees within the last 20 years.
Peter Neumann, a terrorism expert at the Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King's College London, said: "The numbers I hear (going from Britain to Somalia) are 50, 60 or 70 but in reality we don't know.
"You don't need big numbers for terrorism. Somalia will never become another Pakistan, but that does not mean it is not a threat." News Source
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Foreign workers are being brought in by coach to work on a shipping contract on Merseyside because a company claims it can’t find the skills it needs among the local workforce.
Polish workers are being bussed in to the famous Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead to work for ship fitting contractor Trimline on a Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel.
Cammell Laird was one of the biggest names in world shipbuilding in the 19th and 20th centuries, and in Birkenhead they have been building and repairing ships for nearly 200 years, which makes one wonder just how hard did Trimline and the MoD try to find former local Cammell Laird workers with the necessary skills?
The answer is obviously not very hard, and that’s because bringing in cheap foreign labour undercuts the wages of the local workforce and allows Trimline to make a bigger profit.
So what are the union bosses doing to try to stop Trimline using Polish workers? Absolutely nothing - in fact, they are probably negotiating with Trimline for better terms and conditions for its foreign workforce.
But the real irony is that it is the Government, headed by a Prime Minster who called for “British Jobs for British Workers, that is paying Trimline” to bring in Polish workers to work on one of its contracts!
There’s more on Martin Wingfield’s daily blog which can be found by clicking here. News Source
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We said it before..
these are Marxist unions and they aren't working for you!
Angry workers have confronted union leaders after BMW axed hundreds of Mini workers.
Some 850 jobs are going at the company's Mini plant in Cowley, near Oxford.
The firm says agency workers are expected to bear the brunt of the cuts. Union sources said furious workers threw fruit at managers after the news was broken - a claim denied by BMW.
But mobile phone footage showed staff hurling abuse at union bosses, accusing them of not doing enough to save jobs. Staff claimed they were given just an hour's notice of the losses.
"I've been working here five years. I have no pay, no redundancy and no notice," one worker told Sky News.
Sky News correspondent David Crabtree said: "We have spoken to very, very angry people this morning, workers who have said they were told very little about what was happening.
"The company says that was not the case." Workers told Crabtree they were expecting to get two or three week's notice.
"They are not entitled to redundancy pay or any benefits, they are just left without a job and apparently without any prospects," said Crabtree. The Cowley factory employs 4,500 staff - agency staff make up almost a third of the workforce.
Mobile phone footage showed angry workers confronting union leaders as they learnt of the cuts. Tony Woodley, joint leader of the Unite union, accused BMW of targeting agency workers.
"The manner in which these cuts were announced today was disgraceful," he said.
"Sacking an entire shift like this, and targeting agency workers who have no rights to redundancy pay, is blatant opportunism on BMW's part and nothing short of scandalous.
"BMW's parent company couldn't attempt this in Germany because it would be illegal to do so." He told Sky News BMW workers should "fight back because if BMW can do it to agency workers they can do it to anyone".
Talks between BMW and unions have been held over changing the current work pattern of three shifts a day for seven days a week. The factory has started a week-long halt to car production in response to the dip in motor sales caused by the recession.
The cuts are more grim news for an industry that has laid off thousands of workers in recent weeks. Jaguar and Nissan have announced cut in recent weeks while Honda is closing its factory in Swindon.
And the news comes ahead of the Mini's 50th anniversary in August this year. News Source
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A former deputy mayor, Mohammed Aziz, invented "ghost voters" to ensure the Conservatives could snatch a marginal seat from Labour at a council election, a court has heard.
Mohammed Aziz and six colleagues invented 19 inhabitants living in a house known to be derelict, all of whom "applied" for postal votes, it was claimed.
Overall the men invented more than 100 fake voters and used postal voting forms to help secure victory for Tory candidate Raja Mohammed Eshaq Khan, it was alleged.
Reading Crown Court heard that the fraud was carried out in the Slough Borough Council elections in May 2007.
Charles Miskin QC, prosecuting, said Khan had stood unsuccessfully twice before but in 2007, in a shock victory, took the Central ward seat from Labour councillor Lydia Simmons, who had been on the council for 20 years and was a former Slough mayor, by 120 votes.
However, shortly before the election, Miss Simmons became suspicious of the quantity of voters who had applied for postal votes.
Subsequent investigations showed electoral role numbers in the ward had swelled from 6,600 to 7,215, and that a large number of postal voting applications were lodged, of which the "overwhelming majority" were from new registrations. The ward had the highest turnout in the borough, at 44.3 per cent.
Mr Miskin said it was "striking how many people were registered at a number of addresses where people were already registered". They included a house which was known to be derelict, but from where no fewer than 19 people had registered to vote.
Mr Miskin said that Eshaq Khan, who admits conspiracy to defraud and perverting the course of justice, had been held in high esteem among fellow members of the Kashmiri and Pakistani community in Slough, had been Vice President of the Pakistan Welfare Association and ran his own carpet business.
Six others, the former Slough Deputy Mayor, Mohammed Aziz, Altaf Khan, Arshad Raja, Yasar Mumtaz, Gul Nawaz Khan and Mahboob Khan deny being involved in rigging the election.
The court heard that Altaf Khan was caught at a polling station posing as a legitimate voter when someone who knew the real person saw what was happening and called police. The trial continues. News Source
See Also: Labour / Tory Fraud
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The Government will have to borrow almost £100 billion more than previously forecast as it tries to bring a deeper-than-expected UK recession under control, business leaders warned.
In its latest dire warning on the economy, the CBI business group said the economy will shrink by 3.3% in 2009, compared with its November forecast of a 1.7% contraction.
It also predicted State borrowing would be much higher than Chancellor Alistair Darling forecast in his Pre Budget Report last year, as the impact of the recession and the fiscal stimulus "take a toll on the public finances".
The CBI said borrowing is expected to reach £149 billion in the 2009/10 financial year, or 10% of gross domestic product (GDP), compared to the £118 billion announced by Mr Darling.
In the following year the Chancellor said borrowing would reduce to £105 billion, but the CBI expects it to rise again, to £168 billion, or 11.8% of GDP.
Ian McCafferty, CBI chief economic adviser, said: "You would have to go back a long way before you found a deficit as high as 10% of GDP. In recent years we have seen deficits of around the 3% mark as being strongly sustainable."
But he said many countries had been forced to revise their projections down in recent months as the severity of the recession became apparent.
"I think circumstances have changed. The Pre Budget Report was done in October, November and we have seen a dramatic and global change in conditions, literally in the last six to eight weeks," he said.
"Given the rapid contraction in global economic activity and the continuing credit squeeze, we believe the UK will be mired in a deep recession for the whole of 2009, lasting six quarters in total and accompanied by a significant rise in unemployment."
The CBI revised its joblessness forecast upwards to a peak of just over 3 million in 2010. Average earnings growth is expected to drop in the first three quarters of this year to a low of 1.1%, as people become increasingly prepared to accept pay freezes and cuts. Wages are only predicted to return to the current level of growth - 2.5% - in the last quarter of 2010. News Source
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Bosses at the failed Royal Bank of Scotland are using £25million of tax-payers’ money to wine and dine clients at Formula One races.
The shamed bank admitted last night it was continuing to pour cash into the world’s richest sport through sponsorship of the Williams Formula One team, despite needing billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to stave off collapse.
Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, condemned the spending, saying: “It’s ridiculous that taxpayer-funded banks are using taxpayers’ money to sponsor sporting events, especially the rich man’s sport of Formula One.
“RBS needs to realise that it’s now effectively part of the public sector and taxpayers do not want their money to be used to fund elite sports, especially during these tough economic times.”
The bank admits the lavish spend on F1 is to entertain clients. Guests have access to an open bar with champagne and a gourmet banquet with fine wines. There are select boutiques by exclusive watchmaker TAG Heuer and men’s fashion brand Hackett, as well as a masseur, beautician and hairdresser. A guided tour of the pits and chats with team personnel also come with the access, with guests often helicoptered in.
RBS said: “We are trying our best to strike the appropriate balance within the constraints of both contractual obligations and, of course, maintaining the benefit of some key activities to our customer businesses.”
The RBS sponsorship portfolio also includes deals with Six Nations rugby and British tennis ace Andy Murray.
Former chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin, who was grilled by the Treasury Select Committee last week for his role in the banking crisis, steered RBS into sponsoring Williams four years ago and, as the downturn began last year, the bank renewed its deal. It runs for another two years, but is being reviewed. Continued
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Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, claimed almost £70,000 in Commons expenses after designating his £1million family house as his second home.
Between 2003 and 2005, Mr Darling registered rooms in two flats in London as his main residence instead of the large home he shares with his wife Margaret in Edinburgh.
Using the same system exploited by Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, this allowed him to claim thousands of pounds for 'housing costs' towards his second home.
MPs, who split their time between their constituencies and Westminster, can nowadays elect their London or family homes as their main place of residence.
However, designating the larger property as their second home allows them to claim more under the Commons allowance system, including mortgage interest increases, council tax, decoration and utility bills.
The Chancellor and his wife, Margaret, bought a large home in an opulent part of Edinburgh for £570,000 in 1998. Its value is now estimated to be £1.2million.
In 2003 Mr Darling took cheap lodgings with Lord Moonie, one of the peers at the centre of the 'cash for amendments' scandal, who owned and lived in a South London flat.
Mr Darling inhabited a single room in the £260,000 property in Lambeth, which Lord Moonie bought from Gordon Brown in 1992.
Commons rules required all ministers to designate their London homes as their main residence until 2004, after which they were told to list their 'main home'.
Between 2001 and early 2004, when he had no choice but declare Edinburgh as his 'second home', he claimed a total of £45,954 towards his family house.
However, the Chancellor continued to list the room in Lord Moonie's flat as his main residence after the rule change gave him the choice.
This enabled him to claim a further £15,341 in the 2004-05 financial year for his Edinburgh home. In contrast, the typical rent for a room in flat in Lambeth was about £150 per week, or £7,800 per year.
Mr Darling then moved to a room in another flat, again listing it with the Commons as his main residence. In the 2005-06 financial year he claimed a further £19,436 in respect of his second home.
The first five months of this year's claim was made in respect of his family house, before he finally decided to designate it as his main home in September 2005.
In total he claimed more than £70,000 for his second home over five years, including almost £25,000 in the two years after the rule change.
Additional Costs Allowance - worth up to £24,006 a year - is meant to cover housing costs including mortgage interest and utility bills associated with MPs' responsibilities at Westminster and in their constituencies.
Cabinet ministers have used the allowance to claim more than £2 million over the past six years, sometimes attracting controversy.
Last year Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper faced questions over their decision to designate their Yorkshire home as their primary residence, even though their children attend school in London. The move allowed the couple to claim public money on their more expensive London home.
A spokesman for Mr Darling stressed the Chancellor had not broken any rules, adding that he is "fastidious" about his expense claims. News Source
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Brown could have saved HBOS without engineering the merger with Lloyds TSB that has brought the two banks to the brink of disaster, the Government's own financial watchdog has admitted.
Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, the chairman of the Financial Services Authority, suggested in an interview yesterday that HBOS could have been rescued with financial help from the Government, without the need for a takeover.
At the time of the merger - in which the Prime Minister personally intervened to ensure its passage - ministers repeatedly insisted that a union with Lloyds was the only way to save HBOS and the wider financial system from meltdown.
However, speaking to the BBC on Sunday, Lord Turner said: "There could have been a different way of directly supporting HBOS and keeping Lloyds separate."
Lord Turner also disclosed that the FSA and the Treasury had known HBOS was heading for the massive losses that have raised significant fears over the viability of the merged Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) since they were disclosed on Friday.
His remarks will increase the scrutiny on Mr Brown, who is facing mounting political pressure over his personal role in the crisis now gripping the British financial sector.
The newly formed LBG is 43 per cent owned by the taxpayer, and ministers are prepared take a majority shareholding in the bank if its situation continues to worsen when the stockmarket opens for business again today (MONDAY).
Investors in Lloyds TSB have already lost three-quarters of their money since the "shotgun wedding" of the two banks was announced.
On Friday, shares in the merged group fell by a third after it revealed that HBOS had lost more than £10 billion last year.
By contrast, the old Lloyds TSB business made a £1 billion profit.
Lord Turner said that the FSA's secret "stress testing" analysis of British banks had shown last October that HBOS would incur such large losses. "The losses which are being revealed this week are not huge surprises to the FSA," he said.
But the losses were a surprise to the City and have led to accusations from opposition parties and shareholders that Mr Brown has saddled the healthy Lloyds TSB with the loss-making HBOS to avoid a politically embarrassing bailout of the Edinburgh-based bank.
Mr Brown was took a personal role in the merger, assuring Sir Victor Blank, the Lloyds chairman, that competition rules would be set aside to allow the creation of the merged group, which has around 40 per cent of the retail banking market.
Kenneth Clarke, the Tory shadow business secretary, yesterday accused the Prime Minister of personally driving through an ill-advised merger.
He said: "It was Gordon Brown's idea so nobody dared say to Gordon, 'Should we go ahead with your bright idea of persuading Lloyds to take over HBOS, couldn't be challenged?' and so this giant was set up and unfortunately it turns out that HBOS was a disastrous poison pill inside the new giant superstructure."
David Cameron, the Conservative leader, said that while he had supported it at the time, the merger is "now looking like a bad decision." Continued
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To keep people docile in these very unstable combustible times?
A fresh debate will begin this month over the benefits of putting fluoride in drinking water if a health authority goes ahead with its plan to add the chemical to the supplies of almost 200,000 people.
Most residents of Southampton will have no choice but to receive fluoridated tap water if the South Central Strategic Health Authority agrees to the proposal. Its board is to make a decision on Thursday February 26 following a consultation.
While many health experts argue that adding fluoride will help improve children's teeth, critics believe it is a coercive form of "mass medication" with unproven benefits.
If fluoride is added it will increase the concentration of the chemical in Southampton's water twelvefold, from 0.08 parts per million (ppm) to one ppm.
Southampton Primary Care Trust believes this would "significantly improve the dental health of local people, particularly children", in a city that has some of the worst dental health in the country.
Fluoride is added to most brands of toothpaste but those with poor dental habits consequently fail to benefit from it. Fluoride works principally by making teeth more resistant to decay: in fluoridated areas 15 per cent more children have "decay-free" teeth.
Barry Cockcroft, the chief dental officer for England, said it was "the perfect public health measure because people with the greatest need benefit most and most people benefit to some degree".
But Stephen Peckham, a member of the pressure group Hampshire Against Fluoride, said there was "good evidence" to show it led to increased levels of fluoride-related tooth staining and other health problems die to "overexposure to fluoride".
He added: "There has been no discussion of the complex ethical issues that water fluoridation entails."
Should the proposal be successful it would be likely to increase pressure on other areas to follow suit.
Some six million of England's 45 million residents receive fluoridated tap water – 5.5 million have it added to their supplies while 500,000 live in areas in which it occurs naturally.
Since 2003 health authorities have been able to order water companies to add it, rather than just ask. News Source
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See Also:
Controversial fluoride is one of the basic ingredients in both PROZAC (FLUoxetene Hydrochloride) and Sarin nerve gas (Isopropyl-Methyl-Phosphoryl FLUoride).
Sodium fluoride, a hazardous-waste by-product from the manufacture of aluminum, is a common ingredient in rat and cockroach poisons, anesthetics, hypnotics, psychiatric drugs, and military nerve gas. It's historically been quite expensive to properly dispose of, until some aluminum industries with an overabundance of the stuff sold the public on the terrifically insane but highly profitable idea of buying it at a 20,000% markup, injecting it into our water supplies, and then DRINKING it.
...
The idea of water fluoridation was brought to England from Russia by the Russian Communist Kreminoff. "In the 1930's, Hitler and the German Nazi's envisioned a world to be dominated and controlled by a Nazi philosophy of pan-Germanism. The German chemists worked out a very ingenious and far-reaching plan of mass-control which was submitted to and adopted by the German General Staff. This plan was to control the population in any given area through mass medication of drinking water supplies. By this method they could control the population in whole areas, reduce population by water medication that would produce sterility in women, and so on. In this scheme of mass-control, sodium fluoride occupied a prominent place. ...
...
"Careful, bonafide laboratory experimentation by conscientious, patriotic research chemists, and actual medical experience, have both revealed that instead of preserving or promoting 'dental health,' fluoridated drinking water destroys teeth, before adulthood and after, by the destructive mottling and other pathological conditions it actually causes in them, and also creates many other very grave pathological conditions in the internal organisms of bodies consuming it. How can it be called a "health" plan? What's behind it?
"That any so-called "doctors" would persuade a civilized nation to add voluntarily a deadly poison to its drinking water systems is unbelievable. It is the height of criminal insanity.
"No wonder Hitler and Stalin fully believed and agreed from 1939 to 1941 that, quoting from both Lenin's Last Will and Hitler's Mein Kampf: "we shall demoralize, divide, and destroy from within." ... Continued - Please Read Article in Full
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Fluoride used by Nazis to sterilize inmates and make them docile. Fluoride a key dumbing down ingredient of Prozac and Sarin nerve gas.
First of all, it needs to be stated that the 'substance' referred to as 'Fluoride' is a misnomer - there is no such substance listed in the periodic chart of the elements, nor in the prestigious CRC handbook, nor in the sacred 'bible' of the pharmaceutical industry - the illustrious 'Merck Index'. Instead, we find a GAS called Fluorine - and from the use of this gas in various industries such as aluminum manufacturing and the nuclear industry -certain toxic byproducts are created which have 'captured' fluorine molecules. One such toxic, poisonous 'byproduct' is called sodium Fluoride - which according to the Merck Index is primarily used as rat and cockroach poison and is also the active ingredient in most toothpastes and as an "additive to drinking water". But sadly, there is much more to this sordid tale.
Did you know that sodium Fluoride is also one of the basic ingredients in both PROZAC (FLUoxetene Hydrochloride) and Sarin Nerve Gas (Isopropyl-Methyl-Phosphoryl FLUORIDE) - (Yes, folks the same Sarin Nerve Gas that terrorists released on a crowded Japanese subway train!).
Let me repeat: the truth the public needs to understand is the fact that Sodium Fluoride is nothing more (or less) than a hazardous waste by-product of the nuclear and aluminum industries. In addition to being the primary ingredient in rat and cockroach poisons, it is also a main ingredient in anesthetic, hypnotic, and psychiatric drugs as well as military NERVE GAS! Why, oh why then is it allowed to be added to the toothpastes and drinking water?
Independent scientific evidence over the past 50 plus years has shown that sodium fluoride shortens our life span, promotes various cancers and mental disturbances, and most importantly, makes humans stupid, docile, and subservient, all in one neat little package.
There is increasing evidence that aluminum in the brain is a causative factor in Alzheimer's Disease, and evidence points towards sodium fluoride's strong affinity to 'bond' with this dangerous aluminum (remember it is a byproduct of aluminum manufacturing) and also it has the ability to 'trick' the blood-brain barrier by imitating the hydrogen ion thus allowing this chemical access to brain tissue.
To illustrate the emotional vs. the scientific nature of this issue, just look at the response given by people (perhaps yourself included?) when the subject of fluoridation comes up. You need to ask yourself, "Is this particular response based on EMOTIONS born of TRADITION, or is it truly unbiased and based instead on thoroughly researched objectivity?"
There is a tremendous amount of emotional, highly unscientific "know-it-all" emotions attached to the topic of 'sodium fluoride' usage -but I personally have yet to find even ONE objective, double blind study that even remotely links sodium fluoride to healthy teeth at ANY AGE.
Instead, I hear and read such blather as "9 out of 10 DENTISTS recommend 'fluoride' toothpaste" etc. etc. etc. Let me reiterate: truly independent (unattached to moneyed vested interest groups) scientists who've spent a large portion of their lives studying and working with this subject have been hit with a surprising amount of unfair character assassinations from strong vested-interest groups who reap grand profits from the public's ignorance as well as from their illnesses. (Just follow the money!)
Do you have diabetes and/or kidney disease? There are reportedly more than 11 million peiople in the states with diabetes. If it is true that diabetics drink more liquids than other people, then according to the Physicians Desk Reference these 11 million people are at much higher risk drinking fluoridated water because they will receive a much deadlier dose because of their need for higher than normal water consumption.
Kidney disease, by definition, lowers the efficiency of the kidneys, which of course is the primary means in which fluoride (or any other toxic chemical) is eliminated from the body. Does it not make sense that these people shouldn't drink fluoridated water at all? Cases are on record (Annapolis, Maryland, 1979) where ill kidney patients on dialysis machines died because they ingested relatively small amounts of SODIUM FLUORIDE from unwittingly drinking the 'fluoridated' city water supply? Will adequate warnings be given to people with weak kidneys, or will the real cause of such deaths be 'covered up' in the name of 'domestic tranquility'? Continued - Please Read Article in Full
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"Tell a lie loud enough and long enough and people will believe it."
- Adolf Hitler
"Fluoridation is the greatest case of scientific fraud of this century."
- Robert Carlton, Ph.D, former EPA scientist, 1992
The history of forcing fluoride on humans through the fluoridation of drinking water is wrought with lies, greed and deception. Governments that add fluoride to drinking water supplies insist that it is safe, beneficial and necessary, however, scientific evidence shows that fluoride is not safe to ingest and areas that fluoridate their drinking water supplies have higher rates of cavities, cancer, dental fluorosis, osteoporosis and other health problems. Continued - Please Read Article in Full
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You have been warned! But don't just take our word for it, Google it and do your own research on the subject.. You will be Shocked! (Ed)
Over the last few years we have heard the Government attempt to convince us that bottled water should not be used by us because of Eco reasons, Global warming etc etc.. Blah Blah Blah.. When they were not successful we were then told that the Government wanted bottled water to have Fluoride added. Why? Surely it's our choice for those of us who do not wish to drink Tap water which contains Fluoride, Chlorine and other Nasties! Why the overwhelming fight by the government to introduce this to bottled water? Because the Government wasn't able to convince many of us to give the 'Bottled Water' up and how else can you mass medicate a nation if a large proportion of the population refuse to drink tap water!
Recently we were told that Alzheimer's numbers are growing. This we were told was due to the fact that more and more people are living longer. Mental health Authority not so long ago also reported that there are more people with mental health problems than ever before. You don't need to join the dots to see where this is going but come on, those of you who haven't figured it out yet.. then you too could be suffering from the ill effects of fluoride! (Ed)
Once again we would like to stress.. You have been warned!
The rest is up to you!
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You will soon be able to forget the pains of the 'Credit Crunch'
and the oppression by the Stasi Labour party!
A drug which appears to erase painful memories has been developed by scientists.
The astonishing treatment could help sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder and those whose lives are plagued by hurtful recurrent memories.
But British experts said the breakthrough raises disturbing ethical questions about what makes us human.
They also warned it could have damaging psychological consequences, preventing those who take it from learning from their mistakes.
Dr Daniel Sokol, a lecturer in medical ethics at St George's, University of London, said: 'Removing bad memories is not like removing a wart or a mole. It will change our personal identity since who we are is linked to our memories.
'It may perhaps be beneficial in some cases, but before eradicating memories, we must reflect on the knock-on effects that this will have on individuals, society and our sense of humanity.'
Dutch researchers claim to have erased bad memories by using 'beta-blocker' drugs, which are usually prescribed to patients with heart disease.
Experiments on animals had already shown that the drugs - beta-adrenergic receptor blockers - can interfere with how the brain makes and remakes memories of frightening events.
In the latest study, Dr Merel Kindt of Amsterdam University tested the drugs on 60 men and women.
His team created fearful memories in volunteers by showing them pictures of spiders while giving them gentle electric shocks.
The volunteers were urged to 'actively remember' the images, creating a strong negative association between spiders and discomfort.
The following day the volunteers were split into two groups. One was given the beta blocker and the other a placebo pill before both were shown the same spider pictures.
The researchers recorded the level of fear in the volunteers by playing sudden noises and measuring how strongly they blinked.
A strong startle response showed they were in a fearful state, while a mild response showed they were calm.
The group given the beta blocker had a much weaker fear response than those given the dummy pill, the researchers report in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
A day later - once the drug was out of their systems - their fear response was tested again.
Once more, those given the beta blocker the previous day showed fewer signs of spider phobia, suggesting the memory was completely erased.
Beta blockers appear to work because each time someone recalls a powerful emotional memory the memory is 'remade' by the brain.
The drug interferes with this re-creation of the stressful memory - and prevents the brain renewing it. Continued
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The number of people caught carrying knives on our streets is going up, The News can reveal. And police say one in 10 of those found with a blade in public was a child under the age of 16.
Worrying figures obtained from Hampshire Police under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the youngest person caught with a knife across Portsmouth, Fareham, Gosport and Havant last year was just 10 years old.
Two years ago a seven-year-old was also found in possession of a blade.
Detective Chief Inspector Richard John, from Fratton police station, said: 'A child as young as 10 with a knife is a real concern, not just to the police but to the community.
'If the police arrest a child then social services are notified and we work with the family to identify why it has happened and try and prevent it happening again.'
Over a three-month period last year 40 people were stopped and found to be in possession of a knife in Portsmouth and south east Hampshire, compared to 36 during the same period the previous year.
Police say while there hasn't been a huge increase they are concerned that four of those caught – 10 per cent – were children.
Det Con Insp John said: 'We would need to know all the facts to see why they were carrying a knife. It could be they have been asked to carry it by a gang or an older brother, it could be a number of things.'
He added: 'The other point is for parents. To me it's really basic. If you think your child is going to carry a knife stop them, talk to them and tell them the consequences, because it's wrong.'
The number of offences of wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm have also gone up, with 33 incidents in the past nine months locally compared to 23 in the nine months prior.
Dr Bob Golding, from Portsmouth University's Criminal Justice Studies, said youngsters are carrying knives for protection.
'I think what's happened is a developing culture of younger people carrying knives and there are a number of reasons for that,' he said. 'Some people see it as peer pressure to be part of a gang.
'The next stage of that is people feel the need to carry it for protection.'
Cllr John Ireland, cabinet member for children, education and young people, said: 'I am horrified.' News Source
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A convicted killer has boasted on Facebook that being in jail is like being on holiday.
Ashley Graham even put up a picture of himself on the social networking website ‘relaxing’ in his cell. The 27-year-old is serving life at HMP Lindholme in South Yorkshire for stabbing a man through the heart.
But he manages to access Facebook every day by using a mobile phone that was smuggled in to the jail. The killer's boasts are likely to reignite claims that prisoners enjoy an easy life in Britain's jails.
In one update Graham wrote: ‘HMP Holiday’s a place where men can come for a nice relaxin break from their moanin women and crying kids. No stress just rest.’
Astonishingly his friends on the social networking site agreed. Graeme Crockett replied: ‘Loving the status.
Could do wid a nice relaxing break in HMP Ranby or Sunbury again.’ Graham even got messages from a woman claiming to be his wife.
On January 25, Emma Campbell Graham, wrote: ‘Hi hubbi. Been a while since I put some loving on your wall. Wifee is missing you. Not to long til I am in your arms baby. Love you x.’
Graham was jailed after killing Roy Henry in February 2001 when he tried to stop him and an accomplice entering a café to attack another man.
HMP Lindholme has a games room, TV room with DVDs and an activities centre for computer classes.
The Prison Service said measures would be introduced this Spring which would stop prisoners using mobile phones in prisons.
A Prison Service spokesperson said: 'Prisoners are not allowed access to mobile phones or the Internet – an investigation is underway and appropriate action is being taken.
'During Spring 2009 Body Orifice Security Scanners ('BOSS chairs') will be introduced estate wide. These will be supported by high sensitivity metal detectors and mobile phone signal detectors.'
Earlier this year certain prisons in London launched a scheme to allow prisoners limited access to websites in order to let them resettle in their community and apply for jobs.
The scheme allowed prisoners to visit pre-approved websites to take part in online learning and job hunting.
Prisoners were blocked from browsing beyond a list of approved sites and access to 'uncontrolled email' was stopped.
But security fears marred the scheme's initial launch in 2007 after Home Office ministers raised concerns that the proper safeguards were not in place.
It is not the first time that criminals have been caught using Facebook, which is supposed to be family friendly.
Last month the family of murder victim Tony Harrington were outraged after discovering his killer ran a Facebook page from Ford Open Prison in West Sussex.
Andrew McVicar, 25, was serving a life sentence for ramming a broken bottle in the 19-year-old’s jugular vein on Christmas Eve 1998.
And earlier this month it was revealed that hundreds of British drug dealers had infiltrated the site in a bid to attract new victims.
Gangs have set up special groups aimed at encouraging people who join to start smoking super-strong ‘skunk’ cannabis.
One was labelled Smoke Weed Everyday and included several messages by users interested in buying the drug. News Source
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Two London teenagers were shot repeatedly in a mugging by a gang of boys as young as 13 who demanded their iPods and phones.
The victims, brothers aged 18 and 19, were left writhing in agony outside a McDonald's in Neasden. One was hit in the stomach, leg, groin and arm and the other was wounded in the chest and stomach.
The brothers, believed to be eastern European, had been challenged by the gang, some of whom were on bicycles, who asked them what they were doing there and then told them to hand over their valuables.
Suddenly, at least one of the gang is understood to have produced a handgun and the two teenagers were hit by a volley of shots at about 10.45 on Saturday night.
The boys are being treated in hospital today where one was described as “stable” and the other “serious”.
One witness heard several shots from his home, close to the scene on Blackbird Hill. He said: “I heard them — crack, crack, crack, crack, crack. They could have been fireworks, but then I heard a man screaming and shouting. I realised there had been a shooting. I ran out and saw two guys there.
“One of them was lying on the pavement, apparently unconscious. The other was clutching his stomach where he had been shot. I didn't see any blood. I didn't want to get that close in case the gunfight was still going on.
“The guy clutching his stomach was on his mobile phone. I think someone had called him as it was going on. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but I think it must have been his mum because she turned up 10 minutes later. She was freaking out and screaming.”
Police today said two boys had been arrested in early morning raids, one of them 14, the other 15. Officers said they were looking for five boys in connection with the attack.
A spokeswoman said: “The victims were approached by a group of suspects who asked what they were doing in the area. They then attempted to rob the victims and shots were fired.” It is not clear if anything was taken. It is understood the brothers were walking with friends when the attack took place.
Motorists who had been driving past stopped to help the victims who were lying on the pavement. Their cars were left inside the police cordon yesterday.
Jorge Alehandrou, 20, who lives round the corner, said the shooting could be linked to a gang on the nearby Chalk Hill Estate. He said: “I heard a rumour that the people that did this were from the Chalk Hill Estate.
“There's not really a gang problem here. I feel safe on the streets.”
However, other locals were less positive about the area. One shopkeeper said: “You have to be careful who you deal with or you could get lead in your ear. This area used to be lovely, but it's gone really downmarket. Carrying guns is a way of life for some of these people.” News Source
Monday 16th February 2009
A woman who claimed she miscarried twins and suffered knife cuts in a skinhead attack was not pregnant and probably inflicted the injuries on herself, investigators have said.
Paula Oliveira said three neo-Nazis carved the initials of Switzerland's main far-right party into her thighs and stomach during an assault which caused her to lose her unborn babies.
But police have confirmed that the 26-year-old Brazilian, who lives with her Swiss partner in Dubendorf, near Zurich, was not actually pregnant.
And the director of forensic medicine at Zurich University said it was highly likely that she had cut the letters - SVP - into her body herself.
"Any experienced forensic doctor would not hesitate to assume that this was a case of self-infliction," Walter Baer said.
All of the wounds were reachable by hand and none were deep or severe, he said.
He also pointed out that areas of the body which are particularly sensitive for women, including the breasts and navel, had not been injured.
Ms Oliveira told police she was attacked at a station as she returned home from work on Monday.
The alleged incident has been treated as a scandal in the media in Brazil, with leading newspapers speaking of racist "torture" in Switzerland.
Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim told a Swiss diplomat of the South American country's "deep concern" over "a case with obvious xenophobic motives".
The Swiss People's Party (SVP) has taken a hard-line stance against immigrants, pushed for tougher asylum laws and wants to make it easier to expel foreign nationals.
But the party is part of Switzerland's broad coalition government and has never had links to neo-Nazism.
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A Landlord has been arrested for a second time over material on public display in his bar.
Peter Mailer was already on bail after police seized allegedly racist items posted in the Black Bull, Warkworth, last December.
They swooped again on Friday, following a further complaint, and the 52-year-old voluntarily attended Bedlington Police Station that afternoon.
While Mr Mailer admits he supports the British National Party, he strongly denies any wrong-doing and claims the items on his walls were not racially motivated or offensive.
He has now been bailed a second time, until May 9.
His earlier bail runs out on March 3 and is currently being reviewed by the Attorney General's office to determine whether a prosecution will be in the public interest.
Police Harassment
Mr Mailer said: "The police turned up on Friday afternoon, while I was out, and I got a phone call from my barman saying two officers wanted to speak to me.
"Apparently the complaint was made in an anonymous letter, which I find amusing because the police have failed to act on the anonymous threats I've had pinned to my van since my initial arrest in December."
A further visit by a senior police officer followed on Monday.
Mr Mailer added: "They have told me that they will be making regular checks on the pub to see whether I am breaking the law. It's almost verging on harassment, but that's fine by me."
In December, the pub was cleared of newspaper clippings, political cartoons and other paraphernalia by Northumbria Police officers.
They were acting on a complaint received from a senior policeman from the Nottinghamshire force, who was on holiday in the area, alleging that the materials on display constituted a race-hate offence under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998.
A police spokesman said: "A 52-year-old man from the Alnwick area was arrested on Friday, February 6, on suspicion of committing an offence under the Public Order Act.
"He has been bailed until May 9 pending further inquiries."
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Searchlight Generation
Lily Allen was blasted last night for telling parents to encourage their kids to try drugs.
She said potentially lethal Class A drugs like ecstasy MIGHT not harm them — so the best way to find out was to take them.
Lily said: “Parents should say, ‘Drugs might seem fun, but they do funny things to your brain. Some people react to it good, some don’t. Try it and see what you think’.”
The star—who slurped wine during a shambolic gig this weekend—said only fame stops her bingeing on ecstasy pills.
Lily, 23, admits: “If I hadn’t been famous I’d have taken loads. Wouldn’t be too wise right now.”
Apt Tittle: Blame everyone else but yourself Lily!
She adds: “I’ve never been good with cocaine or drugs like that. They make me passionately angry on everything. I steer clear of heroin or crack. Lily is set to go to number one today with her new album It’s Not Me, It’s You.
But she moans she doesn’t want to be a role model. She whines: “Mothers and sisters should be role models. Not pop stars or actresses.”
Her comments in Dutch mag Revu come just a month after she was forced to issue a statement saying she does not condone drugs, following an outburst.
Lily recently gave up booze for a while. She says: “I react bad to alcohol, but I never know when to stop. I keep drinking, because it helps me. I find it difficult to communicate with strangers.”
She wasn’t shy with strippers on stage in the Bahamas on Friday in a revealing outfit complete with fags and wine. She wrote on her Twitter page: “Worst gig ever.”
Tory MP Patrick Mercer called Lily’s drug rant “extraordinary”. Rob Broomfield, of Dad’s Against Drugs, slammed her as “immature”.
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When headmistress Julia Robinson introduced multi-faith assemblies at her Sheffield primary school it seemed like an obvious recipe for classroom harmony.
With more than 200 children on her roll, 35 of whom are Muslim, it appeared pointless to have two separate gatherings – a situation she had inherited when she was appointed as head of Meersbrook Bank Community Primary School.
Although the majority of its pupils are white Christians, and one fifth of the pupils come from ethnic minorities, it seemed altogether more inclusive to amalgamate morning prayers.
Aware that religious education has become a much-debated and, at times, divisive issue in modern, multi-cultural Britain, Robinson proceeded with sensitivity and caution.
She sought the advice of Sheffield city council, set up a working party and spoke to as many parents as possible.
Confident that all were in agreement, she decided to hold a single assembly that included the many religions they represented.
All seemed to be going well. Indeed, when Ofsted inspectors reported on the school, they praised its ''caring and inclusive atmosphere''.
They applauded Robinson's leadership and described Meersbrook as a shining example of one in which ''pupils feel safe and develop strong relationships with adults and one another''.
Robinson, one might assume, had every justification to be proud of her school's glowing reputation. That is, until the rumblings of racism began.
A handful of Muslim parents began to agitate against the joint assemblies, lobbying other, more liberal parents to join the protest. Their children, they claimed, were being coerced into religious studies that were Christian in essence and contrary to their Muslim faith.
Devastated at the accusations of racism, Robinson's health suffered and she has spent much of the past year off work.
This term, when she returned, the row reignited. In the end, she became so disheartened and distressed that she felt she had no option but to resign. It was a desolate decision, both for the popular and accomplished head and for the majority of parents who respected and admired her leadership.
One can only assume that those parents who had clamoured for her dismissal viewed her resignation as a victory for diversity. Instead, it was a dangerous and worrying defeat of common sense.
What is more alarming is that the Meersbrook saga is not an isolated incident. In the past few weeks, there have been several similar situations in which Christianity, especially in the realms of religious education, has come under attack.
Erica Connor, a headmistress at a Woking school, felt forced to seek legal redress after what she claims was a string of ''vituperous'' complaints against her by four Muslim governors. Although external consultants investigated the situation and Connor was exonerated – their report found no evidence of racism, Islamophobia or religious bias – the alleged ''harassment'' continued. Suffering severe depression, Connor took sick leave and is now suing Surrey county council for damages.
Both cases have come to light against the background of a worrying increase in ''attacks'' on Christianity, which has seen one Christian school receptionist facing dismissal after her five-year-old daughter was told off in school for talking about God in class – which upset another girl – and a nurse being suspended for offering to pray for a patient.
The cases have highlighted what many believe is the high cost our Christian heritage is paying simply to survive.
The growing persecution of Christians in public life has so angered senior clerics that they have found it imperative to speak out about the growing marginalisation of Christianity in Britain. Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York and Britain's second most senior cleric, has described the targeting of Christains as ''an affront to decency''.
Calling on the silent majority of Christians to defend their beliefs, Sentamu said:
''For those who despair at the treatment meted out to these Christian women the message is clear: wake-up Christian England.''
And nowhere, according to councillor Alan Craig, of the Christian People's Alliance, is that wake-up call more vital than in the classrooms. ''There is clearly growing discrimination against Christianity in our schools,'' he says.
Teachers are being prevented from implementing policies that may be opposed by some Muslim parents by the fear of an Islamic backlash, believes Craig. Along with the belief that British Muslims are a minority community in need of special protection, such fears have led many schools to deliberately marginalise the values and culture of religions, namely the majority Christian faith.
''This liberal secular ideology – coupled with a fear of Islam – all too often leads to people stepping back from any measures that may be opposed by Muslims,'' he says.
In England and Wales, the law states that children at state schools ''shall, on each school day, take part in an act of collective worship'' which should be ''wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character''. In the light of the many instances of Nativity plays being banned and Christ's birth being celebrated at "Wintermass" rather than Christmas, Craig points out that it is difficult to remember that the Christian element of religious education is statutory.
Traditonally, religious education in Britain was the province of Church and teachers. All that changed, says Penny Thornton, a former RE teacher and author of Whatever Happened to Religious Education? and co-author of Inspiring Faith in Schools, in the early Seventies, when the ''bureaucrats'' took over. ''From that point,'' she says, ''what teachers had to say was not welcome. Thus, the modern trend in schools is to put religion under the microscope, to question it, in a way that doesn't apply to other subjects, such as maths or science. The result is that teachers are now nervous, feeling that they can't just teach or promote one religion over the others.
''Given that the law is set up to acknowledge that the religious traditions in this country are in the main Christian, teachers should not be afraid or ashamed to teach on that basis."
Thornton doesn't believe that the attacks upon Christianity are intentional, but she is concerned enough to admit that she would be ''nervous if that legal framework was taken away''. While Thornton is cautious not to scaremonger, others are more vocal.
Government proposals aimed at giving increased legal rights to Muslims have left many wondering if the result will be a further clampdown on Christianity.
The measures will force councils, schools, hospitals and other public bodies to treat members of all faiths equally. The result, says Simon Calvert, of the Christian Institute, could be a fresh onslaught of politically correct rulings. ''We are worried that this will further squeeze out Christians,'' he says.
''Christian groups already find it difficult to get funding from local councils.'' He fears that town hall bureaucrats could ''over interpret and gold-plate'' measures. ''It will simply mean more of the politically correct rulings, such as banning Christmas celebrations and crucifixes from the work place.''
Mark Pritchard, a Conservative MP and campaigner against anti-Christian discrimination, believes that the legislation is merely vote chasing. ''Labour untie the Judaeo-Christian cords that have held this nation together for centuries at their peril,'' he warns. ''This is not about equality, it is about shoring up Labour's declining Muslim vote.''
Already, scores of British schools have introduced a raft of measures, including Muslim prayer rooms and halal dinners, in an attempt to placate parents. But the measures have so worried white Christian parents that increasing numbers have been withdrawing their children from classes.
Michael Simpkins removed his 16-year-old son from RE classes at Corsham school in Wiltshire, claiming that the teaching was ''one-sided''. Simpkins, 46, a taxi driver and parishioner at an Anglican church, says: ''The school wants to give a nice, fluffy view of Islam, without teaching about some of the controversies surrounding the faith. It is simply pandering to political correctness and I don't want my son to be part of that.''
For many committed Christians, the decision to remove their children has been difficult. When Ruth Weston's daughter turned four, her mother, a churchgoer and theologian, wanted to encourage Christian values in her. ''I wanted her to embrace Christianity – but not Christianity alone. I wanted her to be educated in schools where faith, all faiths, were taken seriously.''
Weston enrolled her daughter at a Church of England school in the Bradford area. Although the 200 pupils were predominantly Muslim, she believed her daughter would do well in a multicultural school.
Three terms later, she decided that she had made a mistake. ''I had to put my daughter's welfare first,'' she says. ''She wasn't thriving at a school where she was the only girl of her religion and culture. I wanted her religious education to be inclusive, but the reverse was the case. She became isolated among her classmates and instead of learning about all faiths, there was increasingly little of her own.''
Perhaps the answer might lie in a new approach to religious education that has been adopted in Birmingham. Marius Felderhof, who lectures on theology at the city's university, drafted a new RE syllabus last year. ''Before, the curriculum had been diverse,'' he explains, ''and the effect had been to diminish the time available available for any Christian treatment. Our new framework is not focused on one religion, per se, but rather on moral values – which draw, in the main, on Christian resources.
Birmingham's response may seem something of an opt-out, but the syllabus has proved popular with teachers and parents. It is, as Felderhof, says: ''A solution to a very difficult situation. It is a way of dealing with pluralism that doesn't divide.''
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The state has diminished and marginalised the role of Christianity in British life.
Although many state officials seem determined to forget it, Britain still has a state religion. It is Christianity, the faith that has been the basis of government in this country for centuries.
The Bible is still the book on which most politicians place their hand when they take the oath of office, and Christian values of charity and justice are still fundamental to most British people's conception of a good society.
That is why the stories that we publish today are so surprising, for they suggest that there is a concerted attempt by some officials to marginalise and to diminish the Christian faith.
Head teachers who merely attempt to ensure a Christian element to their morning school assemblies have faced concerted criticism. A survey of the Church synod has revealed that nearly two thirds of the Synod's members believe that Christians face discrimination at work because of their faith.
What is going on? How can a Christian country get to the position where the effect of some of the Government's policies is the persecution of Christians?
The short answer is that, for many state officials, the most important goal is to avoid offending any religious sensibility except Christianity. The effect has been to introduce policies which sanction curtailing, or even forbidding, the expression of Christian belief, for fear that those of other faiths will be "offended".
This is seriously wrong. Religious toleration – a central Christian value in this country since the 18th century – means tolerating other faiths.
It does not mean caving in to the aspiration that some of the adherents of those other faiths have to be the dominant religion.
Christianity is and should be in a privileged position in Britain. That does not mean that other faiths are disadvantaged or discriminated against. It is simply a recognition of the legacy that has made us what we are.
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Pakistan is to impose Islamic law in a vast region of the north-west called Malakand in an attempt to placate extremists, even as President Asif Zardari warns that they are "trying to take over the state".
Pakistani Taliban militants who are in control of the Swat valley in the region announced a ceasefire tonight, reacting to the government's agreement to bring in sharia courts.
Malakand is part of North West Frontier province, a regular part of Pakistan, not the wild tribal area, which runs along the Afghan border.
Critics warned that the new sharia regulations represented a capitulation to the extremists' demands, and that it would be difficult to stop hardliners elsewhere in the country from demanding that their areas also come under Islamic law.
"This is definitely a surrender," said Khadim Hussain of the Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy, a thinktank in Islamabad. "If you keep treating a community as something different from the rest of the country, it will isolate them."
Javed Iqbal, a retired judge, speaking on Pakistani television, said: "It means that there is not one law in the country. It will disintegrate this way. If you concede to this, you will go on conceding."
The deal, set to be announcedtomorrow, follows talks between the government and a local Islamic leader, Sufi Muhammad, who once led hundreds of men to fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan against the US-led coalition. He was freed by the Pakistani authorities after the restoration of democracy last year, in a move heavily criticised by Washington.
In an interview broadcast todayby the US television channel CBS, Zardari admitted that the future of Pakistan was in grave danger from the Taliban, who are present in "huge parts" of the country. Islamabad is under severe pressure from the US, Britain and other western allies to rein in the extremists, who fight both in Pakistan and Afghanistan and play host to al-Qaida.
Zardari said: "We are aware of the fact [the Taliban are] trying to take over the state of Pakistan. We're fighting for the survival of Pakistan. "
Zardari's wife, the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, was killed by Islamic extremists in 2007. "I lost my wife, my children's mother," the president said. "It's important to stop them and make sure that it doesn't happen again and they don't take over our way of life."
Hajji Adeel, a senior member of the Awami National party which runs the government of North West Frontier province that undertook the negotiations with Muhammad, said the main aim of the new law was to speed up the justice system. Under the new regulations, criminal cases would be disposed of within four months and civil cases in six months, he said.
The creaky colonial-era legal system in Pakistan means that cases drag on for years, sometimes decades, a major source of anger for ordinary people. "If six months ago, this [sharia] had started working in Swat, the intensity of the terror there would have been much less," said Adeel.
The ANP a proudly secular party, has come under sustained attack from the Taliban, and last week one of its members in the provincial parliament was killed by a roadside bomb.
The new law is a relatively mild form of sharia, with the aim of undermining support for the extremists and their populist demand for speedy Islamic justice. Religious experts, known as a qazi, will sit in the court, alongside a regular judge, to ensure that the rulings are in compliance with Islam.
However, many believe that the Taliban will not ultimately accept this form of Islamic law. Muhammad is not part of the Taliban and it is unclear how far his influence goes.
The Swat Taliban's ceasefire, described as a "goodwill gesture", will only last for 10 days, while it decides what to do. Muhammad has undertaken to tour the area to convince the militants to put down their arms. In Swat, the Taliban have for months been enforcing their brutal version of Islamic justice, which includes public floggings and summary executions. The Taliban are also entrenched across the tribal area.
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Dozens of Islamic extremists have returned to Britain from terror training camps in Somalia, the British security services believe.
Intelligence analysts are worried that they may attempt to launch attacks in this country or use the kudos from having trained and fought in Somalia to try to attract new recruits. The issue was raised by Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, in his first interview last month.
In the US, the outgoing head of the CIA, Michael Hayden, has said that Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia in late 2006 “catalysed” expatriate Somalis around the world.
An investigation for Channel 4 News, to be broadcast tonight, also reveals that a suicide bomber who grew up in Ealing is thought to have blown himself up in an attack in Somalia that killed more than 20 soldiers.
The incident is the first reported case involving a Somali based in Britain and will add to pressure on Scotland Yard and the Home Office to tackle the problem within the Somali community, which, at about 250,000 people, is the biggest in Europe.
“Pakistan rightly gets the most attention in terms of external threats,” a senior counter-terrorism source said. “But we believe we should focus more on the Horn of Africa and Somalia in particular.”
Two years ago Ethiopian forces occupied parts of Somalia after ousting the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) from the capital, Mogadishu – the latest chapter in a long history of conflict between the two countries.
The Ethiopians withdrew last month as part of a peace deal agreed between the Government and moderate Islamists, leaving African Union peacekeepers and Somali soldiers – although many believe that they will not be able to keep advancing extremists at bay.
The hardline Islamist militia al-Shabaab, treated as a terrorist organisation by the US, has taken advantage of Ethiopia's withdrawal to boost its control of the south. More than 16,000 people have been reported killed in the past two years of fighting.
Peter Neumann, a terrorism expert who runs the Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King's College London, told Channel 4 News: “The numbers I hear [going from Britain to Somalia] are 50, 60 or 70, but in reality we don't know. You don't need big numbers for terrorism. Somalia will never become another Pakistan, but that does not mean it is not a threat.”
Most Somalis in Britain entered the country as asylum-seekers within the past 20 years. They include Yasin Omar and Ramzi Mohammed, two of the four men convicted of the botched bombing of the London Underground on July 21, 2005.
An audio message from Osama bin Laden last month urged Muslims to send money or go to fight themselves in Somalia. “Such references are usually a good indicator,” Dr Neumann said. “The place is seen as an opportunity, from a jihadist point of view.”
Some Somali leaders say their community – already associated with gang and knife crime – is being unfairly targeted. But outside a West London mosque last week, several Somalis were adamant that they were entitled to fight for their homeland. “If American troops can go from Arizona to Iraq then someone can leave this area and go to Somalia,” one said.
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Senior Tory MP Ann Widdecombe warned last night that Britain had descended into “moral anarchy” and attacked Labour’s “failed” sex education policies in the row over 13-year-old father Alfie Patten.
The former Home Office minister said she felt despair when she heard about the circumstances surrounding the birth of his baby, Maisie Roxanne.
The baby’s mother, Chantelle Steadman, is 15.
Shocked Miss Widdecombe said that, contrary to the views of some “woolly” liberals, schoolchildren now need less sex education, not more.
Her comments came as police said there would be no criminal investigation into the case.
Maisie Roxanne was born weighing 7lb 3ozs at Eastbourne District General Hospital, East Sussex, six days ago.
Despite suggestions that her teenage mother had sex with other partners, baby-faced Alfie is said to be the father. He has just turned 13.
The baby is now living with Chantelle, her five brothers and sisters and their parents at a cramped council house in Eastbourne.
Alfie lives with his mother Nicola, 43, but spends much of his time at the Steadmans’.
Miss Widdecombe took aim at the parents of both Chantelle and Alfie.
She said: “This is the clearest indication of moral anarchy. What on earth were the parents doing allowing a 12 year old to impregnate a 14 year old? Both of them were below the age of consent, yet nobody appears willing to take any responsibility.
“There appears to have been inadequate supervision on the part of the parents. The state will now have to pick up the bill.”
She said the spotlight should now be on Maisie’s grandparents.
“Whether the baby is safe is now entirely down to the grandparents and whether they are fit to bring her up,” she said.
“They have both brought up children, some would say fairly unsuccessfully, but if they have brought them up safely, then you can’t really argue that the baby should be taken away.” Miss Widdecombe said that any demands for more sex education in schools were “grossly misplaced”.
She claimed that 12 year olds would not normally be thinking about sex, but for the “huge” emphasis on sex in today’s schools.
She went on: “Children should not be provided with contraceptives without parental consent. At the moment they can be provided without even parental knowledge.
“This kid Chantelle was quoted as saying that she was on the pill but that she missed one day.
“What on earth was she doing on the pill when she was under-age in the first place? It’s no good having an age of consent if you don’t enforce it.”
Outside the Steadmans’ home yesterday, police were enforcing a protective cordon.
Four officers arrived as mother and baby were driven away in two cars to a secret location on Friday night. As they blocked the road with a police car, it all seemed more in keeping with a celebrity getaway.
A Sussex police officer at the scene insisted: “We are just here to look after this community We want to make sure that everyone is safe and sound.”
It was not clear last night whether Alfie or his family would be demanding a DNA test after allegations from Chantelle’s neighbours that she had slept with other boys.
Some questioned whether a 12-year-old whose voice had not yet broken could even be capable of fathering a child.
However, a spokesman for the London Bridge fertility Centre, Britain’s largest sperm bank, said it was perfectly possible.
He added: “We have seen a gradual reduction in the age of puberty.
“Different parts of the body mature at different rates, so it would be possible for a boy of this age to
produce sperm even though his voice had not broken.” Alfie, whose story was revealed in The Sun newspaper, spent yesterday at the £400,000 detached home of his mother Nicola, along a private road in the nearby town of Hailsham, where his face could be glimpsed peering anxiously from a window.
He, too, was keeping a low profile as a big money deal was done for an exclusive interview, which is believed to have been arranged by celebrity agent Max Clifford.
Alfie’s mother appeared briefly to complain that the media attention meant her son had been unable to see his daughter for several days.
Neighbours confirmed that Steve and Penny Steadman, who have lived in Eastbourne for five years, were jobless and living on benefits.
“When they moved here, the lads in the family were a real nuisance in the street,” said one, who did not want to be identified.
“They used to tamper with the street lighting and stupid stuff like that but they have quietened down recently and they are not bad lads.
“The family exists on benefits but so do a lot of people in the same street.”
Neighbours confirmed that Alfie regularly spent the night at Chantelle’s home with her parents’ blessing before putting on his uniform and walking to lessons at a nearby school.
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Three men arrested by counter-terrorism police on a motorway were allegedly planning to leave Britain as part of a £1million aid convoy to Gaza, which was organised by former Labour MP George Galloway.
Security sources say the men aged 26, 29 and 36 from Burnley, Lancashire, had been under surveillance for two months in an operation connected to a potential threat of terrorism in the Middle East.
Nine men were arrested initially on Friday night as they drove west in two vans on the M65 near Preston. Six were later released without charge.
One of the two vans surrounded by police vehicles bore an image of the Palestinian flag on its side. The other had signs saying Stop Killing Children, Free Palestine and From Blackburn (UK) to Gaza.
The arrests were part of an ongoing operation by specialist officers from Lancashire Constabulary, Greater Manchester Police and the North West Counter Terrorism Unit. The operation has been monitored by MI5.
The three men were being held tonight at a Lancashire police station hours after the convoy.
Made up of more than 100 vehicles, they left London and boarded ferries from Ramsgate in Kent, to Ostend, Belgium, en route to Gaza.
The convoy included 12 ambulances and a fire engine and carried medicines, tools, clothes, blankets and shoe boxes full of children's treats.
Respect Party MP Mr Galloway,
who will help drive the convoy, declined to comment on the arrests.
His spokesman said that without the names of those arrested and their vehicle registration numbers, it would not be possible to say whether the men detained by police were part of the official convoy.
It will travel 5,000 miles through France, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt before arriving at Rafah in Gaza early next month.
Police today searched five houses in Burnley where those arrested were understood to have lived. One front door was removed from its hinges as police entered the house.
Chief Superintendent Neil Smith, of Lancashire Police, said: 'We will endeavour to carry out any searches as quickly as possible to minimise the impact on the area concerned.
'However, enquiries of this nature are complex and may take time to resolve.'
Tory MP Patrick Mercer, chairman of the Commons Counter-Terrorism Sub-Committee, said: 'This is another successful operation by our security forces that marks the ongoing threat no one must underestimate.'
A Lancashire police spokeswoman said: 'Three people were arrested at approximately 9pm on Friday on the M65 westbound motorway near Preston.
'The motorway was closed for a short period of time whilst a number of vehicles were seized.
'The arrests are part of an ongoing intelligence-led operation and investigation by Lancashire Constabulary and the North West Counter Terrorism Unit.'
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Nine men were arrested in a counter-terrorism operation after being stopped on a motorway by anti-terror police.
The men were travelling on the M65, near Preston, Lancashire when they were arrested last night in a joint operation by Lancashire Constabulary and the North West Counter Terrorism Unit.
Six of the men were later released without charge, while three men, aged 26, 29 and 36, remained in custody today.
It was understood that the operation was connected to a potential threat of terrorism overseas.
Specialist officers conducting a counter-terrorism operation were searching five houses today believed to be linked to the arrests.
Lancashire police said officers with local knowledge were being deployed in the areas where the searches were taking place, in Burnley, Lancashire, and nearby residents would be receiving a letter containing information.
Chief Superintendent Neil Smith said: 'This is a very sensitive time for all our communities and we are working hard to ensure everyone is kept up to date with as much information as we can give.
'We will endeavour to carry out any searches as quickly as possible to minimise the impact on the area concerned. However, enquiries of this nature are complex and may take time to resolve.
'I would like to thank local residents affected by these searches for their co-operation and ask that they remain patient. We will ensure people are kept updated in relation to the investigation as and when we can.'
Speaking about last night's arrests, a Lancashire police spokeswoman said: 'The people were arrested at approximately 9pm on the M65 westbound motorway near to junction one, which is near Preston.
'The motorway was closed for a short period of time whilst a number of vehicles were seized.
'The arrests are part of an ongoing intelligence-led operation and investigation by Lancashire Constabulary and the North West Counter Terrorism Unit.'
Photographs taken at the scene of last night's incident on the M65 appear to show two vans surrounded by police vehicles.
One van bears an image of the Palestinian flag on its side while the other has signs saying Stop Killing Children, Free Palestine, and From Blackburn (UK) to Gaza.
Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said today that it was assisting Lancashire Police with its investigation.
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The row over Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's ?116,000 Commons expenses has grown after neighbours challenged her claims about how much time she spends at lodgings with her sister in London.
Calls for an inquiry into Ms Smith's expenses were turned down after Parliament's sleaze watchdog accepted her assertion that her London 'digs' are her 'main home' because she is there most of the week - not at the family home in the Midlands where her husband and children live.
But Ms Smith's account has now been flatly contradicted by neighbours in South London who say she is often there for as few as two nights a week and spends little time there during the long parliamentary recesses.
Businessman Dominic Taplin and his wife Jessica, a manager for a charity, who live four doors from Ms Smith, have written to Commons officials claiming that she has not told the truth.
Mrs Taplin, 33, said: 'When I read that she says she spends most of the week here, I thought, "That is a fabrication."
'She is virtually never here on a Sunday as she claimed and you don't see much of her in the summer. I would say she spends no more than a third of the year here.'
Mr Taplin, 46, who works from home, said: 'You can tell when she is here because the police guards arrive first. They turn up mid-morning on Monday and leave mid-morning on Thursday.
'I cannot recall when they have been here any other nights of the week. I find her behaviour extraordinary.'
Both Mr and Mrs Taplin say they are prepared to give evidence if there is an official inquiry into Ms Smith's expenses.
The Home Secretary's version of events came under further pressure after she refused to say if she had paid capital gains tax - liable on second homes - on the house she and her husband Richard Timney sold in Redditch five years ago.
Nor would she say if she had obtained a council tax discount - available to people who do not live at their 'main home' - on her Midlands property. Ms Smith's local council also refused to discuss this.
The Taplins, who have lived in Ms Smith's sister's London street for three years, point out that they are not members of the Tory Party. Mrs Taplin said: 'I voted for Ken Livingstone to be London mayor but changed to Boris last year.'
Mr Taplin added: 'I have voted Tory in the past but I think Gordon Brown is doing a pretty good job and may vote for him next time.'
The Taplins' version of events was backed up by other neighbours who say they see little of Ms Smith.
Another resident who lives a few doors down from Ms Smith's lodgings, on the same side of the road, said: 'I see the policemen outside the house three mornings a week. It varies but I would say no more than three mornings a week.
'You really know when she's there - you can't miss two armed coppers standing on your road.'
One neighbour who has lived on the street since the Sixties said: 'I just can't believe it's her main residence. The policemen disappear for weeks.' Continued
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Due to Muslim demand, a subway store in Thornton Heath will be completely halal from Monday.
The popular sandwich chain will serve a range of certified halal meats which are prepared in accordance with halal guidelines from Monday 16.
Rachel Shaw, who holds the franchise for the fast food outlet, said: “I am really pleased to have converted the Thornton Heath Subway outlet into halal.
“It now offers customers halal Subs that are fresh, made-to-order and just the way they like them.
"I decided to convert due to popular demand from our customers.
“Subway aims to be at the heart of the community, and we are happy to offer subs that everyone can enjoy.
"It was our objective to ensure the taste of the halal products matches the taste of the Subway stores gold standard meats.”
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Britain's most powerful police body is being run as a private business with an annual income of around £18million.
The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), which oversees everything from anti-terrorism policy to speed cameras, was last night facing demands that it be disbanded, following a Mail on Sunday investigation into its activities which include:
- Selling information from the Police National Computer for up to £70 – even though it pays just 60 pence to access those details.
- Marketing ‘police approval’ logos to firms selling anti-theft devices.
- Operating a separate private firm offering training to speed camera operators, which is run by a senior officer who was banned from driving.
- Advising the Government and police forces – earning £32million of taxpayers’ money in the process.
- Employing retired senior officers on lucrative salaries.
Until now, ACPO’s central role in policing has not been questioned as it is seen as an essential, if sometimes controversial, public body writing the rules on police operations as well as campaigning on key issues such as the proposed 90-day detention for terror suspects and the DNA database.
But the organisation is not a public body, nor is it a police trade union or even a campaign group. It is a private company – a self-styled ‘global brand name’ – paid millions of pounds a year by the taxpayer to effectively run the nation’s police forces.
Because ACPO is a private company, members of the public cannot use the Freedom of Information Act to scrutinise its operations. Last night it came under fire from politicians and human rights lawyers, who called for its immediate reform.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights group Liberty, questioned whether ACPO’s role as a company with increasing national powers was ‘legal’. She said: ‘They need to be stopped in their tracks.’
At the centre of the controversy are the services ‘sold’ by ACPO and over which it has a monopoly.
The association is headed by former Sussex Chief Constable Sir Ken Jones, who earns £138,702 a year and receives a further £30,000 in pension contributions on top of his existing police pension.
Its unpaid board includes Sir Hugh Orde, Chief Constable of Northern Ireland, Sir Paul Scott-Lee, West Midlands Chief Constable, and Tim Hollis, Chief Constable of Humberside.
It also employs a number of former high-ranking police officers on lucrative short-term contracts.
Its staff bill is £1.4million a year – which averages out at £66,000 for each of its 21 employees, although that figure also includes pension contributions and retainers paid to former members of staff acting as consultants. Continued
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Police State is here and Now..
No longer can you photograph Police to use as public evidence against corruption and when miscarriage of Justice occurs. (Ed)
In that brief time not long after he became Prime Minister, when Gordon Brown was regarded as a serious political figure and one refreshingly less artful than his predecessor, he delivered a speech at the University of Westminster on liberty.
It was an erudite and thoughtful exposition of this country's difficult, and sometimes bloody, attempts to come to terms with the countervailing demands of individual liberty and state power.
I recall being impressed that a prime minister was making such a weighty and thought-provoking speech. I even kept a copy, though it can be found on the Number 10 website; and after last week's decision to ban a Dutch MP from visiting Britain because of his views on Islam, I thought it apposite to read it again.
"Too often in recent years the public dialogue in our country has undervalued the importance of liberty," Mr Brown said. "Now is the time to reaffirm our distinctive British story of liberty – to show it is as rich, powerful and relevant to the life of the nation today as ever; to apply its lessons to the new tests of our time."
Yet, not for the first time, what the Government does bears no resemblance to its rhetoric. From today, new counter-terrorism laws come into effect that will entrench a growing tendency by the police to prevent anyone taking photographs in public, especially if they (the police) are the subject. There has been a worrying increase recently in police arresting or seeking to prevent what is a lawful activity.
Andrew Carter, a plumber from Bedminster, near Bristol, took a photograph of an officer who had ignored a no-entry road sign while driving a police van. This might have appeared a somewhat petulant thing to do, but taking a photograph in a public place is not a crime.
Yet the policeman smashed the camera from Mr Carter's hand, handcuffed him, put him in the back of the van and took him to the police station, where he was kept for five hours. When he returned to answer bail the following week, he was kept at the station for another five hours. He was released without charge, despite an attempt by the police to claim some spurious offence of "assault with a camera".
Whereas in the past the police have not had the power to prevent photographs being taken of them, from today they have.
Under the new Counter-Terrorism Act it is an offence to take pictures of officers "likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism". This is such a catch-all measure that it can be used – and, in view of recent trends, will be used – to prevent photographs to which the police object merely by invoking counter-terrorist requirements.
While it is important for officers involved in such operations to maintain anonymity, many photographers fear these powers will be abused.
In an article in the British Journal of Photography, Justin Tallis, a freelance photographer, recounted how he was threatened while covering a protest against the BBC's decision not to broadcast a fundraising film for Gaza. He was approached by an officer who had just been photographed. According to Tallis, the officer tried to take his camera away, but gave up as other photographers captured the incident.
A few weeks ago, an amateur photographer was stopped in Cleveland by officers when taking pictures of ships. The photographer was asked if he had any terrorism connections and told that his details would be kept on file. According to the Government, while there are no legal restrictions on photography in public places, "there may be situations in which the taking of photographs may cause or lead to public order situations or raise security considerations".
The problem is that there are so many instances of counter-terror laws being invoked to stop perfectly innocent activities, such as trainspotting or bird watching, that many photographers do not believe such assurances.
There is a wider issue of creeping censorship which a new organisation, the Convention on Modern Liberty, is seeking to highlight with the publication today of a list of examples of this insidious development.
They include a demand by Suffolk police that Facebook shut down a page dedicated to an over-zealous traffic warden because it contained "hurtful criticisms"; proposed curbs on financial reporting during the banking crisis; a ban on students filming an interview in Parliament Square; the threatened arrest of two evangelical preachers for committing a "hate crime" by handing out Gospel leaflets in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham; the occasions when the police have reprimanded people for wearing T-shirts carrying political slogans; and, of course, the ban last week on Geert Wilders from showing a film on Islam to a group of parliamentarians.
In his speech on liberty, Mr Brown said: "The character of our country will be defined by how we write the next chapter of British liberty – by whether we do so in a way that respects and builds on our traditions, and progressively adds to and enlarges rather then reduces the sphere of freedom." At least it sounded good at the time.
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The “blame whites” mentality which grips the politically correct ruling elite has outdone itself in a new report which blames white police “racism” for the fact that more black and minority ethnic (BME) officers are dismissed for misconduct.
According to the report, issued by the famously anti-white Runnymede Trust and drawn up by one of the three people involved in the equally biased Macpherson study on “police racism,” black and minority ethnic groups are more likely to have been dismissed or required to resign compared with their white counterparts (8.5 percent and 1.7 percent respectively).
Instead of drawing the logical conclusion - namely that these officers were dismissed because of misconduct and their own personal behaviour - the Runnymede report blames “institutional racism” - in other words, whites.
The review also blames white police “racism” for the fact that BME candidates have not joined the police force in large enough numbers, and resign more often.
Dr Richard Stone, who, along with Dr John Sentamu, now Archbishop of York, and Tom Cook, the former West Yorkshire police chief, was one of three advisers to Sir William Macpherson, carried out the original inquiry into “police racism” following the Stephen Lawrence incident, called the review’s findings “dispiriting” and warned that the “police’s failure to address them would have serious repercussions on the streets of Britain’s inner cities. If it’s not addressed, this will explode in their faces. There’s a lot of resentment on the streets; there’s a lot of anger.”
In essence this latest report says that not only are whites to blame for the higher misconduct rate of BME officers, but that if those whites don’t do something about this, the BME community will cause “repercussions” on inner city streets.
This is nothing short of race hate blackmail, and will be dismissed as such by all right-thinking police officers and the public.
Recommended Reading: Racist Murder and Pressure Group Politics: The Macpherson Report and the Police
By Norman Dennis et al. Racist Murder and Pressure Group Politics shows that the Macpherson Report produced no evidence at all of racist policies in the Metropolitan Police. The Macpherson Report did not even produce evidence of any racist ‘bad apples’ among the officers who were involved in the investigation into the murder of Stephen Lawrence.
- Racist Murder shows that the evidence of the ‘unwitting racism’ of individual officers is ludicrous.
- Racist Murder accuses the Macpherson Inquiry of abusing the forms of a court of law to put individuals on trial for nebulous thought crimes.
- Racist Murder exposes the circular logic of the Macpherson Report.
- Racist Murder exposes the Macpherson Report’s low standards of proof and all-embracing definition of racism.
- Racist Murder proves that videotape evidence was misrepresented in the Macpherson Report.
- Racist Murder reveals that the Macpherson Inquiry ‘unwittingly’ took the term ‘institutional racism’ from an author who was himself a racist.
- Racist Murder tells the story of appalling and potentially life-threatening mismanagement by the Macpherson Inquiry. If the Macpherson Report applied its own logic to its own mismanagement, it would itself be shown to be racist.
- Racist Murder shows that the only irretrievable mistake in the Lawrence affair was not made by the police. It was made when murder suspects were privately prosecuted on hopelessly weak evidence by the Lawrences and their advisers. These suspects can never be tried again for the murder.
- Racist Murder demonstrates that the main result of the Macpherson Report has been to give yet another boost to crime and to deliver yet another blow to the effectiveness of the police and the security of the public.
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Sensational allegations that a minister persuaded the BBC not to report information that a Serbian hit team killed television personality Jill Dando will be aired in the High Court this week.
Barrister Ed Fitzgerald, QC, is set to make explosive revelations that cast a new light on the death of the popular Holiday and Crimewatch presenter.
His claims will put pressure on the Government and on the BBC to release all the information in its possession about a Serbian plot to kill Miss Dando.
Her murder is said to have been ordered in retaliation for the Nato bombing of a Serbian television station in Belgrade during the Balkans war.
Miss Dando, 37, had also angered Serbian leaders because she broadcast an appeal on behalf of Kosovan refugees.
Sources told the Sunday Express that Mr Fitzgerald is determined to reveal astonishing evidence, pointing the finger of blame at Serbia.
It will be claimed that BBC foreign correspondents met with a shadowy political group in Serbia after Miss Dando’s death as part of an investigation into her assassination on the doorstep of her home in Fulham, south-west London
on April 26 1999.
The group claimed to know the identity of the Serbian hit team sent to kill Miss Dando, who died from a single gunshot wound to the head. A specially adapted bullet was used to muffle the sound, indicating a professional hitman.
The journalists were told there was a plot to kill Dando because then Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic was furious over the Nato bombing of the Serbian television station on April 23. He knew some of those who died personally.
The BBC contacted the Government about the information it had been given but was told not to broadcast it as the report could compromise a security services operation involving MI5.
It is understood British spies were engaged in secret operations to monitor those in the Serbian government at the time and Serbs in Britain who supported Milosevic’s ethnic cleansing of Kosovans. It is not clear if Mr Fitzgerald, a respected defence barrister, will reveal the name of the minister involved.
Mr Fitzgerald spent years working on behalf of Barry George, 48, the misfit loner who spent eight years in prison
for her murder, although he did not represent George when he was cleared at an Old Bailey retrial last summer.
On Thursday at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, Mr Fitzgerald will act for Paul Cleeland in a complex judicial review. Mr Cleeland was jailed for life in 1973 for shooting gangland leader Terry Clarke a year earlier and served 25 years in jail. He vehemently protests his innocence and has been fighting a lengthy battle to clear his name.
He has argued that he was the victim of a cover-up and that the trial jury was not allowed to see evidence proving that the shotgun said to have been the murder weapon was faulty and could not be fired.
Mr Cleeland told the Sunday Express: "‘The information Mr Fitzgerald has on the Dando case will be raised as a way of illustrating how information can be suppressed.”
Mr Fitzgerald, who has represented Moors murderer Myra Hindley and Jamie Bulger killer Jon Venables, was not available for comment yesterday.
After Mr George was freed, Scotland Yard announced it would be conducting an internal review to re-examine lines of enquiry. It has refused to disclose information about what it has discovered.
Barry George has been living in Cork, Ireland, with his sister Michelle Diskin in recent months because he was tired of being pursued by journalists in London.
William Clegg QC, his barrister, said after he was cleared: “In considering a case of this complexity, the police need to keep an open mind as far as possible as to who is responsible.
“I think they did close their mind after the arrest of Barry George.”
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Government must be rubbing their hands with glee!
Extra staff are being drafted into Army recruiting offices to cope with a massive increase in youngsters desperate to avoid the dole by signing up.
Some centres report double the usual numbers coming through their doors while visitors to the Army’s recruitment website have risen by 17 per cent.
After years of struggling to swell their ranks, Army chiefs are putting the final touches to Operation Solomon, a summer recruitment blitz that aims to exploit the recession.
A Ministry of Defence source said: “Historically, there’s always been a correlation between recessions and recruitment, so you’d only expect us to prepare for that.”
Latest recruitment figures are expected to be even higher than they were at the end of last year, when inquiries at careers offices doubled to 24,500 in the last 10 weeks of 2008.
An Army spokesman in Colchester, Essex, home to one of the Army’s biggest garrisons, said: “There’s far more coming through the door now showing an interest.
“Whereas before we’d be getting 20 people coming in a week, that’s regularly been more like 40 over the last couple of months.”
In Shrewsbury, where the recruiting office covers a large swathe of the West Midlands, Herefordshire and Worcestershire, an Army spokeswoman said: “There’s been an upsurge in interest and additional measures are to be put in place.”
Although details of Operation Solomon are under wraps, one source confirmed that recruiting centres would be beefed up.
Despite the rising demand, the MoD, which spends about £14million a year on recruitment, tried to play down the economic links.
A spokeswoman said: “It is much too early to say whether the economic climate is having any effect on recruitment or retention.” But another source admitted: “Of course it’s good news for us if there is more interest because of
the economy.
“Not everyone who expresses an interest in signing up will join, but we will bring in extra clerical staff to handle this rise in interest.”
The MoD is privately hoping that Army pay will prove attractive to anyone worried about finding civilian jobs.
New entrants are paid a basic £13,000, with private soldiers able to earn between £16,200 and £25,200.
Saturday 14th February 2009
Only 500 out of 12,500 promised jobs for Brits
Brown’s pledge to provide “British jobs for British workers” lay in tatters last night after claims a new £7.5billion high speed rail network will create just 500 posts in this country.
Critics slammed the “crass” decision to hand a Japanese firm the contract to build the 125mph Super Express Trains (SETs).
Transport Minister Geoff Hoon sparked fury by proclaiming the controversial scheme will safeguard 12,500 UK jobs.
But MPs immediately dismissed the move as “Labour spin” and said in fact the majority of new jobs would go to Japanese workers.
The Tories said just an estimated 500 British jobs would be created in this country.
Furious Labour MP Bob Laxton said: “This is a crass decision which gives the Japanese an opportunity of getting into the UK market. I don’t believe for one moment the figure of 12,500 jobs.”
Tory Transport secretary, Theresa Villiers, said “progress was finally being made” for passengers but added: “This is typical spin from Labour.
“Only around 500 of the 12,500 jobs announced today will be created in the UK by the train builder Hitachi and Labour have produced no convincing evidence to back up the rest of their claims on jobs.
“This announcement raises further questions about Gordon Brown’s claims about British jobs for British workers.
“Geoff Hoon needs to stop the spin and tell the UK’s hard pressed train manufacturing industry the real truth about his decision on replacing intercity trains.”
The row once again exposed the Prime Minister’s betrayal of British workers after weeks of wildcat strikes staged in protest at British jobs being handed to foreigners.
Amid huge fanfare, Mr Hoon announced the fleet of SETs as “the single biggest investment in Inter City trains for a generation”.
Promising that the locos will start running in the UK by 2013, Mr Hoon said: “It is good news for the British Economy that over 12,500 jobs will be created and safeguarded and good news for passengers that we are taking the steps necessary to improve their rail journeys.”
In total, 1,400 locomotives and carriages will be built in Japan at Hitachi’s factory in Kasado, Japan.
These would be exported to Britain for final assembly at a new train factory, either at Ashby de la Zouch in Leicestershire, Sheffield, or at Gateshead in the North East.
But in a further blow, questions remained as to whether the engines and carriages would even be owned by Britain.
The Japanese firm would also build five maintenance depots, in Bristol, Reading, Doncaster, Leeds and West London, and upgrade existing depots throughout Britain to create 500 jobs.
The new Inter City scheme is set to roll into action on the East Coast mainline in 2013, and then the West Coast Mainline, with the promise that the engines will be faster, greener cheaper to run and carry a fifth more passengers that the existing 125s and 225s.
The announcement was welcomed as a boost to passengers sick of sub-standard rail services.
But rather than giving the contract to the Agility Trains consortium, formed by John Laing, Hitachi and Barclays, MPs said the deal should have been given to Derby-based firm Bombardier – Britain’s last train manufacturer – which employs 2,000 workers.
Derby North MP Mr Laxton said: “Hitachi will look for grants from the Government or regional development agencies, which Bombardier wouldn’t have because they are already based here.
He added: “It would have secured jobs in Derby and in the supply chain. I simply cannot understand why the Department for Transport has taken this decision.”
The RMT union demanded answers as to why rival bidder Bombardier did not get the order.
Secretary Bob Crow said: “We need to know why the order was not placed with Bombardier, which has established train-building capacity and a skilled workforce in Derby.”
He added: “There are a number of other unanswered questions, including who will own the trains.”
Tory MP Edward Timpson said the announcement would be a “huge disappointment” for Bombardier’s workers, who had already seen colleagues laid off last year.
Mr Hoon later attempted to back-peddle in parliament by claiming that the trains would create only up to 2,500 British jobs. He justified the earlier higher figure of 12,500 by saying that it was estimated that a series of British suppliers could also benefit. News Source
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Andrew Spence was one of the leaders of the 2001 Fuel Protest. Mr. Spence is a farmer and haulier who lives and works in County Durham.
As leader of a number of ‘rolling roadblocks’ on motorways and the blockade of the giant Jarrow refinery, Mr. Spence became a national hero during the Fuel Protest, which came close to toppling the Blair regime. This is part of an interview he later did with a sympathetic news outlet.
Interviewer: The 2001 Fuel Protest gave the Labour government an enormous fright and sparked copycat actions which ground several European countries to a halt as well. When and how did you get involved in it?
AS: Right from the very start. I was sitting in the Jolly Drovers in Leadgate with two mates, complaining as always about the crippling price of fuel. I had fourteen wagons on the road at the time. “Why don’t you do something about it then?” I was asked. I’m naturally quite shy at heart, but things were so desperate that I decided that I would. There was a Hunt meeting next door so I went straight round. All the fieldsports people were angry about the threatened hunting ban as well so they were immediately responsive. “How many people here are fed up with the cost of fuel?” I asked, and everyone put their hands up. So we decided there and then to do something about it.
Interviewer: How did you work out where to start?
AS: TransAction had tried rolling blockades on the motorways in the mid-eighties, but had been bought off. We decided to adopt their tactics. We announced that a convoy of wagons and farm vehicles would take a slow drive around the centre of Newcastle the Saturday before the Budget. The Monday before we had a meeting and only five people turned up, but we decided to go on with the protest anyway. We gave the story to the media and kept our fingers crossed as we drove to meet up at Birtley Truck Stop on the A1 near the Angel of the North. We couldn’t even get in! The place was overflowing with more than 300 trucks, tractors and taxis, and TV news helicopters were buzzing overhead. Apart from several fully loaded muckspreaders which the police turned back and everyone got through; we set off and our seven mile long convoy caused chaos! I was threatened with arrest, but we hit the national headlines. Would-be protesters started calling from all over the country and we realised that this could be big.
Interviewer: So how did you build a national network?
AS: I was called by a group of farmers in Monmouthshire who wanted to protest about fuel prices and the fact that the supermarkets and big dairies were making them sell their milk at less than the cost of production. Contacts from other parts of the country came as well and we held a meeting of just over a dozen would-be protest leaders and formed Farmers for Action.
As Gordon Brown hadn’t put up fuel duty in the Budget after the Newcastle demo we decided to hit the supermarkets next. Near the end of 2000 a group of thirty of us turned up late one night and blockaded the First Co-op Dairy in Blaydon. We were there for four hours in heavy rain, but by the end of the night word had got around and there were more than a hundred of us. The Co-op were so concerned that they rousted the Chief Executive out of bed in Leeds and he drove up to see us. We left the minute he arrived, having wrecked their schedules and made our point.
We knew that the protest would get publicity and that others would follow our example. The Co-op knew that too and tried to blackmail their milk suppliers into staying away. So we took sheep and beef farmers instead. Then we found out that they were bringing in sub-standard, untested, French milk to mix with ours, so we extended the protests to milk processors and then supermarket Distribution Centres. A typical Regional DC sends out fifty trucks an hour so even small and short pickets caused them major headaches. This gave other farmers confidence and the protests spread.
Interviewer: Who were the main players and how did you come to switch back to the fuel issue?
AS: Martin Falkingham from Yorkshire, David Handley and Brynley Williams from Wales, Paul Ashley from Cheshire and Maurice Vellacott from Devon were just some of the local leaders I soon got to know. Then Brynley Williams held a protest meeting in a cattle market in Wales and one of the farmers there suggested going to the Stanlow oil refinery. To start with just four tractors and fifteen farmers turned up, but then GMTV ran the story and over 1,000 joined them. The tanker drivers refused even to try to cross the picket lines and the story got even bigger.
Interviewer: So a lot of the success was media-driven?
AS: Absolutely. Media coverage and mobile phones were really what did it. I had three mobiles and they were all going virtually all the time. It was an irresistable story, and from the sympathy we got from the news crews it seemed as though they too wanted to see our little group take the Government down a peg or two. We already had a road blockade planned for that Sunday - cutting off all the main roads between England and Scotland. I went up there but then heard that the lads at Stanlow were coming under increasing pressure from the police and were getting jittery being the only ones blockading a refinery. So I passed the word around at the Alnwick demo, grabbed two friends and we drove by car to Jarrow refinery. By this time we were being followed everywhere by the police, but I just parked the car across the main gate and declared the refinery closed! Several police cars pulled in behind me and they started to argue, but then the next cars arrived and blocked them in too. The the wagons and tractors started turning up, along with the news cameras again. With Stanlow and Jarrow shut down, protesters were soon camped outside every refinery in mainland Britain.
Reader Submitted Link. Thank You Welshie
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Employment of UK-born workers declined by almost 280,000 in 2008, according to official figures released by the Office for National Statistics.
While the number of UK-born employees declined, the number of foreign staff employed by UK businesses rose by 214,000.
The employment figures were issued by the ONS at the same time as unemployment figures, showing the number of people out of work rose to 1.97 million between October and December, the highest level since 1997.
The figures showed that in the 12 months to fourth quarter of 2008, employment of all workers in the UK, both UK and non-UK born, fell by 59,000.
The number of foreign workers now stands at over 3.8m - up almost 2m from a decade ago.
At Prime Ministers questions Gordon Brown said the percentage of foreign born workers in the UK - 8% of the workforce - was "lower than in many other countries".
Staff in the UK staff have recently been protesting in Nottingham and Scotland over the employment of foreign workers, claiming that they are forcing them out of work.
The European Union recently stated that it will examine rules that govern that free movement of EU workers - a ruling that could affect small business' employment policies. News Source
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GPs will be paid bonuses for persuading teenagers to have long-lasting contraceptive implants and jabs without their parents' knowledge, it has emerged.
From next year, doctors are to receive the payments for encouraging young women to use long-acting methods of contraception rather than taking the Pill each day.
They will be pressed to tell those prescribed the morning-after pill that an injection or coil would be better to prevent pregnancies.
Ministers say the move is necessary as many teenagers fail to take the Pill regularly and do not use condoms properly.
But campaigners condemned the payments as bribes. They warned that the measures would lead to thousands of underage girls being given contraception without the knowledge of their parents.
They said the contraceptives would encourage promiscuity and fuel the rise in sexually-transmitted infections.
The plans were revealed by Health Secretary Alan Johnson and Schools Secretary Ed Balls yesterday as part of a strategy on the young.
Ministers believe traditional contraceptive methods have had little impact on the teenage pregnancy rate, which remains the highest in Western Europe.
Instead, they want teenage girls to use contraceptive jabs and implants or intra-uterine coils, which can last between three months and five years.
Ministers say those aged 16 to 24 account for nearly of all diagnosed sexually-transmitted infections, despite making up just 12 per cent of the population.
The document said: 'We have evidence that young people have very limited knowledge of contraceptive methods - particularly the safe and very effective, long-acting,
reversible methods of contraception (LARC) - to prevent repeat abortions or births.'
Some £27million a year will be invested to improve access to contraception.
'Identified priorities for this funding include teenage pregnancy 'hotspot areas'.
'We have made clear that this funding should be used to ensure that all young people have easy access to high quality contraception advice, including LARC, and to improve training of health professionals in providing contraception-From 2009-10 onwards, GPs will be given greater incentives, through the Quality and Outcomes Framework, to provide advice on sexual health - specifically advice on contraception, particularly long-acting methods.'
GPs receive about a third of their salary, which is performance-related, through this framework. From next April, they will be paid every time they give a teenager advice on sexual health, particularly on long-acting contraception.
Doctors will be given the money if they achieve three indicators. Each point is worth about £124 for the practice. Continued
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An NHS hospital boss criticised the Government's new computerised medical records system today, saying it cost his trust an extra £10 million and meant fewer patients could be seen.
Andrew Way, chief executive of Hampstead's Royal Free Hospital, in north west London, said staff were 'incredibly disappointed' with the IT upgrade on trial at the hospital.
The National Programme for IT (NPfIT) aims to create a centralised medical records system for 50 million patients in England at a cost of more than £12 billion.
The Government believes this will benefit patient care and could prove vital in an emergency.
The Royal Free began trialling the e-records system last summer.
Mr Way told the BBC: 'I think it is very disappointing that the work we had to do as a trust has caused our staff so much heartache and hard work.
'Many of the medical staff are incredibly disappointed with what we have got. I have personally apologised for the decision to implement the system before we were really clear about what we were going to receive. I had been led to believe it would all work.'
He said the hospital spent an extra £4 million to get the system working, with added administration costs including 40 extra staff to handle the added workload.
And he said a further £6 million was effectively lost because fewer patients and problems with the system meant the hospital was unable to bill other parts of the NHS for work done.
He also said the Royal Free had been unable to invest in new equipment and out-patient bookings were taking four times as long.
Last month the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) warned of further delays to the scheme and described progress as 'very disappointing'. Continued
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Church Excuses for Marxist oppression
Being made jobless in the recession can come as a relief, a senior Church of England bishop has claimed.
Those sacked 'seem to be relieved to get off the treadmill and to be given an opportunity to reconsider what they really want out of life', the Bishop of London, the Right Reverend Richard Chartres said.
Dr Chartres suggested that the credit crunch could give Britons a chance to 'reboot our sense of what a truly flourishing human life consists of'.
The third most senior figure in the Church added: 'It is difficult to know whether to sympathise more with those who have lost their jobs or those who are left carrying even greater loads with higher targets and fewer colleagues.'
Unions reacted sceptically.
A TUC spokesman said: 'You don't have much time for finding yourself when you're living on £60-a-week jobseeker's allowance.'
The praise for unemployment from the Bishop contrasts with the message put out by some of his colleagues, who have tried to sympathise with the problems faced by those thrown out of work.
Last month the Church published prayers for the recession which acknowledged the pain and confusion of redundancy, and yesterday Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu expressed his concern for 'individual hardship and families in need.'
Dr Chartres, however, said that redundancy could help ease the 'crack-berry culture' shared by many workers in his diocese.
'The 'crack-berry culture' is dangerously addictive and switching off from it is notoriously difficult,' he said;
The bishop said his diocese was trying hard to help those laid off in the slump.
Around 150,000 people in the diocese, which covers London north of the Thames, including the City.
Those Preaching to us are not enduring ANY Hardships
Bishop Chartres, whose job is not under threat because of the downturn, is paid a stipend of £57,040 a year.
However, he does not have to pay a mortgage. The bishop and his family live in a 'see house' provided free by the Church in the Old Deanery, a grade one listed Wren house next to St Paul's Cathedral.
The apartment was refurbished for him at a cost of £300,000 in 1995.
Dr Chartres, a father of four, responded to criticism of the cost of his housing by saying the accommodation used by his bachelor predecessor was inadequate and that he needed a larger residence fit for 'a public person involved in public life', rather than an 'office wallah' in a 'suburban villa'.
Last month the CofE published a 'prayer on being made redundant' which read: 'Redundant - the word says it all - useless, unnecessary, without purpose, surplus to requirements. Thank you, Heavenly Father, that in the middle of the sadness, the anger, the uncertainty, the pain, I can talk to you. Hear me as I cry out in confusion, help me to think clearly, and calm my soul. News Source
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Two London police community support officers who patrol government buildings have been arrested over drug and sex assault allegations, only days after a Met report revealed that a number are being disciplined for misconduct.
One 19-year-old PCSO was held on Wednesday following claims that he groped and sexually assaulted a woman colleague.
Another, a 24-year-old, was arrested on suspicion of drug-taking yards from St James's Palace in Pall Mall.
Both men are based in Westminster and patrol the sensitive government security zone containing potential terror targets in central London.
The arrests come days after a report disclosed that London's community support officers are constantly getting-into trouble because they are bored and unmotivated.
The Met review found a number of the civilian patrol staff - nicknamed "plastic police" - are being disciplined for misconduct such as drink driving, other motoring offences and inappropriate behaviour.
The majority of London's PCSOs work in Westminster patrolling potential terror targets.
A police superintendent has now issued an email to all 250 or so Westminster PCSOs warning them about their behaviour. Insiders say they work 12-hour shifts and are given little responsibility. Senior Met officers are said to be concerned about not offending the Police Federation by giving the PCSOs more powers.
The 19-year-old officer is alleged to have groped a woman PCSO on duty and sent inappropriate text messages. He has been placed on restricted duties pending further investigation.
The 24-year-old was arrested with two other men as they sat in a car in Carlton Gardens, a secluded cul-de-sac off Pall Mall. Police found an allegedly illegal white powder in the car.
The report found PCSOs made up more than half of all police staff gross misconduct cases during the past financial year despite only making up one fifth of the workforce.
In more than half the cases, they were sacked or reprimanded for criminal offences. Others were disciplined for behaving inappropriately.
Martin Tiplady, the Met's director of human resources, said: "Some [PCSOs] felt as though they were 'glorified security guards'. This led to feelings of boredom and reduced motivation."
PCSOs were introduced in 2002 to increase the uniformed police presence on the streets. News Source
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Pakistan has admitted for the first time that the terrorist attack on Mumbai was at least partly masterminded from inside its borders.
The statement by a senior official represented a major reversal of Islamabad's position, with its government previously only conceding that the lone surviving gunman was from Pakistan but consistently denying any further link between the country and the attacks in November in which 10 terrorists killed 179 people in a three-day assault.
Rehman Malik, the head of Pakistan's interior ministry, also revealed that six men suspected of masterminding the attack on India's commercial capital had been arrested and now faced criminal charges for allegedly helping to plan the outrage from within Pakistan.
He said that they included Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and Zarar Shah, two senior leaders of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the terrorist group accused by India of orchestrating the attacks.
That pressure intensified significantly earlier this week when the leader of India's Congress party, Sonia Gandhi, warned Pakistan not to "mistake its patience for weakness" and India's army chief said the country was ready to launch "surgical strikes" on Pakistan if deemed necessary.
India's foreign ministry welcomed Mr Malik's admission as a "positive development" and said that it would send a dossier to Islamabad naming 16 suspects. Continued
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A Teen who blackmailed a business man and threw petrol bombs at his house has had his sentence almost halved at London’s Court of Appeal.
In June last year Shoban Ahmed Butt, of Kings Road, in Prestwich, pleaded guilty to blackmail, making explosives, causing an explosion, committing and act with intent to cause an explosion and possessing a prohibited weapon.
At Manchester Crown Court he was given a seven year jail sentence, but last week his sentence was slashed. Top judges at the Court of Appeal heard that Butt was remorseful for what happened, reducing his sentence to four years.
Mr Justice Blake, sitting with Mr Justice Burnett, was also told that the 18-year-old was naive, having committed the offences when he was 17, and had made good progress behind bars.
Butt wants to take up a technical apprenticeship and has also been working with a psychiatrist while locked up. In reducing his sentence, Mr Justice Blake said that Butt had not been particularly sophisticated in what he had done and had left numerous clues to his guilt.
The court heard that Butt demanded his victim - who he blamed for a property deal which went wrong - pay him £30,000 and sent threatening letters and text messages.
When the money didn’t appear, he threw two petrol bombs at his victim’s house, causing damage to cars on the driveway.
He was arrested when he came to collect the £30,000 in a park and police found literature on bomb making and equipment to carry out further attacks at his home.
Forensic evidence, including fingerprints, also linked him to offences. He pleaded guilty on the basis that he intended to scare, rather than harm, his victim. News Source
Reader Submitted Link. Thank You Welshie
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He has already been accused of ungentlemanly behaviour after circulating details of a colourful private conversation with the Mayor of London.
Now senior Labour MP Keith Vaz appears to have forgotten the great tradition of letting women and children go first.
After being upgraded on a recent family trip to India, the former Home Office minister and his lawyer wife Maria enjoyed first-class seats on Jet Airways, described by the airline as like 'your own private bedroom 30,000ft above the earth'.
Meanwhile their children, Luke, 13, and 12-year-old Anjali, were left in lower-grade seats further back in the plane. Mr Vaz revealed details of the upgrade on the House of Commons Register of Members' Interests.
He said: 'On 28 December 2008 and 10 January 2009 my wife and children and I were upgraded on flights from London to Mumbai from standard class to business class and first class by Jet Airways.' But a spokesman for the MP confirmed that it was Mr Vaz, 52, and his 49-year old wife who took the best seats on offer.
Jet Airways boasts that there are only eight passengers per cabin in first class, with each enjoying a seat that turns into a 90-inch long flat bed, and a private wardrobe.
It adds: 'Close the dual sliding doors to create your own private suite, offering unrivalled privacy and more personal space than one can imagine.' The in- flight entertainment includes a 23in flat-screen TV with a choice of 75 films and TV programmes on demand.
Vaz could also have enjoyed a five-course meal of 'world-class cuisine' and have been provided with lip balms, facial sprays, sleeper suits, eye masks, slippers and body lotion, should he have wanted any.
This week, Mr Vaz apparently circulated minutes of an extraordinary private phone conversation with London Mayor Boris Johnson among members of the Home Affairs Select Committee.
The mayor was said to have repeatedly used the F-word during the call and accused Mr Vaz, chairman of the committee, of talking 'bull****'.
The two clashed after Mr Vaz questioned Mr Johnson's account of the events surrounding the arrest of Tory immigration spokesman Damian Green in November. The conversation took place on February 4, the day after Mr Johnson appeared before the committee.
Mr Vaz , whose parents are from Goa, India, was elected Labour MP for Leicester East in 1987. He became a junior minister in 1999 at the Lord Chancellor's Department and in the same year was promoted to the Foreign Office as minister for Europe.
He has been chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee since 2007. News Source
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The foster mother struck off for allowing a Muslim girl to convert to Christianity took the child in after she was threatened with an arranged marriage.
The woman, a devout Christian, was asked to care for the teenager after the authorities learned of her abusive family background. Her father beat her just for chatting to boys and warned he would haul her off to Pakistan to marry against her will, a friend claimed.
But council officials were angered when the girl chose to be baptised. They insist the foster mother failed in her duty to preserve the girl's original religion. As a result, the girl was removed and the foster mother struck off the register last November, despite having worked with children for ten years with a perfect record.
Neither the carer, who has looked after more than 80 children, nor the girl, who is now 17, can be identified. But a friend of the girl claimed yesterday: 'Her dad is a very strict Muslim who could get violent. One time he hit her with a belt just because she chatted with a couple of boys.
'Another time he beat her over and over and said he would take her to Pakistan and make her marry. 'She really didn't want that. She was very frightened. Her dad would shout and swear at her and told her that she'd shamed the family. 'Her mother didn't really do anything to protect her.'
After the local authority became aware of the situation the girl was removed from her family and placed with the carer, a single mother of two. The foster mother says she initially tried to discourage the girl from attending church and offered to take her to a mosque instead.
But the girl, who was 16 at the time, was determined to go to church and after two months chose to be baptised. The woman said it had never occurred to her that she would be taken off from the register.
The move has stripped her of her sole income and she has had to move into a one-bedroom flat. Her lawyer Nigel Priestley said the local authority has agreed to review the case next month. It is the start of a process which could lead to her being reinstated as a foster parent.
Mike Judge, from the Christian Institute, which is funding her case, said: 'The girl in question told her own social workers, "I intend to go to church, I intend to convert". 'In any free society people must be free to change their religion.'
The case follows the controversy over Caroline Petrie, 45, the Christian nurse in Somerset suspended without pay in December for offering to pray for an elderly female patient. She was reinstated last week. News Source
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England's biggest St George's Day parade is facing the axe after councillors said many of those attending it were racist.
For the last decade up to 15,000 have assembled in the town of West Bromwich under the slogan 'Forever England, For Everyone'.
Children and parents from all over the country parade through the Black Country town waving St George flags and marching to rousing anthems such as Jerusalem.
In a letter to the organisers, one councillor, Yvonne Davies, said the parade created an 'unhealthy atmosphere' and inspired young boys to be racist.
She wrote: 'It is not only the parade which is the problem, but the tribal excitement it creates.'
The West Bromwich St George's Day parade started in 1998 and began as a fairly modest affair with 5,000 turning up. Now three times that attend the two-mile parade in April. Fire Service and Scout Association bands have played, the British Legion lends its support and each year ex-servicemen attend. Continued
A Huge annual procession through the centre of High Wycombe to mark a Muslim holy day will take place in March.
Rolling road closures will be put on place whilst the procession to mark the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad takes place around several streets in the town centre, on Sunday, March 15.
It will start from the Green Street Mosque, travel down Desborough Road and Bridge Street and onto Oxford Road and on to Castle Street.
From there worshippers will walk down Corporation Road, turn right along the High Street and into Paul's Row, then through the underpass and up to Wycombe Hospital where they will stop for short prayers for the sick.
From here they will make their way back to the Mosque in Green Street.
Roads closures will start from 11.30am and last until 2.30pm.
Sarah Widows, of Buckinghamshire County Council's Highways Department, said the parade is expected to take about two hours.
She said: "Rolling road closures will be in place. Police will stop traffic to allow the parade to pass, before reopening the road and allowing traffic to flow again." News Source
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The number of attacks on Jews in Britain has risen sharply since Israeli attacks began on Gaza last December, a charity has said.
The Community Security Trust, a charity working to protect Jews in the UK, says more than 250 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded in four weeks.
They include property vandalism, verbal threats and some physical attacks, most of which centred on north London.
The same period last year saw just 27 incidents, according to the trust.
Synagogue fire
Among the crimes recorded by the trust were violent street assaults, hate e-mails and graffiti threatening British Jews.
There was one report of an arson attack on a synagogue in Brondesbury, north-west London, and other cases of racist graffiti and young groups chanting anti-Semitic slogans. The trust says schoolchildren have also been singled out for verbal abuse and bullying.
The incidents took place in predominately Jewish areas, including Golders Green and Stamford Hill in north London, as well as parts of Salford and Bury in Greater Manchester.
Just after Labour came to power
Since 2000, there has been an upward trend in racially or religiously aggravated assault, peaking around 2006 and falling slightly since then. Continued
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BNP leader Nick Griffin has joined the nearly 30,000 others who as of 2pm GMT have signed an online petition supporting Dutch politician Geert Wilders.
The petition calls upon all freedom loving people to boycott all Dutch goods if the government of that country continues with its prosecution of Mr Wilders.
“I wrote in the comments section of the petition that the Dutch nation, which successfully stood up in the past to Spanish clerical fascism, should show the same resolve in standing up to modern Islamo-fascism,” Mr Griffin told BNP News.
The petition reads: “To: The Dutch Government:
WHEREAS Geert Wilders has exercised his fundamental human right of freedom of expression and spoken out, with facts and evidence, of the threat posed by radical Islam;
WHEREAS certain elements within Islamic communities have threatened a boycott of Dutch goods if Geert Wilders is not punished by the Dutch government for exercising his freedom of expression; and
WHEREAS certain elements in Dutch industry and the Dutch government are suggesting that Geert Wilders be prosecuted civilly or criminally, in order to prevent such a boycott;
IT IS RESOLVED that, in the event that the Dutch government attempts, in any way, to punish or prosecute Geert Wilders, civilly or criminally, for exercising his freedom of expression, the undersigned will initiate a boycott of any and all Dutch goods.”
(Image: A front page of Holland’s De Telegraaf newspaper, reporting on the death sentence passed on Mr Wilders by Al-Qaeda. The headlines read: “Al-Qaeda orders death sentence: Jihad Against Wilders”).
* Recommended Reading: Jihad: Islam’s 1,300 Year War on Western Civilisation
By Arthur Kemp. For centuries, violent Muslims have been trying to capture Europe for Islam. Sweeping out from its origin in Saudi Arabia, Islam has expanded through violent conquest into North Africa, the Middle and Near East, and very nearly into Europe itself, attacking through Spain, Italy, and the Balkans. Each time, the Islamic hordes were turned back by a united European military effort.
Today, the Islamic invasion is not being carried out with sieges, scimitars, or cannon, but rather by immigration, birth rates, and demographics.
Given current trends, Europe is set to be overrun before the end of this century.
This book puts the current crisis into historical perspective, showing that instead of being a “religion of peace,” violent Islam has, in fact, been waging war on all its self-appointed opponents since its inception.
Finally, this book dares to say what must be done if Europe is to avoid succumbing to the new invasion. The choice is hard, but is one which will determine whether Western Civilisation lives or dies. Link to where it can be Purchased
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While physical attacks on British Jews continue to rise, the Government prefers to devote its efforts to preventing the non-existent attacks on British Muslims.
It is a symptom of Labour’s obsession with the virtual: real-life anti-Semitism is increasing, and little is done; potential anti-Islamism is spied afar, and the full force of the law is unleashed.
Geert Wilders was humiliatingly detained by plain clothes border guards on arrival at Heathrow airport. They held his arms as he was escorted past passport control to a secure immigration holding area where he was subject to interrogation. He was then deported.
"Is this how Great Britain treats a democrat?" asked Mr Wilders, as he was unceremoniously led away.
He accused the Government of ‘weakness and cowardice’, calling them ‘the biggest bunch of cowards in Europe’, observing that Britain's freedom of speech had been ‘set back centuries’. He exhorted the British: “Be brave. Be a defender of free speech. If you don't you are weak. You are cowards. Your country has already taken a big step in the direction of Islamicisation."
It is noteworthy that Mr Wilders has already shown his film to Denmark's parliament and is due to attend a screening in Italy and the US House of Representatives in the coming weeks.
Will he be admitted to the Land of the Free?
The Home Office refused him entry on the grounds he ‘would threaten community security and therefore public security’.
Their statement said: "The Government opposes extremism in all its forms. It will stop those who want to spread extremism, hatred and violent messages in our communities from coming to our country, and that was the driving force behind tighter rules on exclusions for unacceptable behaviour that the Home Secretary announced in October last year."
Unacceptable behaviour? What is Mr Wilder’s unacceptable behaviour? He has beliefs and opinions; he expresses thoughts and ideas. But has not engaged in violence, incitement, or been found guilty of any illegal behaviour.
The Government’s decision is a spectacular own goal. Geert Wilders would have continued in relative obscurity if he had been admitted.
The ban has raised the profile of him and his film, resulted in hundreds of thousands more viewings as people’s curiosity is aroused, and is an absolute gift for the extreme-left BNP.
We appear to live under a regime in which those who actually behave illegally may excuse their behaviour by apportioning blame to the one who expressed the opiniojn which provoked them.
Mr Wilders criticises Islam; Muslims march, threaten and attack Parliament; Mr Wilders is arrested. Israel attacks Gaza; Muslims march, threaten and attack the police; Israel supporters are ordered to take down their Star of David flags. It is difficult to fathom why the police have not arrested Salman Rushdie for his book 'The Satanic Verses', or Tony Blair for bestowing upon him a knighthood. The former is manifestly critical of Islam, and therefore may be deemed guilty of incitement; and the latter was a provocative recognition which certainly led to protests.
But it is a curious state of affairs that the EU’s ‘free movement of people’ means that the British Government can do nothing to prevent Dutch thieves, fraudsters, murderers, rapists and paedophiles from entering the UK. But they set such legislation aside when it comes to barring a democratically-elected Dutch politician who talks about the sources of terrorism.
Mr Wilders has been accused of hypocrisy and double standards over his demand for freedom of speech alongside his calls for the Qur’an to be banned.
The banning of books is indeed something with Cranmer does not agree, but one must understand that Mr Wilders is articulating a view within the context of the Netherlands, which has banned ‘Mein Kampf’. It is his assertion that both books are concerned with totalitarian ideology and that both may incite violence which leads to his call for consistency.
One may not agree with an awful lot of what Mr Wilders says, but barring entry to the country, censorship and silencing are no substitute for debate and discussion.
But Muslims are divided on the Government’s handling of this issue.
A spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain said: "Geert Wilders has been an open and relentless preacher of hate - there is little difference between his views and those of the far right. Mr Wilders' xenophobic views have been identified as repugnant by a Dutch court, and is now confirmed by his official exclusion from the United Kingdom."
Mohammed Shafiq, the chief executive of the Muslim youth organisation the Ramadhan Foundation, supported the government's ban: "His hatred of Islam is based on fiction and his presence in the UK may lead to community tensions. Mr Wilders and his fascist views are not welcomed to our country where we pride ourselves as a multi-faith society."
Lord Ahmed said other Muslim peers shared his concerns, and stressed that Mr Wilders' views would certainly present a threat to public order.
But the eminently sensible, manifestly enlightened and utterly reasonable Anjem Chaudary insists that Mr Wilders should not have been barred.
The ‘former lieutenant’ to Omar Bakri said: “Rather than banning him, it would be wiser to take part in open and public debate on Islam and whether it offers a better solution than capitalism.”
He appears to have forgotten that he recently avocated death to those who insult Islam. Perhaps he wishes to be incited to attack a few passing Jews? News Source
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Britain was once renowned around the world for defending people's right to speak out. Not any more, says Philip Johnston.
The refusal to admit Dutch MP Geert Wilders to Britain yesterday marks a further retreat from this country's traditions of free speech. It stands in stark contrast to what happened exactly 20 years ago tomorrow, when Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa calling for the death of Salman Rushdie for insulting the Prophet Mohammed in his book The Satanic Verses.
In retrospect, that was a turning point in the country's history of free speech, an event that appeared to demonstrate indomitability, yet turned out to be a defeat. An unambiguous stand was taken on Rushdie's behalf by the government of the day, which denounced the threat to his life and broke off diplomatic relations with Iran. Sir Geoffrey Howe, then foreign secretary, told the Commons: "This action is taken in plain defence of the right within the law of freedom of speech and the right within the law of freedom of protest."
Despite mass book burnings, protests around the world, including in Bolton and Bradford, and threats of violence, the work continued to be published and sold. How could it be otherwise? This was Britain, after all, the citadel of free speech. We would not be brow beaten into denying the rights of one of our citizens, or anyone else for that matter, from having their say, however controversial or offensive their opinion might be.
Sadly, the past two decades have seen a pusillanimous flight into cowering capitulation.
We seem to have forgotten what free speech entails, how hard it was fought for and how important it is to defend. It is the value with which this country is most associated throughout the world.
It is why Britain has been home, over the centuries, to so many political dissidents who would have been persecuted elsewhere, and why those who live in autocracies that brook no criticism tune into the BBC World Service.
They see this as a place able to accommodate opinions that are obviously crazy, offensive or even seditious, a country where a view can be held and expressed, provided – and this has always been true – that it does not foment violence.
Geert Wilders is an anti-Islamist who regards the Koran as inherently inflammatory and believes he is justified in saying so.
He has made a 17-minute film, Fitna – an Arabic word meaning test of faith – setting out this thesis and was invited to show it at a private screening in the House of Lords. The film can be seen on the internet, so there is no question of stopping its dissemination.
It contains some unpleasant images of bomb explosions, of captured hostages facing death and of chanting mobs interlaced with passages from the Koran.
Wilders claims that these verses from the holy book of Islam are being used today to incite modern Muslims to behave violently and anti-democratically.
You may think he is wrong to say this; you may agree with him; you might, like the lords who invited him to Britain, think it is something worthy of discussion, given the obvious problems caused around the world by radical Islamism and the violence perpetrated in the name of the religion. It is hard, in a free country, to understand why it is a view that must be suppressed.
What, then, possessed the Home Office to ban Wilders – an unprecedented action against a democratically-elected politician from a European state, who is entitled to free movement within the EU? By any measure, it was an extraordinary decision; yet it was not even raised in parliament, the supposed guardian of our freedoms, though some MPs have commented on the ban, largely to support it.
Were Wilders a terrorist preaching violence against particular groups, it could be understood on public order grounds.
The order issued by Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, read: "The Secretary of State is of the view that your presence in the UK would pose a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat to one of the fundamental interests of society.
The Secretary of State is satisfied that your statements about Muslims and their beliefs, as expressed in your film Fitna and elsewhere would threaten community harmony and therefore public security in the UK."
Yet what possible threat to public security is posed by a Dutch MP showing a film, in private, to a smattering of peers on a Thursday afternoon in February? Of itself, the film does not call for violence against Muslims; indeed, it suggests that Islam is a cause of violence, a view with which you are entitled to agree or feel strongly about, but not to prohibit.
The reason for the ban appears to have been the possibility of protests by some Muslim organisations against Wilders's visit.
In other words, his freedom to express a view and the liberty of peers to hear it in an institution supposedly devoted to free speech, were set aside in the face of intimidation – the opposite of what happened in the Rushdie case, even if that author was forced into hiding.
What is particularly insidious is the application of double standards. One of those most opposed to Wilders's visit is the Muslim peer Lord Ahmed, though he denies allegations that he warned parliamentary authorities that 10,000 demonstrators would take to the streets. Yet two years ago, Lord Ahmed invited Mahmoud Abu Rideh, a Palestinian previously detained on suspicion of fundraising for groups linked to al-Qaeda, to Westminster to meet him.
When he was criticised for doing so, he said it was his parliamentary duty to hear Rideh's complaints. He does not appear to see any contradiction with the position he now adopts against his fellow peers.
Had a foreign parliamentarian who disliked Christians and considered the Bible to be inflammatory planned a visit to Britain, does anyone imagine he would have been prevented from doing so? No, and neither should he have been. This must work for everyone.
The arrest and possible prosecution of Rowan Laxton, a Foreign Office diplomat, for railing at the Israeli invasion of Gaza from his exercise bike in the gym, is the latest example of an equally sinister development – the denunciation of opinions expressed in private, as with Carol Thatcher's "golliwog" comments.
Free speech is about understanding that some people hold a different view from you, whether you like it or not. When we start to alert the "authorities" to thought crimes we really are one step away from the dystopian world that Orwell invented as a warning, not a prophecy.
The Government that has treated our liberties in such a cavalier way is having none of this, of course. David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said the film made by Wilders was "full of hate" and therefore fell foul of British laws, though he admitted that he had not seen it and therefore could not judge. But, in any case, is he right? Is it against the law?
People have always been free under the criminal law to speak their minds, provided they did not, in doing so, incite others to commit violence or infringe public order.
Rabble-rousers trying to whip up the mob have never been the beneficiaries of this latitude: there is, in other words, a difference between license and liberty. However, it is necessary to demonstrate that the words complained of are likely to stir up hatred and public disorder, not merely to complain that they are unpleasant or objectionable to some.
Imams have been allowed to continue preaching in mosques when it could be argued that they have overstepped this mark, as when they have called for the death of homosexuals or Jews.
Wilders is no advertisement for free speech. After all, he wants the Koran to be banned. But that is not the point. It is what this affair says about us, not him, that matters.
Is Britain now adopting a position where people who support suicide bombers and jihad are able to make known their opinions without legal challenge, whereas those who oppose them cannot?
The very people who in 1989 were demanding the murder of Salman Rushdie for writing a book are today leading the charge against a Dutch MP for making a film.
The fundamental difference is that 20 years ago, the government supported free speech; today, it has cravenly surrendered.
It is simply not good enough to say that Wilders should not be heard because he might provoke a backlash from those who do not like him or his views. That is not upholding the law. That is appeasement. News Source
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An Air ambulance will bring Guantanamo Bay terror suspect Binyam Mohamed to Britain — at taxpayers’ expense.
Foreign Secretary David Miliband also sent a medic to treat Mohamed, who is on hunger strike.
The Ethiopian — whose right to live in Britain expired five YEARS ago — was set to arrive yesterday, but was too ill.
A Commons statement last night read: “The visit will help us make preparations for his return.
“A medical examiner may assess Mr Mohamed’s condition himself and report back.”
But critics blasted the costly operation.
Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Why should any additional cost be placed on taxpayers when the prisoners of Guantanamo all wanted the camp to be closed?
“This illustrates the problems with our entanglement in the Human Rights Act. It molly-coddles the people who deserve least protection.”
Ministers must let Mohamed stay in the UK. MI5 say it will cost a fortune to watch him.
A High Court judge yesterday lifted a control order on a terror suspect who allegedly plotted car bombs in London — despite admitting he could still be a threat. News Source
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The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is fighting a court order that would force it to reveal an internal report on anti-Israel bias. The media giant has reportedly spent 200,000 British pounds (roughly $280,000) on the case.
The legal battle was started by attorney Steven Sugar of London, who contends that the report on bias in its coverage must be made public under the Freedom of Information Act. The 20,000-word report is rumored to have concluded that the BBC's coverage was biased against Israel, a conclusion that Sugar says is of public interest.
The BBC argues that the document is protected under a clause exempting information held for journalistic purposes from the Freedom of Information Act.
The case has been through Britain's Information Tribunal, High Court and Appeals Court, and will now return to the High Court. The most recent round, in the Appeals Court, ended in Sugar's favor.
The BBC has faced numerous charges of anti-Israel bias, including an official complaint from Israel in 2004 after correspondent Orla Guerin dismissed terrorists' use of a teenage would-be suicide bomber as “a picture that Israel wants the world to see.” In the complaint, Minister Natan Sharansky accused Guerin of anti-Semitism and “total identification with the goals and methods of Palestinian terrorist groups.”
In the previous year, Israel had temporarily boycotted the BBC over allegations made in a documentary on Israel's weapons arsenal.
"This is not an organization that is there to get the truth. It's there to level every real or imagined accusation against Israel,” Israeli press office director Danny Seaman said at the time.
The BBC recently aroused fury among pro-Gaza activists by announcing that it would not air an appeal for money for repairs following Israeli counterterrorism operations in the area because the appeal could undermine the station's objectivity. The decision was seen by some as a reaction to charges of anti-Israel bias during coverage of the Gaza fighting. News Source
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Britain's Terrorists: Only one extradited since 2001
One of the US's most wanted terrorist suspects, Khalid al-Fawwaz, has launched a new attempt to fight extradition from Britain.
To date Britain has extradited only one terroris suspect wanted by the US since 2001 - Syed Hashmi, a US citizen – and six suspects continue to defy attempts to put them on trial across the Atlantic.
Khalid al-Fawwaz, allegedly a close associate of Osama bin Laden arrested in connection with the bomb attacks on two US embassies in East Africa, has launched a fresh legal challenge against the British Home Secretary's decision last March to deport him to the US, claiming his human rights would be breached if he were sent to an American "supermax" prison. He has spent more than 10 years in custody in Britain, at a cost of £1 million to the taxpayer
The attacks in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in August 1998 killed 223 people and injured more than 4,000, making Osama bin Laden one of the US top ten most wanted terrorists.
It represented al-Qaeda's major success before the September 11 attacks but US law enforcement officials have been constantly frustrated over their attempts to have al-Fawwaz and an associate Adel Abdul Bary, extradited.
A third suspect, Ibrahim Eidarous, died from leukemia last year under house arrest.
At the High Court in London, lawyers for al-Fawwaz and Bary, said conditions at the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado would breach article three of the Human Rights Act which ensures protection from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
The prison is likely to play a key role when the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay is shut down but Richard Drabble QC, told the High Court that it was only intended as a short-term measure for the most troublesome prisoners.
Al-Fawwaz faces life without parole in a "23/7" cell measuring 11ft 5ins by 6ft 6ins, and would be allowed out for only one hour a day to exercise alone in a concrete pen and would be prevented from communicating with other prisoners.
Richard Drabble QC, for Bary, said District Judge Timothy Workman had commented in the case of the extremist preacher Abu Hamza, that the prison was "offensive to my sense of propriety."
The al-Fawwaz case has caused huge frustration in the US where Daniel Coleman, a retired FBI agent who investigated the embassy bombings, last year described him as a "very, very close friend" of bin Laden and accused the British of "trying to thumb their nose at us."
"They view us as the Belgian Congo," he told the Washington Post. "It's insulting to the United Sates. Our justice system is better than theirs."
Al-Fawwaz, 46, a Saudi national who was living in Dollis Hill, north West London, is said to have fought with bin Laden in Afghanistan and ran the Abu Bakr Sadeeq training camp before moving to Sudan with bin Laden.
He is accused of running an al-Qaeda cell in Kenya and was arrested there in 1994 before allegedly bribing his way out of custody and fleeing to Britain where he set up the Advice and Reformation Committee, a publicity machine for the terrorist group.
Between 1996 and 1998, bin Laden is said to have called al-Fawwaz more than 200 times and in May 1998 al-Fawwaz published an influential fatwa [religious ruling] by bin Laden which called on Muslims to attack Americans and their allies around the world.
According to the US government: "Al Fawaz was sent to London by Osama bin Laden in1994, where he set up an office to serve as a conduit among various al-Qaeda cells." News Source
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The annual cost to Britain of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has soared to more than £4.5billion.
Funding for both conflicts rose more than 50 per cent last year despite British forces beginning to withdraw from Basra.
The figures released by the Ministry of Defence will once again highlight the intense pressure placed on the Armed Forces budget.
But they led to calls for troops to be quickly redeployed to Afghanistan where they are engaged in heavy fighting against the Taliban.
According to the MoD figures, the cost of operations in Afghanistan rose by 27 per cent from £1.5billion to £2.6billion.
The amount spent on operations in Iraq increased by a quarter from £1.5billion to £2billion, even though troops are effectively confined to their barracks.
MoD officials said the increased costs reflected moves to ensure troops were 'properly trained, equipped and supported'. Much was made up by writing off the value of worn-out equipment not worth the expense of bringing home.
Britain spent £1.6billion on both wars in 2007, meaning the amount spent has increased nearly three-fold since then.
Conservative MP Patrick Mercer, an advisor to the Prime Minister on security issues, said: 'War is expensive and during the credit crunch everything to do with war has got more expensive, with the possible exception of fuel.
'In Iraq, though we have scaled down, the remote nature of the airport means everything is still expensive despite the fact there are now less men on the ground. And obviously extra troops means more money there.'
Liberal Democrat spokesman Nick Harvey said: 'Every extra day British forces spend in Iraq costs millions of pound and diverts much-needed helicopter and vehicles from Afghanistan.
'The Government must make sure that this time it keeps true to its commitment to withdraw all forces from Basra airbase as soon as possible.'
Defence staff are drawing up plans to send between 1,500 and 3,000 more troops to Afghanistan later this year, in addition to the 8,000 already there.
Britain's garrison of 4,100 troops at Basra airport will be run down to 300, who will leave by the end of July.
The defence budget will increase by more than £500million to £38billion this year, although the MoD has asked for more than £600million for 'urgent operational requirements'.
A study by former defence chiefs published last September concluded troops were 'in crisis' and in urgent need of funds if they were to protect the nation properly.
An MoD spokesman said the Government was committed to ensuring commanders had all the resources they needed to do the job.
'That includes significant levels of spending on new equipment and equipment upgrades through the Urgent Operational Requirements process,' the spokesman said.
'This is new money over and above the core Defence budget from the Treasury Special Reserve.' News Source
Friday 13th February 2009
England's biggest St George's Day parade is facing the axe after councillors said many of those attending it were racist.
If this is the case then why do they allow many minority celebrations? One could say that ' some if not Many are Al-Qaeda or Hezbollah sympathisers'! (Ed)
For the last decade up to 15,000 have assembled in the town of West Bromwich under the slogan 'Forever England, For Everyone'.
Children and parents from all over the country parade through the Black Country town waving St George flags and marching to rousing anthems such as Jerusalem.
Organisers say one of the aims is to reclaim the Saint George Cross from Right-wingers and make it a source of pride for all.
But last night the local council, Labour-controlled Sandwell, voted to withdraw its support for the parade. Funds will go to support a Party in the Park instead.
It leaves parade organisers with what they say is the impossible task of raising £10,000 to cover their costs with only a few weeks to go.
In a letter to the organisers, one councillor, Yvonne Davies, said the parade created an 'unhealthy atmosphere' and inspired young boys to be racist.
She wrote: 'It is not only the parade which is the problem, but the tribal excitement it creates.'
The West Bromwich St George's Day parade started in 1998 and began as a fairly modest affair with 5,000 turning up. Now three times that attend the two-mile parade in April. Fire Service and Scout Association bands have played, the British Legion lends its support and each year ex-servicemen attend.
A volunteer dresses up as St George and rides with the marchers, children paint their faces with the St George Cross and there are activities such as medieval jousting.
There have been some problems - last year organisers had to clamp down on drinking in the street and a band with hard-Right roots joined in without their permission.
Councillor Davies wrote in her letter: 'I am sure most are very respectful and law-abiding, however some are distasteful in the extreme and wish to divide and separate people from each other.'
She said she had once been abused by youths who 'had been emboldened by the parade and thought racist chants were funny'. 'I have seen first hand how the parade (albeit unintentionally) creates an unhealthy atmosphere.'
At a meeting of Sandwell council cabinet last night, her colleagues sided with her and decided against backing the parade. Instead there will be the Party in the Park, a concert in the Town Hall and St George Flags will be flown on all of the council's buildings.
Trevor Collins of the Stone Cross Saint George Association, which organises the parade, said: 'To suggest the parade is racist is ridiculous and offensive.
When you see the kids, the dogs, everyone out having fun, it's really a beautiful sight. It doesn't matter if you're black, white, green, brown or whatever, everyone's welcome.
'The council's decision means we have to foot the bills for insurance and security. We've got to come up with £10,000 in two months which seems impossible.'
Another organiser Mark Cowles said the parades had raised £7,000 for charity. He added that, as well as losing out on council support, they had probably missed the deadline for applying for road closures.
'All we wanted to do was organise a fun, family-friendly day for everyone that celebrates being English,' he said. 'We have been approached by extreme Right-wing groups and we have turned them away.' News Source
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Labour Tactics: Smear anyone that makes Labour uncomfortable!
Labour was last night accused of a 'disgraceful' attempt to 'bully' independent statisticians who revealed uncomfortable truths about the number of foreign workers in the UK.
Senior party figures launched a vicious whispering campaign against the Office of Nationals Statistics after it released figures showing a surge of 214,000 in the number of non-UK born people working here as the country slid into recession.
The data made a mockery of Gordon Brown's promise to create 'British jobs for British workers', as unemployment among UK-born people soared to a 12-year high.
But, instead of debating the ONS's report, ministers launched a behind closed doors smear campaign against the Whitehall statisticians.
Unnamed sources told the Times newspaper that ministers were 'fizzing' with anger, accusing the ONS of a political act designed to embarrass Gordon Brown over his 'British jobs' soundbite.
A senior government source told the Labour supporting newspaper: 'The fact that they highlighted this in this way, in a press release, looks like they are trying to embarrass the Government over the slogan ‘British Jobs for British workers’.
Last night, ministers - who have been repeatedly criticised for manipulating or 'spinning' ONS statistics - were attacked for their tactics.
Critics suggested their intention was to bully the ONS into dropping the publication of similar statistics in future.
The ONS's report pointed out that the total number of non-UK born workers increased by 214,000 - to 3.8 million - in the year to December. At the same time the number of UK-born workers in employment fell by 278,000 to 25.6 million.
Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling said: 'The Government is utterly hypocritical when it comes to using official statistics. If the news is bad, they want it buried. If it's good, they want it all over the front page.
When he became Prime Minister, Gordon Brown promised a new era of open Government. Now things are tough for him, he'll do anything he can to avoid facing up to what is really happening.'
Tory MP James Clappison, a member of the Commons home affairs committee said there was a need for an open and honest debate on migration policy.
He added: 'It is disgraceful that the Government should seek to bully an independent statistics authority.'
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch UK, said: 'It is astonishing that the ONS should be attacked for setting out the facts of the case.
'In the past the public have been deeply suspicious of official statistics on immigration. It is absolutely right for the ONS to seek to rebuild their confidence.'
Those questioning the ONS included Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee.
He said: 'The danger is that such information could be misconstrued or misused by those who do not support the view that Britain should be a diverse and multicultural society.'
Yesterday, Mr Vaz raised the issue directly with Mr Brown at a Parliamentary committee.
Mr Brown said: 'This is a decision that the independent Office for National Statistics has made. This is not a decision that the Government has made to publish this information.'
He also sought to distance himself from the 'British jobs' promise he made in September 2007.
Mr Brown told MPs: 'Statements taken out of context can be completely misleading. think if you look back on the speech that I made, I wanted to say that in an open, global economy where there is a huge amount of mobility it is important that we do everything in our power to give British workers the skills that are necessary for them to be able to get the jobs that are available in our country.'
The ONS said the employment statistics released yesterday included the number of UK-born and non-UK born workers in the same way as they do every time they are released.
The only different step taken today was that the ONS published a short release specifically highlighting the figures. This analysis had been due to be released in two week's time, alongside a raft of other immigration statistics, but was brought forward to make it more relevant.
A spokesman said: 'Given the level of interest in this aspect of the labour market, and since calculations are not straightforward, we decided to publish estimates by our standard techniques.
'The aim is to help public information and avoid potential confusion if alternative statistics were published.' News Source
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They came in their hundreds in the cold, drawn by the prospect of snagging one of just 50 temporary jobs at London Zoo.
In recent years, the annual open day for seasonal jobs during the Zoo's high season has only attracted between 120 and 150 applicants.
But yesterday more than 400 hopefuls waited for several hours for the chance to work in the gift shop or in the zoo's canteen for £8.80 an hour.
The image echoes the classic Tory 'Labour isn't working' advert of 1979 - a year in which unemployment was creeping towards three million under Jim Callaghan's Labour government.
This snapshot of modern Britain came as new figures revealed that unemployment has reached a 12-year high.
The official number of 1.97million out of work was the highest since just after Labour came to power, and does not include those sacked this year or the 7.86million Britons classed as 'economically inactive' who may be claiming benefits.
The Office for National Statistics also reported that nearly 3,000 people are being made redundant every day.
Last night ministers were preparing to cut the number of work permits handed to non-EU workers, amid fears of a possible backlash from jobless Britons.
The issue of 'British jobs for British workers' has sparked a series of illegal wildcat strikes across the country in the past week.
Yesterday around 150 workers were said to have downed tools at Staythorpe gas-fired power plant in Nottinghamshire.
Unions said dozens of construction workers at the site walked out after claiming 41 steelworkers had been threatened with the sack for refusing to cross a picket line outside the £660million facility.
The unofficial strike came five days after unions reached an agreement with French oil firm Total to end wildcat action over foreign workers at the Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire - a dispute which triggered walkouts at another 20 plants around the country.
In the past year, the number of UK nationals in work fell by 278,000 to 25.6million. But the number of non-UK nationals in work rose by 214,000 to 3.8million.
Last year a record 151,000 work permits were handed out to foreigners.
Home Office sources said the 'bar could be raised' on the new points-based immigration system to make it harder for foreign workers to enter the UK.
Immigration Minister Phil Woolas said in a statement that he expected the number of foreign workers to be cut.
Dr John Philpott, chief economist from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, said: 'The final quarter redundancies figure of 259,000 is fairly horrendous.
'The normal lag between redundancies being made and people joining the unemployment count also indicates that unemployment remains on course to rise above three million before the economy recovers.' News Source
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Eastern European immigrants living in shocking poverty have put a major strain on a city's health services, an official report said yesterday.
Families living in overcrowded conditions have led to the spread of diseases including Hepatitis A and thread worm among children causing 'enormous' problems for health workers in Sheffield.
The report by city's council and Primary Care Trust painted an image of Dickensian life among the136 Slovakian families who have settled in the Yorkshire city since 2007, in search of work and building a better life for their families.
Many of the migrants barely earn enough to buy food and their children are so poorly nourished that they are losing their hair.
Destitute youngsters wander the streets 'inadequately-clothed and dishevelled' with their poverty 'apparent for all to see', the report said.
Several families are often forced to live together in one house with children sharing beds to try to make ends meet.
'Overcrowding and poverty increases risk of accidents,' the report warned.
'There have been incidents where children have been scalded or fallen down stairs.
'It also significantly increases risk of infectious disease.
There have been outbreaks of impetigo, head lice,
Hepatitis A, severe gastrointestinal infections
and thread worm infestations amongst children.
'Limited finances impacts on ability to provide nutritious diets. Childhood anaemia is common as is chronic vitamin deficiency, resulting in hair loss.'
Health visitors were 'currently struggling' with resources and 'unable to take on additional work generated by the families', the report said.
But it found the full extent of health problems was difficult to assess because many families had not registered with GP practices while others are 'defensive and suspicious of visitors'.
The report also reveals problems with 'noise and mess' from the new arrivals and young children not being sent to school because families believed the starting age was six or seven, as in their home country.
There is also 'ongoing conflict' between Eastern European and Pakistani residents which it said led to 'severe violence, with cars burnt out, bricks thrown and verbal and physical abuse.
The report concluded: 'Needs of Eastern European migrants are not being adequately met by local services.
'This is primarily due to the lack of resources in areas where they are living - parts of the city that have high deprivation, poverty and population with increased health needs.
'New migrants have increased demand on services in terms of numbers and complexity of problems.' News Source
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The Guardian's environment team must have choked on their organic muesli running this one:
'Apocalyptic climate predictions' mislead the public, say experts: Met Office scientists fear distorted climate change claims could undermine efforts to tackle carbon emissions
In an article published on the Guardian website, Dr Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, calls on scientists and journalists to stop misleading the public with "claim and counter-claim".
Pope says there is little evidence to support claims that Arctic ice has reached a tipping point and could disappear within a decade or so, as some reports have suggested.
"The record-breaking losses in the past couple of years could easily be due to natural fluctuations in the weather, with summer ice increasing again over the next few years," she says.
Pope's original article is the latest in a series of clues that all is not well within the climate change lobby. The great Gerald Warner has been covering the subject recently, with his usual flair:
This has been a bad 24 hours for the climate-change liars, beginning with Christopher Booker's exposure in The Sunday Telegraph of the fabrication of data to "prove" pretended warming in the Antarctic.
As more and more scientists who have not been bought by the United Nations climate clique find the courage to voice dissent from the junk science peddled by the IPCC and a public plunged into economic depression loses patience with this multi-billion-pound scam, it looks as if the great global warming imposture is finally on the retreat.
By and large, the scientific community has been in agreement about climate change until now. But I reckon we're about to see open warfare between experts presenting serious, evidence-based research into the state of the planet and hysterical alarmists like James Hansen, who seem hell-bent on destroying our economy through eye-wateringly expensive and totally unnecessary "emergency measures". News Source
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A family of migrants today told how the use of a single word was enough to evade security in Calais so as to start a new life in ‘Eldorado’ Britain.
After travelling thousands of miles to fulfill their ‘English dream’, the four simply had to say ‘family’ to get past border guards.
The extraordinary testimony of Faradh and Bahan Maruj and their two children will come as a huge embarrassment to the Home Office as it pledges to reduce the constant flow of stowaways arriving from northern France.
They are now living in Birmingham after initially paying people smugglers $800 cash to get them across the Channel.
All hope to have asylum applications confirmed soon, although they admitted: ‘It’s a little bit less easy under Brown than with Blair’, referring to the Prime Minister and his immediate predecessor.
After one failed attempt to smuggle themselves aboard a lorry in the summer, they all got into the passenger cab of a Dutch HGV in November.
When it was stopped by customs officials in Calais Mr Maruj, 28 and originally from Iraq, used one of his few words of English get them through.
There were no searches, and not even a request for passports or other papers.
‘I said “Family”, and the customs official shut the door,’ said Mr Faradh, who claims to have been persecuted because he was an alcohol salesman in Kirkut, north of Baghdad.
Mr Maruj even boasted about how easy it was for him and his 24-year-old wife to open a bank account in Britain without yet living in the UK.
They paid their live savings into it before leaving Iraq, ensuring that they could use the money to pay for their illegal passage.
During three months in Calais the family - including sons Farangh, eight, and Saffir, three - spent some time on a notorious stretch of wasteland in Calais known as ‘The Jungle’.
It was full of illegal migrants, who played a constant game of cat-and-mouse with the authorities as they tried to board ferries and trains.
But they also befriended a French family who offered them food and use of their bathroom.
The Lefèvre family also advised them on seeking asylum in Britain, and have recently visited the family in their new home in Birmingham.
Mr Maruj said his alcohol business in Iraq was fire-bombed by the ‘Taliban’, and at one stage his eldest son was kidnapped.
‘They wanted me to close my shop,’ said Mr Maruj.
‘I said "No". They put their knife on Farangh’s throat. They kidnapped him. I paid a ransom. Then they started a fire and threw a bomb in the shop.’
‘Some members of my family and some friends were killed. We had to leave.’
At the end of June, after selling their house and car, the family left for the ‘Eldorado’ of England, travelling through Turkey, Greece, Italy and France, by foot and by lorry.
The family now has council accommodation in Birmingham and are paid around £170 a week in benefits.
Mr Maruj said: ‘We came her because we can get our papers. It’s a little less easy with Blair than Brown.’
Last month France called on Britain to toughen up its security against thousands of migrants arriving illegally from across the Channel.
During a crisis visit to Calais, the country’s hard line new immigration minister Eric Besson said his London counterparts were currently not doing enough.
Instead lax security in the Channel Tunnel and at ferry ports was encouraging thousands to try and enter Britain illegally - causing huge problems for the French.
Mr Besson said: ‘Our English partners must apply themselves more actively in the reinforcement of checks and in security in Calais.’
The UK Border Agency, a dedicated British security force, currently has officers stationed in Calais to try and deter illegal migration.
But earlier this month Etienne Pinte, a former French minister and veteran member of President Nicolas Sarkozy's governing UMP party, condemned Britain's ‘inhumane and illegal’ immigration policies, blaming them for causing ‘utter misery’ across the Channel. News Source
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Eight electoral vote letters were recovered from a Bradford councillor’s home after police arrested him, a jury heard yesterday.
Jamshed Khan’s home in Russell Street, Bradford, was searched in May 2005, Leeds Crown Court was told.
A statement by PC Jenny Haigh, of Bradford Police, said she seized Bradford Council letters, dated April 26, 2005, addressed to six people.
The jury heard the letters required additional proof of residency.
Alyas Khan, 50, of Hilton Road, Bradford, was arrested in September 2005, the court heard. His house was searched and a disk recovered containing documents relating to postal votes.
Police also seized a diary and the contents of a briefcase from Mohammed Sultan’s home in Toller Lane in November, 2005. Items were also recovered by the police at the home of another Bradford councillor, Reis Khan, in Whetley Hill, Bradford, in September, 2005, the jury was told.
Mohammed Rafiq, 68, of Cecil Avenue, Little Horton, Bradford; Conservative candidate for Bradford West, Haroon Rashid, 39; Jamshed Khan, 64; Reis Khan, 39; and Sultan, 51, all plead not guilty to conspiracy to defraud Bradford Council’s electoral registration officer in the run up to the May 2005 General Election.
It is alleged they intended to harvest postal ballots and use them to vote for Rashid. Rashid, who was brought up in Bradford, but now lives in Buckinghamshire, lost by 3,026 votes. Alyas Khan has pleaded guilty to conspiracy. News Source
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Protectionism is alive and well and legal in Scotland, but denounced as xenophobic and illegal in England.
‘If ever proof was needed that this Government under Gordon Brown, the MP for Scotland’s Kirkaldy and Cowdenbeath constituency, operates double standards in Scotland’s favour, one of his own Scottish Labour MPs has provided it.’
This information has been revealed in the columns of The Scotsman newspaper. Michael Connarty, the Labour MP for Linlithgow and East Falkirk accused the English protesting against their exclusion from applying for jobs at the Lindsey refinery in Lincolnshire of ‘xenophobia and protectionism’.
Yet at the same time in that newspaper he made the stunning revelation that there are "long-standing working practices in Scotland that allow workers living within 40 miles of a plant to be prioritised for work”.
‘What a display of double standards!” Michael Knowles speaking for the CEP has declared. ‘The number of Portuguese or Italian workers who meet the specified criteria is rather limited to say the very least.
The brutal undeniable fact is that they were brought to England, they are being housed in floating hotels by their employment agents and it is can only be suspected therefore that they got their jobs, not on merit, but because they are prepared to accept a rate of pay below Englsh, even local Lincolnshire, rates.
‘How can a Labour Prime Minister allow a situation where the jobs of his own Scottish countrymen and women are protected against foreign competition while those of the people of England are not?
How can the Leader of the Conservative Party stand up in Parliament at PMQT and denounce protectionism and say not a word in support of the right of English workers to apply for work in their own country against unfair foreign competition while workers in Scotland operate regulations which protect them from foreign competition?
‘The only conclusion to draw from the revelations made by Mr Connarty is that there is one law for the Scottish workforce in the United Kingdom and another law for the English workforce. As this Campaign asks again and again: Who is there in the UK Parliament who speaks up for England? News Source
Contact details on site
Reader Submitted Link. Thank You Les
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Poland's army has launched a drive to recruit Poles living in the UK as it looks to drum up support for its newly professional armed forces.
The Polish defence ministry will take part in a year-long campaign organised by Poland's 12 biggest cities aimed at enticing those living abroad to return home. With each town hosting an event in Hammersmith, West London, the heart of the UK's Polish community, the ministry hopes to find recruits especially as the recession bites in Britain and Poles get laid off.
An army spokesman said that Poles with experience of the UK would make excellent material for the country's armed forces.
"It would be great for Poland if we managed to get some recruits," said Lieutenant-Colonel Artur Golawski. "They'll know English, which is really important now, and they shouldn't be scared of new challenges and might have lived in somewhat awkward conditions: experiences that are welcome in the army."
He added that it was important for the Polish armed forces to tell expatriates that the services were no longer the cash-strapped and conscript-based institutions that some Poles, he joked, may have left Poland to avoid.
At the start of the year Poland abandoned conscription and started to pour money into converting its army into a 120,000-strong modern, professional force.
The starting salary for a private now comes to around £472 a month, 13 times more than a conscript received, while specialist skills and combat experience could further increase the monthly pay-packet.
Poland's move away from conscription is in line with a massive overhaul of its armed forces. The country plans to spend some £17 billion by 2018 on modernising its military, which is still burdened by Soviet-era equipment.
Overseas deployment has also put wear and tear on equipment. Poland has 1,200 troops involved in combat operations in Afghanistan: a mission that has stretched the army's resources to the limit. News Source
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Top bankers and Labour politicians are made for each other. Arrogant, hypocritical and incompetent, they are both groups of money-grabbing parasites.
The bankers have their endless bail-outs, the politicians their flood of generous expenses.
It is nauseating that ordinary taxpayers are forced to hand over a sizeable chunk of their incomes to maintain the privileged life-styles of these leeches while the rest of the country sinks deeper into recession and mass unemployment.
What is even more offensive is that they have done nothing to deserve a penny from the public. Instead, with their disastrous policies, they have dragged Britain to the brink of ruin.
The political and financial elite’s contempt for any notions of restraint was highlighted by two scandalous stories that
emerged at the weekend, one relating to the conduct of the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, the other to proposed new bonuses for failing bankers.
Yesterday it was revealed that Ms Smith has claimed huge sums from the taxpayer by exploiting the system for MPs’ housing allowances. Ms Smith has a large family house in her West Midlands constituency of Redditch but while
working at Westminster during the week she stays in her sister’s home in south London.
Nothing wrong with that arrangement, you might think. Except that she has designated her sister’s house as her “main residence”, while her family base in Worcestershire is treated a “second home”, thereby making her eligible for a tax-free payout currently worth up to £24,000 a year.
In all, Ms Smith is said to have claimed £116,000 in accommodation expenses while effectively lodging with her sister.
In the time-honoured tradition of any modern politician whose self-serving behaviour is exposed, Ms Smith is full of
outraged innocence, protesting that she has broken no rules.
Although this might be technically true, it is hardly an adequate moral defence for someone in her position. As the Home Secretary, she is responsible for law enforcement in this country. She therefore has to be seen as a figure of the utmost integrity. Being accused of manipulating her expenses hardly helps that quest.
Equally reprehensible is the continuation of the lavish bonus culture in the banking system. This climate of greed
was bad enough when the banks were in the private sector but now, with most of them propped up by the taxpayer, it is wholly unjustifiable.
Yet without any sense of shame the Royal Bank of Scotland is talking about paying its staff £1billion in bonuses this
year, the money to come directly from the £20billion that the government recently handed over to RBS to stop it
completely collapsing. In the present banking shambles the belief that anyone at RBS should be entitled to a bonus is a disgrace.
Bonuses for what? For helping to create the biggest financial disaster this country has seen since the twenties? Anyone still working in top management at the banks after the recent debacle should just be grateful that they still have a job, unlike so many who been thrown on the scrapheap as a result of the financial sector’s epic recklessness.
The upper tiers of the public sector, from where most of the banks now operate, increasingly resemble the elite of the former Soviet Union. Completely divorced from the experiences of ordinary Britons, this nexus of politburo chiefs, quango bosses, bankers and municipal commissars presides over our country with a grotesque sense of entitlement.
There is one law for them, with their subsidised homes, bloated salaries and fat bonuses, another for the hard-working public who pay for it all.
Yet the higher echelons of the public sector display not the slightest hint of embarrassment about their eagerness to
fleece the British people. They take our cash, and then endlessly harass us, demanding more money or personal details or absolute submission to their ideology.
It is as if they feel their extortion gives them the right to bully us in the way that gangsters tyrannise those who are forced to pay them protection money. The apparent hypocrisy of Jacqui Smith is striking in this case.
Anyone putting out their rubbish on the wrong day or filling in their tax form wrongly is likely to feel the full weight of the oppressive state machinery. Yet Ms Smith blithely claims thousands of pounds of our money in expenses. In one recent speech she said that “fraud is a despicable crime that is costing UK victims huge sums of money every year. It will not be tolerated”.
She should take a closer look at the grossly over-subsidised political world she inhabits, where personal ga in has been elevated above public service.
The banks are as bad, punishing savers, harassing the financially beleaguered to whom they once lent so eagerly, yet still indulging their own useless executives.
All this largesse towards the elite has achieved nothing. Britain has never had a worse banking system nor a more
ineffectual Home Secretary.
Smith and RBS are symbols of national decline. She has presided over the collapse of our borders, erosion of our liberties and politicisation of the police. RBS is a shell of an institution, destroyed from within by its own lust for global power and the loss of basic banking principles. Yet still they both think they deserve our financial support.
Gordon Brown often talks of his “moral compass”. The only place the needle is pointing is towards the trough. News Source
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Millions of families face yet another hike in heating bills to pay for a massive expansion of green energy.
Ministers say that the money raised will subsidise solar panels, wind turbines and wood-burning boilers for hundreds of thousands of homes.
But critics warn that the levy is an 'insidious' stealth tax that will hammer households at a time of rising unemployment, falling incomes and economic uncertainty.
We are already paying an average of £410 more on our annual energy bills after price rises last year of 59 per cent for gas and 26 per cent for electricity.
The green levy, or 'Renewable Heating Incentive', is part of an energy package to be unveiled today by the Energy and Climate Secretary Ed Miliband.
As well as grants for domestic windmills and solar panels, he will announce plans to insulate seven million homes. The measures will be funded by the levy on fossil fuel energy suppliers - which will be passed on to us in our household bills.
The Government insists that overall the package will cut energy waste and reduce fuel bills for millions. 'Not only do we want to cut fuel bills and greenhouse gas emissions, we also want to make Britain less reliant on imports of fossil fuels,' said a spokesman for the Department for Energy and Climate Change. 'Fossil fuel prices are more volatile.'
Ministers have no idea at this stage how much the levy will be - or when it will be introduced. Susie Squire of the Taxpayers' Alliance said the plan would hit families who are finding it hard to make ends meet. 'It sounds like another insidious stealth tax at a time of economic recession when people are already struggling,' she said.
'Increasing everyone's bills to subsidise the cost of green energy for a few is nonsense. People should be encouraged to be more energy efficient, but it should be voluntary.' Professor Ian Fells of Newcastle University, a former government advisor on energy conservation, welcomed plans to insulate more homes.
But he warned that the incentive scheme could see less-affluent families subsidising solar panels for others. 'All these renewable energy systems are expensive to put in,' he said. 'Even solar panels for heating take at least 12 years to pay back the costs.
'I don't see people up here on Tyneside in apartment buildings being interested in renewable heating. 'So if they are going to put an additional levy on fossil fuels - and prices are high enough as they are - I suspect it's going to be the upper middle classes who benefit, not the people in terraced homes and rented apartments.'
Ministers say financial incentives are needed because the costs of installing renewable energy systems are so high. A typical ground source heat pump costs at least £10,000 to install. Rooftop solar panels for heating water cost from around £3,000, while a wood pellet boiler system costs from £5,000 to £14,000.
The Government is aiming to cut Britain's greenhouse gas emissions by 26 per cent within the next 12 years. A spokesman for the DECC said today's package was designed to slash fuel bills and save money, and would include protection for people on low incomes. News Source
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The Muslim peer at the heart of the opposition to Dutch politician Geert Wilders's visit once invited an Al Qaeda terror suspect to visit Parliament.
Three years ago, Lord Ahmed, Labour's first Muslim peer, invited Mahmoud Abu Rideh to Westminster, after meeting him at the Regent's Park mosque.
Abu Rideh, a Palestinian, had been detained in Britain in December 2001 on suspicion of fundraising for groups linked to Al Qaeda.
He is said to have admitted travelling in Afghanistan with large sums of money hidden in a plaster cast on his leg.
He has since been subjected to a control order which places restrictions on his freedom.
At the time, the peer said it was his parliamentary duty to hear the former detainee's complaints. He had asked the Palestinian about terror links, he added, but Abu Rideh had denied them.
Yesterday, internet chatter claimed that Lord Ahmed had threatened to mobilise 10,000 Muslims to prevent Mr Wilders getting into the Palace of Westminster.
Lord Ahmed denied the reports and said his lawyers are investigating those he blames for spreading it.
However he is among those most opposed to any Parliamentary platform for the Dutch politician.
And he firmly supports Miss Smith's ban on Wilders entering the country.
Lord Ahmed said yesterday: 'My main argument against him is that he should be put on trial for inciting hatred in his country of origin.
'Is it right that Parliament can be used to support incitement to hatred?
'I have had threatening letters and emails coming from everywhere from California to the Netherlands.'
Lord Ahmed said of the two peers promoting Mr Wilders's Westminster appearance: 'Lord Pearson and Baroness Cox are lovely people, but they are being used by the wrong crowd.
'They went from the Conservatives to UKIP because the Conservatives were not strong enough for them, and now the British National Party is supporting them.'
Lord Nazir Ahmed, 51, built his career in mini-markets, fish-and-chip shops and petrol stations in Yorkshire. By the time he was a millionaire property developer, he had a leading role in the Yorkshire Labour Party.
Tony Blair sent him to the Lords in 1998, where he has played a moderate role on committees deliberating on subjects which include forced marriage and extremism in mosques.
Tories have criticised his more shadowy role as one of Mr Blair's informal diplomatic envoys.
Born in Kashmir, Lord Ahmed is said to have been particularly influential in Pakistan.
However, opponents have accused him of flirting with extremists.
The peer is awaiting sentencing for a dangerous driving offence, after admitting sending and receiving text messages on the M1 just before a fatal crash in which a father of two died. News Source
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Dutch politician Geert Wolders is to be sent back to the Netherlands after attempting to defy a ban on entering Britain.
Geert Wilders arrived at Heathrow airport this afternoon and was presented with a letter that refused him entry to the UK.
Mr Wilders said he was detained by UK Border Agency officials on arrival, had his passport taken away, and was told he would be sent home within two hours.
The politician had been invited to Westminster to show his 17-minute film Fitna, which criticises the Koran as a 'fascist book', by a member of the House of Lords.
Speaking from Heathrow, Mr Wilders branded Gordon Brown the 'biggest coward in Europe' and said freedom of speech in Britain had been 'set back centuries'.
He told the BBC: 'We should have a public debate, we should have freedom of speech. It's very easy to invite people who agree with you...
'I think that a discussion is always better than barring people or turning people away.'
Gordon Brown's spokesman declined to say whether Home Secretary Jacqui Smith consulted the Prime Minister before taking the decision to exclude Mr Wilders, but added: 'The Prime Minister fully supports the decision taken by the Home Secretary.'
Among those waiting for Mr Wilders in arrivals at the airport was Gerard Batten, UK Independence Party MEP for London.
He said: "I thought it would be a nice touch to turn up and welcome him here if he gets through."
On Tuesday Mr Wilders received a letter from the Home Office refusing him entry because his opinions 'would threaten community security and therefore public security' in the UK. Continued
And just look at some of those we HAVE let in...
The Home Secretary may consider Geert Wilders too much of a threat to public safety to be allowed into Britain. But by contrast, these are some of the characters who have been let in:
FIREBRAND CLERIC
Visited London in 2004 at the invitation of Ken Livingstone, then the city's mayor, who considered him a 'progressive force for change'.
Egyptian-born spiritual leader of Muslim Brotherhood, which embraces the Hamas organisation that controls Gaza.
Has justified suicide bombing, which he calls martyrdom, and the killing of Israeli women and children, on the grounds that they are 'militarised'.
HOMOPHOBIC SINGER
Bounty Killer, Rodney Price, 36
Performed in East London in November despite appeals to the Home Secretary from gay activists who wanted him banned from the country.
The Jamaican reggae singer is accused by critics of glorifying gang violence and guns and of inciting murder against gays.
One song, translated from the Jamaican patois, calls on listeners to 'burn a fire on poofs and faggots'. Another claims: 'We need no promo to rub out dem homo'.
BILLIONAIRE CULT LEADER
Reverend Sun Myung Moon, 89
Labour Home Secretary Charles Clarke overturned a 27-year ban against the cult leader and allowed him 24 hours in Britain to address a rally in London, in 2005.
The Korean-born billionaire declares himself to be the Messiah.
His movement, famous for its mass weddings of thousands of couples, is said to brainwash the young people it persuades to become followers.
It has been a failure in Britain since 1981, when the Moonies lost a milestone libel case against the Daily Mail. The Mail had called Moon's Unification Church 'the church that breaks up families'.
SERIAL PAEDOPHILE
Raymond Horne, 62
A serial paedophile with a long jail history in Australia for offences against boys from 13.
Horne, who emigrated to Australia with his parents in 1952, when he was five, has a criminal record in Queensland stretching back 43 years.
He was released last year from a 12-year sentence for 14 offences against two homeless boys he met while posing as a charity volunteer.
British ministers made no objection when Australian authorities deported him to this country after he finished his sentence, on the grounds that because he never took out Australian citizenship, he is British.
ANTI-SEMITIC AGITATOR
Ibrahim Moussawi, 43
Propagandist for Hezbollah cleared to enter the country by Jacqui Smith in November, despite fierce Tory objections.
He is the head of a TV station that routinely describes suicide bombers as 'martyrs' and which has broadcast a 30-part series on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-semitic forgery produced in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century that pretends to present a Jewish conspiracy for world takeover.
Moussawi is alleged to have said that Jews are 'a lesion on the forehead of history'.
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Anti Christian oppression agenda gathering pace!
A primary school receptionist whose five-year-old daughter was scolded by a teacher for talking about God is facing the sack after seeking support from members of her church.
Jennie Cain, who works part-time at her daughter Jasmine's school, sent an e-mail to close friends asking them to pray for her child.
Jasmine was left in tears after she was reprimanded by a teacher for discussing heaven and God with a friend.
But Mrs Cain's e-mail fell into the hands of the school's headmaster, Gary Read.
The mother-of-two is now being investigated for professional misconduct for allegedly making claims against the school and staff members.
She has been told she may be disciplined and was warned she could face dismissal from Landscore Primary School, in Crediton, Devon.
It is the latest example of a Christian facing a misconduct hearing where they work for practising their faith.
Last week, nurse Caroline Petrie was told she could go back to her job in North Somerset after she had been suspended for two months for offering to pray for a patient.
Mrs Cain, who is being supported by the Christian Institute, told the Daily T