Archive 18
UkTabloid
The People's News Portal
Sunday 26th April 2009
Alistair Darling's credibility lay in tatters last night as figures showed Britain's recession is worse than he predicted three days ago.
National output slumped by 1.9 per cent in the first three months of the year, capping the worst six months for the economy since records began in 1948.
The Chancellor was accused of being 'at odds with reality' and of 'wishful thinking' for telling MPs in the Budget on Wednesday that the slump in gross domestic product would be similar to the previous quarter's fall of 1.6 per cent.
Instead, the economy went into a nosedive worse than in any three-month period since the Winter of Discontent in 1979, rendering the Chancellor's claims a laughing stock in Westminster and the City.
The dire figures fuelled accusations that the Treasury 'cooked the books' in the Budget in order to delay painful tax rises and spending cuts until after the next election.
Economists declared that the huge miscalculation blew other optimistic Treasury forecasts about the length of the recession and soaring debt levels out of the water.
Analysts said the shocking plunge in activity means the UK now appears to be heading for its worst annual downturn since the depths of the Great Depression in the 1930s.
Mr Darling's Budget predicted a slump of 3.5 per cent this year, followed by a 1.25 per cent rebound in 2010 and blockbuster growth of 3.5 per cent in 2011.
Independent economists ridiculed the claims.
The Centre for Economics and Business Research declared the Chancellor's forecasts 'wishful thinking' and said Britain is on track for a 4.5 per cent annual contraction, the steepest fall since 1931.
Alan Clarke, of investment bank BNP Paribas, said Britain's recession would either have to end now for Mr Darling's 2009 estimate to be met, or there would need to be a stunning recovery in the final quarter of this year amounting to at least 2 per cent growth.
This, Mr Clarke said, would be 'boom time growth and we are not in a boom'.
Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said: 'Darling's optimism over the economy is completely at odds with reality.'
But last night the Chancellor, who is visiting Washington, stuck to his Budget forecast and said: 'I remain confident that the economy will start to grow by the end of the year.'
The quarterly GDP figures issued by the Office for National Statistics also showed that manufacturing contracted 6.2 per cent, the most since at least 1948.
Economic turbulence was matched by wildly divergent opinion polls yesterday.
A YouGov survey gave the Tories an 18 point lead over Labour after the Budget, eight points up on the month before.
Thirty-nine per cent of voters said the Conservatives would be better for the economy and just one in four chose Labour.
But a ComRes poll found Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling more trusted by the electorate to manage the economy than David Cameron and Shadow Chancellor George Osborne, by 34 per cent to 31. News Source
A senior Tory MP has attacked Gordon Brown's plans to overhaul expenses because he does not want to become 'poorer'.
Shadow Northern Ireland minister Laurence Robertson, who has claimed nearly £1million in expenses since 2001, insisted that MPs should be properly compensated for working long hours away from home. He defended the current system of pay and perks, although he admitted that the system needed to be more accountable.
The stance taken by Mr Robertson, 51, could prove embarrassing for Tory leader David Cameron as he seeks the moral high ground over MPs' expenses.
Mr Robertson, the member for Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, has repeatedly claimed the £24,000 a year maximum allowed under the controversial second home allowance.
The former businessman stressed that he did 'not intend to become personally poorer' at this stage of his career. In a leaked email, the Tewkesbury MP said: 'Perception in politics is almost everything so, yes, we must be seen to be cleaning up our act.
'But we should not be bounced into a system . . . simply because the Home Secretary mistakenly claimed less than £10 for a porn film.' He later told the BBC that MPs should be required to account for 'every penny' they spend, but they should not be left worse off.
Mr Robertson added that his MP's salary was his sole source of income and said MPs should be compensated for having to work anti-social hours and spending long periods away from their families. News Source
Solution: Sack the Ministers and give their jobs to the consultants!
Ministers are planning to spend £4billion of taxpayers' money on consultants when they are supposed to be cutting costs.
The colossal bill for outside help drives a coach and horse through Alistair Darling's Budget claims that Whitehall is diligently searching for 'efficiency savings'.
The £4billion will pay management consultants for central government departments and other public sector agencies such as health authorities for the next three years.
At £1.33billion per year, this represents a 46 per cent increase in costs. Last year the Government spent £909million on consultants.
The Government agency that helps public bodies find consultants is already asking for firms to help Whitehall departments with 'culture change', 'equality and diversity', ' stakeholder management', ' customer profiling', 'naming, branding and positioning', and a 'Channel Migration Strategy'.
Francis Maude, Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office, said: 'All the management consultants in the world cannot put this broken Labour Government back together.
'At a time when Whitehall needs to tighten its belt because of the nation's ruined public finances, Labour ministers are burning £4billion of taxpayers' money on consultants to tell them what to do.
'This is another sign
of a government that has completely lost its way.'
The contract was revealed in the small print of a 'pan-Government' tender notice printed on the European Union's public sector tendering database.
EU rules force such contracts to be advertised on their website so that consultancy firms can apply for the work anywhere in Europe. Continued
For years now tens of thousands of would-be immigrants have tramped their way across Europe to gather around on the Channel coast with the hope of busting their way into Britain.
They’ve ignored the delights of Italy, they’ve swerved round rich Switzerland and they’ve turned their noses up at France.
Instead they’ve piled into squalid camps around Calais in the hope of a ride to the UK in the back of an empty truck or buried in a cargo of something uncomfortable.
Why?
Is it the resilience of our ancient democracy that drives them?
Our great literary heritage?
Or just the world-famous warmth of an English welcome?
If you want to know the real reason that makes us such a magnet then simply listen to Madame Natacha Bouchart, the Mayor of Calais.
Mme Bouchart says she can no longer cope with the hordes of Africans, eastern Europeans and Asians who end up in and around her town.
And she is certain where the blame for her costs and hassle lies – with the cash that Britain showers on the hordes of illegals.
If they apply for asylum in France they have to wait six months before they get anything.
Over here they get £42 a week from day one plus free housing, NHS treatment and schooling for their children.
In an attempted clean-up operation the Calais authorities have arrested almost 200 suspects.
That’s not would-be immigrants. That’s just the fixers who charge up to £1,000 a time to arrange a Channel hop.
Our misplaced and misguided generosity has to end.
Not because we want to be good neighbours to the French.
Not because this is already the most overcrowded nation in Europe.
But because, more than any time in modern history, we simply can’t afford it. News Source
Nine out of 10 truckers smuggling illegal immigrants into the UK are foreign, figures show.
The UK Borders Agency said 1,571 overseas drivers were caught last year and fined a total of £1.4million.
But Tory Damian Green said smugglers continued operating after being fined £2,000 for each immigrant.
Trucker Mervyn Osgood, of Kent, added: "We always see foreign drivers talking to migrants in Calais." Last year 28,000 migrants were caught trying to sneak in on cross-Channel lorries..News Source
The UK will have to build one house every six minutes, day and night, seven days a week for the next 20 years to meet the current scale of immigration, an MP warned today.
Labour MP and former Minister Frank Field said that immigration will account for 70 per cent of population growth in the next 20 years.
That is seven million - or seven times the population of Birmingham.
In 2007, immigrants were arriving at the rate of almost one every minute.
Mr Field, MP for Birkenhead said “For many years, probably a generation, immigration has been a no-go area to British politics.
"'Racist’, ’Little Englander’, ’xenophobe’ - those who have raised the subject have been insulted, abused and, all too often, silenced.”
“The losers have been the citizens of this country, those with the longest roots and those who have newly arrived.”
He said that over the last few years immigration had reached unprecedented levels. “Net migration - the number of people coming to the UK minus the people leaving - has more than quadrupled since 1997.
In 2007, 502,000 migrants arrived in the UK - almost one every minute, Mr Field said.
“Our population is officially projected to reach 70 million by 2028 and 80 million in mid-century, with immigration the main driver and the only one that the government can directly influence.
“It accounts for 70 per cent of population growth in the next 20 years: that is seven million, or seven times the population of Birmingham.”
Mr Field said that these projections were based on the Government’s own net immigration assumptions.
“But cold statistics do not paint the whole picture. Delve beneath ’seven new Birminghams’ and we see that in the next 20 years, one third of projected household formations will be a result of immigration, meaning we will need to build 260 houses a day for the next 20 years to meet the requirement - that is one house every six minutes, day and night, seven days a week.”
And he warned: “If the Government does not adopt the policy of balanced migration, or something close to it, our population is set to rise to a level to which the vast majority of people are strongly opposed.
“They are not opposed to immigration or immigrants, but to the present scale of immigration which is bound to have a negative aspect on many aspect of life in Britain, be that the public services, infrastructure, environment, or community cohesion. In other words our whole quality of life.” News Source
Nightly, scores of illegal immigrants slip into Britain, secreted in lorries coming from Calais. They join hundreds of thousands of others already living in the country. Then there are the countless asylum seekers, genuine and bogus.
And the many foreign 'students' studying in 'colleges' that are no more than postal addresses. And don't forget the millions coming from European countries, some of whom have been our deadly enemies in decades gone by. All, by and large, are allowed to remain in Britain.
But what of those who have fought for our country, and often seen their comrades die in action? There can be no greater service rendered to a nation than men who are prepared to lay down their lives for it.
And when that sacrifice is by citizens not of Britain, but of a tiny Himalayan nation bound to us only by history and tradition, the debt is all the greater.
The very least we can do is to allow those Gurkhas who wish to settle in Britain after their years of service to do so - something that was recognised by the Government when it changed the law to allow those who retired after 1997 to do just that.
But in an act of disgraceful parsimony, the same rights were denied to Gurkha soldiers discharged before that year. When a British judge looked at that decision, he threw it out, quoting the military covenant, which states that 'British Soldiers must be able to always expect fair treatment'.
In response to his criticism, the Government has spent six months looking at the rules. On Friday, it responded in an utterly treacherous way, by imposing cynically unrealistic criteria on Gurkhas hoping to come to Britain (such as demanding 20 years of service, when the standard service contract is only for 15).
Of the 36,000 or so whose service ended before 1997, as few as 100 may be able to come to this country under the revised rules.
This is, frankly, a moral outrage, and the more appalling because Britain has opened wide its doors to millions of immigrants, virtually none of them as deserving of our hospitality as the Gurkhas.
Gordon Brown promised, when he became Prime Minister, to be guided by his moral compass. There's precious little sign of that instrument at the moment. News Source
Gurkhas are not in the same categorised agenda as Immigrants. Immigrants will vote for anyone that allows them to settle in Britain and Labour has reaped the rewards of imported votes through Immigration. Gurkhas on the other hand would not guarantee votes for Labour therefore unimportant in the eyes of the treacherous Labour scum! (Ed)
Laboratory created Biological Weapon?
As you read below you could say that such a splice
of viruses are impossible unless artificially created!
- New mixture of viruses in flu never seen before
- Eight cases found in California and Texas
- WHO says Mexico, U.S. well-equipped to handle outbreak
- No need to change travel plans, say WHO and CDC (Adds eighth case in United States; details)
A strain of flu never seen before has killed as many as 61 people in Mexico and has spread into the United States, where eight people have been infected but recovered, health officials said on friday.
Mexico's government said at least 16 people have died of the disease in central Mexico and that it may also have been responsible for 45 other deaths.
The World Health Organization said tests showed the virus in 12 of the Mexican patients had the same genetic structure as a new strain of swine flu, designated H1N1, seen in eight people in California and Texas. [nLO274836]
Because there is clearly human-to-human spread of the new virus, raising fears of a major outbreak, Mexico's government canceled classes for millions of children in its sprawling capital city and surrounding areas.
"Our concern has grown as of yesterday," U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acting director Dr. Richard Besser told reporters in a telephone briefing.
It first looked mostly like a swine virus but closer analysis
showed it is a never-before-seen mixture of swine, human and avian viruses, according to the CDC. [nN24420522].
"We do not have enough information to fully assess the health threat posed by this new swine flu virus," Besser said.
Humans can occasionally catch swine flu from pigs but rarely have they been known to pass it on to other people.
The WHO said it was ready to use rapid containment measures if needed, including antivirals, and that both the United States and Mexico are well equipped to handle the outbreak.
Both the WHO and the CDC said there was no need to alter travel arrangements in Mexico or the United States.
CLOSE TO 1,000 SUSPECTED CASES IN MEXICO
Eight people were infected with the new strain in California and Texas, but all of them have recovered. Mexico said it had close to 1,000 suspected cases there.
The CDC's Besser said scientists were working to understand why there are so many deaths in Mexico when the infections in the United States seem mild.
Worldwide, seasonal flu kills between 250,000 and 500,000 people in an average year, but the flu season for North America should have been winding down.
The U.S. government said it was closely following the new cases. "The White House is taking the situation seriously and monitoring for any new developments. The president has been fully briefed," an administration official said.
Mexico's government cautioned people not to shake hands or kiss when greeting or to share food, glasses or cutlery for fear of infection.
The outbreak jolted residents of the Mexican capital, one of the world's biggest cities and home to some 20 million people.
One pharmacy ran out of surgical face masks after selling 300 in a day.
"We're frightened because they say it's not exactly flu, it's another kind of virus and we're not vaccinated," said Angeles Rivera, 34, a federal government worker who fetched her son from a public kindergarten that was closing.
The virus is an influenza A virus, carrying the designation H1N1. It contains DNA from avian, swine and human viruses, including elements from European and Asian swine viruses, the CDC has said. [nN23355101]
The Geneva-based U.N. agency WHO said it was in daily contact with U.S., Canadian and Mexican authorities and had activated its Strategic Health Operations Center (SHOC) -- its command and control center for acute public health events.
The CDC said it will issue daily updates at http://www.cdc.gov/flu/swine/investigation.htm.
Surveillance for and scrutiny of influenza has been stepped up since 2003, when H5N1 bird flu reappeared in Asia. Experts fear that or another strain could spark a pandemic that could kill millions. [nN24440477]
In Egypt, a 33-year-old woman died of bird flu, becoming the third such victim there in a week. The H5N1 bird flu, a completely different strain from the swine flu, has infected 421 people in 15 countries and killed 257 since 2003.
An outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, killed 44 people in Canada in 2003. (Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Maggie Fox in Washington; Writing by Kieran Murray; Editing by Eric Walsh) News Source
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(Natural Solutions Foundation www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org)
We have continually raised the warning about the potential for a “weaponized” or “engineered” pandemic. See for example the following postings on this blog:
- 07/19/08 - Weaponized Avian Flu Intelligence Report, Video & Updates - http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=742
- 09/15/08 - Smoke and Mirrors… shards of truth - http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=965
- 03/06/09 - Avian Flu “Accident” - http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=2220
Now we must raise the alarm once again. “Although past weaponization events have failed to trigger the pandemic,” Foundation President Gen. Stubblebine suggests, “we must assume the forces at work will produce what world health officials have called the inevitable pandemic.”
Whether those forces are the chaos of the natural world, the greed-addicted structure of the health care industry and its Big Pharma cartel, or the evil intent of individuals or groups, we know not.
One need not believe in conspiracies to observe that social and economic conditions may be such that a pandemic is almost a foregone conclusion. For example, several major foundations are providing significant funding to several dozen laboratories around the world that are studying the Avian Flu virus to find out how easy it might be for “terrorists” to weaponize the flu.
How many such labs do you think it takes before it is inevitable that an engineered pathogen will escape?
Before you answer that question, remember that just this past January, as related in the second link above, a shipment of annual flu vaccine was “accidentally” contaminated with live Avian Flu virus… nearly triggering the pandemic.
And now, over the past couple days, the story has broken of a potential Swine Flu pandemic (yes, the Swine Flu is back!). We reproduce below three stories about this and are continuing our investigation so that we can issue a Pandemic Flu eAlert shortly to the Health Freedom Action eAlert’s several hundred thousand subscribers. If you do not yet receive the free eAlert, please join at: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=187
A final “smoking gun” is found in one article below, where the particular strain of Swine Flu is said to be a “novel strain” — and in another where it says, “It first looked mostly like a swine virus but closer analysis showed it is a never-before-seen mixture of swine, human and avian viruses, according to the CDC.” this, Dr. Laibow says, can be a hallmark of an engineered virus.
PLEASE TAKE THIS ALERT SERIOUSLY.
Dr. Laibow urges you to make sure you have supplemental silver (ionic or colloidal) available and stockpiled. This nutrient offers hope in a dangerous situation. You can order ionic silver and support the Foundation at the same time by going to: www.Nutronix.com/NaturalSolutions and on the top bar choose “Products” — then on the left menu (near the bottom) choose: “Silver Solution”.
Ralph Fucetola JD
NSF Trustee for Dr. Laibow and Gen. Stubblebine
Our Accomplishments: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=195
We need your support to keep you informed: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=189
The Weaponized Flu Pandemic, WPF, Appears to Have Begun
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Below taken from an email alert on the subject (Ed)
"It first looked mostly like a swine virus but closer analysis showed it is a never-before-seen mixture of swine, human and avian viruses, according to the CDC."
"Don't be concerned", say the pundits of officialdom, "but this virus has killed 61 people in Mexico and has spread to the US." In Mexico, the victims have died while in the US they have not. I must assume that this is because their immune systems were in better shape...
[...]
The WHO said it was ready to use rapid containment measures if needed, including antivirals, and that both the United States and Mexico are well equipped to handle the outbreak. Both the WHO and the CDC said there was no need to alter travel arrangements in Mexico or the United States."
I believe, on the contrary, that you SHOULD alter you travel plans. If you have any means to, or reason to, or thoughts of, being outside the US and Mexico RIGHT NOW, do it. Get a ticket and get out. Why? Because the flu may not sicken or kill you, but the forced vaccinations very well may.
It has also been noted in officialdom that although there is no evidence that this year's seasonal flu would provide cross "protection," that "possibility" is being "studied."
5 will get you 10 that the official pronouncement comes forth that, indeed, this year's flu vaccine miraculously confers "protection" against this mystery disease and, aren't we lucky? We can all take the Seasonal Flu vaccine and get "protected". I will be literally astonished if that is not the thrust of this "investigation" of a "lucky coincidence".
Vaccines, an uninsurable risk, are damaging and deadly at the best of times and have never been proven either safe or effective, despite the near-religious fervor of their well-funded supporters. Despite the total lack of scientific evidence that the antibodies produced by an irritated immune system provide protection for people against what they were injected for, epidemics continue to occur primarily in vaccinated populations (just as Avian Flu continued to appear in vaccinated flocks living in industrial conditions).
But epidemics make for great crowd control opportunities and for wonderful population reduction exercises.
If this "strange brew virus" is the beginning of the Pandemic we have been promised for so long, it will LITERALLY signal the end of our lives as we know them, or even the ending of our lives.
The monsters intentionally working this scheme have said over and over that there WOULD be a Pandemic, that it COULD be any time. The Powers That Kill (PTK) decided some time ago that there were simply too many of us "Useless Eaters" and they have concocted several schemes to accomplish the culling to get rid of what the US Government, the UN, WHO and others have decided is "necessary" for a sustainable planet: 80-90% of us dead.
Remember, information is appearing which says that the new virus is a "strange brew" of swine flu, avian flu and human flu. Such "Strange Brews" do not occur by themselves. They occur in laboratories where mad men/women and their murderous gutless, spineless technicians and helpers assist them.
[...]
Two days ago, we heard rumblings of a mystery "Swine Flu" which was killing people in Mexico, but, not to worry! This was, the media soothed, not, repeat not, the start of a Pandemic. Yesterday we heard that there were now cases of this mystery disease in the US and today, at 1:30 PM, Recombinomics Commentary, a virology journal, tells us that this IS the start of the Pandemic.
But they also tell us that the gene sequences are totally novel and that such a virus has not been seen before.
Not outside of a weapons virology laboratory, that is. If this engineered Pandemic does not fizzle as several recent attempts we've tracked, you are being set up for one of three events. If it does fizzle there WILL be another attempt after this one, and another and another... until they get what they are after: genocidal depopulation -- unless we stop these atrocities.
Here's what you are looking at in the very near future:
You will face either FEMA or the Department of Homeland Security running the country with:
1. Martial Law and forced vaccinations, if you accept them. These vaccine will have GOD ONLY KNOWS WHAT in them (perhaps some of the same goodies that were used to sterilize 3,000,000+ women in the Philippines without their knowledge, according to the conviction handed down by the Philippine Supreme Court, or the ones that were used, starting in 1985 by the WHO, to make enough women sterile in Africa to "eliminate 150,000,000 excess Sub Saharan Africans") or something in there to make sure that you have the flu or develop leukemia from the known contaminating viruses permitted in vaccines by the FDA for decades, or poisonous aluminum, fluoride and mercury, or MSG, or, or....
2. Martial Law with forced internment for an indefinite period if you refuse the "treatment" or "prevention" offered to you. If you think that this internment will be for your good health and survival, guess again. The DOJ no doubt already has a Memo drafted that it is perfectly legal.
This is not conspiracy theory - this is conspiracy fact: there IS a conspiracy to kill you and yours. Disregard this information and warning at your own peril. What are the consequences if you are unable to incorporate this information and it is true? What are the consequences if you do deal with it and it turns out to false or the weaponized virus fails in its mission?
You can see pretty quickly that this is a time to act on the basis that it IS true and do a Monday Morning Quarterback session if it's not. If it is correct, and we fear it may be, then not acting on it can, quite simply, destroy you and yours.
Not convinced? Simply think about Baxter's contamination of seasonal flu vaccine with highly infective weaponized Avian Flu Virus - followed by no criminal investigation, no firings, nothing and add in the fact that Baxter was applying for a license to sell their new Avian Flu vaccine against the same strain found in the vaccines in the very same 18 countries and you cannot miss the conspiracy.
But time has run out to try to persuade people. Frankly, at this point, you either follow your intuition and get it or you do not.
You are about to read for yourself the way it is and if you can see it, fine. If you cannot, well, the consequences will be on your own head. But the cost of ignoring what you are about to read, and not sharing it, may be truly life-and-death horrendous. Let me add here that I pray to my God that this deadly attempt on our lives and our way of life fails as the other attempts we've documented have.
DEAR GOD, LET ME BE WRONG!
Some of the intentional plagues, like SARS, have fizzled miserably (or gloriously for us who do not wish to die). Avian Flu simply would not get off the ground - 64% of the chickens in Indonesia, for example, developed a gene which makes them immune to the novel, weaponized Avian Flu with which they have been injected!
The Wellcome Trust of drug giant Burroughs Wellcome/SmithKleinGlaxo recently handed out grants to figure out why the Avian Flu was NOT causing a pandemic.
Highly pathogenic (disease-causing) agents went through several transmissions and, DANG!, they lost their punch so that Egyptian toddlers are, as a recent news article said, unexpectedly not dying.
The fact, however, that they were not dying of the Avian Flu was, in the bizarre and twisted logic of that writer, a cause for even greater concern (and more vaccinations?) because then people would spread it without dying and there would be more deaths.
Say what? Logic is not a strong point of those who hire themselves out to TPK.
Laws have been put in place to allow the mere utterance of the word "Pandemic" by the Secretary of Health and Human Services to close the trap on anyone inside, entering or leaving the US, compelling vaccination or internment via martial law and other "emergency measures":
~ Accept either Mandatory Vaccination or involuntary internment ("quarantine") for an unspecified period of time. More than 630 camps, with a total capacity of close to 30 million people, have been built and staffed (Patriot Acts I, II, BARDA, State Emergency Medical Powers Acts in virtually every state make refusing a vaccine when called for by the Governor a felony offense punishable by immediate imprisonment).
~ Presidential Emergency Powers which authorize the stripping of your citizenship and habeas corpus rights and authorizing holding you as a suspected terrorist if you disagree with the system's desires (Executive Order, October 17, 2007).
The Sec of HHS needs no scientific substantiation, no advice and consent from Congress, no validation from anyone. Just the magic word, "Pandemic!" CAN and WILL trigger Health Fascism such as we have never seen outside of the concentration camps of Germany. You see,
~ The Warren Commission Act (October 17, 2006), authorizes holding "suspected terrorists" [see above] without a trial or with a trial before a military tribunal but without legal representation, the right to confront one's accusers, the right to examine the evidence against you or be informed of the charges against you, and subjecting you to the possibility of a secret execution as a "suspected terrorist" while -
President Bush's Executive Order of October 17, 2006 cancels habeas corpus, the rights granted under the English Common Law System to not be kidnapped by the state without notifying people that you are being held, the right to legal representation, the right to a speedy trial, the right to know the charges against you, the right to examine the evidence being held against you, the right to face your accusers, the right, in short, to justice under the US Constitution. Gone.
Natural Solutions Foundation has been warning for some time that a bio-engineered, weaponized flu virus and/or weaponized flu vaccine is in the offing. See, for example, Intellegence Report on Weaponized Avia Flu, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r-njxcVt5U, Smoke and Mirrors… shards of truth - http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=965 and Avian Flu "Accident" - http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=2220.
If you recall, it was the Natural Solutions Foundation which broke the Weaponized Flu story in July, 2008 and have followed it up vigorously with videos, on the radio and in writing since then.
OK. NOW WHAT?
An official in Indiana recently claimed that he had been briefed along with others that FEMA has a plan to vaccinate every man, woman and child in the US within 48 hours of the start of an official "Pandemic".
While that is an enormous logistical task, given that battle veterans are in place "backing up" police departments throughout the nation, who knows what might be accomplished? Rounding up people, putting them in holding centers and administering these shots forcibly under armed guard as was done to the children of Prince George's County, MD, school district in November, 2007?
You will recall that the State's Attorney in this action, Mr. Glenn Ivey, stated that his own young children were protected under an exemption in the state which he had filed for them because the vaccines were dangerous.
Could mercenaries who work for companies like Xe, the renamed Blackwater, the hundreds of thousands of foreign soldiers reported to be quartered in the US (despite the "outmoded" [according to President Obama] US Constitution's prohibition of such quartering) and newly retrained US and Canadian troops round people up and sort out the accepters from the refusers, shipping off the refusers to camps and jails prepared for them.
No? Why not? After all, they would be indoctrinated to believe that you, unvaccinated, would pose a danger that the rest of us and therefore, if you were reluctant to do your duty for society and accept the vaccination, you would have to be removed from society. Can't happen? That's what the ghastly, inhuman and ineffective, but ever-burgeoning prison system is based upon. Precisely.
Given that in July of 2008, within 24 hours of each other, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security declared that their goal was to vaccinate every man, woman and child in the United States against the Avian Flu (now, of course, it would be the "Mysterious" Swine Flu), starting, as they so chillingly put it, with those who want it, there is no reason to think that this is not what lies in store for us.
My advice to you: DO NOT accept injections. Protect your immune system by starting a vigorous, but sensible, detoxification program NOW and by giving up any sort of packaged food that is not labeled organic and GMO free.
Read the information below on how to do that with safe, clean and effective products which also provide support to the Natural Solutions Foundation so that we can continue fighting for you and your rights.
Disclaimer: This article has been duplicated in most part to serve as public information
Many thanks to Jim for Links and Information regarding this article. (Ed)
Natalie Rowe is 'absolutely fuming'. She has arrived home to find that her teenage son has left the patio door unlocked. 'Anyone could have walked in and helped themselves to my valuables,' she complains.
Poor boy. One imagines that the threat of burglary has taken second place in his adolescent mind to possible public exposure of the extraordinary circumstances of his conception.
His father is William 'Sincs' Sinclair, the Old Etonian grandson of the 1st Viscount Thurso, former Liberal Party leader and long-time confidant of Winston Churchill. His mother is a onetime dominatrix prostitute and drug dealer from the backstreets of Bradford, West Yorkshire.
You might want to keep her CV hush-hush, for everybody's sake. But this week Ms Rowe, 45, claimed in a lurid Sunday newspaper 'taster' that she is about to name, as former clients, two leading members of David Cameron's Tory inner circle, and two former Tory ministers, one of whom is now a peer. General Election dynamite.
Of her 14-year-old son, Ms Rowe admits: 'He doesn't like me washing my dirty linen in public. It has made him very angry.' Perhaps, you might say, understandably so.
But, no matter, the boy will just have to bite the bullet. His mother expects her kiss-and-tell memoirs, already written apparently, to earn her a giddy £1million that will outweigh concerns for her son's angst.
Naturally, the publicity is being handled by the old sleazemeister himself, Max Clifford.
A mile across London from this fraught domestic drama, Jasper Orlando Slingsby Duncombe - 7th Baron Feversham since the death of his father two weeks ago - laughs heartily when asked about Ms Rowe and her allegations.
He was once a close confidant of at least one of the protagonists in this rather sordid story, but is reluctant to discuss the circumstances. 'I really can't tell you anything about Tories, sex and drugs,' he says. 'I'm simply not in a position to spill the beans.'
With an affable shrug, he returns to running his business. That is not managing his family estate at Duncombe Park, North Yorkshire, but directing the latest hardcore film for his hugely successful Relish Treble X pornographic production company.
For the record, the new flick is a 'homage to Bollywood', provisionally titled Sex Wallah. Previous works by his lordship have included To The Manor Porn, described by the cognoscenti as 'pure posh filth'.
Ms Rowe, Mr Sinclair and Lord Feversham are just three members of a large and colourful cast of bohemian characters, interlinked by loose association and dubious habits, who caroused in the smarter reaches of West London almost two decades ago.
Naturally, most of them have moved on and have forgotten - or would like to forget - the youthful indiscretions of those carefree days. Not least as many have moved on to succesful, high-flying careers.
But there are those who are only too eager to draw them to the public's attention. Labour's spin-doctors would love to resurrect, embellish or totally reinvent the events of yesteryear, as part of a political smear tactic.
For there is a fourth cast member in this story who now stands on the threshold of one of the highest offices of State. That is Shadow Chancellor George Osborne, who was involved with this aristocratic demi-monde for a while. That much is certain, after a notorious photograph, taken in a West London flat 16 years ago, came to light.
In the picture, leaked to the Press four years ago, the then 22-year-old Osborne is shown posing happily alongside Ms Rowe, who was at the height of her 'career' as a dominatrix prostitute.
Osborne wears a dishevelled shirt and tie and has a friendly arm thrown across the young woman's shoulders.
It is claimed, though it certainly cannot be proven, that on the table before them there is a line of the Class A drug - cocaine.
Draw your own conclusions, voters, was the message when the picture was first published.
Much has been written about the circumstances of the photograph since and much of it has been wrong. But if Ms Rowe's claims are to be believed - and that is a big 'if' - then her forthcoming book may help clear up some of those uncertainties.
So could it really be true that her grubby kiss'n'tell confessions will heap shame on the Tory Party at the very moment it prepares for a forthcoming General Election?
To gauge the credibility of her claims, let us go back to the beginning of the story, and the eccentric man who stands at its centre.
Isaiah William Columba Stroma Sinclair was born 38 years ago this summer, with the obligatory silver spoon in his mouth. Continued
See Also:
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith will face angry protests on Monday as she unveils plans to store details of each internet click the public makes.
The proposed expansion in surveillance powers could see every web user assigned a unique ID to track activities.
It would allow the State to snoop on social sites such as Facebook and auction platform eBay for the first time.
Miss Smith warns the move is necessary to prevent terrorists exploiting technologies to hatch plots. She will seek to reassure the public by saying town hall stasi will have no access to the information.
They said Terrorism laws would not be abused. But Councils use the terrorism acts to snoop on Dog Fouling, Wheelie bin and recycling offending, On Parents (School catchment fraud) and on littering! Therefore her words are hardly comforting! (Ed)
But the Office of the Information Commissioner has described the move as a ‘step too far for the British way of life’.
Phil Booth, of the NO2ID privacy campaign, called the plan ‘Stalinist’ and a ‘complete abhorrence’.
Under current laws, details of all phone calls and texts are stored for a year by network operators.
They can be accessed by the police and security services and, in some cases, various public authorities.
Under the new proposals, data would be stored by internet service providers and made available on demand or, more controversially, held on a giant database.
The database, which would also contain details of phone calls and texts, could be controlled by the Government or another body.
NOTE: Civil servant Chris Galley, who leaked Home Office immigration papers to Tory MP Damian Green, was sacked yesterday. News Source
An environmental protester today claimed that police tried to recruit her as a paid spy to inform on her organisation.
Plane Stupid member Matilda Gifford said police told her that they have a network of informants inside protest organisations, which they tried to persuade her to join.
The 24-year-old said she was approached by officers claiming to be from Strathclyde Police a few weeks after she was arrested in a protest at Aberdeen Airport in March.
In meetings at a Glasgow police station, which she recorded, and later in a cafe, they offered her financial rewards for information on Plane Stupid.
She passed recordings of three conversations with police to the Guardian, which has posted them on its website.
Ms Gifford said the officers did not specify how much money would be offered, but that it would be tax free and cash in hand as if it was paid into her bank account it could compromise her by leaving an audit trail.
She said they warned her that her protest activities might damage her future employment prospects, and the experience left her feeling intimidated.
She said: 'They were talking about having a business arrangement with a financial agreement whereby I would be swapping information about Plane Stupid, about the dynamics and plans for the group.
'They were playing games, trying to make me believe that other people in the group were already informing.
'The police are using really sinister tactics and tax payers money. I think it raises really serious questions about whether the police are there to protect the state and big business or to protect the civil liberties of people.'
In the 'tape one' recording on the website, one officer says they have a network of informers from groups such as terrorist organisations, environmentalists, and leftwing and rightwing extremists.
Ms Gifford said that around half an hour later one of the officers approached her and said he was disappointed.
Ms Gifford said that when Plane Stupid's lawyer contacted Strathclyde Police to find out more about the officers, police denied any knowledge of them.
Later they said that police had been in contact with Plane Stupid protesters. Assistant Chief Constable George Hamilton told The Guardian that the force had 'a responsibility to gather intelligence'. Continued
Sunday Roundup of the News this week
Don't want hear? Don't want to see? Don't want to speak out?
It's time time you did and loudly! Make your votes count!
An astonishing £7million has been spent on wine by the Government Hospitality Unit since Labour came to power, figures revealed last night. This year taxpayers face a bill of £800,000 for wine drunk at parties hosted by ministers and civil servants. And in the depths of an economic crisis, the total alcohol budget for Whitehall is rocketing by more than 50 per cent this year.
The budget for ministers' parties has been quietly increased by 50 per cent - and almost £140,000 spent on an exclusive wine cellar, according to a claim made by the Conservatives. Figures obtained by Tory MP Grant Shapps suggest Government hospitality is unaffected by the recession in the week when the Chancellor promised a Whitehall efficiency drive.
The unprecedented burden of public debt built up by Gordon Brown will not be brought under control for nearly a quarter of a century, economists have said. ”Debt freedom day”, when the national debt returns to sustainable levels, will not be reached until 2032 - another 23 years away, the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies said.
Alistair Darling has admitted he is not certain "what will happen" with the economy after being accused of using "fantasy" estimates to chart Britain's economic recovery. The Chancellor appeared to question the robustness of his own economic forecasts and conceded he may have to develop new proposals. Within hours of Wednesday's Budget speech, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) produced predictions which suggested that Mr Darling had been too optimistic in his prediction that the British economy will grow next year.
New evidence has surfaced that Gordon Brown is feeling the strains of office, with claims that the Prime Minister recently slung a laser printer to the floor in a fit of pique. A report on the financial wire service Bloomberg News claimed that aides saw Mr Brown send the machine crashing. The report failed to provide further details of the incident on the grounds that to do so would imperil the anonymity of the source.
The Labour Party’s state smear campaign - of which an insight was gained this week on how they go to work against the Conservative Party - is in full swing against the British National Party. “Politically directed police are being sent to harass BNP activists and provide the controlled media with unsubstantiated smear stories as election day draws ever nearer,” said Simon Darby, deputy leader and press officer. Reacting to the news that totally innocent BNP Euro Eastern region candidate Mr Peter Lucas had been detained yesterday, Mr Darby said such things were always expected in the run-up to each and every election.
Campaigners condemned new rules giving more Gurkhas the right to live in Britain as a 'disgrace' today. Immigration Minister Phil Woolas said the changes would allow around 4,300 more former Gurkhas to settle here out of the 36,000 who served in the British Army before July 1997. But supporters of the Gurkhas' campaign attacked the new criteria as 'unattainable', with actress Joanna Lumley saying she felt 'ashamed' of the Government.
France wants Britain to sign a deal allowing thousands of migrants to flood into the UK. Calais mayor Natacha Bouchart’s controversial plan to scrap passport controls was announced as migrants in the port staged an angry demo yesterday, waving placards written in flawless English. The banners expose how Britain’s open-door asylum system and benefits culture are a magnet for Afghans, Kurds and Eritreans.
UK pledges immediate £15m humanitarian support for Zimbabwe A £15m package to help the people of Zimbabwe was announced by International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander today.
A tax timebomb in Labour's Budget will leave families facing a bill of £2,800 a year for the next decade, independent experts said yesterday. The devastating verdict from the Institute for Fiscal Studies came as Alistair Darling flew to the U.S., leaving colleagues struggling to defend his 'fantasy' proposals. The IFS warned the state of the public finances was so desperate it will take 23 years for debt to return to the limit set under Gordon Brown's now abandoned 'golden rules'.
The Home Office's reputation on crime statistics suffered a humiliating setback after its own key adviser, Louise Casey, admitted the public do not trust them. Ms Casey, the crime and anti-social behaviour expert and former Respect Tsar, said confidence is so low that the public are no longer even surprised if figures turn out to be false.
Two men brutally tortured a pensioner with a knife to get him to reveal where he kept his savings before beating him to death with his own walking stick, a court heard today. Joby Barney, 25, and John James, 19, allegedly attacked Reginald Baker with such ferocity that they broke his neck, back and fractured every one of his ribs. The thugs also partially severed the defenceless 75-year-old's finger as they tried to force him to hand over his cash, the court was told.
Big rises in burglary, theft and robbery at knife-point fuelled warnings yesterday of a “credit- crunch crime wave’’. Opposition parties accused ministers of complacency while police suggested crime increases linked to the recession had yet to peak.
Meet PC Pam Fleming - the first Jedi police officer to admit she is a devotee of the Star Wars-inspired religion. PC Fleming, a beat officer who has patrolled the mean streets of Glasgow for the past 23 years, stepped proudly forward today - light sabre in hand - to say 'I'm a Jedi and I'm proud'. She even admits to using Jedi mind tricks during interviews with suspects in 'an effort to achieve the truth', although she tells industry magazine Police Review that she does not use 'The Force' to influence what suspects say or do.
A Met police officer who allegedly boasted on Facebook he was going to "bash some long-haired hippies" at the G20 protests is under investigation. Pc Rob Ward, 27, who is based at a station near his home in Enfield, is claimed to have posted the comment just an hour after the death of newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson, 47, who was shoved to the ground by another police officer at the protests in the City on 1 April. Pc Ward's message, left at 8.17pm that night, referred to the world leaders' summit taking place the next day in Docklands.
Every phone call, email or website visit will be monitored by the state under plans to be unveiled next week. The proposals will give police and security services the power to snoop on every single communication made by the public with the data then likely to be stored in an enormous national database. The precise content of calls and other communications would not be accessible but even text messages and visits to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter would be tracked.
Five men who brought terror to a busy street on a Friday night have all been jailed. Tasab Hussain, Asrar Sami, Omar Arbab and brothers Nasir and Naim Aziz were convicted of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and carrying a firearm with criminal intent following a trial at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court. Victim, Damien Miller, was stabbed and shot at outside the Wedgwood pub in Waterloo Road, Cobridge, on January 18 last year.
Three people who gave false alibis for two of the men who attacked Damien Miller have been sent to prison.Joseph Holland, aged 23, and Abul Bosher Shahjahan, aged 25, said they were with Omar Arbab at the time of the assault, while 23-year-old Melissa Jackson said her husband Nasir Aziz was at home.
Britain appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian state. As a sometime teacher of political science and international law, I do not use the term totalitarian loosely. There are no concentration camps or gulags but there are thought police with unprecedented powers to dictate ways of thinking and sniff out heresy, and there can be harsh punishments for dissent. Nikolai Bukharin claimed one of the Bolshevik Revolution's principal tasks was "to alter people's actual psychology". Britain is not Bolshevik, but a campaign to alter people's psychology and create a new Homo britannicus is under way without even a fig leaf of disguise.
France is to send in its army to close down a shanty town where hundreds of illegal migrants camp as they wait to sneak into Britain. The news came as the mayor of Calais urged the UK to sign up to an agreement making the port town a passport free zone - so they can get rid of thousands of illegal migrants. It would mean that all could get straight across the Channel without official papers to the welfare benefits available in their British ‘Eldorado’. And exasperated mayor Natacha Bouchart spoke of chartering a boat to 'dump' the illegal immigrants sleeping rough in her town on Britain's shores.
It Is a telling insight into the way the Prime Minister’s mind works that he should think the best way to clean up parliamentary expenses is to pay every MP a bonus for turning up to work. At least parliamentarians who milked the discredited “additional costs allowance” knew that details of their excessive claims might well be exposed by newspapers.
Every time I see Trevor Phillips, the head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (cost: £70 million a year), he seems to be grinning like a Cheshire cat who's not only found the cream but who has also just been given a six-figure non-job on a government quango monitoring anti-feline discrimination. No wonder, if this Observer article is anything to go by. Apparently Equate, a private company 70 per cent of whose shares are owned by Phillips, has signed a deal with a Canadian company that sells prepaid credit cards to migrant workers. Lib Dem MP Norman Baker has already said that "it could be argued that there is a conflict of interest".
Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, has spoken openly about the UK's need to attract migrant workers and warned the government not to "clamp down" on immigration. Why?
Mr Purnell said EHRC chairman Trevor Phillips had agreed to work with the Government to assess whether any groups were suffering in the recession.
Trevor Phillips, the Chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Government watchdog that ordered the study, insisted that immigration is part of the solution to economic problems, not part of the problem.
It is sometimes difficult to keep up to date with the endless stream of ever-changing quangos that seem to illicitly govern our country. With no democratic mandate or channels for accountability the damage they do to society can be underestimated. The quangos have always been a natural adversary to society but it seems they are now even working against one another. The upper management of the quangos seem to be deserting the sinking ships as fast as possible.
A spat at the equality watchdog highlights wider divisions on policy The earnest folk at the old Disability Rights Commission (DRC) might not be everyone’s idea of wild party animals. But this week it was alleged that the National Audit Office, a public-spending watchdog, had queried several items in the accounts of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), a mega-quango which absorbed various anti-discrimination outfits, including the DRC, in 2007.
Pakistan teetered on the brink of collapse today as Taliban fighters threatened to overrun the volatile country. As violence broke out in the disputed north-west corner, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the state, which has nuclear capability, now posed a 'mortal threat' to the world.
Children are to be tracked by satellite technology to allow parents and teachers to keep tabs on them. Pupils will be monitored with a swipe card that registers when they board and alight from school buses.
Heroin dealers will no longer face automatic jail sentences and could escape with community service order under reforms put forward by Government advisers yesterday. They claimed that long jail terms do not deter dealers and that courts should focus on confiscating the profits of drug barons. The Sentencing Advisory Panel also said it was wrong that drug pushers can go to jail for longer periods than other serious criminals such as rapists, violent attackers or dangerous drivers. The proposals would mean that a heroin dealer, who would now get a jail sentence of two to five years, could hope to be handed a community punishment order. Even gangsters who control the biggest drug rings should get reduced sentences, the panel said.
Thieves and violent criminals have been enjoying fishing trips under the guise of 'intensive' community punishment, a report said today. Young offenders spared jail in the name of 'tough' community sentences have also spent their time learning to dig gardens, it found. Others have attended classes in which they have been taught how to claim the greatest possible amount in state benefits. Fishing and gardening classes are among the punishments handed out to criminals under trials of a new £14milllion Intensive Alternatives to Custody system launched by Justice Secretary Jack Straw last year.
Pollution is protecting the world from climate change, according to two new studies. The first study found that the hole in the ozone layer, caused by the use of CFCs, has prevented the melting of Antarctica even as the rest of the world warms. A separate study found that plants absorb more carbon dioxide under polluted skies, therefore slowing global warming.
Antarctic sea ice is growing rather than shrinking as a result of the hole in the ozone layer, scientists have said. In stark contrast to the loss of sea ice in the Arctic over the last 30 years, the frozen seas surrounding the South Pole have increased at the rate of 100,000 square kilometres a decade over the last 40 years. Scientists believe the growth is down to stronger surface winds over Antarctica and more frequent storms in the Southern Ocean – both direct consequences of the ozone hole.
Britain will be left with a £140billion black hole in public finances which is impervious to economic recovery once the recession ends, experts warned today. The Institute of Fiscal Studies says nearly all of the £175billion the Government plans to borrow this year will be 'structural' and remain in the long-term. The devastating analysis emerged as Alistair Darling absorbed the fallout from his shocking 'red ink' Budget.
Often it takes adversity to bring out the best in a human being. A young soldier, coming under fire for the first time, discovers within himself hitherto undiscovered reserves of courage, skill and steadiness of nerve. A cricketer, coming to the crease amid the clatter of wickets, puts his head down and bats his side out of trouble. And sometimes adversity reveals hidden defects. The soldier panics, the batsman loses his head.
As David Cameron observed yesterday, all Labour governments eventually run out of money. Thanks to a long global economic boom it has just taken a bit longer to happen this time. But Gordon Brown’s regime is certainly making up for lost time now. The onset of the credit crunch has highlighted terrible weaknesses in Britain’s public finances.
Britain has voiced its protest after Argentina made a fresh bid for sovereignty over a submarine area three times the size of France that includes the Falkland Islands. The UK also lays claim to the island archipelago - known as the Malvinas in Argentina.
Unemployment has soared to its highest level since Labour came to power in 1997, new figures showed today. The number of people looking for work jumped by 177,000 in the three months to February to reach 2.1 million - the biggest quarterly rise since 1991. The gloomy new figures come ahead of Alistair Darling's 'Budget for jobs' in which he is expected to announce a £2.5 billion package to get young people back into work.
A Sense of menace hung in the crisp spring air. On almost every street there were groups of hardened youths, many wearing headscarves. A sullen look was in their eyes, an aggressive tone in their Arabic voices. But this intimidating scene was not from downtown Algiers. It could be found just a few miles from the white cliffs of the Kent coast, in the historic French port of Calais, where thousands of immigrants gather with the aim of crossing the Channel.
A Pensioner has been attacked by a young thug - because he was handing out BNP leaflets. Master gunmaker Peter Frenette, British National Party organiser for South Cambridgeshire, was assaulted in St Neots along with a fellow party member. The 67-year-old activist was approached by his attacker, who is described as white, 16 to 20 and wearing a black T-shirt and black trousers, in Market Square, near a BNP stall. Police have appealed for witnesses.
Britain suffers from more than 27,000 crimes per day, or more than ten million crimes per year - the direct result of decades of softly-softly politically correct policing and a failed social engineering policy which has put the rights of yobs and criminals above that of victims. According to the Office for National Statistics’ British Crime Survey of 2008, 22 percent of people in Britain will be the victim of some crime during the course of a single year. To combat this shocking state of affairs, the British National Party seeks a return to traditional standards of law enforcement, combined with social reform directed at addressing the root causes of criminal behaviour.
An elderly woman suffering from dementia was blindfolded "like a prisoner" before being snatched from her daughter's home in a raid by social workers and police. Betty Figg's daughter Rosalind had refused to take her mother back to a care home, claiming she was deeply unhappy there. She and her husband spent thousands of pounds adapting their home so that Mrs Figg, 86, could live with them. But social services called in the police who, armed with a battering ram, threw a towel over Mrs Figg's head and took her away from her family against their will.
Members of the BNP should be banned from being nurses, according to a motion passed at Unison’s Health Care Service Group Conference today. Delegates voted unanimously in favour of the motion, submitted by the National Nursing Sector, which calls for a law to prevent BNP members becoming nurses.
If this kind of logic is allowed to be applied than one should ask the question as to how many Muslim extremists are there working for the NHS? and then to apply Unison's logic (as they had done with BNP Nurses) in this case should Muslims be banned from working in the NHS as extremists could be discriminating against non-Muslim patients when treated by the NHS! It's a dangerous road that Unison seem to be heading down!
Highly-educated Muslim doctors, living in the UK and working in its hospitals, are being investigated over the failed terror attacks in London and Glasgow. Were they the work of al-Qaeda or bungling amateurs? Olga Craig investigates It has become clear that they are also the favoured occupations for many Islamic extremists: Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, trained in engineering and Ayman al-Zawahiri, his deputy, qualified as a doctor. Both professions have now been exposed as fertile breeding grounds for terrorism.
The number of pregnant women with HIV has risen to an all-time high in Scotland, latest figures have shown. Statistics from Health Protection Scotland found 27 women were identified as HIV positive last year, up from 22. More than 100 people living in Scotland were diagnosed with the virus in the first three months of this year, taking the total number infected to 5,901.
A girl of three has died in a hospital where intravenous drips used on children's wards were sabotaged. Punctures were discovered in a dozen of the bags, used to administer fluids to patients, which are kept in a secure store room. Forensic experts are checking them for fingerprints and to see if they were spiked with chemicals.
Couples with serious genetic conditions in their family have been forced to face the agonising decision to bring up a disabled child or terminate a pregnancy because the NHS is refusing to pay for testing, experts said. Couples facing a high risk of having a baby with an inherited serious condition can go through IVF, even though they are not infertile, in order to produce embryos that can be tested for the faulty gene responsible for the disease.
Labour's general secretary Ray Collins today called for a review of the law to consider whether the party could be allowed to select candidates from shortlists made up entirely of black and ethnic minority candidates. Ray Collins said evidence showed that all-women shortlists had worked to increase the number of female Labour MPs in parliament.
The News of the World has a stonking story which calls into question how many more lies those close to the Red Rag/McBride story have told. The Labour Party General Secretary has been forced to admit he was at the meeting which agreed to set it up. And, what's more, so was Brown lackey Kevin Maguire. And he calls himself a journalist.
The fortunes of Calais have been intricately intertwined with Britain for much of its history. For several centuries in medieval times the Channel port was a territorial possession of English monarchs. The town’s mayor Natacha Bouchart clearly thinks that little has changed, commenting yesterday that modern-day Calais is a “hostage to the British”.
Britain's lax asylum system and benefits culture is to blame for the thousands of migrants who try to sneak into the UK from France, the mayor of Calais has claimed.
The mayor of Calais, Natacha Bouchart, has blamed Britain's asylum and benefits system for "imposing" thousands of illegal migrants on her town.
A Birmingham care worker arrested for being an illegal immigrant had an “arsenal” of information which could have been helpful to terrorists. One of the items seized was a video recording that Pa Jobe had taken on a mobile phone of West Midlands Police headquarters.
Calais police swooped on more than 200 British-bound migrants in a series of dawn raids early yesterday. Armed officers stormed a squalid woodland camp near the ferry port known as 'The Jungle', arresting scores of bedraggled refugees. More were arrested in squats and disused industrial buildings along the northern French coast.
Migrants trying to cross the Channel illegally will soon be able to claim asylum in Britain while still in France under a controversial EU plan. Brussels intends to create a purpose-built “asylum support office” in Calais and alter the Dublin Convention to allow refugees to demand sanctuary in one country while in another.
Failed asylum seekers are winning the right to stay in Britain because of "shambolic" failings in the immigration hearing system. Hundreds of appeal hearings are going ahead without a representative from the Home Office to defend its original decision to deny asylum. The disclosure could help explain why the percentage of asylum seekers winning their appeals has risen from 17 per cent in 2005 to 25 per cent for the third quarter of 2008.
The number of migrants caught trying to sneak into Britain on ferries has more than doubled in the past year, French border officials revealed. Statistics show a 106 per cent jump in the number of economic immigrants and asylum seekers trying to breach security at the ferry port in Calais.
The Royal Navy, once the scourge of brigands on the high seas, has been told by the Foreign Office not to detain pirates because doing so may breach their human rights. Warships patrolling pirate-infested waters, such as those off Somalia, have been warned that there is also a risk that captured pirates could claim asylum in Britain.
A growing number of the African slave children arrive in Britain unaccompanied, as asylum-seekers, or with “private foster parents.” Once brought to Britain, the children are used as a fraudulent means by Nigerians already present in this country to obtain illicit housing and other welfare benefits, totalling tens of thousands of pounds each a year.
Labour has been blasted for trying to blame the deluge of illegal immigrants into Britain on the French. Minister Phil Woolas said the flood could be stopped if illegals in Calais and other ports were deported to their country of origin. He said: “These people are economic migrants. “If they were genuinely fleeing persecution they would seek asylum in France or one of the other EU countries.
Soaring population will force millions to flee water shortages in search of refuge - and, according to new figures, Britain will be one of the world's 'lifeboats'. On the eve of a major population conference, Science Editor Robin McKie asks: could the UK cope? Britain will become one of the world's major destinations for immigrants as the world heats up and populations continue to soar. Statistics from the United Nations show that, on average, every year more than 174,000 people will be added to the numbers in the UK and that this trend will continue for the next four decades.
An asylum seeker from Afghanistan has admitted he was the sex attacker who brought terror to the streets of Sneinton. A sudden wave of incidents in December, 2006, sparked police warnings for women to be vigilant and repeated appeals for information. Police issued a CD-fit of the sex attacker and put up posters appealing to local people to help them catch him.
WHAT IS THE IMPACT OF ASYLUM? Understandably, many migrants are desperate and will use any means they can to ensure they can settle here. From 1997 to 2002, it seemed that claiming asylum – claiming that you are a refugee fleeing persecution – was the most effective way of gaining the right to settle here. In 2002, 84,000 people claimed asylum. Add their dependents and the number was more than 100,000. The majority had their claims rejected, but very few of them were deported: most were allowed to stay, even if they were not given an officially recognised right to do so.
When a BNP councillor or councillors are elected in your ward the government will usually suspend sending any more asylum seekers and immigrants to your area under the governments asylum seekers dispersal policy. This means you will then have to pay less council tax, as the support services for those asylum seekers such as language translation services and social services are not required. This means that demand for local council housing is reduced and local families have a far better chance of getting a council house.
The Labour party is drowning in a cesspit of its own making. In recession-hit Britain, political corruption seems to have become the nation’s only growth industry. We no longer have a democratic government. Instead, we have rule by a sleazy, authoritarian cabal that continually abuses both public money and public office. Desperate, despotic and arguably dishonest, this gang of swindlers will go to any lengths to cling on to power, from locking up opponents to subverting the voting process.
The Government should have better things to do amid a financial crisis than tinker with speed limits. This country has some of the safest roads in the world; just a handful of countries have a lower fatality rate. So why is the Government wheeling out sweeping new road safety measures?
A Russian journalist believes the level of surveillance is worse in ‘Big Brother Britain’ than it was in Russia during the Soviet era. Irada Zeinalova, who is based in London, said she felt she was being constantly spied on by security cameras. She highlighted how in the UK the level of monitoring is such that even rubbish bins have computer chips fitted so councils can check what householders are throwing out. ‘Security has got absurd,’ she said. ‘I don’t like that level of intrusion into my private life.
Somali pirates, the new scourge of the Indian Ocean, are teaming up with radical Islamist groups in a renewed bout of anti-Western frenzy, intelligence agencies have reported. According to the respected Jane’s Intelligence Review, intelligence agencies are alarmed at the pirates’ increasingly close ties to Islamist groups. According to Jane’s, the agencies have managed to penetrate the pirate clans and believe that the pirates are increasingly working hand-in-hand with Islamists, who are allies of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida.
A mentally ill thug who stabbed to death a young mother in front of her child has been released from custody after just three years. Percy Wright butchered Colette Lynch, 24, on her doorstep in a frenzied knife attack in front of her two-year-old daughter.
Royalty protection officers posed for comical photographs on the Queen's throne, traded hardcore porn in locker rooms and handled firearms while drunk, a court heard today. Members of Scotland Yard's Royalty Protection Command, based at Buckingham and St James' palaces, also sold steroids, fell asleep on duty and ran gambling rings, it was claimed.
UKIP voters have been stabbed in the back once again by yet another scoundrel MEP from that party, Mr Tom Wise, who along with his “researcher” has been arrested for fraud.Mr Wise, who was elected for UKIP in East Anglia in 2004, has been charged by Bedfordshire Police in terms of a Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) order.
(Recap: 11th May 2008) High-Living Euro MP Tom Wise raises a glass to another rewarding day in Brussels-spent shamelessly DODGING work and SCAMMING a fortune in expenses. As he leaned on the bar guzzling beer Wise bragged to a News of the World investigator how he milks the taxpayer for THOUSANDS every week in dodgy allowances and travel claims. We followed his freeloading ride on the gravy train for weeks. (Visit Site for video)
Majority of Information from TheyWorkForYou.com and Guardian Voting record (from PublicWhip) How Shahid Malik voted on key issues since 2001:
(Summary from BBC News Article) Dewsbury MP Shahid Malik is top of expenses league MPs totted up £87.6m in expenses in the last financial year - a "like for like" rise of about 5% on the previous year, according to House of Commons figures. The figures average out at about £135,600 an MP, on top of their basic salary of £60,277 and pension. Labour minister Shahid Malik claimed the most at £185,421. Unfortunately Dewsbury is already a national laughing stock for having Shahid Malik as an MP. It takes some doing to get to number one in the MP expenses list but you managed it with ease Mr. Malik. CONGRATULATIONS!
Migrants trying to cross the Channel illegally will soon be able to claim asylum in Britain while still in France under a controversial EU plan. Brussels intends to create a purpose-built “asylum support office” in Calais and alter the Dublin Convention to allow refugees to demand sanctuary in one country while in another.
Some schools in Britain could soon be allowed to close for non-Christian religious festivals, it has emerged. The move comes as figures reveal a big increase in absences from city classrooms for 'religious observance'. Under new council guidelines currently being drawn up, schools in Manchester where more than 40 per cent may be absent for a religious festival could decide to close.
MPs will take an 82-day summer holiday this year - seven days more than members enjoyed last year. The 12-week break is 12 days longer than their summer recess of just five years ago. The news has provoked claims that the Government is out of touch and that politicians are more concerned with feathering their own nests than solving Britain's problems. It means MPs can take more than twice as much time off over summer than most workers are entitled to during an entire year.
Drugs given to five elderly patients in a hospital in the late 1990s which was later dubbed the 'end of the line' contributed to their deaths, an inquest ruled today. Robert Wilson, 74, Elsie Devine, 88, and Geoffrey Packman, 67, while at Gosport War Memorial Hospital in Hampshire, were given inappropriate medication, the inquest jury ruled.
A care home boss told police 's*** happens in our business' after a resident choked to death on a ham sandwich, a court heard today. Glen von Malachowski made the remark as he was being interviewed by officers over the death of Jesse Moores.
Children's charities have condemned Cambridge University after a shamed professor caught with more than 1,100 images of child pornography returned to work today. Dr Nicholas Hammond, 45, was convicted of possessing the images - including 30 in the most serious 'level five' category and some featuring babies just two days old. But he was spared jail at his sentencing and today went back to work as a reader - a position under professor - with a yearly salary of at least £55,259 according to the university's latest pay scale.
Pakistani chain immigration based on marriage is “importing poverty” to Britain, Labour Party MP Ann Cryer has confessed, confirming once again that the British National Party policy is correct. Ms Cryer made the remarks in an interview in a recent edition of The Economist magazine, which also revealed that every year at least 250,000 Pakistanis come to Britain in what it described as an “immigration superhighway.” Each year, 350,000 Pakistanis go back temporarily to visit their country of origin, most often to bring back brides to perpetuate the immigration chain.
Every household in the country will soon owe the equivalent of £50,000 in national debt, a damning report into Labour’s mishandling of Britain’s finances revealed last night. As families brace themselves for eye-watering tax rises in this week’s budget, figures from accountants Grant Thornton show that the UK Government will have built up debt of £1.32 trillion – £1,320,000,000 – by 2014.
A British MEP targeted by a Sunday newspaper in an expenses expose is facing criminal charges, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said this afternoon. The CPS has advised Bedfordshire Police to charge former UK Independence Party MEP Tom Wise, who now sits as an independent MEP for East Anglia, and his then researcher Lindsay Jenkins with one count each of false accounting and one count each of money laundering.
Millions of hard-working British families are being hit by a stealth income tax increase because the Government is refusing to change tax brackets in line with wage inflation, experts point out today. Since 2005, the UK’s average income has risen 15.2 per cent but the average amount of tax deducted from workers’ pay has jumped by 19.6 per cent.
Britain's equality watchdog has denied that its chairman is open to a conflict of interest after he signed a deal with a financial services company to promote specialist credit cards for immigrants. Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, has spoken openly about the UK's need to attract migrant workers and warned the government not to "clamp down" on immigration. In his private capacity, he is to help a Canadian company sell prepaid credit cards to the tens of thousands of migrant workers who often struggle to obtain bank accounts in the UK.
The vice madam at the centre of the Smeargate scandal is set to name and shame FOUR high-flying Tories in a tell-all book. Natalie Rowe will reveal how the men enjoyed degrading sex sessions which saw them whipped and handcuffed while high on cocaine. Two of her former clients are in Tory leader David Cameron’s top team today, while the other two are former Tory ministers – one was in the Cabinet. Her £1million memoirs – already snapped up by a major publisher – threaten to send shockwaves through David Cameron’s party ahead of next year’s general election.
Anyone doubting the madness of the European Union and the mortal danger it represents need only consider the fact that yesterday the Romanian president decided that up to one million impoverished Moldavians had the right to enter Britain in search of work. The decision — enacted in terms of the Tory Party introduced “freedom of movement directive” - proves that the British government no longer has the right to determine who can and who cannot enter Britain.
Immigration into Britain has added one million new voters to the electoral register in just two years, caused directly by immigration laws which allow newcomers to register without any checks as to their legality within a day of arriving here. An analysis of the new electoral register just released shows the million strong jump in voters which has taken the total number to a record 46 million. A million votes is, as observers have pointed out, enough to swing an election.
There were so many events this week that made significant statements about the mess the Labour Party are in. Firstly, there was the sacking of McBride after being exposed for wanting to spread malicious rumours about Conservative MPs and their families. This story has the potential to get even worse, with Guido threatening more revelations tomorrow.
A roller disco coach, a part-time toothbrush adviser for infants and a ceremonial sword bearer are just some of the 'non-jobs' offered by councils across Britain. Other roles which have come under criticism from the Taxpayer's Alliance include trampoline coaches, skate park attendants, flower arrangers, a 'befriending co-ordinator'; and a 'street football co-ordinator', which pays £19,000-a-year.
The heads of three new Government quangos are to be paid more than double the salary of the leader of the single agency they are replacing. The Learning and Skills Council (LSC) is being abolished and three new organisations established in its place. The three new chief executives will be paid in excess of £430,000.
How would you cope if faced with a GCSE physics paper? Have no fear. You don’t need to know anything about physics, so long as you’ve listened to enough environmentalist propaganda. Consider a question from one of last year’s papers. Candidates were asked which of these phrases - “acid rain”, “global warming”, “noise pollution”, “radioactive waste” – went into these sentences:
Four leaders suspected of having blood on their hands, another president who let police beat up peaceful protesters and a lame duck are to receive invitations to an EU summit in May. The Czech EU presidency's foreign minister, Karl Schwarzenberg, personally handed an invitation to autocratic Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko in Minsk on Friday (17 April). Similar invitations will be sent to Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Ukraine by Monday.
The BBC is splashing £100,000 a year on chauffeur driven cars to ferry its top two executives a few miles to work. Despite the Corporation sacking 7,200 staff and slashing programme budgets to plug a £2billion funding shortfall, director general Mark Thompson and his deputy Mark Byford are ferried to work in luxury. Thompson, who earns £816,000 a year, takes the train to London from his home in an exclusive area of Oxford, before being collected from the station by his driver.
Ministers today launched an investigation into the Government's drugs advice hotline after teenage callers were told to go ahead and use drugs. Advisers on the Frank helpline condoned cannabis smoking by a 13-year-old and suggested to a 15-year-old who said she had experimented with ecstasy that she should go on taking it. They told young teenagers that alcohol is more dangerous than cannabis and repeatedly counselled one worried caller not to tell the parents of a cannabis smoker about his drug use.
Britain has become a "brittle" society where even the smallest effect on resources risks bringing the country to its knees, a think tank will warn next week. It also calls on local authorities to use online networks like Twitter and Facebook to communicate with and advise members of the public during crises. Demanding lifestyles are now reliant on an "outmoded and archaic" infrastructure that is vulnerable to any kind of shock, whether severe weather conditions, flooding, or international conflict, a Demos report will say.
Fears were growing last night that a fresh wave of migrants was on the way here after up to a million eastern Europeans were offered a back door route into Britain. Citizens from Moldova – the continent’s poorest country – are expected to arrive in search of work after they were offered the right to travel across the European Union visa-free. The move follows a disputed election in the tiny former Soviet Republic.
Failed asylum seekers are winning the right to stay in Britain because of "shambolic" failings in the immigration hearing system. Hundreds of appeal hearings are going ahead without a representative from the Home Office to defend its original decision to deny asylum. Immigration lawyers admitted that the situation is helping their clients to win cases they might otherwise have lost.
They pored over her intimate love letters, stripped the sheets from the marital bed and even rifled through their 15-year-old daughter's homework. In this exclusive interview, Alicia Collinson recalls what happened after her husband was accused of modern-day treason...
The detectives who arrested Damian Green, the shadow immigration minister, were after information on Shami Chakrabarti, one of the country's leading human rights campaigners. Mr Green has disclosed that officers trawled through his private emails and computer documents using the key words "Shami Chakrabarti" – even though the director of Liberty was nothing to do with the leaking of Home Office documents that prompted the investigation.
In what is further bad news for the deteriorating reputation of Britain's police, the second post-mortem examination on Ian Tomlinson yesterday revealed that he had died from internal bleeding, minutes after being felled by a police officer during the mayhem of the G20 riots. The officer who struck the 47-year-old is now being questioned on suspicion of manslaughter. The inquiry must be rigorous and, if wrongdoing is proved, he must be punished.
Soldiers paraded through Plymouth city centre today as thousands of spectators waved Union flags to mark their homecoming from Afghanistan. The 450 men of 29 Commando Regiment Royal Artillery returned from a six month tour of the country earlier this week.
As advertisments go, it's not the most original. A nervous-looking man holds a can of Courage beer and anxiously contemplates the rear view of a stout woman in a tight new dress, a portrait framed with the slogan: 'Take Courage My Friend.' You would imagine that every man - and possibly even woman - could identify with the horror and embarrassment which so rapidly strikes when one is presented with a lady's rather large behind.
to their development on the market.
Saturday 25th April 2009
An astonishing £7million has been spent on wine by the Government Hospitality Unit since Labour came to power, figures revealed last night.
This year taxpayers face a bill of £800,000 for wine drunk at parties hosted by ministers and civil servants. And in the depths of an economic crisis, the total alcohol budget for Whitehall is rocketing by more than 50 per cent this year.
The incredible tab emerged a day after Alistair Darling’s Budget revealed Government borrowing of £175billion this year and a national debt of £1.4trillion within four years. It was also a budget which slapped an extra two per cent on the cost of beer, wine and spirits.
Last night the excess was labelled as the final insult to recession-hit households dealt by a political elite out of touch with reality. Figures showed that the Hospitality Unit, based in the Foreign Office, spent £525,568 on wine in the financial year 2007-08.
But a budget of £800,000 has been allocated for receptions this year, and the same again for next year. A total of £7.1million has been spent on wine by the unit since 1997.
The figures were unearthed by front bench Conservative MP Grant Shapps. He said: “As Gordon Brown announces the nation’s biggest debt in history and talks about making efficiency savings, his own Hospitality Unit is living it up like never before.” Mr Schapps also found that there is a Whitehall committee charged with picking the finest vintages.
The Advisory Committee on the Purchase of Wine meets four times a year at a cost of £10,000 per annum. Mr Shapps said: “This investigation reveals a previously unknown Whitehall Committee paid to advise Government departments which wine they should buy.”
Favourite tipples downed in Whitehall include vintage champagne, wines from Burgundy, Bordeaux and the Loire Valley. It also has the pick of New World wines from Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and Chile.
The Government Hospitality Unit organises lavish receptions for all Government department and employs 14 civil servants. News Source
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The budget for ministers' parties has been quietly increased by 50 per cent - and almost £140,000 spent on an exclusive wine cellar, according to a claim made by the Conservatives.
Figures obtained by Tory MP Grant Shapps suggest Government hospitality is unaffected by the recession in the week when the Chancellor promised a Whitehall efficiency drive.
The unit set up to organise wining and dining for ministers and senior civil servants is said to have had its budget increased by 52 per cent from £525,000 to £800,000 for this financial year.
However, a Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokesman claimed that actual spending has decreased. He said: 'The budget for Government Hospitality has not increased between 2007/08 and 2008/09. 'It remains set at £800,000 - a decrease in real terms.
'In addition, while spending on hospitality will always vary according to the major international or other events the Government is hosting, actual spending has decreased over the last few years, down 40 per cent between 2004/5 and 2007/8.
'The Government Hospitality budget is not used solely for wine, but for a range of costs around events - last year it catered for around 25,000 to 28,000 guests.'
The unit, based in the Foreign Office, delivers 'official hospitality for all government ministers and Permanent Secretary-level officials'.
Last year, it delivered 208 functions at an average cost of £2,227 per event. Since 1997, it has cost £7.1million to run.
The fund also oversees the administration of the Government wine cellar, and the maintenance of stocks of linen, china, silver and glassware.
Parliamentary questions have also revealed that last year, £137,460 was spent on new stock for the cellar – a rise of 26 per cent on the previous year.
They also show that an 'advisory committee on the purchase of wine', made up of senior officials, meets four times a year at a cost of £10,000.
The unit has recently purchased vintage and non-vintage Champagne, red Bordeaux, white and red Burgundy, white Loire, sweet white Bordeaux, red Spanish, red Italian, red Argentinean, red Australian, red Chilean, red New Zealand, red US, and English still and sparkling white and rosé wines.
Mr Shapps said: 'This investigation reveals a previously unknown Whitehall committee paid to advise government departments which wine they should buy.
'At a time of austerity and fast rising taxes on ordinary families, a 52 per cent increase in the Government's own hospitality budget is simply too much to swallow.'
The Government wine cellar supplies everything from dinners at Chequers, the Prime Minister's country residence, to departmental receptions.
At any one time there are around 39,000 bottles stashed away in the official wine cellar, which is held in the vaults of Lancaster House, just off the Mall in London.
Its exact contents are a closely guarded secret, though it is said to offer 180 individual clarets alone. News Source
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The unprecedented burden of public debt built up by Gordon Brown will not be brought under control for nearly a quarter of a century, economists have said.
”Debt freedom day”, when the national debt returns to sustainable levels, will not be reached until 2032 - another 23 years away, the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies said.
Families could soon find themselves paying at least another £1,400 a year in tax as part of the Government’s attempts to bring public debt back under control, the IFS predicted.
It said there was a gap between the amount of money that would be raised by the tax measures in this week’s Budget and the amount the Government will need to fund its spending plans.
This secret “blackhole” could end up adding another £1,430 each year to the average families’ tax bill, it said.
The stark warning of a generation of austerity ahead came as Alistair Darling admitted he could not be sure his optimistic forecasts for a quick economic recovery would be realised.
“It is very difficult to be absolutely certain as to what will happen,” he admitted.
The Chancellor’s predictions for growth to resume by the end of this year and to reach boom levels again by 2011 have been widely questioned, with the International Monetary Fund suggesting the British economy would actually shrink next year - despite Mr Darling’s forecast of modest growth. “The crisis is far from over,” it said.
The IFS warned that despite the tax rises and spending cuts announced in the Budget this week, future chancellors would be forced to raise even more money to fill a “breathtaking” long-term hole in the public finances.
The scale of the problem is so great that even with years of tax rises and spending cuts, the national debt will not be low enough to meet Gordon Brown’s now-abandoned “sustainable investment rule” until 2032. This “golden rule” dictated that Government debt should not rise above 40 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
In the Budget however, Mr Darling said he would borrow another £700 billion over the next five years, pushing the accumulated stock of Government debt to £1.4 trillion, equal to almost 80 per cent gross domestic product.
The golden rule on borrowing, which Mr Brown actually announced when he was Chancellor, has been “temporarily suspended” as the UK economy endures the worst recession for 60 years.
Mr Darling has set out plans for debt to peak at 76.2 per cent of GDP in 2013/14. Paying the interest on that debt could cost as much as £58 billion a year by then, more than annual spending on schools in England.
Bringing the debt back to the level Mr Brown once said was necessary for economic stability will take another 23 years, according to Carl Emmerson, an IFS economist. “Public debt will remain high for a generation,” he said.
”Deliverance from Darling’s Debt Day” will come on 27 February, 2032, Mr Emmerson said.
As a first step towards controlling the stock of debt, Mr Darling has set out plans for the Government to stop running up annual deficits by 2017/18.
To achieve that, Mr Darling on Wednesday set out plans for several years of tax rises - including a 50 per cent top rate of income tax -- and an effective freeze on public spending from 2011.
But as far-reaching and controversial as those measures are, they will still not be enough to get the Government out of the red, according to the IFS, an independent think-tank.
Robert Chote, the IFS director, said that collapsing tax revenues and the cost of bailing out the banking sector have done “breathtaking” long-term damage to the public finances.
The Budget reveals an “underlying problem,” a permanent hole in the public finances of around £90 billion a year, he said. “It is this that will require two full parliaments of mounting austerity.”
In all, the Government will have to bring in an extra £2,840 a year for every household by the end of the parliament after next.
But the IFS said that the Budget package only explained how around half of that sum will be raised after 2014.
The rest of the shortfall will have to come from higher taxes, lower spending, or a combination of the two.
George Osborne, the Conservative shadow chancellor, said the IFS analysis showed that ministers had understated the scale of the fiscal crisis facing Britain.
”This secret tax bombshell of £1430 was not even announced by the Chancellor on Wednesday,” he said. “It shows what a dishonest Budget it was and how quickly it is unravelling.”
The unexplained gap in the public finances does not open up until April 2014, which is likely to be in the parliament after next.
With opinion polls pointing to a Labour defeat at the next election, it may fall to a Conservative Government to fill the gap.
”Whoever is in No 11 come 2014 will have to make some difficult choices. It could be a plan to cut more from public spending, or it could be more tax rises,” said Mr Emmerson.
David Cameron has signalled that he is likely to retain some of Labour’s tax rises including the 50p rate, saying that unpopular decisions will be required to control the debt.
But the Tories are still debating their approach to spending: some Tory MPs believe the party should commit to squeezing spending harder than Labour, but Mr Cameron is still wary of making pledges that could lead to accusations that the Tories will cut front-line services.
The Treasury defended the debt plans.
A spokesman said: “To try to reduce our borrowing overnight would have very bad consequences for us all, and lead to greater losses in the long term. That is why the current Budget charts a course to reduce borrowing while at the same time supporting the economy now, which is critically important for our recovery.” News Source
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Alistair Darling has admitted he is not certain "what will happen" with the economy after being accused of using "fantasy" estimates to chart Britain's economic recovery.
The Chancellor appeared to question the robustness of his own economic forecasts and conceded he may have to develop new proposals.
Within hours of Wednesday's Budget speech, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) produced predictions which suggested that Mr Darling had been too optimistic in his prediction that the British economy will grow next year.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme yesterday, Mr Darling admitted: "At this stage it is very difficult to be absolutely certain as to what will happen.
"If the economy does well that will help us, but what I tried to do yesterday was to set out a sensible path. But, of course, chancellors will have to come back to these things."
Mr Darling and Gordon Brown both insisted yesterday that New Labour is still alive despite the controversial decision to introduce one of the highest rates of tax in the developed world.
They stand accused of resorting to "class war" by abandoning Labour's long-standing pledge not to increase income tax.
In the budget, Mr Darling introduced a new 50p top rate of income tax to be introduced next year.
Tony Blair had blocked previous attempts to increase tax on the wealthy arguing that freezing the highest rate of tax was a central tenet of the reformed Labour party.
Speaking yesterday, Mr Darling insisted that the new higher tax rate did not represent a change in philosophy.
"I don't think New Labour has changed one bit in terms of our sense that we want the country to do well, we want families to do well," he said. "I want a country of aspiration where people do well for themselves and for their families."
The Prime Minister also launched a robust defence of the tax increases which were widely condemned yesterday.
"This is not taxation for its own sake, it is tax for a purpose," he said. "This is Britain fighting back against the international recession, this is Britain taking bold action for recovery."
"What we are about is aspiration, we are about helping people get on, we are about giving people new chances, we are about helping people make the most of their potential. New Labour, that's what we're about," he said. News Source
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The pound continues losses against both the dollar and the euro after UK finance minister projects a rise in the country's public debt.
British Chancellor Alistair Darling said Wednesday in his budget speech that debt would increase to 68% of the UK's economic output in 2010.
The pound plunged to $1.44, its lowest level since early April. It also dropped against the euro to 1.1127 euros.
Data also showed that the total number of unemployed people in Britain increased and government borrowing reached a record high, showing that the British economy is in a deep recession.
International investors are currently hesitant to invest in British assets, reducing the demand for the sterling.
The pound rose above $1.50 last week for the first time in the last four months on hopes that the UK housing market could be recovering. News Source
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Gordon Brown is Loosing it!
New evidence has surfaced that Gordon Brown is feeling the strains of office, with claims that the Prime Minister recently slung a laser printer to the floor in a fit of pique.
A report on the financial wire service Bloomberg News claimed that aides saw Mr Brown send the machine crashing.
The report failed to provide further details of the incident on the grounds that to do so would imperil the anonymity of the source.
In a profile of the Prime Minister likely to have been widely read by bankers and other subscribers to the news service around the world, the report said: ‘The strain shows, say current and former Brown aides.
'Among other things, it has inflamed a temper that has always been the subject of gallows humor among those who work with him.’
The claim that Mr Brown trashed a printer in anger is just the latest in a series of claims about his short fuse by No 10 insiders and bemused civil servants who have to work with him.
Previous reports have included accounts that the Prime Minister hurled pens, a stapler and even mobile phones at his aides in frustration.
Bloomberg’s account says: ‘Another aide was warned to watch out for "flying Nokias" when he joined Brown’s team.
‘One staffer says a colleague developed a technique called a 'news sandwich” – first telling the prime minister about a recent piece of good coverage before delivering bad news, and then moving quickly to tell him about something good coming soon.’
Downing Street moved to rubbish the story, but the Prime Minister’s official spokesman did not deny the specific details.
‘I think it's the sort of unsubstantiated, unsourced nonsense that you read in Sunday newspapers, not on supposedly respectable financial wire services,’ the spokesman said.
But asked whether or not the report is true, he repeated the same form of words and added: ‘This is not an account that I recognise.’ News Source
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The Labour Party’s state smear campaign - of which an insight was gained this week on how they go to work against the Conservative Party - is in full swing against the British National Party.
“Politically directed police are being sent to harass BNP activists and provide the controlled media with unsubstantiated smear stories as election day draws ever nearer,” said Simon Darby, deputy leader and press officer.
Reacting to the news that totally innocent BNP Euro Eastern region candidate Mr Peter Lucas had been detained yesterday, Mr Darby said such things were always expected in the run-up to each and every election.
“Mr Lucas had his home searched by police on the pretext of looking for illegal weapons, most likely because he is the owner of the deactivated Bren gun which was used as a stage prop during the BNP’s recent Battle for Britain road shows,” Mr Darby said.
“Of course they found nothing at Mr Lucas’s house. They have now bailed him till after the June elections, at which time they will, as is always the case, withdraw any suggestions of charges. All this does is harass legitimate and innocent political activists while providing the media with an opportunity to print lurid anti-BNP stories.
“Fortunately the public is now used to this sort of tactic and it has no effect on us whatsoever,” Mr Darby said.
“The proof that Mr Lucas’s arrest was harassment and nothing else came in the fact that the police also stole all the cash he had and his mobile phone, upon which he depends for his living.”
Mr Darby pointed out that there are two other such incidents going at the same time, all designed to smear the BNP without any justification at all.
“In Lancashire, four BNP activists have been bailed to, surprise, surprise, just after the June elections for distributing a leaflet which has already been ruled as legal in that same jurisdiction, while in Liverpool yesterday a BNP activist was arrested after he was attacked by a Communist.
“Mr Peter Tierney, one of the famous Liverpool 13 who were arrested earlier for distributing legal leaflets - and over which the police were forced to back down and admit that nothing was wrong or illegal - was attacked in the city centre.
“Despite the fact that Mr Tierney was the one who was attacked - and the CCTV coverage will show this clearly - he was detained until late last night. Upon his release, he was bailed until after the June elections.
“Mr Tierney has also been barred from going into Liverpool city centre by the police - a clear a sign as any that it is an act of political victimisation and nothing else.”
Mr Darby said that the Labour regime’s increasing panic at the rise in popularity of the BNP was the primary driver for its insane underhand attacks on the party.
“We will not be stopped by such smears, and will push on to prevent this country from being destroyed by the traitors in Westminster,” Mr Darby concluded. News Source
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Thousands of Illegal Immigrants Thousands of Bogus Asylum Seekers But those more than worthy of the Right to live in Britain.. BETRAYED!
Campaigners condemned new rules giving more Gurkhas the right to live in Britain as a 'disgrace' today.
Immigration Minister Phil Woolas said the changes would allow around 4,300 more former Gurkhas to settle here out of the 36,000 who served in the British Army before July 1997.
But supporters of the Gurkhas' campaign attacked the new criteria as 'unattainable', with actress Joanna Lumley saying she felt 'ashamed' of the Government.
Ragprasad Purja, 43, served with the Gurkhas for 17 years.
He said: 'It is the saddest day for the Gurkhas and the saddest day for the British Government.
'I cannot believe that this Government made such a decision. I was proud of my service but now I am very sad.'
Mr Purja, who was discharged after 1997, said he would continue campaigning for the former Gurkha soldiers who have been refused permission to settle in the UK.
'It's not justice, so we'll keep on fighting,' he said.
Mr Woolas set out the new eligibility criteria in a written ministerial statement. Gurkhas and their families will be allowed to settle in Britain if they meet one of these five criteria:
- Three years continuous residence in the UK during or after their service
- Close family in the UK
- A level 1-3 bravery award (including the Victoria Cross, the Distinguished Service Order and the Military Cross)
- Service of 20 years or more in the Gurkha brigade
- Or a chronic or long-term medical condition caused by, or aggravated by, service in the brigade
- In addition Gurkhas will normally be allowed to settle in the UK if they meet two or more of the following criteria:
- They were previously awarded a UK MoD disability pension but no longer have a chronic medical condition
- A mention in dispatches
- Service of ten years or a campaign medal for active service in the brigade
Mr Woolas said: 'This guidance honours the service, commitment and gallantry of those who served with the Gurkhas brigade.
'Where there are strong reasons, there has been scope for Gurkhas who retired prior to July 1997 to apply to settle in the UK.
'In fact, because of rules brought in by the Government, we have already welcomed around 6,000 Gurkhas and family members to Britain.
'Now, another 10,000 Gurkhas and family members will be able to benefit from our revised guidance.'
But lawyers for the Gurkhas argued that fewer than 100 people, largely officers, would be able to meet the new requirements and vowed to return to the courts.
David Enright, of Howe and Co solicitors, said: 'They have set criteria that are unattainable. They require a Gurkha to serve for 20 years but a rifleman is only permitted to serve for 15 years.
'It's a sham and an absolute disgrace. It's far more restrictive than the old policy.'
Joanna Lumley, a long-time supporter of the campaign, said: 'The Gurkhas cannot meet these new criteria. It makes me ashamed of our Government.
'We will fight on. We don't stop. This has been a setback but that is all.'
Immigration rules introduced in 2004 allowed serving Gurkhas with at least four years' service to settle in the UK but they did not apply to Gurkhas discharged from the British Army before July 1, 1997.
Today's Government announcement followed a High Court ruling last year that immigration guidelines on older veterans were unlawful and in need of urgent review.
The Gurkha brigade was formed following the partition of India in 1947 but Nepalese Gurkha soldiers have been part of the British Army for almost 200 years.
More than 200,000 Gurkhas fought for the Allies during the First and Second World Wars, with 43,000 giving their lives. There are currently around 3,500 serving Gurkhas.
Martin Howe, of Howe & Co solicitors, said: 'This is nothing less than an act of treachery. It has scant regard to the High Court judgment of last September.
'It has scant regard to the wishes of the people up and down the length and breadth of the country.
'We have a so-called Labour Government prepared to give £200 billion to banks but not a penny to the Gurkhas. That is prepared to keep the ordinary rank-and-file soldier who has served so gallantly and has served this country for 15 years ... out, and trying to allow a small handful of officer-class men in.
'It's nothing short of scandalous. All this does is insult the integrity of the men of the brigade.
'This is a matter that will be going back to the court.'
Mr Woolas said it was 'simply not true' that the Government had betrayed the Gurkhas.
He told the BBC: 'What we've done today is to allow even more people in without setting a precedent that would create a massive pressure in my view on the immigration service, which I don't think the public would want me to grant.'
Lumley went on to say that she was surprised by the decision.
'This has set us back in its obtuse lack of understanding of any of the problems facing these men or, I think, of the conditions facing soldiers.'
She added: 'I think this is inexplicable. I can only think they have no notion of the armed services. They have no direct experience of what it is.'
She vowed to continue the campaign, saying: 'This is a setback. We simply regroup and start again. We don't give up the battle just because one of the tactics has failed.' News Source
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Meanwhile
France wants Britain to sign a deal allowing thousands of migrants to flood into the UK.
Calais mayor Natacha Bouchart’s controversial plan to scrap passport controls was announced as migrants in the port staged an angry demo yesterday, waving placards written in flawless English.
Photo shows all smiles as they know once on British soil, Accommodation and Benefits are within an easy grasp which also means British Citizens will loose out!
The banners expose how Britain’s open-door asylum system and benefits culture are a magnet for Afghans, Kurds and Eritreans.
Exasperated by the sight of migrants sleeping rough as they try to board England-bound trains and lorries illegally, Mrs Bouchart outlined her scheme to rid Calais of the blight to French Immigration Minister Eric Besson.
“It’s necessary to speed up negotiations with the British because at the moment we’re ready to charter a boat to dump them over there,” she said.
She said all Britain had to do was sign up to the Schengen Agreement, which allows anybody to travel between EU states without passports or visas.
Mr Besson challenged Britain to share responsibility for France’s problem by asking why migrants from places such as Iran, Somalia and Sudan travel across the world to reach the UK.
“Britain should step up its controls and take on more of this burden,” he said. “Britain should also question why migrants and the traffickers in migrants believe that the British illegal job market is a golden opportunity.”
Mrs Bouchart welcomed a plan to bring in the army to destroy a notorious shanty town called The Jungle where a London journalism student was raped last year.
The two politicians, both tough-talking members of the ruling UMP party, were taking part in a meeting aimed at “cleaning up” a problem firmly blamed on Britain’s benefits culture.
The French believe it encourages foreigners from all over the world to use their country as a base to get to the UK, where they receive generous welfare payments as asylum seekers or disappear into the black economy.
While Mr Besson favours the use of military force to tear down the squatter camps, he knows that removing passport controls from Calais would cause outrage on the other side of the Channel. Instead he would prefer to see a series of “mini” welcome centres set up along the French coast, offering food, showers and information. News Source
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Recession.. Depression..Credit Crunch.. Where the heck
is the Government continually finding the money for these overseas aid?
Whilst Britain is plunged deeper into an abyss of Debt which will take at least 23 years before the national debt begins to recover the government is being generous with money that taxpayers will have to pay back!
UK pledges immediate £15m humanitarian support for Zimbabwe
A £15m package to help the people of Zimbabwe was announced by International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander today.
This critical humanitarian aid will mean increased support for the country’s health system, greater access to clean water and more support for struggling farmers in Zimbabwe.
The package will help address a number of urgent priorities identified by Zimbabwe’s new Inclusive Government and builds on existing UK support, which amounted to £49m last year.
“The welfare of the people of Zimbabwe remains a major concern, with the humanitarian situation continuing to cause great hardship for millions.
“The creation of a more inclusive Government represents a real opportunity for much-needed change. We welcome efforts by the new Government to deliver economic, social and political reform. Credible progress will attract increasing support from donors and other partners to tackle the root causes of Zimbabwe’s problems.
“The UK remains committed to providing humanitarian support, which is why I am announcing £15m in additional assistance to ensure that people have food to eat, and access to life-saving health services.” Continued
Reader Submitted Link. Thank You Rod
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A tax timebomb in Labour's Budget will leave families facing a bill of £2,800 a year for the next decade, independent experts said yesterday.
The devastating verdict from the Institute for Fiscal Studies came as Alistair Darling flew to the U.S., leaving colleagues struggling to defend his 'fantasy' proposals.
The IFS warned the state of the public finances was so desperate it will take 23 years for debt to return to the limit set under Gordon Brown's now abandoned 'golden rules'.
The warning came ahead of dire new figures showing the economy contracted by a massive 1.9 per cent at the start of the year.
This is even more than the 1.6 per cent drop between October and December 2008 and will prompt further scorn about Mr Darling's predictions for recovery.
The IFS claimed to have identified a £45billion black hole in the Budget - even using Mr Darling's rose-tinted economic forecasts.
It would have to be filled either by tax increases or spending cuts in the years ahead.
By 2017, families would have to pay an average of £1,430 in higher taxes - on top of £1,370 already pencilled in - to balance the books.
In a further blow to Mr Darling, the organisation also said he may struggle to raise the £7billion he is hoping for from taxing the rich.
There are serious doubts over whether his plans will yield the amount he claims, with City warnings of an exodus of wealth-creating executives.
Brown was forced to insist a new 50p rate of tax for top earners did not mean the death of New Labour.
But a Populus poll for today's Times newspaper found that a majority of voters believe the Budget did mark the end of New Labour, although 57 per cent had a favourable view of the 50p rate.
The IFS, delivering its traditional post-Budget verdict, said the economic crisis is costing the Treasury £90billion a year.
But so much permanent damage has been done to the British economy that even if growth returns, the staggering shortfall in funds will remain, it said.
Only around half of the bill for this black hole has been funded by the tax and spending measures announced in the Budget.
The rest will have to be found by raising taxes or axing spending after 2014. Continued
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The Home Office's reputation on crime statistics suffered a humiliating setback after its own key adviser, Louise Casey, admitted the public do not trust them.
Ms Casey, the crime and anti-social behaviour expert and former Respect Tsar, said confidence is so low that the public are no longer even surprised if figures turn out to be false.
She also admitted the police service had become institutionalised over having to chase Government targets.
It is the latest in a series of outbursts from the straight-talking Ms Casey, who almost lost her job in 2005 when she appeared to speak in favour of binge-drinking.
Last year she said Britain had become a walk-on-by nation after losing all faith in the criminal justice system.
She warned law-abiding, decent members of the public are no longer willing to step in to stop a crime or assault amid fears they will be attacked themselves or even arrested.
Her comments came as Home Office figures showed less than half the public believe the police are effectively tackling crime and anti-social behaviour or are there when needed.
They will be a huge embarrassment for the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith who was forced to apologise after the deep row over the release of controversial knife statistics last year, which appeared to show a fall in the number of teenage stabbing victims but had been rushed out before they had properly been checked.
The chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir Michael Scholar, spoke out publicly against the government's "premature, irregular and selective" use of the statistics.
Miss Casey told Police Review magazine: "The irony is that public confidence in statistics is so low that it does not matter what happens with hospital figures or whatever as the public do not trust the figures.
"I mean, shock horror, there is another statistics story. It is a shock and horror for newspapers, but not for the public."
Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling said: "This blows a lid off what Jacqui Smith's team at the Home Office really think about this Government's record on crime, law and order and their use of official statistics.
"She is absolutely right. People do not have confidence in this Government's crime figures because they have a long track record of trying to use and abuse them for political purposes."
Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, Chris Huhne added: "It is particularly embarrassing that the Government's own crime and anti-social behaviour adviser has lost faith in their crime figures.
"Surely, ministers must now realise that crime statistics must be taken away from the Home Office and given to the Office for National Statistics."
The comments came as the latest official crime stats were published which showed overall crime down but knife point robberies, burglaries and theft offences all rising.
Separate figures in the British Crime Survey showed only 46 per cent of the public think the police or local councils are dealing with anti-social behaviour and crime in their area.
Similarly, only 48 per cent said police could be relied upon when needed and 43 per cent said they could be relied upon to deal with minor crime.
A spokesman for Ms Casey said she was only repeating what she said in her major review for Gordon Brown last year on crime and the criminal justice system.
In that, she also warned the public firmly believed the scales of justice were weighed heavily in favour of the criminal and that crime would "strangle" our towns and cities if the public's concerns were not addressed. News Source
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Why we need the Death Penalty!
Two men brutally tortured a pensioner with a knife to get him to reveal where he kept his savings before beating him to death with his own walking stick, a court heard today.
Joby Barney, 25, and John James, 19, allegedly attacked Reginald Baker with such ferocity that they broke his neck, back and fractured every one of his ribs.
The thugs also partially severed the defenceless 75-year-old's finger as they tried to force him to hand over his cash, the court was told.
The pair then fled, leaving frail cancer sufferer Mr Baker for dead in the lounge of his own home.
Barney and James, who deny murdering Mr Baker, escaped in a car with two other men who have already pleaded guilty to the pensioner's manslaughter.
Trevor Gray, 19, and Daniel Coker, 23, have also admitted conspiring to burgle Mr Baker. John Wilkinson, 40, is also on trial accused of burgling Mr Baker's house, in rural Landford, Wilts, a month before the alleged murder.
Today prosecutor Christopher Parker QC said Mr Baker had been the victim of a series of distraction burglaries in the weeks before his death.
He said the first burglary, five weeks before Mr Baker's death, was carried out by Wilkinson and two others, who stole £2,300 from the pensioner.
During that raid the gang noticed that Mr Baker still had money left, which he kept stashed in drawers in his house.
Mr Parker said that on September 5 last year Barney, James, Gray and Coker went to Mr Baker's £300,000 bungalow in a burglary 'orchestrated by Wilkinson.'
He said Coker and Gray waited outside the house in a dark grey Peugeot car as 'back-up and getaway drivers.'
He added: 'James and Barney kicked the front door in and burst into Mr Baker's house.
'They knocked him to the ground and over the next 35 minutes they ransacked virtually every room in the house in their hunt for the savings.
'But they did not stop at that - they set about him with vigour. He was, in any view, subject to a severe and prolonged beating.
'They beat Mr Baker and tortured him to get him to reveal where he had hidden his savings.
'He was cut and stabbed with a knife and at a fairly early stage he was assaulted with his own walking stick. His ribs were fractured, but it wasn't just two or three of his ribs - it was every single one. In total he suffered 62 fractures to his ribs.
'His back was broken and so was his neck, and there was bruising to the rest of his body. His left lower jaw was bruised and cartilage in his left ear was smashed. He had two stab wounds to his left hand and he had also been stabbed on the left side of his face.
'The tip of his right index finger had also suffered some deep cuts. A pathologist who examined Mr Baker said the injuries suggested a controlled and deliberate infliction.'
Mr Parker told the court that Mr Baker's neighbours saw two men run from the house and jump in the Peugeot car, which had already started moving.
They called the police, but when officers arrived at Mr Baker's home they found him already dead. The defendants were caught after police traced the car registration.
The jury was shown still CCTV images taken during the attack by a camera in Mr Baker's home, which had been installed after the first distraction burglary on July 30.
Following that burglary, police had helped Mr Baker deposit all of his savings into a Post Office bank account - so there was no more money in the house.
The court was told that a minute after Barney and James knocked on Mr Baker's door, the pensioner tried to dial 999.
He got through but was cut off because the operator could not hear anybody at the other end of the phone.
Mr Parker added: 'It is obvious from the speed of the violence that this was never intended to be a distraction burglary.
'This was a case of 'we're coming in, like it or not.'
Mr Parker described Mr Baker, a former Water Board employee,
as 'undoubtedly very frail'
and said that he suffered from cancer of the prostate.
He said: 'His condition made him particularly vulnerable to trauma. He was slow in all of his movements and he walked with a stoop and with the aid of a stick.'
Barney, from Alderholt, Hants, and James, from Salisbury, Wilts, both deny murder and conspiracy to commit burglary.
Wilkinson, from Ferndown, Dorset, denies burglary and conspiracy to burgle.
The trial at Winchester Crown Court continues. News Source
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Big rises in burglary, theft and robbery at knife-point fuelled warnings yesterday of a “credit- crunch crime wave’’.
Opposition parties accused ministers of complacency while police suggested crime increases linked to the recession had yet to peak.
Some 75,600 homes in England and Wales were broken into between October and December last year, four per cent more than in the same period in 2007 according to crimes recorded by police.
Domestic burglaries had also shown a four per cent rise in the previous three months compared with 2007.
The last time burglaries rose two quarters in a row was seven years ago.
Businesses and other premises also suffered a four per cent increase in burglaries, yesterday’s figures showed.
The number of killings involving knives fell 12 per cent but robberies at knife-point were up by five per cent, to 4,283.
The separate British Crime Survey, which is based on interviews with people about their experiences rather than on crimes recorded by police, showed a 25 per cent rise in “theft from the person’’ during the whole of 2008 compared with 2007.
This category includes pick pocketing and “snatch’’ thefts from cars, and the figures suggested that many such crimes were not reported to police.
The statistics overshadowed findings that in the last three months of 2008 compared with the same period in 2007, overall property crime recorded by police was down four per cent thanks to fewer vehicle break-ins, other thefts and criminal damage.
Lib Dem spokesman Chris Huhne said: “This is the second quarter in which there is clear evidence of rising theft and burglaries as the recession bites.
“With Chancellor Alistair Darling confirming that we are entering the deepest recession since the Second World War, we are also facing a credit crunch crime wave.”
Sir Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: “The historical experience shows that it can take some time for the full impacts of economic recession on crime levels to manifest and the police service remains vigilant and ready to meet challenges ahead.”
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: “All of this underlines the need for the Government to stop wrapping up our police in unnecessary paperwork and get more officers back on to the streets.
“The figures on knife robberies will completely undermine claims by ministers that they are getting to grips with knife crime in Britain.’’
Police Minister Vernon Coaker said overall crime had fallen by 39 per cent, violence by 40 per cent and burglary by 55 per cent under Labour and the new figures showed overall crime stable or falling.
“But we know we are facing some new challenges now and we are focusing our experience and knowledge to tackle these head on,’’ said Mr Coaker. News Source
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And then of course... We have the Jedi to clean up the Crime wave!
Labours Diverse Police Force to solve all Burglaries, Muggings etc
May the Force be with You
Meet PC Pam Fleming - the first Jedi police officer to admit she is a devotee of the Star Wars-inspired religion.
PC Fleming, a beat officer who has patrolled the mean streets of Glasgow for the past 23 years, stepped proudly forward today - light sabre in hand - to say 'I'm a Jedi and I'm proud'.
She even admits to using Jedi mind tricks during interviews with suspects in 'an effort to achieve the truth', although she tells industry magazine Police Review that she does not use 'The Force' to influence what suspects say or do.
Jedi mind tricks are used in the Star Wars movies by characters Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker to 'influence the minds of weak-minded sentient beings' to get them to do what you want them to do.
PC Fleming, who is one of ten police workers - eight of them officers - at Strathclyde Police who have listed their religion as Jedi, said her faith helped her 'fight crime and disorder on Glasgow's streets'.
She said: 'Being a Jedi is a way of life.'
Speaking in casual outfit - rather than her uniform or Jedi cloak - the 45-year-old beat officer added: 'For me, it is not a joke. I love the Star Wars films and the concept of being a Jedi.
'The faith is not divisive. It does not matter what your race, faith or sexual orientation is - you can be one. It is all encompassing.'
The PC, speaking at the annual Scottish Police Federation conference in the sleepy town of Peebles, near Edinburgh, this week said she had even stared calling her rookie cop a Padawan (a Jedi apprentice).
She said: 'I have been a confirmed Jedi on force monitoring form for three years now.
'I like the principles such as inclusiveness and oneness - that we are all part of one plan.
'I have even started calling my probationer, as a joke, my Padawan (Jedi apprentice). Although I am not sure he likes that.'
PC Fleming said she knew some of the other Jedis on her force, but said it was not a secret society and that anybody could join.
She added: 'We do not meet up and seek each other out. It is not a secret society.
'But I am getting more and more colleagues telling me they are Jedis though - even Federation representatives here today.'
She even said that the Jedi faith was a model for everybody, especially police officers, adding: 'I think all police officers are, or should be, Jedis.'
Other police officer in Glasgow, however, said they thought being a Jedi was 'ridiculous'.
John Miller, a community enforcement officer in Glasgow city centre, said: 'I have never heard of anything as ridiculous in my life.'
Colleague Allan Scott said: 'We work very closely in partnership with Strathclyde Police officers but we have not met any Jedis yet.'
An officer for British Transport Police, when asked if he was a Jedi, replied: 'No - we take our jobs much more seriously.'
The Jedi religion, which has more than 400,000 members in the UK, is inspired by the Star Wars films in which the Jedis represent the 'light side' in the fight against Darth Vadar's 'dark side'.
The Jedi Church believes that there is one all powerful force that binds all things in the universe together.
It states on its website: 'The Jedi Church recognises that there is one all powerful force that binds all things in the universe together, and accepts all races and species from all over the universe as potential members of the religion.
'The Jedi religion is something innate inside everyone of us, the Jedi Church believes that our sense of morality is innate. So quiet your mind and listen to the force within you!'
It continues: 'There are two sides to the force, the dark side and the light side. Beware of the dark side... The dark side leads to fear. Fear leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.'
Editor of Police Review Chris Herbert said: 'So will the other members of the Jedi faith come forward?
'Perhaps they will surface in a couple of weeks on their favourite day. May the 4th will soon be with us.' News Source
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We really didn't know what to make of this. One of our readers sent us this link to Blackjack which can be found on the Telegraph website in the culture section.
Blackjack is a slide show story and the events portrayed in the slide show are entirely fictitious. So, what is it's meaning? What significance or viability? In the words of our reader 'To say it`s a bit disconcerting is an understatement.' What do you make of it? (Visit website for the 5 part slideshow story).
Reader Submitted Link. Thank You Jim
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A Met police officer who allegedly boasted on Facebook he was going to "bash some long-haired hippies" at the G20 protests is under investigation.
Pc Rob Ward, 27, who is based at a station near his home in Enfield, is claimed to have posted the comment just an hour after the death of newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson, 47, who was shoved to the ground by another police officer at the protests in the City on 1 April.
Pc Ward's message, left at 8.17pm that night, referred to the world leaders' summit taking place the next day in Docklands.
Mr Tomlinson's death was not known publicly at the time he posted the message on the social networking website.
The message - which was misspelt - reads: "Can't wait to bash some long haired hippys up @ the G20."
Twenty minutes after Pc Ward posted his comment he got a reply saying: "LMAO (Laughing my a**e off). Dats bad but good in da same way lol [laugh out loud]."
In other posts Pc Ward, a father of one, boasted about being near US President Barack Obama's wife Michelle during the couple's visit to London.
In one post he complained about his rota, saying: "Graveyard shift! Wish I was at home."
His Facebook page says he is an Arsenal fan and lists films such as Green Street and the Football Factory among his favourite movies. Pc Ward faces possible disciplinary action but has not been suspended.
A Met spokeswoman said: "The matter will be investigated appropriately."
It comes as Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul St e phens on today ordered a tough crackdown on wrongdoing in his force, announcing a new regime of "intrusive supervision" to root out rogue officers.
He said: "I will not accept inappropriate conduct by officers. The public must trust us."
Sir Paul spoke out as the Met faces a series of investigations into allegations that officers used excessive force to handle the G20 protests.
There are also claims some failed to wear ID numbers. The officer who pushed Mr Tomlinson has been questioned on suspicion of manslaughter over his death.
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The Chancellor faced criticism last night for putting off cuts in public spending until a Tory government may be in power.
The fine print of the Budget revealed that Alistair Darling plans a massive pre-election surge in spending in schools and hospitals.
In 2009/10, it will increase more than in any other Labour year --and carry on rising in 2010/11.
The Budget says total expenditure will be £620billion in 2008/9, £671billion in 2009/10 and £ 702billion in 2010/11 - a 14 per cent rise.
Under the Chancellor's plans, any restraint will be put off until the following years - and crucially, after the next general election.
The Chancellor told MPs frontline public services would be 'protected' because current spending growth would be maintained in real terms at an average of 0.7 per cent a year.
However, the Institute for Fiscal Studies demolished that claim, suggesting public spending would eventually be cut by around £20billion a year even under Mr Darling's optimistic expectations for the public finances.
The IFS said the slowdown in spending growth from 1.1 per cent to 0.7 per cent was only current spending - which includes bloated public sector wage bills.
It masked a 17 per cent cut in 'investment' spending in infrastructure - on roads, hospital buildings and schools, for example.
In total, spending was being cut very slightly, by 0.1 per cent in real terms from 2011/12 to 2013/14.
The IFS said soaring debt interest payments and benefit bills will mean that Government departments will in reality have to face an average 2.3 per cent cut by 2013/14.
Tory MPs said Mr Darling's proposals would kill off traditional Labour attacks on their plans for 'cuts', which have been at the centre of the party's last three election campaigns.
They condemned the Chancellor as 'dishonest' for boosting spending now and scheduling cuts for when Labour looks likely to be out of office. News Source
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As many as 40,000 drinkers are dying every year because the Government has utterly failed to deal with Britain's alcohol problem, leading experts said yesterday.
Doctors and academics lined up to condemn round-the-clock drinking, brought in by Labour, and the availability of cheap alcohol in supermarkets.
One accused supermarkets of having the 'morality of the crack dealer' for selling cut-price alcohol. Others criticised Gordon Brown for appearing to rule out a minimum alcohol price, saying this was the only way to defuse the binge-drinking timebomb.
Professor Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians, told MPs that the number of alcohol-induced deaths was much higher than the official figure of 8,000. These are cases where alcohol is directly mentioned on death certificates.
He said up to five times as many deaths are directly caused by drink, including some cancers, high blood pressure leading to stroke and heart attacks, and violence.
Professor Gilmore warned that the number of alcohol deaths is comparable to the numbers dying as a result of obesity. And although 80,000 die every year through smoking, alcohol death rates are rising sharply and look likely to overtake smoking in coming years as more people quit.
He firmly blamed the Government for the deteriorating situation, saying that Department of Health strategies on reducing harm from alcohol were scuppered because they came at the same time as Home Office 24-hour drinking laws.
'It was in my view unfortunate that the plan coincided with a change in licensing laws which made it easier for places to stay open longer, and made it more difficult to turn down applications for licences, with no need to take public health into account,' he told the all-party Commons health select committee.
'In that respect I think Government strategy has not worked.' Continued
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No Longer just Logged.. But also
Every phone call, email or website visit will be monitored by the state under plans to be unveiled next week.
The proposals will give police and security services the power to snoop on every single communication made by the public with the data then likely to be stored in an enormous national database.
The precise content of calls and other communications would not be accessible but even text messages and visits to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter would be tracked.
The move has alarmed civil liberty campaigners, and the country's data protection watchdog last night warned the proposals would be "unacceptable".
Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, will argue the powers are needed to target terrorists and serious criminals who are taking advantage of the increasing complex nature of communications to plot atrocities and crimes.
A consultation document on the plans, known in Whitehall as the Interception Modernisation Programme, is likely to put great emphasis on the threat facing Britain and warn the alternative to the powers would be a massive expansion of surveillance.
But that will fuel concerns among critics that the Government is using a climate of fear to expand the surveillance state.
Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, the country's data watchdog, told the Daily Telegraph: "I have no problem with the targeted surveillance of terrorist suspects.
"But a Government database of the records of everyone's communications – if that is to be proposed – is not likely to be acceptable to the British public. Remember that records – who? when? where? – can be highly intrusive even if no content is collected."
It is understood Mr Thomas is concerned that even details on who people contact or sites they visit could intrude on their privacy, such as data showing an individual visiting a website selling Viagra.
Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer, last month revealed he was considering lobbying ministers over the proposal, which he described as "overkill".
The proposed powers will allow police and security services to monitor communication "traffic", which is who calls, texts, emails who, when and where but not what is said.
Similarly they will be able to see which websites someone visits, when and from where but not the content of those visits.
However, if the data sets alarm bells ringing, officials can request a ministerial warrant to intercept exactly what is being sent, including the content.
The consultation is expected to include three options on how the "traffic" information is then stored: a "super database" held by the Government, a database held and run by a quango or private company at arms' length, or an order to communication providers to store every detail in their own systems, which can then be accessed by the security services is necessary.
A memo written by sources close to the project and leaked last year revealed it was fraught with technical difficulties.
Ms Smith has already claimed local authorities will not have access to the data but the Tories have warned of the "exponential increase in the powers of the state'', while the Liberal Democrats have dubbed the plans "Orwellian" and deeply worrying.
Security services fear a failure to monitor all forms of communications effectively will hamper their ability to combat terrorists and serious criminals. Sir Stephen Lander, chairman of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, said: "Any significant reduction in the capability of law enforcement agencies to acquire and exploit intercept intelligence and evidential communications data would lead to more unsolved murders, more firearms on our streets, more successful robberies, more unresolved kidnaps, more harm from the use of Class A drugs, more illegal immigration and more unsolved serious crime." News Source
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Five men who brought terror to a busy street on a Friday night have all been jailed.
Tasab Hussain, Asrar Sami, Omar Arbab and brothers Nasir and Naim Aziz were convicted of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and carrying a firearm with criminal intent following a trial at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court.
Victim, Damien Miller, was stabbed and shot at outside the Wedgwood pub in Waterloo Road, Cobridge, on January 18 last year.
He was with friends and family members celebrating his dead mother's life when he visited the pub. The defendants lured Miller outside and attacked him.
The five men were sentenced at Stoke-on-Crown Court yesterday. Father-of-two Nasir Aziz, of Wulstan Road, Cobridge, was in possession of a sawn-off shotgun during the attack, which was fired twice.
Andrew Baker, defending 25-year-old Aziz, said: "There is no clear evidence that there was any ammunition in the gun that could actively be discharged and kill.
"What took place was intended to scare Damien Miller and those associated with him."
Anthony Potter, representing Aziz's 28-year-old brother Naim Aziz, also of Wulstan Road, said his client played no part in the worst of the assault.
He said: "There was no significant evidence that he had a weapon. There was also evidence that by the later stage of the incident, which was the most serious stage, he was an observer."
Joanne Wallbanks, representing 22-year-old Asrar Sami, formerly of Waterloo Road, Cobridge, said: "He was married in March last year and removed himself from the area, but continued at college.
"He has qualified as a plumber and has set up a business in Birmingham."
The court heard Tasab Hussain, aged 28, of Waterloo Road, Cobridge, had a number of previous convictions.
Tariq Mahmood, representing Hussain, said: "Since 2005 there has been a stop in his criminal convictions as a result in having stability in his family life. His father passing away and his religion have given him stability."
Alison Downs, defending Omar Arbab, aged 20, of Rushton Close, Cobridge, said she could offer no mitigation with regard to the assault because her client maintained he had no involvement.
She said: "He has a supportive family, he will have employment when he comes out of prison and he has a young wife in Pakistan."
Judge Robert Trevor-Jones handed Sami, Hussain and the Aziz brothers an indeterminate sentence for the protection of the public. He said if he imposed a fixed sentence it would have been nine years. They cannot apply for parole for four-and-a-half years and will be released only when the parole board is satisfied they are not a threat.
Arbab was sentenced to eight years in a young offenders' institution, and will spend a further two years on licence.
Judge Trevor-Jones said: "Your actions that night, arming yourselves with deadly weapons and your willingness to use those weapons, make it clear to me that you all represent an obvious danger to the public."
Speaking after the hearing, Superintendent Bernie O'Reilly, from Stoke-on-Trent police division, said: "I'm very pleased those involved in this crime have been removed from our community, preventing them from causing further distress to residents." News Source
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Three people who gave false alibis for two of the men who attacked Damien Miller have been sent to prison.
Joseph Holland, aged 23, and Abul Bosher Shahjahan, aged 25, said they were with Omar Arbab at the time of the assault, while 23-year-old Melissa Jackson said her husband Nasir Aziz was at home.
Natalie McDonald, aged 18, who gave a statement which backed up Jackson's, avoided prison.
Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court was told the four pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice.
Mark Heywood, prosecuting, said: "Miss Jackson and Miss McDonald both said Nasir Aziz had come home at 4.30pm and they had a normal family evening.
"Mr Holland and Mr Shahjahan gave statements to police saying Omar Arbab had been at religious events."
The court heard Holland, of Ladywell Road, Tunstall, lied because he had wanted to gain popularity, while Paul Cliff, representing Shahjahan, of Davison Street, Cobridge, said his client had not believed Arbab would be involved in the attack.
Mr Cliff said McDonald, of Barrett Drive, Cobridge, lied because of misguided loyalty to Jackson.
Nicholas Tatlow, defending Jackson, whose address cannot be revealed, said: "This was committed by a vulnerable young woman."
Judge Robert Trevor Jones sentenced Holland, Shahjahan and Jackson to six months. McDonald was sentenced to three months in a young offenders' institution, suspended for 12 months. She was given 80 hours' unpaid work. News Source
Friday 24th April 2009
Britain appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian state. As a sometime teacher of political science and international law, I do not use the term totalitarian loosely.
There are no concentration camps or gulags but there are thought police with unprecedented powers to dictate ways of thinking and sniff out heresy, and there can be harsh punishments for dissent.
Nikolai Bukharin claimed one of the Bolshevik Revolution's principal tasks was "to alter people's actual psychology". Britain is not Bolshevik, but a campaign to alter people's psychology and create a new Homo britannicus is under way without even a fig leaf of disguise.
The Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalise politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years' prison.
The House of Lords tried to insert a free-speech amendment, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw knocked it out.
It was Straw who previously called for a redefinition of Englishness and suggested the "global baggage of empire" was linked to soccer violence by "racist and xenophobic white males".
He claimed the English "propensity for violence" was used to subjugate Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and that the English as a race were "potentially very aggressive".
In the past 10 years I have collected reports of many instances of draconian punishments, including the arrest and criminal prosecution of children, for thought-crimes and offences against political correctness.
Countryside Restoration Trust chairman and columnist Robin Page said at a rally against the Government's anti-hunting laws in Gloucestershire in 2002: "If you are a black vegetarian Muslim asylum-seeking one-legged lesbian lorry driver, I want the same rights as you." Page was arrested, and after four months he received a letter saying no charges would be pressed, but that: "If further evidence comes to our attention whereby your involvement is implicated, we will seek to initiate proceedings." It took him five years to clear his name.
Page was at least an adult. In September 2006, a 14-year-old schoolgirl, Codie Stott, asked a teacher if she could sit with another group to do a science project as all the girls with her spoke only Urdu.
The teacher's first response, according to Stott, was to scream at her: "It's racist, you're going to get done by the police!" Upset and terrified, the schoolgirl went outside to calm down.
The teacher called the police and a few days later, presumably after officialdom had thought the matter over, she was arrested and taken to a police station, where she was fingerprinted and photographed.
According to her mother, she was placed in a bare cell for 3 1/2 hours. She was questioned on suspicion of committing a racial public order offence and then released without charge.
The school was said to be investigating what further action to take, not against the teacher, but against Stott. Headmaster Anthony Edkins reportedly said: "An allegation of a serious nature was made concerning a racially motivated remark. We aim to ensure a caring and tolerant attitude towards pupils of all ethnic backgrounds and will not stand for racism in any form."
A 10-year-old child was arrested and brought before a judge, for having allegedly called an 11-year-old boya "Paki" and "bin Laden" during a playground argument at a primary school (the other boy had called him a skunk and a Teletubby).
When it reached the court the case had cost taxpayers pound stg. 25,000. The accused was so distressed that he had stopped attending school. The judge, Jonathan Finestein, said: "Have we really got to the stage where we are prosecuting 10-year-old boys because of political correctness? There are major crimes out there and the police don't bother to prosecute. This is nonsense."
Finestein was fiercely attacked by teaching union leaders, as in those witch-hunt trials where any who spoke in defence of an accused or pointed to defects in the prosecution were immediately targeted as witches and candidates for burning.
Hate-crime police investigated Basil Brush, a puppet fox on children's television, who had made a joke about Gypsies. The BBC confessed that Brush had behaved inappropriately and assured police that the episode would be banned.
A bishop was warned by the police for not having done enough to "celebrate diversity", the enforcing of which is now apparently a police function. A Christian home for retired clergy and religious workers lost a grant because it would not reveal to official snoopers how many of the residents were homosexual. That they had never been asked was taken as evidence of homophobia.
Muslim parents who objected to young children being given books advocating same-sex marriage and adoption at one school last year had their wishes respected and the offending material withdrawn. This year, Muslim and Christian parents at another school objecting to the same material have not only had their objections ignored but have been threatened with prosecution if they withdraw their children.
There have been innumerable cases in recent months of people in schools, hospitals and other institutions losing their jobs because of various religious scruples, often, as in the East Germany of yore, not shouted fanatically from the rooftops but betrayed in private conversations and reported to authorities.
The crime of one nurse was to offer to pray for a patient, who did not complain but merely mentioned the matter to another nurse.
A primary school receptionist, Jennie Cain, whose five-year-old daughter was told off for talking about Jesus in class, faces the sack for seeking support from her church.
A private email from her to other members of the church asking for prayers fell into the hands of school authorities.
Permissiveness as well as draconianism can be deployed to destroy socially accepted norms and values. The Royal Navy, for instance, has installed a satanist chapel in a warship to accommodate the proclivities of a satanist crew member. "What would Nelson have said?" is a British newspaper cliche about navy scandals, but in this case seems a legitimate question. Satanist paraphernalia is also supplied to prison inmates who need it.
This campaign seems to come from unelected or quasi-governmental bodies controlling various institutions, which are more or less unanswerable to electors, more than it does directly from the Government, although the Government helps drive it and condones it in a fudged and deniable manner.
Any one of these incidents might be dismissed as an aberration, but taken together - and I have only mentioned a tiny sample; more are reported almost every day - they add up to a pretty clear picture. News Source
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France is to send in its army to close down a shanty town where hundreds of illegal migrants camp as they wait to sneak into Britain.
The news came as the mayor of Calais urged the UK to sign up to an agreement making the port town a passport free zone - so they can get rid of thousands of illegal migrants.
It would mean that all could get straight across the Channel without official papers to the welfare benefits available in their British ‘Eldorado’.
And exasperated mayor Natacha Bouchart spoke of chartering a boat to 'dump' the illegal immigrants sleeping rough in her town on Britain's shores.
In that case if this happens then perhaps this is something the UK should be doing with all it's Illegal Immigrants dumping them on the shores of whence they came! (Ed)
‘It’s necessary to speed up negotiations with the British because at the moment we’re ready to charter a boat to dump them over there,’ Mrs Bouchart told Immigration Minister Eric Besson.
She said all that Britain had to do was sign up to the Schengen agreement, which allows anybody to travel between designated European Union states – including France - without passports or visas.
Mrs Bouchart also welcomed a scheme to bring in the Army to destroy a notorious shanty town next to Calais port called ‘The Jungle’ where a London journalism student was raped last year.
Both politicians – who are tough talking members of the ruling UMP party - were taking part in a crunch meeting aimed at ‘cleaning up’ a problem firmly blamed on Britain’s benefits culture.
The French believe it encourages foreigners from all over the world to use their country as a base to get to the UK, where they will receive generous welfare payments as asylum seekers or else disappear into the black economy.
While Mr Besson favours the use of military force to tear down the squatter camps, he knows that removing passport controls from Calais would cause outrage on the other side of the Channel.
Instead he would prefer to see a series of ‘mini’ welcome centres set up along the French coast, offering food, showers, and information about how to claim asylum.
The Minister denies emphatically that they will be like the Red Cross Centre at Sangatte which acted as a magnet to thousands of migrants to the UK before being shut down as part of an Anglo-French agreement in 2002.
If the UK did sign up to Schengen, then all of the Calais migrants could flock to Dover unchallenged – meaning France’s problem would immediately become a British one.
Earlier this week Mrs Bouchart said: ‘Today, with some 800 migrants in the town, the situation is becoming unmanageable. Calais is hostage to Britain, which refuses to ratify Schengen.
‘On Thursday I will ask the Minister to restart negotiations with Great Britain over international agreements.’
Mrs Bouchart said that if Britain signed up to Schengen, then the migrants could make their way direct to the UK to claim asylum, rather than using France as a platform to get there illegally.
There are some 2000 migrants sleeping rough in the entire Pas de Calais area, with most playing a nightly game of cat and mouse with frontier police as they try to board lorries and trains to Britain.
Referring to ‘The Jungle’, Mrs Bouchart said: ‘It’s not a camp, it’s a village. The municipal workers cannot clean it up, they’re not up to it.
‘I’ve told the Prefect and I’ve asked him to look at a measure to wipe out this organised village. It needs an intervention by the Army.
‘There are more than 80 shelters, with a transport stop, a mosque, and a shop. ‘Migrants know exactly how to go about taking water, electricity, and stolen building material from local businesses.’
She said thousands of pounds worth of equipment had been stolen to build makeshift homes, with some of it recovered during a series of police raids on Tuesday.
Almost 200 men were arrested at the same time, in an attempt to break up people smuggling gangs who charge up to £1000-a-time for illegal passages to the south coast of England.
While almost all have since been released, Mr Besson said the operation was a success, and that his ‘target’ was the people smugglers.
‘The migrants themselves will not be abandoned as humanitarian measures will be put in place,’ Mr Besson explained.
‘The law of the jungle will not rule either here in Calais or anywhere else in France,’ he said.
On the new welcome centres Mr Besson insisted they will not become ‘a new, or a mini Sangatte.’
Responding to the plan to make Calais a passport free zone, British Immigration Minister Phil Woolas said: ‘The UK policy is to not sign up to the Schengen Agreement.
'Free movement is only rightly available to legal entrants. Weakening our controls will only play into the hands of the traffickers who profit from human misery and suffering.’ News Source
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Gordon Brown's plan to give MPs a 'clocking-in' allowance was in doubt today after Britain's anti-sleaze boss warned that the public would not tolerate it.
Sir Christopher Kelly, chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said voters would not back a system where politicians were paid without receipts.
His remarks, on the day the committee launched its independent review of MPs' expenses, came as David Cameron and Nick Clegg came out firmly against the Prime Minister's proposal for a daily Westminster attendance allowance to replace the controversial second home payout.
Mr Brown wants to replace MPs' controversial £24,000-a-year housing allowance with a daily rate determined by attendance.
The Tory and Lib-Dem leaders indicated their parties would vote against the scheme when it is put to a Commons vote next week.
With many Labour backbenchers also unhappy at the plan, the vote is now on a knife-edge.
Sir Christopher said he was "not surprised" last night's meeting of Gordon Brown, Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg broke up without agreement. "The tide of public fury at what's been going on with expenses is overwhelming," he said, adding that the problems with Mr Brown's plan proved why an independent body needed to look carefully at the system.
Sir Christopher said the issue of MPs' expenses was "the single most damaging issue for public trust in politicians" in the last 15 years.
He said: "There must be reform and it must be done properly.
"This is not something that should be left to politicians to sort out for themselves. If public confidence is to be restored, there needs to be an independent inquiry by people with no political agenda of their own which can look hard at all the evidence and that is open to anyone who wants to contribute."
His committee is set to report before the end of the year. Both Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg feared possible abuse of "clocking-in" and felt MPs should not be paid simply for going to work.
Mr Cameron laid out his own receipt-based proposals to clean up Westminster expenses. He said: "I'd have a transparent allowance - no more patio heaters, no more bath plugs, certainly no pornography. People want a cleaned-up system."
The Tories said after the meeting that the premier had failed to address concerns about the proposed per diem allowance. They and the Liberal Democrats will vote against the plan next week.
Today the Committee on Standards in Public Life began its inquiry into the expenses system, publishing its terms of reference.
Mr Cameron, the Tory leader, said after the cross-party meeting: 'Sadly, what is clear is that the Prime Minister is absolutely wedded to his idea of having a system where we pay MPs to turn up and do their job.
'What he's effectively doing is replacing a system where you have to produce some receipts with a system where you get the money without having to produce any receipts. It's completely untransparent.
'I simply don't think the British public will accept that and so I think we'll have to oppose it.' Continued
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Same Old 'Nu Labour'
It Is a telling insight into the way the Prime Minister’s mind works that he should think the best way to clean up parliamentary expenses is to pay every MP a bonus for turning up to work.
At least parliamentarians who milked the discredited “additional costs allowance” knew that details of their excessive claims might well be exposed by newspapers.
If Gordon Brown has his way, a uniform new attendance allowance will replace the ACA, giving every MP a daily handout of nearly £200 just for signing in.
This is a radical extension of the idea that public servants who report for duty are engaged in some extraordinary act of selflessness.
Thus the Crown Prosecution Service has already paid bonuses of £250 to staff who put in an appearance at the office during snowy weather.
Euro-MPs and members of the House of Lords have long been used to pocketing generous attendance allowances too.
By proposing to give MPs what amounts to a massive pay rise as a reward for disreputable conduct, the Prime Minister shows the paucity of his thinking.
A far better approach would have been to make MPs set an example to the rest of the public sector in these tough economic times by getting by on their basic salary of £64,766.
Mr Brown should also have acknowledged that Britain has far too many MPs given that much of their workload has been transferred to devolved assemblies and Brussels.
But he has always favoured the political class over the common people. News Source
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Every time I see Trevor Phillips, the head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (cost: £70 million a year), he seems to be grinning like a Cheshire cat who's not only found the cream but who has also just been given a six-figure non-job on a government quango monitoring anti-feline discrimination.
No wonder, if this Observer article is anything to go by. Apparently Equate, a private company 70 per cent of whose shares are owned by Phillips, has signed a deal with a Canadian company that sells prepaid credit cards to migrant workers. Lib Dem MP Norman Baker has already said that "it could be argued that there is a conflict of interest".
This is a man who's supposed to be in charge of maintaining racial harmony in Britain, and who has spoken out against immigration restrictions, which many people - myself included - think are the one measure most likely to reduce racial unrest.
Not that there is anything wrong with Phillips making money from this perfectly legitimate credit card enterprise, if it wasn't for the alleged conflict of interest. At least credit card salesman is a legitimate job, unlike being the modern-day equivalent of the Witchfinder General.
Phillips was previously also a director of Equate, "a UK based consultancy business specialising in advising major corporate clients in the private sector in all aspects of racial equality both social and legal".
In other words, a company that protects firms from the allegation of racism, a smear which every company and employee is now terrified of having against their name, thanks to anti-discrimination laws that assume everyone is a racist unless proven otherwise.
Phillips ditched his directorship (though not his shares) after it was found out that Channel 4 were paying Equate for advice during the Jade Goody Big Brother racism non-event.
I wonder how much that cost taxpayers? Only a fraction of what the ludicrous, wasteful, taxpayer-ripping off Equalities Commission cost.
This super non-job quango fleeces the taxpayer and has ballooned since it was formed from previous race, sex and disability watchdog.
Incredibly, while taxpayers of every colour were slogging away and living in fear of a P45, this collection of smug, sanctimonious Guardian-readers gave themselves an average pay rise of £9,000, taking the average to £45,920.
Do you think this figure is going to make people more or less racist?
Britain already has an impossible number of equality laws that cover every imaginable prejudice. They've made the workplace a minefield for people working with anyone who could conceivably qualify as a discrimination victim.
They've already done great work in turning British people into East Germans, forever fearful of losing their livelihoods and reputations for fear or being exposed as a "racist"
We have more than enough laws defending workers for racism, sexism, ageism and every other conceivable prejudice. But you can't legislate for opinion, manners or taste, and as racism and prejudice will always exist, and will only grow as immigration continues unchecked, these quacks will always find ways of increasing their budgets.
Time to wind up this group of privileged quangocrats and let them make some money in the private sector. Trevor Phillips could give them some advice on that. News Source
See Also: Trevor's Self-Interest
Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, has spoken openly about the UK's need to attract migrant workers and warned the government not to "clamp down" on immigration. Why?
Because in his private capacity, he is to help a Canadian company sell prepaid credit cards to the tens of thousands of migrant workers who often struggle to obtain bank accounts in the UK. Phillips's private company, the Equate Organisation, has signed a deal to link up with Toronto-based Mint Technology to market the cards in the UK.
Mr Purnell said EHRC chairman Trevor Phillips had agreed to work with the Government to assess whether any groups were suffering in the recession.
Trevor Phillips, the Chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Government watchdog that ordered the study, insisted that immigration is part of the solution to economic problems, not part of the problem.
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What is the Real purpose of a Quango?
We believe they are a strategically placed permanent covert mix of government and common purpose with no route for accountability to the public! 'New World Order' agendas can then continue regardless of government change!
It is sometimes difficult to keep up to date with the endless stream of ever-changing quangos that seem to illicitly govern our country. With no democratic mandate or channels for accountability the damage they do to society can be underestimated.
The quangos have always been a natural adversary to society but it seems they are now even working against one another.
The upper management of the quangos seem to be deserting the sinking ships as fast as possible.
Three senior staff at the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) have left within the last couple of weeks.
Maybe this is due to the inherent flaws of such bodies – Is there not a huge paradox in trying to engineer equality of opportunity?
The emergence of the quangos was a costly episode in more ways than one under New Labour. We have paid dearly for the dubious honour of having the quangos rule over us.
There are roughly 1,162 Quangos in the UK (not even the government knows the full statistics) which run at a total cost of £63bn (equivalent to £2,550 per household).
They employ over 700,000 staff – all to do boondoggle jobs which have been artificially created by the government.
It is not only our taxes that have taken a hit at the hands of the quangos. Our democratic rights have also been massively depleted.
The heads of quangos are appointed, not elected, and as such there are no routes for accountability to the public. Yet they are still used to wield huge sums of public money and massive amounts of power. As such, they are extremely useful tools for the government when it comes to unpopular policies and legislation.
The prominence of quangos in our society is yet another example of government trying to help itself and promote self-interest rather than focussing resources towards those that would benefit most.
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Looking Back at recent Quango Issues
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The heads of three new Government quangos are to be paid more than double the salary of the leader of the single agency they are replacing.
The Learning and Skills Council (LSC) is being abolished and three new organisations established in its place. The three new chief executives will be paid in excess of £430,000.
This is more than double the £195,000 salary of Mark Haysom, the head of the LSC, who resigned in the wake of financial blunders which have left colleges half built and sixth forms facing the prospect of turning away unfunded A-level students.
As the new term starts, head teachers will renew pressure on the Treasury to plug the £200 million hole in school and college funding which could see an estimated 35,000 pupils without sixth form places in September.
The creation of the new agencies contradicts Government claims that it will rein in the cost of quango staff. Continued
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As Whitehall cock-ups go, the £5.7bn disaster at the Learning and Skills Council is a corker. The council approved major building projects it could not afford and did not realise its error until building work had started in many colleges.
I’m told that the underlying reasons for the fiasco include a doomed attempt to make the LSC answerable to two departments at once, an attack of ministerial grumps, signs of an exodus of senior civil servants plus a perfectly barmy plan to set up three new further education quangos where once it was all dealt with under one roof.
Let’s start at the top – with cabinet minister John Denham at the Department of Innovation, Universities and Schools (Dius). A good public performer who resigned over the Iraq war, he is often regarded as a smooth man but not according to insiders, who say he can be an extremely hairy minister.
“He’s very grumpy,” said my man with the inside track, as we tucked into baked halibut and dry white. One reason for Mr D’s irritation could be that Lord Drayson, his junior minister, has better access to prime minister Gordon Brown than he does. Then there is a certain rivalry with schools secretary Ed Balls – the LSC is responsible to both of them. Continued
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A regional quango is advertising for firms to take on a £240,000 public relations contract – despite employing 13 full time press officers.
The Newcastle-based North East Regional Development Agency has invited tenders to provide media monitoring on top of a separate £30,000 contract to distribute press releases in the area.
Branding itself as "One North East" the quango already employs 13 staff in its media office, including a director of communications, a head of public relations, a public relations manager, a regional image PR manager and regional image PR specialist advisers. Continued
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As my colleague Damian Thompson has reported, the taxpayer-funded Equality and Human Rights Commission has spent your money putting together a Muslim Women Power List 2009.
If the exercise was to show how much enterprise and initiative Muslim women have brought to new Britain, how come the list is full of public-sector quangocrats and academics? Look at this lot. As someone posted on Damian's blog: "Not one of those women has a job. Just checked again - no, not one."
Baroness Haleh Afshar OBE, AcSS, BA, PhD
Professor of Politics and Women's Studies, York University, and Life Peer
What have all these councils and task forces and university departments done for British Muslims, aside from fill them with further grievances? Did the Huguenots or Russian Jews need an Equality Commission to help them on the road from the East End to the suburbs?
In the past 12 years, Labour has created a quangocracy of unprecedented size, and within that a race relations/equality industry that makes university-educated people of all colours very well-off, but drives the rest of us apart. This "power list" is a disgrace. Continued
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Civic leaders have come out fighting against a public body which asked for views on travellers sites – and then dismissed them as racist.
Leading politicians from across the area have blasted the South East England Regional Assembly's (Seera) decision to reject letters sent from worried residents.
As reported in The News yesterday, the assembly sent back 147 letters that it received during a period of public consultation on proposals for more than 150 plots of land for travellers.
Among them were pensioners Rita and Norman Brookhouse, who live in Fortunes Way, Havant, whose rejected letter merely said that councils spent thousands clearing up after travellers every year.
Today council leaders, who are opposed to being forced to accommodate travellers sites, criticised Seera – an unelected government quango which is due to be abolished – for not listening.
Councillor Dave Smith, leader of Gosport Borough Council, said: 'It is ridiculous that a faceless, unelected government body can dictate to us. Continued
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A spat at the equality watchdog highlights wider divisions on policy
The earnest folk at the old Disability Rights Commission (DRC) might not be everyone’s idea of wild party animals. But this week it was alleged that the National Audit Office, a public-spending watchdog, had queried several items in the accounts of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), a mega-quango which absorbed various anti-discrimination outfits, including the DRC, in 2007.
The auditors are said to have noted impressive partying expenses incurred by fun-loving folk at the disability group, and to have expressed alarm that a lot of laptops apparently went missing when the former Commission for Racial Equality was wound up. Matters are expected to be resolved in the next few weeks, and the accounts approved.
This stumble rounded off a wobbly couple of weeks for the EHRC, in which three senior staff members resigned. Spokesmen insist that the resignations are sheer coincidence: Patrick Diamond, the head of strategy, was wooed away to an unrefusable job at 10 Downing Street, and Nicola Brewer, the chief executive, is said to have been poached for a plum post elsewhere. Kay Hampton, one of the 17 expert commissioners, apparently stepped down because of other work commitments.
Whether or not the ship-jumpings are linked, no one denies that discontent at the commission is rife. Chaired by Trevor Phillips, a former journalist who previously headed the racial-equality enforcer, the new über-quango has a remit spanning age, disability, gender, race, religion, sexuality and human rights of every description, as well as an annual budget of £70m. Continued
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Pakistan teetered on the brink of collapse today as Taliban fighters threatened to overrun the volatile country.
As violence broke out in the disputed north-west corner, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the state, which has nuclear capability, now posed a 'mortal threat' to the world.
'I think the Pakistani government is basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists,' she added.
Mrs Clinton's comments came as Islamabad was forced to deploy troops to protect key buildings and bridges.
One of the policemen travelling with the military convoy was shot dead after coming under fire from gunman.
In another development, dozens of militants armed with guns and gasoline bombs blowing up five tankers carrying fuel to NATO troops in Afghanistan.
There are fears that the Taliban, who have already been handed control of the Swat valley, could now take Islamabad and topple the government.
Militants are believed to be just 60 miles away - and edging closer by the day.
'If the Taliban continue their advances at the current pace they will soon be knocking at the doors of Islamabad,' Fazl-ur-Rehman, head of the Jamiat-e-ulema-e-Islam, the country's largest Islamic party, told parliament.
The security of Pakistan is viewed as vital to American efforts to stabilise neighbouring Afghanistan.
But today the picture looked increasingly bleak.
So far Islamabad has deployed around 100 paramilitary troops to the Buner district, the site of aggressive Taliban encroachment.
Residents claim militants have occupied police stations and that gun-toting fighters were roaming marketplaces urging people to support Sharia law.
Taliban fighters have also set up checkpoints and are patrolling roads.
Many police and government officials appear to have either fled or are keeping a low profile.
'A platoon of the Frontier Corps has arrived in Buner to help police maintain security in the district,' Arsala Khan, a deputy police superintendent said.
Many in Buner are now too frightened to speak to reporters.
However, one judge said that the militants had entered the district in 'large numbers' and started setting up checkpoints at main roads and strategic positions.
'They are patrolling in Buner, and local elders and clerics are negotiating with them to resolve this issue through talks,' Istiqbal Khan said.
The militants in Buner also are using radio airwaves to broadcast sermons about Islam, and have occupied the homes of some prominent landowners, said a police official who insisted on anonymity because he was afraid of retaliation. Continued
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Children are to be tracked by satellite technology to allow parents and teachers to keep tabs on them.
Pupils will be monitored with a swipe card that registers when they board and alight from school buses.
Parents will be able to log on to a website to ensure their child has made it safely to school.
The project was launched this week in North Wales and aims to tackle truancy and improve child safety. It will also help bus drivers to identify and report children who are badly behaved.
If successful the scheme could be introduced across the UK.
Last night organisers denied that the technology would be used to ‘spy’ on schoolchildren.
Peter Daniels, of Denbighshire County Council, said: ‘The system is very secure and it’s obviously governed by data protection law.’
When has that ever prevented the misuse of the system? (Ed)
He added: ‘I have to say that in North-East Wales we don’t really see trouble and misbehaviour, but in the afternoon some of the pupils can be jolly and minor anti-social behaviour can occur, or from time to time something more serious.’
Project officer Shelly Barratt said: ‘If youngsters go on a bus and vandalise it or bully someone, a message will end up with the school within 12 hours and that will be followed up by a call to the parents.’ News Source
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Heroin dealers will no longer face automatic jail sentences and could escape with community service order under reforms put forward by Government advisers yesterday.
They claimed that long jail terms do not deter dealers and that courts should focus on confiscating the profits of drug barons.
The Sentencing Advisory Panel also said it was wrong that drug pushers can go to jail for longer periods than other serious criminals such as rapists, violent attackers or dangerous drivers.
The proposals would mean that a heroin dealer, who would now get a jail sentence of two to five years, could hope to be handed a community punishment order.
Even gangsters who control the biggest drug rings should get reduced sentences, the panel said.
They would suffer by losing their 'lavish lifestyles'.
Under the plans, life sentences for the most serious offenders would be abolished, to be replaced by a maximum term of 14 years.
An offender might expect to serve under half of this.
The panel, headed by an academic lawyer and funded by the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office, delivers its proposals to the Sentencing Guidelines Council.
The council, led by Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge, sets the rules for judges and the courts. The proposals may get official approval within two years.
Panel chairman Professor Andrew Ashworth said current sentencing sometimes went beyond levels 'justified by the seriousness of the offence'.
Critics accused Labour of railroading though a major shift in criminal justice policy by means of a quango paper issued on Budget day when bad news can be buried.
Criminologist Dr David Green of the Civitas think-tank claimed the proposals were 'intended to reduce the prison population because there is too little prison space.'
He added: 'All the real evidence on drug dealing and deterrence shows that deterrence does work.' News Source
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Punishment: The Nu-Labour Way!
Thieves and violent criminals have been enjoying fishing trips under the guise of 'intensive' community punishment, a report said today.
Young offenders spared jail in the name of 'tough' community sentences have also spent their time learning to dig gardens, it found.
Others have attended classes in which they have been taught how to claim the greatest possible amount in state benefits.
Fishing and gardening classes are among the punishments handed out to criminals under trials of a new £14milllion Intensive Alternatives to Custody system launched by Justice Secretary Jack Straw last year.
Under the scheme, criminals who might otherwise have been looking at sentences of up to a year in jail go on courses which Mr Straw described as 'a combination of unpaid work, electronic monitoring, behaviour programmes, mentoring and help with resettlement all under intensive supervision.'
However the report for the Police Review journal found that judges took a different view of what the IAC scheme should offer to young criminals.
Deputy District Judge Joanne Alderson, who sits in Derby where one of the trials is under way, said: 'This is not about giving criminals nice things to do, but it is important to show them how different life can be.'
She added: 'Some offenders lead extremely chaotic lives and have no idea about time management. Many of them are unable to pick up their benefits, register with a GP or keep an appointment.'
The trials in Derby have involved taking prisoners out to lakes to teach them fishing.
Another project in Dorset has included gardening lessons, in which offenders aged between 18 and 25 have been equipped with seed potatoes, bulbs and other plants.
Classes for criminals on the scheme teach how to claim benefits alongside lessons in booking GP appointments and telling the time.
The latest extension of apparently cushy treatment to serious offenders comes at a time when a series of inquries have underpinned the widespread public perception that community punishments outside jail are soft.
Last month a study by academics at the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King's College, London, said community sentences had 'largely failed' and that nearly half of them were never completed by the criminals concerned.
It found probation officers believed criminals given community sentences were 'laughing their heads off'.
Last year the Government's spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, said prisoners who failed to turn up for community punishments were being allowed to get away with handing in sick notes written by themselves, claiming they had overslept, explaining they had no transport, or saying they had forgotten.
However community sentences remain popular among senior judges who believe prison does nothing to reform criminals, and with ministers anxious to cut back the number of offenders for whom they must provide prison places.
But former Prisons Minister and Tory MP Ann Widdecombe said: 'I can't see this working.
'Maybe it would be a good diversionary tactic on, say a 15-year-old, but these are people who have committed crime which would lead to up to a year in prison. They are far too far down the line for something like this.
'It should be done before people go on these rampages.'
Mark Wallace of the TaxPayers Alliance, added: 'This is ridiculous.
'Serial offenders, who are a clear menace to the public, are getting the soft option. It is worrying. It seems these sort of orders are being given not to enforce justice but to save the Government the embarassment of not having enough prison places.'
But Cardiff police inspector Tony Bishop told the Police Review: 'I am a great believer in trying to keep people out of the criminal justice system using things like cautions, reprimands and final warnings. But if they do end up in the system, is it always right to send them to prison?
'Obviously on certain occasions they have to be but prisons are full to bursting and people are being released early because of pressures on the system. There are people in the criminal justice system who if you give them a chance to get away from that life of crime, perhaps they might see the light.' News Source
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Pollution is protecting the world from climate change, according to two new studies.
The first study found that the hole in the ozone layer, caused by the use of CFCs, has prevented the melting of Antarctica even as the rest of the world warms.
A separate study found that plants absorb more carbon dioxide under polluted skies, therefore slowing global warming.
Scientists said the findings made it even more important to cut carbon emissions in the future as pollution from CFCs and other sources is expected to decrease.
The survey of Antarctica by the British Antarctic Survey and Nasa found sea ice in the South Pole has increased at a rate of 100,000 square kilometres (38,601 square miles) a decade over the last 40 years even as the ice cap in the North Pole melts.
The scientists said the reason was the hole in the ozone layer, caused by the use of CFCs. The ozone layer absorbs heat in the atmosphere, but the emergence of the hole – almost the size of North America – has cooled temperatures, resulting in more ice.
However following a ban on CFCs the hole in the ozone layer is expected to repair, causing temperatures in the South Pole to rise again.
The study of plants by scientists from across the UK, including the Met Office, found that "global dimming" caused by polluted skies over the last 40 years has increased the ability of plants to absorb carbon dioxide by as much as a quarter.
The study published in Nature said this is because the diffusion of sunlight means the land receives light from different directions rather than just directly from the sun.
As a result, plants are able to convert more of the sunlight energy into growth, trapping carbon dioxide as they do so, because more leaves are in the sun.
The increase in the amount of carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas, may have helped to slow global warming. However as the world cuts pollution it will speed up again.
Both studies concluded that it was even more important to cut carbon emissions in the future as the reduction in pollution will mean global warming is speeding up. News Source
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Antarctic sea ice is growing rather than shrinking as a result of the hole in the ozone layer, scientists have said.
In stark contrast to the loss of sea ice in the Arctic over the last 30 years, the frozen seas surrounding the South Pole have increased at the rate of 100,000 square kilometres a decade over the last 40 years.
Scientists believe the growth is down to stronger surface winds over Antarctica and more frequent storms in the Southern Ocean – both direct consequences of the ozone hole.
But the team from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and Nasa warned the ozone hole was only delaying the impact of greenhouse gases on the climate of the White Continent.
If ozone levels recover as expected over the next 100 years, thanks to the international ban on damaging CFCs, weather patterns will return to normal and Antarctic sea ice will shrink rapidly, they said.
Professor John Turner of BAS, lead author of the paper published in the Geophysical Research Letters journal, said the results underlined the complexity of climate change.
He said: "While there is increasing evidence that the loss of sea ice in the Arctic has occurred due to human activity, in the Antarctic human influence through the ozone hole has had the reverse effect and resulted in more ice.
"Although the ozone hole is in many ways holding back the effects of greenhouse gas increases on the Antarctic, this will not last, as we expect ozone levels to recover by the end of the 21st Century.
"By then there is likely to be around one third less Antarctic sea ice." News Source
Do they really know the outcome? Afterall we are seeing opposites to what they have been telling us for years... amid the global warming hysteria! (Ed)
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Britain will be left with a £140billion black hole in public finances which is impervious to economic recovery once the recession ends, experts warned today.
The Institute of Fiscal Studies says nearly all of the £175billion the Government plans to borrow this year will be 'structural' and remain in the long-term.
The devastating analysis emerged as Alistair Darling absorbed the fallout from his shocking 'red ink' Budget.
IFS chief Robert Chote warned that the only way to resolve the huge debt burden will be through vicious public spending cuts and more tax hikes.
'About four-fifths of the borrowing this year is going to be "structural" in the jargon,' he told the BBC.
'This means that even when the economy has stabilised to a "Goldilocks" state that is neither too hot nor too cold, we are going to be left with about £140billion of that £175billion of borrowing and that's going to have to be whittled away through a combination of spending cuts and tax increases.'
He added that the real surprise in the Budget was the prediction by Treasury officials in the small print that the UK's 'productive potential' - the amount it can produce without raising inflation - will be permanently cut by five per cent.
'The Treasury thinks that the economic crisis will punch a bigger hole in the UK's productive potential. It also expects prices to be lower over the long term and it has been hit by the growth of VAT debts,' Mr Chote said.
The IFS will publish its own detailed assessment of the Budget later today as the small print revealed Britain has permanently lost billions due to the recession.
The Treasury admits in its Budget 'Red Book' there will be a permanent dip in output of around five per cent, according to an assessment by the National Audit Office.
The new figures emerged as Mr Darling defended his gamble on a 1970s-style tax raid against the rich and a wildly-optimistic forecast of economic recovery
The Chancellor admitted his measures, including a 50p top tax rate, were 'extraordinary' but declared: 'These are, I'm afraid, extraordinary times.'
He has been accused of basing his Budget on a 'fantasy' after claiming a recovery starting next year would clean up a public-finance bloodbath.
But this morning, he was defiant, saying: 'I remain confident that the economy will start to grow before the end of the year.'
In a blitz of media interviews, Mr Darling defended his statement as a 'sensible path' towards re-balancing the books and did his best to appear upbeat.
'Today does not look good in terms of headlines, I was resigned to that for some time,' he said.
'But I do believe that we do have reasons for confidence and we should not get ourselves into a position of believing otherwise.'
An incredulous shadow chancellor George Osborne condemned the Budget as 'another nail in the coffin' for Labour, which had simply avoided any difficult choices.
'A lot of decisions taken yesterday were not real decisions; they were decisions to push it off until after the election,' he said.
'It was a kind of "manana, manana" approach and I don't think Britain can afford that these days.'
No one would be feeling more confident about their future this morning, Mr Osborne claimed, because the Chancellor had not unveiled a 'serious plan'.
The move to sting top earners with a new 50p tax rate drove a stake through the heart of New Labour.
Budget in focus
- UK debt to hit 79% of GDP before falling back in 2015
- Britain's economy to shrink by 3.5% this year
- IMF disagrees growth will return in 2010
- Government to borrow £703bn in next five years
- Top tax rate raised to 50% for earners above £150,000
- £2,000 incentive for drivers who trade in old cars
- Duty on alcohol and cigarettes to rise 2%
- ISA limit to rise to £10,200 for everyone from next year
Experts said the move - resisted for a decade by Tony Blair - was largely symbolic and could even lose the Treasury money by prompting an exodus of the rich.
It was the big shock in a nakedly political Budget which will mean unprecedented levels of borrowing and led David Cameron to dismiss Gordon Brown as the 'clapped-out' leader of a ' government of the living dead'.
The Prime Minister today insisted Labour was still a party of aspiration and that the rise was essential to the nation's recovery.
'The point that I think we have got to accept is if we are going to give people opportunities they need for the future, then there has got to be a contribution by those who have the most and who have gained the most over the last few years,' he said.
'This is not taxation for its own sake, it is tax for a purpose. This is Britain fighting back against the international recession, this is Britain taking bold action for recovery.'
The decision to 'soak the rich' shattered Labour's election manifesto pledge not to raise income tax and appeared chiefly designed to wrongfoot the Conservatives.
But lower earners will be hit too, with a surprise 2p a litre rise in petrol duty from September, along with increased duty on cigarettes and alcohol.
As unemployment figures crashed through 2.1million yesterday - higher than when Labour came to power in 1997 - Mr Darling unveiled a £3.1billion package to safeguard and create jobs.
But opponents accused him of burying his head in the sand over the big question - the catastrophe being wrought on the public finances by the worst recession since the Second World War.
Though national debt will double to a jaw-dropping £1.4trillion - meaning every baby will now be born owing £22,500 - the Chancellor offered virtually no solutions to the fiscal mess.
While he plans to slow the growth in public spending, he still is refusing to make cuts.
Darling's plan to fix the deficit relies on unprecedented levels of borrowing and an astonishingly rapid rebound in the economy.
The Chancellor said borrowing would hit a record £175billion this year and the economy would shrink by 3.5 per cent - its worst performance since 1945.
It was a disastrous admission for a Government which had long claimed to have 'ended boom and bust'. This time last year, Mr Darling was predicting that borrowing would be just £38billion.
But the cost of bank bail-outs will help push national debt up to 79 per cent of national income by 2013, almost twice the limit under Gordon Brown's abandoned 'golden rules'.
Interest payments alone on the debt will now reach £43billion a year - more than the cost of the education system or the armed forces.
Mr Darling admitted Britain faced deepening deflation.
He confidently claimed, however, that the recession would end this year - with 1.25 per cent growth in 2010 and a startling 3.5 per cent in 2011.
Even under his rose-tinted scenario, the deadline for balancing the Government's books has been extended to 2018.
The Budget document itself conceded there were 'broad risks' around all economic forecasts because of the uncertainty over Britain's prospects.
Business leaders and City experts said Mr Darling's forecasts were barely credible.
And his figures were contradicted by international forecasters within an hour of his speech ending.
The International Monetary Fund said Britain's economy would contract by 4.1 per cent this year and still be in recession next year, shrinking by 0.4 per cent. News Source
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Often it takes adversity to bring out the best in a human being. A young soldier, coming under fire for the first time, discovers within himself hitherto undiscovered reserves of courage, skill and steadiness of nerve.
A cricketer, coming to the crease amid the clatter of wickets, puts his head down and bats his side out of trouble.
And sometimes adversity reveals hidden defects. The soldier panics, the batsman loses his head.
On Wednesday, Alistair Darling came out to bat at a time of unprecedented national crisis. Our national finances are in their most desperate state since the end of World War II more than 60 years ago.
Unemployment surges ahead, economic growth has collapsed, and politically the far Right is on the warpath. Britain's very creditworthiness is in the balance.
Only on two or three occasions in history has there been so much at stake as a British Chancellor of the Exchequer rose to deliver his annual Budget.
This could have been the moment that Alistair Darling made his reputation as a bold, visionary statesman with the courage and personal stature to rescue Britain from catastrophe.
But no, Alistair Darling ducked the challenge. He ran away from the sound of gunfire. He failed the nation and he failed himself.
When, in years to come, Darling looks back at yesterday's events, he should blush deeply. His Budget ought to have been a turning point in our economic history. Tragically, for Britain, it was the turning point that failed to turn.
Poor Darling shied away from the tough decisions. He lacked the courage to take on the spending lobbies that now control Gordon Brown's Labour Party. He failed to make the unpopular spending cuts that are urgently needed if national financial collapse is to be averted.
Instead of the powerful and clear-headed Budget the occasion called for, Darling ducked for cover. Wednesday's Budget statement was a demeaning mixture of bogus initiatives, outright dishonesty and low political stratagem.
At a time of crisis, this pathetic Chancellor offered gimmick rather than substance and preferred comforting falsehoods to the difficult and uncomfortable truth.
He claimed, for example, to be giving additional help to children with changes to the system of child credits. In fact, as the Centre For Policy Studies revealed, the changes are all but non-existent.
He boasted that he would extend a scheme to help home buyers. However - as Tory leader David Cameron pointed out in his dazzling reply to Alistair Darling's statement - not a single home buyer had taken up the existing scheme by the end of last month.
Meanwhile, Darling announced a £20 billion boost to mortgage lending - an announcement which had first been made months ago. He dishonestly claimed that G20 leaders had injected more than $1.1 trillion into the world economy when the true sum was a fraction of that.
But the main problem was not Darling's reliance on fraudulent statistics, re-announcements and bogus initiatives. It was Darling's total failure to address the very significant deficit in our national finances.
He did act to cut very slightly the growth in public spending by a trivial 0.4 per cent in the years ahead. Even these cuts - unspecified 'efficiency savings' in Whitehall back-offices - look fabricated.
But this utterly gutless failure to address Britain's out-of-control spending commitments over the years ahead left Darling with a problem. He needed to show the financial markets that he was getting borrowing under control. Continued
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A recession crime wave' has taken hold in England and Wales with burglaries, personal theft and knifepoint robberies all soaring, it was revealed today.
Home Office figures showed a four per cent leap in the number of domestic burglaries in the final three months of 2008, to 75,600 offences.
It is the equivalent of one family suffering the agony of a break in every two minutes.
It followed a similar rise between July and September last year and is the first sustained increase in burglaries since the last recession in the mid-nineties.
Recorded crime figures also showed a worrying five per cent surge in knifepoint robberies in the final three months of 2008, when the country had officially slid into recession.
The 4,283 offences was the equivalent of one every 30 minutes.
Figures from the separate British Crime Survey showed a 25 per cent rise in thefts from the person - another so-called acquisitive crime linked to unemployment and hard economic times.
There was also a six per cent increase in drug offences, which police have predicted some people may turn to as the economic downturn bites.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: 'The figures paint a worrying picture of rising levels of many serious crimes.
'In particular the jump in burglaries and robberies at knife point is an alarming step in the wrong direction.
'All of this underlines the need for the government to stop wrapping up our police in unnecessary paperwork and get more officers back on to the streets.'
The figures show a 12 per cent fall in the number of homicides involving knives.
Between October and December, 52 people were stabbed to death, compared to 59 in the same period in 2007.
But Ministers, who have ploughed tens of millions into the Tackling Knives Action Plan, will be alarmed by the surge in knifepoint robberies.
One in five robberies now involves a blade.
Mr Grayling said: 'The figures on knife robberies will completely undermine claims by ministers that they are getting to grips with knife crime in Britain. They have got to do much better than this.'
Liberal Democrat spokesman Chris Huhne said: 'This is the second quarter in which there is clear evidence of rising theft and burglaries as the recession bites.
'With Alistair Darling confirming yesterday we were entering the deepest recession since the Second World War, we are also facing a credit crunch crime wave.'
Bob Jones, chairman of the Association of Police Authorities, said the 25 per cent increase in thefts from the person was 'a worrying development'
Last year, a leaked memo from Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to Gordon Brown warned of an increase in crime during the recession, including theft and burglary.
Last month, Miss Smith responded by offering families discount vouchers for B&Q if they wanted to buy new window locks.
Today's figures showed that, overall, property crime was down by 4 per cent thanks to falls in vehicle break-ins, other thefts and criminal damage.
Total recorded crime was down 4 per cent.
Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker said: 'Since 1997, overall crime has fallen by 39 per cent, violence is down by 40 per cent and burglary is down by 55 per cent.
'That is why we have already responded to early concerns about burglary - working with police, charities, DIY stores and insurers to increase enforcement activity, target repeat offenders and give practical advice to help people secure their homes.'
Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: 'The historical experience shows that it can take some time for the full impacts of economic recession on crime levels to manifest and the police service remains vigilant and ready to meet challenges ahead.'
He added: 'We note that the British Crime Survey reveals a sharp rise of 25 per cent in theft against the person.
'This category is largely made up of theft where the victim is unaware of what is happening and no force is involved.
'It is a cause for concern and our advice to the public is to take simple but sensible steps to reduce the risk of becoming of a victim of crime, such as taking care with credit cards and cash and avoiding leaving wallets and handbags open and accessible.' News Source
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As David Cameron observed yesterday, all Labour governments eventually run out of money.
Thanks to a long global economic boom it has just taken a bit longer to happen this time.
But Gordon Brown’s regime is certainly making up for lost time now. The onset of the credit crunch has highlighted terrible weaknesses in Britain’s public finances.
Mr Brown recklessly overspent during golden economic years when he should have been reducing the national debt.
Now recession has struck there is no money in the kitty and the nation is hurtling towards bankruptcy at breakneck pace.
Instead of setting out plans to get the books back into balance in the Budget yesterday, Alistair Darling took the
coward’s way out: he pretended everything was under control and proposed to borrow further sums unprecedented in British history.
A bloated public sector that has become a byword for inefficiency and waste was left almost untouched. Getting to grips with it would have upset Labour’s trade union paymasters.
Nightmarish borrowing projections would have been worse still had Mr Darling not taken refuge in preposterously optimistic growth forecasts.
A regime that started life promising it had “no plans to increase taxation at all” yesterday descended into the depths of spiteful, unreconstructed socialism. In a grubby political manoeuvre, Mr Darling unleashed a series of tax rises against those on high incomes in the full knowledge that this approach is bound to prove self-defeating.
Instead of seeking to whip up resentment against successful people who already contribute massively to income tax revenues, the Chancellor should have turned his gaze towards those who contribute nothing.
Labour was once seen as the party of working people. Under Brown it represents shirkers rather than workers.
It diverts billions to teenage girls who opt for single parenthood as a career move, to layabout youths, Third-world migrants, drug addicts and serial spongers.
A 50 per cent top tax rate sends a dire signal to anyone who aspires to reach the top of their chosen field. By the time national insurance, VAT and other stealth taxes are taken into account it is a wonder that wealth-creators canbe bothered to get out of bed in the morning.
The danger is that, increasingly, they won’t. Or that they will move abroad, taking their ideas and energy with them.
Labour has reverted to type. It is obsessed with redistributing wealth but clueless about creating it. Once more it has turned Britain into a financial failed state.
The next election cannot come soon enough. News Source
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Britain has voiced its protest after Argentina made a fresh bid for sovereignty over a submarine area three times the size of France that includes the Falkland Islands.
The UK also lays claim to the island archipelago - known as the Malvinas in Argentina.
Authorities at the British Embassy in Buenos Aires have already told Argentine officials 'not so fast'.
The South American country is staking claim to a vast area of seabed stretching from South America to the Antarctic in its latest bid for control of the South Atlantic.
Argentina presented 12 years' worth of research to the United Nations to prove its continental shelf extends up to 150 miles (240 kilometres) beyond the current 200-mile (320-kilometre) limit.
That's an additional 688,280 square miles (1.8 million square kilometres) of submarine area, the head of the Argentine commission that prepared the study, Frida Armas Pfirter, said.
It's also an area more than three times the size of France.
Argentina says its continental shelf extends out from the South American and Antarctic continent - and from the Falkland Islands.
The presentation, made yesterday, reiterates and strengthens Argentina's claim to sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, the South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands, Armas Pfirter said.
But authorities at the British Embassy in Buenos Aires voiced their protest immediately. Continued
Thursday 23rd April 2009
- Debt soars above 50% of GDP as borrowing hits £90bn
- Unemployment in biggest rise since 1991
- Income tax receipts slump by 17%
Unemployment has soared to its highest level since Labour came to power in 1997, new figures showed today.
The number of people looking for work jumped by 177,000 in the three months to February to reach 2.1 million - the biggest quarterly rise since 1991.
The gloomy new figures come ahead of Alistair Darling's 'Budget for jobs' in which he is expected to announce a £2.5 billion package to get young people back into work.
But new statistics today added to the Chancellor's problems by showing that net debt has ballooned to more than 50 per cent of GDP - the highest since 1976.
The number of people claiming jobseeker's allowance increased for the 13th month in a row in March, up by 73,700 to 1.46 million, the highest total since September 1997.
A raft of other gloomy figures from the ONS also showed cuts in manufacturing jobs, a record low number of vacancies and the lowest rise in average earnings since 1991. TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: 'These are another set of grim figures. There are no green shoots here, and there will be no real recovery until unemployment starts coming down.
'Mass unemployment drains public finances, ruins lives and blights communities. Everything in today's budget must be designed to create or save jobs.'
Theresa May, shadow work and pensions secretary, said: 'Behind these statistics are the shattered lives of millions.
'Labour have reached another grim milestone with unemployment now higher than when they came to power.
'This Government is sleepwalking through this unemployment crisis, recklessly casting millions of people adrift.
'No amount of Labour spin can cover up the fact that this Government closed a job centre every week in 2008 while unemployment was rising.'
Official figures today showed that public borrowing soared to a record £90 billion last financial year.
The figures come as net borrowing for March hit £19.1 billion, the highest level for a single month since records began in 1993
It is far higher than the prediction of £78 billion in net borrowing for the year that Mr Darling made in his Pre-Budget Report last November.
And it smashes Gordon Brown's self-imposed 'sustainable investment' pledge of 1997 that net borrowing should never exceed 40 per cent of GDP. Continued
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A Sense of menace hung in the crisp spring air. On almost every street there were groups of hardened youths, many wearing headscarves. A sullen look was in their eyes, an aggressive tone in their Arabic voices.
But this intimidating scene was not from downtown Algiers. It could be found just a few miles from the white cliffs of the Kent coast, in the historic French port of Calais, where thousands of immigrants gather with the aim of crossing the Channel.
Just before Easter, my wife and I drove through the out-skirts of Calais. The atmosphere of fear was almost palpable, as if the city were under siege.
At one garage, where I stopped for petrol, a French-man nodded at a gang of north Africans standing nearby and said to me: “They’re not refugees. Where are their wives?
Where are their children? They just want English money.” Scores of young men could be seen wandering by the railway lines and the roads into the ferry port, where the authorities issue warnings about the dangers of thefts and people-trafficking.
Calais has become a tragic symbol of Britain’s disastrous migration policies, which have done incalculable damage to our country and brought misery to our nearest continental neighbour.
This week the Mayor of Calais, natacha Bouchart, launched a stinging condemnation of our Government for its
unwillingness to maintain the integrity of Britain’s borders.
“Calais is a hostage to the British,” she said, pointing out that our country is a magnet for illegal immigration. She is so disgusted by the stance of British politicians that she refuses to meet representatives of our Government, knowing that any assurances from the Brown regime will be hollow.
The Mayor of Calais is fully justified in her outrage. The flood of migrants descending on her city not only shows what a soft touch Britain has become under Labour but also makes a mockery of the entire asylum process.
As my French acquaintance at the petrol station pointed out, the tough young Arab men are not fleeing persecution.
If they were, they would be only too relieved to settle in any European country offering them a haven. no, what they really want is the vast array of social security benefits, housing and support that the British state offers.
That is why so many flock to Calais, desperate to reach the welfare honey-pot across the Channel.
Other European countries, including France, have strict rules about entitlement to handouts and accommodation but Labour shows more generosity towards foreigners than towards its own people.
The right to welfare used to be related to British citizenship and contributions towards society but that spirit of moral justice has evaporated under Blair and Brown.
Immigrants are now at the front of the queue, often enjoying priority over people who have lived and worked in Britain all their lives.
Almost anyone who is given leave to remain here can claim the full range of benefits, while almost half of all new social housing goes to migrants.
Even asylum seekers, no matter how fraudulent their cases, are given at least £42 cash-in-hand every week, plus free housing,education, nHS treatment and all their utility bills paid.
As Mayor Bouchart pointed out, for African migrants this repre- sents unparalleled wealth, given that the average annual salary in somewhere like Eritrea is just £140.
The absurd extravagance of our welfare system and the laxity of our borders were high-lighted recently by the case of an Iraqi Kurdish family headed by Faradh Maruj.
Claiming to be in flight from Islamic funda- mentalists, they travelled right through continental Europe until they reached Calais, where the lorry carrying them was wavedthrough by officials after Mr Maruj uttered the single word “family”.
On their arrival in Britain, they were given a home in Birmingham and £170 a week in benefits, more than most pensioners receive.
no matter how illegal their status, immigrants know that the British Government lacks the will to deport them. Bent on creating a multi-cultural society, ministers regard the tidal wave of migrants as a welcome ally in their project of destroying the traditional identity of our country.
That is why they have dismantled our borders, dished out benefits to newcomers and allowed the so-called “refugee” process to descend into such a shambles that 90 per cent of failed asylum seekers are not removed.
It is also why the Government has presided over the creation of a vast public-funded industry designed to protect the supposed “rights” of migrants.
Made up of an expensive army of lawyers, lobbyists and out- reach workers, this industry has aggressively promoted thestate ideology of mass immigration.
Some £75million has been given by the national Lottery, for instance, to support the cause of asylum campaign- ers and fighting deportations.
Propaganda is a key weapon in this effort. We are constantly told that mass immigration is a huge gain to Britain, since new arrivals allegedly do the work that ordinary Britons will not.
But this is a lie. In fact, immigrants, particularly those from Muslim countries, are far more likely to be unemployed than are ordinary Britons.
If we had a Government that believed in Britain, then it would join France in tackling the problem.
But tragically we are led by a bunch of traitors filled with loathing for their nation. News Source
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A Mobile phone salesman from Walthamstow yesterday admitted plotting to firebomb the home of a book publisher.
Abrar Mirza, 23, of Eastfield Road, at Croydon Crown Court pleaded guilty to conspiring to recklessly damage property and endanger life.
Ali Beheshti, 41, of Tavistock Gardens, also admitted the same charge and both have been remanded in custody.
Gibson Square publisher Martin Rynja's home, in Lonsdale Square, Islington, was attacked on September 27 last year shortly before the release of The Jewel of Medina, a novel about the Prophet Muhammad.
Fuel was poured through the house's letterbox and set alight.
A third man, Abbas Taj, 30, a minicab driver from Field Road, Forest Gate denies conspiring to damage property with intent to endanger life. News Source
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A Pensioner has been attacked by a young thug - because he was handing out BNP leaflets.
Master gunmaker Peter Frenette, British National Party organiser for South Cambridgeshire, was assaulted in St Neots along with a fellow party member.
The 67-year-old activist was approached by his attacker, who is described as white, 16 to 20 and wearing a black T-shirt and black trousers, in Market Square, near a BNP stall.
Police have appealed for witnesses.
Mr Frenette, of Cock Audley, Little Paxton, said: "We had been handing out leaflets and were mostly well received by the public.
Then these three men came up and one of them started shouting at me, calling me a racist and a bigot.
"He started pushing me and grabbed my leaflets and began to rip them up. My colleague, who is in his 60s, was also confronted and was being pushed. There was about six of us out there. They stole about £60 of our leaflets which were later found ripped up and in bins.
"I tried to be calm and told him we were a legitimate party and that we had a right to be here and that we were a democratic party but he was just so furious there was no talking to him. He was really hate-filled and it was impossible."
A police spokeswoman said: "Officers are investigating an assault at 11.25am on Saturday. The aggrieved was confronted by a man who made threats. Police are now looking at CCTV footage of the incident and are appealing for witnesses to the assault."
Mr Frenette was one of scores of BNP members from Cambridgeshire who had their personal details posted on the internet.
A document revealed the names, addresses, and contact details of 142 far-right supporters from the county.
The party's leader, Cambridge law graduate Nick Griffin, lodged a complaint with police and described the publication as "a disgraceful act of treachery" by former BNP staff members.
Anyone with information about the St Neots incident should call police on 0845 456 4564. News Source
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Britain suffers from more than 27,000 crimes per day, or more than ten million crimes per year - the direct result of decades of softly-softly politically correct policing and a failed social engineering policy which has put the rights of yobs and criminals above that of victims.
According to the Office for National Statistics’ British Crime Survey of 2008, 22 percent of people in Britain will be the victim of some crime during the course of a single year.
To combat this shocking state of affairs, the British National Party seeks a return to traditional standards of law enforcement, combined with social reform directed at addressing the root causes of criminal behaviour.
To this end, BNP crime and justice policy will:
- Free the police and courts from the politically correct straitjacket which is stopping them from doing their jobs properly;
- End the liberal fixation with the “rights” of criminals and replace it with concern for the rights of victims - and the right of innocent people not to become victims;
- Re-introduce corporal punishment for petty criminals and vandals;
- Restore capital punishment for paedophiles, terrorists and murderers as an option for judges in cases where their guilt is proven beyond dispute (such as with DNA or other compelling evidence).
At the same time, the BNP recognises that decades of social welfare dependence - encouraged by disastrous Labour and Tory policies - which is the primary cause of social delinquency, must be brought to an end.
Social reform is therefore also required. Workfare, not welfare, except to the neediest, should be the norm. Only in this way can the cycle of social deprivation, which is the primary cause of indigenous criminality, be broken.
To this end, the BNP will introduce a system of workfare for those in unemployment benefit for more than six months with compulsory work and training in return for decent payment.
The socialist building block housing concrete monstrosities which blight our urban areas and which are the breeding ground for delinquency and crime will be torn down and replaced with decent housing which encourages the stable family unit.
Non-indigenous crime - rapidly becoming a serious problem, as the knife and gun crime epidemic spreading throughout our major cities - will be dealt with in terms of BNP immigration and identity policy.
Overcrowding in prisons will be solved by the deportation of the tens of thousands of foreign criminals to serve their sentences abroad in their home countries. This act alone will free up to 70 percent of jail space in many prisons.
The BNP will also:
- Make prisons more austere and make criminals serve their full sentences. Offenders will be made to understand that they are being punished and not rewarded with a state-subsidised holiday for their crimes;
- Use electronically tagged “chain gangs” to provide labour for projects such as coastal defences;
- Introduce automatic prison sentences for all repeat offenders;
- Put police back on the streets and remove their current political correctness shackles;
- Allow victims of crime full freedom to defend themselves and their property;
- Make joint custody of children the norm in divorce cases;
- Grant anonymity to those accused of crimes until they are convicted;
- Make police concentrate on real criminals and serve the public, not the government’s political aspirations.
The British National Party alone recognises that crime must be tackled on two levels: firstly by effective policing, and secondly by addressing the root social causes of crime, both indigenous and non-indigenous in origin.
Addressing these two issues will solve the crime problem. News Source
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A Wealthy playboy who supplied assassin kits to the underworld has been ordered to hand over £57,000.
Kaleem Akhtar, who was jailed for 20 years last May, has been told to pay up within six months or a further 18 months will be added to his sentence.
He will also have to pay an extra £27,000 to cover the cost of his trial.
Judge Clement Goldstone made the order at a proceeds of crime hearing at Manchester Crown Court.
The court heard other members of the gang had also benefited from the deadly enterprise by many thousands of pounds.
But because financial investigators were unable to find any assets which could be sold to repay the money, they escaped with demands for much smaller repayment amounts.
Two were ordered to pay just £10 each.
Akhtar, of St Brannocks Road, Chorlton, teamed up with cage-fighting Liverpool hardman Paul Wilson, Bradford gangster Madasser Ali and Lithuanian gun runners from Essex to supply the kits.
Made up of converted Russian Baikal pistols, silencers and packages of ammunition, they were sold to gangsters in the north of England and Scotland.
Akhtar, 30, is from a wealthy family and didn't need the money but thought that the association with criminals and weapons gave him `street cred'.
During his trial, the court heard gang members thought they were `untouchable', continuing to trade even when they knew police were on to them.
When batches of weapons were confiscated by police they ordered more and when members of the gang were arrested they recruited others.
Describing the scale of the business during Akhtar's trial, Nick Clarke QC said police `uncovered the largest connected network of illegally-held weapons ever seen in this country and included the second-largest single seizure of firearms in Greater Manchester'.
The gang was smashed following a surveillance operation when police watched a number of clandestine exchanges in areas including Rusholme, Burnage and Whalley Range.
As a result, 29 guns were seized and a further 27 were recovered later with the same tell-tale hand-carved Roman numerals on them.
Akhtar was convicted of conspiracy to possess firearms and ammunition with intent to endanger life.
During the proceeds of crime hearing, the court was told Akhtar's friend, Asaid Salim, 27, of Bedford Road, Firswood, Trafford, was also said to have benefited by £57,000.
But the only realisable asset which could be found was £2,500 which he was ordered to pay within eight weeks. He is serving 10 years and eight months for his role.
Madasser Ali, from Bradford, described as the gang's leader, benefited from the conspiracy by £84,000 - the total value of the guns involved. No assets could be traced so he was told to pay a nominal £10.
The same amount was demanded of Agnius Malcevas, from Essex, whose wages from the plot were estimated to be £12,000. Ali is serving 18 years and Malcevas 12 years. News Source
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Two men helped a suspected rapist flee the country and evade the justice system.
Burnley Crown Court heard how Shakeel Asghar, 22, and Mohammed Asim, 27, had taken the man to Birmingham railway station, where he got a train to London.
He later flew to Pakistan and has never been prosecuted over the attack.
The court was told Asghar hatched the plan for "entirely selfish reasons" as he had been at the house where the alleged assault took place with the alleged victim – his girlfriend.
He had not wanted his wife or family to find out so he picked up his co-defendant and they drove to Birming-ham.
Asghar of Crossland Street, Accrington, had been convicted by a jury of attempting to pervert the course of justice.
Asim, of Higher Antley Street, Accrington, had admitted the allegation at trial.
Asghar was given three months in jail, suspended for two years, and a two month curfew, between 10pm and 6am. Asim got a two-month prison term, suspended for two years, and must pay £250 costs.
The court was told the complaint of rape was made in December 2007.
Asghar failed in a bid to try and persuade the woman not to call police and hatched a plot to get the potential defendant away from the scene.
Sentencing, Judge Andrew Woolman said neither of the defendants was responsible for getting the alleged rapist to Pakistan but they played their part to some extent.
He told them: "You were responsible for the fact that the police were never able to investigate this report any further."
The judge said whether there would have been a prosecution was an entirely different matter.
But he added: "You played your part in defeating the proper course of justice."
Judge Woolman added that during the trial Asghar, who arguably should not even have been at the house, had been very tearful and he was satisfied he was sorry for what happened – although it may be that some of the sorrow was for himself.
Asghar had no previous convictions.
For Asghar, Martin Hack-ett said he had been married for five years. He worked at a call centre in Preston and was able to do unpaid work.
For Asim, whose pre-sentence report stated he did not think he had done anything wrong, Joanne Shepherd said he stood by his plea, adding he was not at the house at the time of the alleged rape.
The complainant named three men as being present.
Asim admitted his presence in the car and said he became aware of what he was embroiled in on the journey. News Source
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Khadim Thathall, who represents Shobnall on East Staffordshire Borough Council, was banned from practising as a barrister for 30 months.
In September he was found to have ‘engaged in conduct likely to diminish public confidence in the legal profession or otherwise bring the legal profession into disrepute’.
The charges against him were last week upheld by the Bar Standards Board — the profession’s regulatory body — after an appeal hearing on April 1, although his suspension was reduced by six months to 24 months.
Labour politicians were quick to pounce on their Conservative rival, with Peter Beresford, who represents Burton Town division on Staffordshire County Council, saying Councillor Thathall should ’consider his position’ and quit — a view echoed by Bill Ganley, who also represents Shobnall ward on the borough council.
"He should resign — it’s the only honourable thing to do," said Councillor Beresford.
"He has put in his appeal and been judged by a panel of his own peers. These are not lay-people — they know what they’re talking about.
"He may feel this has nothing to do with his job as a councillor but it has a lot to do with his credibility among the electorate — he has lost a lot of credibility."
Councillor Ganley said his Tory rival was perceived as ‘a liability’ by members of his own party, a claim dismissed by council leader Alex Fox.
"I don’t think there is any reason for Khadim Thathall to resign — it’s a technical matter he has to deal with himself and we don’t judge that his misconduct is sufficiently severe to warrant us withdrawing his membership of the council," said Councillor Fox.
"Peter Beresford and Bill Ganley have a vested interest and are making a political point out of this. They are only saying these things because they want a by-election and they think they can win the seat."
The charges relate to Councillor Thathall’s role in a now-defunct barristers chambers in Luton, Bedfordshire, which was found to have breached several sections of the code of conduct for the profession.
He, along with two other barristers at the chambers — Khandakar Abdul Quddus and Donald George — was censured for breaches relating to ‘the advertising, short-listing, interview, selection and renumeration of pupils’ and to the taking on of a trainee barrister, or ‘pupil’, knowing there were insufficient members of the chambers to supervise him.
He claimed in September that he had only been working as a clerk at the time of the offences, and that he himself had instigated the investigation by reporting his concerns about the chambers, which he said was run by ’cowboys’.
Councillor Thathall won his seat in May, 2007, after defeating his Labour opponent, Craig Prescott, by just one vote. Until December he was a member of the council’s standards committee and he remains a member of the authority’s audit committee.
Councillor Thathall had not returned The Mail’s calls for a comment at the time of going to press. News Source
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A Lancashire MEP branded "no better than a thief" has announced he is taking legal action to clear his name.
Former Chorley MP Den Dover was expelled from the Conservatives last year for an alleged "gross misconduct" over expense claims worth more than £500,000.
He denied abusing his position but EU bosses have demanded the return of payments originally given to a family firm, MP Holdings, in European Parliament staff allowances.
The former Tory whip told the European Parliament in Strasbourg: "All I would like to say is that the big fuss and bother about my parliamentary assistant's expenses, covered by the media over the last nine or 12 months, has been a harrowing experience.
"I have lodged my papers with the Court of First Instance (the EU court in Luxembourg), so I intend to fight a very robust case.
"I understand I have a very good case and, also, along with that, I have gone for interim measures, which means that no money will be payable until the Court has heard all the evidence and made the appropriate decision."
Earlier, Liberal Democrat North West MEP Chris Davies launched a stinging personal attack on Mr Dover.
He said: "If one of our constituents fraudulently claims welfare benefits, they will be prosecuted and could go to prison.
"Most people regard Mr Dover as no better than a thief, a crook who should be in jail."
Mr Dover, first elected as a North-West MEP in 1999, was suspended and later expelled from the Tories after EU bosses demanded repayment last November.
He still receives a full salary and allowances and will qualify for a £35,000-a-year pension after he stands down.
Mr Dover told the Lancashire Evening Post: "I deplore the language and attack launched by Chris Davies in the chamber.
"I understand I have got a very good case. I have taken it to interim measures which means until the court has heard the evidence, nothing has to be repaid." News Source
Are there any British Meps Left? See Also:
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An elderly woman suffering from dementia was blindfolded "like a prisoner" before being snatched from her daughter's home in a raid by social workers and police.
Betty Figg's daughter Rosalind had refused to take her mother back to a care home, claiming she was deeply unhappy there.
She and her husband spent thousands of pounds adapting their home so that Mrs Figg, 86, could live with them.
But social services called in the police who, armed with a battering ram, threw a towel over Mrs Figg's head and took her away from her family against their will.
Yesterday Miss Figg, 55, said: "There were two social workers, four policeman and two police vans as well as a doctor all swarming around outside my house.
"One of the officers came towards the front door with a battering ram as though they had come to raid a drugs den.
"I let them in and I was shaking with fear as I did so.
"I was powerless to act and I felt like a criminal but all I'd try to do was to do the best for my mum and look after her as best I could.
"Mum was escorted out of my house in her wheelchair and had a towel thrown over her head as though she was some kind of prisoner."
Mrs Figg was put into the £2,200 a month Butts Croft House in Coventry last year after a spell in hospital, where she had fallen and broken a hip.
Her daughter gave up a thriving pottery business to look after her and her partner, Christopher Roberts, 41, a builder, converted an annexe of their house into a bedroom with an en-suite toilet and shower with wheelchair ramps ready to bring Mrs Figg home.
They even fitted the bed with sensors in the mattress so an alarm would wake them if she got up in the middle of the night.
Last November Miss Figg applied to take her mother home but social services ruled the renovations did not meet their requirements and turned the application down.
She said her mother had become increasingly unhappy at the home and that on one visit she found that her mouth was caked in dry blood and she was complaining of feeling hungry.
Miss Figg, who said Monday's raid had left her feeling "numb and intimidated", said: "On Saturday I picked mum up as I do every weekend but when I saw just how unhappy she had become I told the home I was not going to bring her back.
"They told me they were going to call the police, but I'd already contacted them and they told me that this was a civil matter and they wouldn't get involved."
She added: "I will fight tooth and nail to get my mum back, she is not happy there. She should back with her loving family - where she belongs."
A spokeswoman for Coventry City Council said: "Staff from a number of agencies are involved in safeguarding Mrs Figg, including using statutory powers to protect her against further moves and to provide a mental health assessment after she was removed from a residential care home by her daughter against advice from the Older People's Community Mental Health Team, which includes representatives from health agencies and Social Care.
"An advocate has been appointed through the Independent Mental Capacity Advocate Service to represent and support Mrs Figg.
"Police were asked to assist social care staff to move Mrs Figg from an address on Keresley Close Coventry to a place of safety earlier this week.
"Social care staff had visited the property earlier in the day and after being refused entry requested the help of police to gain access."
A police spokesman said: "Police were asked to assist social services to remove an elderly woman from an address on Keresley Close, Coventry, to a place of safety.
"The safety of the woman was of paramount importance.
"A warrant was granted and an enforcer was taken in order to gain access to the property if needed. The enforcer was not used." News Source
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Members of the BNP should be banned from being nurses, according to a motion passed at Unison’s Health Care Service Group Conference today.
Delegates voted unanimously in favour of the motion, submitted by the National Nursing Sector, which calls for a law to prevent BNP members becoming nurses.
It also calls for support from the NMC, which states that nurses should not discriminate against patients on the basis of race, but does not ban BNP membership outright.
Proposing the motion, Mick McKeown, nursing sector committee member, said that the racist views of the BNP were incompatible with the public service ethos of nursing.
He said: ‘The main thrust of this motion is to say that membership of the BNP is completely incompatible with public service, particularly as a nurse within the NHS.
‘Despite how they try and portray themselves, the BNP is a nasty, racist, Nazi party.’
He added that the BNP would discriminate against patients on the basis of skin colour if it ran the health service.
‘They say on their website they would like to give nurses a pay rise - but the other thing they say is that the healthcare should be for the white majority. What they say is British healthcare for British people.’
Mr McKeown added that the NHS was founded on immigrant labour and that one of its major strengths has been the diversity of its workforce.
‘The NHS could not have happened without immigration and the contribution of overseas nurses,’ he added.
UNISON will now raise the issue with the Department of Health to establish legal powers barring members of the BNP and other racist groups from being members of Unison.
It will also ask the NMC to support its stance and issue interim advice for nurses on the standards expected of them regarding anti-discriminatory practice. News Source
If they going to tow that kind of ridiculous logic then it should apply right across board! (Ed)
Below is the beginning section of the constitution of the Muslim Doctors and Dentists Association of the UK -
Please note under section 2 Objects and powers that their main object is to ADVANCE THE ISLAMIC RELIGION IN THE UK and to promote and preserve the good health of MUSLIMS in the UK.
No Where Is It Found That The Muslim Doctors And Dentists Have As Their Prime Objective The Good Health Of The Non Muslim British People - in fact- the British people in general are not even given a mention as only muslims are a worthwhile. It is obvious that this lack of concern, by muslim doctors, for non muslim patients in not exclusive just to the UK but would extend worldwide.
Why might that be?
Why don't you ask Dr. Mohammed Asha or Dr Bilal Abdullaor EngineerKafeel Ahmed--oops sorry Kafeel died from burns suffered when trying to blow up Glasgow Airport.
Just think if the British Medical Association had a statement that British doctors should prioritize non-muslim British people --one can imagine the throngs of muslims pouring into our streets with angry contorted faces screaming and demanding.
What is even more alarming is that the British Medical Association, by its silence, is condoning the clearly discriminatory behaviours of the moslem doctors - as stated in their M.D.D.A. UK Constitution. It is also disgusting that no government official or new media has even investigated this clear evidence of discrimination.
So please keep the below in mind the next time you go to your muslim doctor or dentist and remember that he does not place YOU or YOUR HEALTH as a priority. Muslim's come first by their very own "code of (un) ethics".
Constitution
The Muslim Doctors and Dentisits Association UK (M.D.D.A. UK)
1. Name
The name of the Association is Muslim Doctors and Dentists Association UK (the Association)
2. Objects and powers
2.1 The objects of the association shall be:-
2.1.1. To advance the Islamic religion in the practice of medicine in the United Kingdom
2.1.2. To advance medical education in relation to the doctrines, practices and traditions of the Islamic religion.
2.1.3. To promote research in various aspects of medical science and to disseminate and publish the useful results of such research.
2.1.4. To promote the preservation and protection of the good health of Muslims in the United Kingdom.
As mentioned earlier if this kind of logic is allowed to be applied than one should ask the question as to how many Muslim extremists are there working for the NHS? and then to apply Unison's logic (as they had done with BNP Nurses) in this case should Muslims be banned from working in the NHS as extremists could be discriminating against non-Muslim patients when treated by the NHS! It's a dangerous road that Unison seem to be heading down! (Ed)
(Recap: July 2007 - Telegraph)
Highly-educated Muslim doctors, living in the UK and working in its hospitals, are being investigated over the failed terror attacks in London and Glasgow. Were they the work of al-Qaeda or bungling amateurs? Olga Craig investigates
The instant Police Constable Stewart Ferguson saw the Jeep Cherokee erupt in flames, moments after it had rammed into Glasgow airport's main terminal, he reacted as he had been trained to do. As his colleague Sergeant Torquil Campbell traded punches with one of the vehicle's occupants, Ferguson, though technically off-duty, raced inside the terminal, grabbed a fire extinguisher and began spraying the second man who, tumbling from the Jeep, had doused himself in petrol and set himself ablaze. In that split second Ferguson realised this was not, as he had thought, road rage, but a terrorist attack.
"I did know he was one of the bad guys, but that didn't change my opinion of what had to be done," he said later. "It never entered my consciousness to walk away from him. I would have been failing in my duty. One of the prime duties of a police officer is to preserve life and it doesn't matter whose."
These are the honourable words of a heroic man who, though in horrific danger and facing what appeared to be a fanatic intent on death and destruction, knew his immediate duty was to extinguish the flames that scorched 90 per cent of the man's body: to save the man's life.
The instincts of the alleged occupants of the Jeep were supposedly the opposite: that is, to take lives. Dr Bilal Abdulla, 27, British-born and who had worked at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley for almost a year, was, as the son of a doctor, in some ways born to heal. Somehow, though, he appears to have forsaken that path and to have turned on the country of his birth. His new allegiance, it is believed, was to a bloody jihad against the West.
The news that, of the eight suspects arrested in connection with the police investigations into the attacks in London and Glasgow, most were doctors or medical students has shocked the public and, in particular, Britain's Muslim community. While medicine and engineering - the latter the discipline in which the Jeep's second alleged occupant, Kafeel Ahmed, holds a doctorate - have long been the two most prestigious professions for Muslims,
it has become clear that they are also the favoured occupations for many Islamic extremists:
Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, trained in engineering and Ayman al-Zawahiri, his deputy, qualified as a doctor.
Both professions have now been exposed as fertile breeding grounds for terrorism.
One theory after recent events is that al-Zawahiri developed a plan for seeking out young recruits among those who might be seen as highly educated and "Westernised". The fact that most speak fluent English and practice professions that make emigration to the West easier, would have been an added attraction. In 2004, when there was a nationwide recruitment crisis in the NHS, al-Qaeda exploited the situation by slipping some extremists into Britain. Continued
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The number of pregnant women with HIV has risen to an all-time high in Scotland, latest figures have shown.
Statistics from Health Protection Scotland found 27 women were identified as HIV positive last year, up from 22.
More than 100 people living in Scotland were diagnosed with the virus in the first three months of this year, taking the total number infected to 5,901.
The report also showed a significant rise in infections in Glasgow, with 50 of the 109 new cases in that region.
Since 2003 all pregnant women in Scotland have been offered a routine HIV test.
Precautions can be taken after early detection to protect the baby from the virus, and many babies have been born free from HIV as a result.
Of the 27 pregnant women diagnosed with HIV last year, around two-thirds were originally from overseas.
Infection rising
The Health Protection Scotland statistics showed Greater Glasgow and Clyde had the highest number of all new HIV cases, compared with 22 in the Lothian area, 11 from Tayside and 10 in the Grampian region.
A total of 43 are thought to have acquired the infection from outside Scotland.
The most common probable cause was heterosexual sex, accounting for 54 of the new cases.
The probable route of transmission in 23 cases was men who had sex with men, and three were attributed to injecting drugs.
Catherine Murphy, of the HIV and Aids charity the Terrence Higgins Trust Scotland, said: "Up until 2002, Edinburgh and the Lothians consistently saw higher numbers of new HIV diagnoses.
"However, in recent years Glasgow has seen a significant increase in people affected by HIV. During the first quarter of 2009, Glasgow had almost half of all new diagnoses and twice as many Lothian, the next worst affected region."
"HIV diagnoses continue to rise across the whole of Scotland, and a quarter of people with HIV don't know they have it, so - irrespective of where you live - it's always best to use condoms and, if you think you've put yourself at risk, go for an HIV test." News Source
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A girl of three has died in a hospital where intravenous drips used on children's wards were sabotaged.
Punctures were discovered in a dozen of the bags, used to administer fluids to patients, which are kept in a secure store room.
Forensic experts are checking them for fingerprints and to see if they were spiked with chemicals.
Hundreds of staff with access to Basildon University Hospital's four children's wards - including nurses, pharmacists, porters and cleaners - will be interviewed by police officers.
CCTV footage is also being scoured to establish who is responsible for the damage, which left some bags leaking.
The child was admitted on Friday with a serious illness and died the following morning.
The sabotage was discovered the next day. Police have refused to identify the girl or her illness.
A spokesman said: 'Essex Police is investigating the circumstances leading up to the death of a three-year-old child in tandem to the investigation into the damage to 12 intravenous bags discovered at the store room in the paediatric wards on Sunday evening.'
The girl's parents are being comforted by family and a police liaison officer.
Detective Superintendent Tim Wills added: 'A post mortem examination will be carried out by a forensic pathologist.
'The priority is to establish the cause of death, support the family and keep them informed.'
Basildon University Hospital has 60 beds for children. All the wards are accessed through a secure door controlled by a buzzer system.
Penguin Ward - where the child is believed to have been admitted - has four beds and is used as a 24-hour assessment unit for emergencies and GP referrals.
Puffin Ward, with 16 beds, is a medical ward for patients with acute or long-term illnesses such as cystic fibrosis. One of the beds is for high dependency care with one-to-one nursing for serious illnesses such as meningitis.
Wagtail Ward has 19 beds catering for children recovering from surgery as well as ear, nose and throat, orthopaedic and cancer patients.
There is also a neonatal intensive care unit which has 21 beds for newborn babies.
The storeroom where the intravenous bags were kept remained sealed off yesterday. It is accessed using a numerical keypad lock, although the hospital admitted 'lots of people' have the code.
Maggie Rogers, director of nursing at Basildon and Thurrock NHS Foundation Trust, said: 'I can reassure our local community that we rapidly took all necessary steps to ensure patient safety.'
Basildon University Hospital has been at the centre of a number of controversies involving newborn babies and children.
The most high-profile case was in 1997, when a woman disguised in a wig and sunglasses abducted a newborn boy from the maternity ward.
Karli Hawthorne was found at a house a few miles away the next day when neighbours became suspicious.
Mother-of-three Denise Giddings, 32, was later charged with abduction. She was put on probation for three years after a court heard she had been suffering from serious mental delusions.
In another case, an expectant mother of twins who needed a caesarian section had to be ferried 250 miles between four hospitals in December after Basildon University Hospital said it had no intensive-care cots available.
In April last year nearly 200 new mothers had to be tested for HIV after a member of staff who helped deliver their babies was found to have the virus.
And in 2007, the High Court ruled the trust responsible for Basildon Hospital had to pay a £1.3million lump sum and £95,000 a year to a girl left brain damaged at birth in 2001 due to a series of blunders. News Source
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Couples with serious genetic conditions in their family have been forced to face the agonising decision to bring up a disabled child or terminate a pregnancy because the NHS is refusing to pay for testing, experts said.
Couples facing a high risk of having a baby with an inherited serious condition can go through IVF, even though they are not infertile, in order to produce embryos that can be tested for the faulty gene responsible for the disease.
Only the embryos free of the faults are chosen for implantation in the womb.
The method is controversial as some people believe it is wrong to discard the faulty embryos and others think embryos should not be tested for conditions that are not always fatal or only manifest later in life.
Conditions that can be tested for include Huntingdon's Disease, Haemophilia A and B, Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, Cystic Fibrosis, Sickle Cell Anaemia and one form of inherited breast cancer.
Couples in this situation apply for NHS funding for the testing known as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, however some are refused, experts at Guy's Hospital in London said.
Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust is opening a new PGD clinic in order to expand the service.
Alison Lashwood, consultant nurse in genetics and PGD at Guy's said there were couples who have been refused funding for the testing, which costs in total £7,000.
They are then faced with the choice of conceiving naturally and take the chance that their child is unaffected, go through prenatal testing during the pregnancy and have an abortion if the child has the disease, or bring up the child.
Ms Lashwood said: "There are couples who have not been given funding. For some they will not have children at all, others feel their only option to go ahead with a pregnancy and they have had another affected child, or they have had prenatal testing and have had a termination."
She described one couple who had a stillbirth and then had a severely disabled child after being refused funding for PGD.
Ms Lashwood said couples can also wait for around one year for the decision to made on whether to fund the testing or not.
Prof Peter Braude, Head of Department, Women's Health, Kings College, London, said part of the problem was that primary care trusts confuse PGD with fertility treatment and refuse to fund couples who already have children. But in some cases the couple have a disabled child who will die early in life and are still refused PGD funding.
Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis is only carried out rarely and primary care trusts make funding decisions on a case-by-case basis.
However there is little guidance for them to follow, Prof Braude said.
In 2006 there were just 46 babies born after going through PGD in the UK compared with 12,589 babies born after IVF treatment. News Source
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A three-year-old Bristol girl awaiting heart surgery has had her operation cancelled three times because of a shortage of beds, her parents claim.
Ella Cotterell was due to have aorta-widening surgery on Monday at the city's Children's Hospital.
The operation was cancelled 48 hours before, for the third time as each of the 15 beds in the intensive care unit was occupied, her parents said.
A hospital spokesman said its procedures would now be reviewed.
Ella needed open heart surgery when she was nine days old and suffered a stroke at 18 months.
Her parents Ian Cotterell and Rachel Davis were told last October that she would need the operation within 12 to 18 months.
Her surgery was initially planned for 2 April but was cancelled because of emergency cases and rearranged for four days later, the couple said. However, the operation was cancelled again for the same reason, they said.
A third date was arranged for 20 April and last Thursday she went to the hospital for tests.
On Saturday her parents received another call explaining her operation would have to be cancelled.
Michele Narey, of the University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust, said: "The decision to cancel any patient for any procedure is taken extremely seriously but is sometimes unavoidable because of the need to effectively manage emergency patients requiring beds on a day-to-day basis.
"We know that cancelling procedures can cause additional stress for patients so we will always seek to avoid this wherever possible."
She added it was not possible to discuss individual medical cases. News Source
Same old.. Same old' we can not discuss individual cases! The usual from those who don't want to give a straight answer on NHS, Council or other issues! (Ed)
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A teenage girl died in agony in hospital days after medics dismissed her as a 'drama queen' whose pain was 'all psychological', an inquest has heard.
Sian Jones, 15, was admitted to hospital with stomach pains, which doctors suspected were caused by appendicitis.
When they removed her appendix the next day, her condition continued to worsen.
Doctors said the pain was from the operation and missed a series of tell-tale signs that she was suffering from perienteritis - a serious infection that inflames the lining of the stomach and intestines.
Sian, from Stirchley, Birmingham, died from multiple organ failure, brought on by the infection, a week after being admitted to the city's Heartlands Hospital in August 2007.
Her sister Sarah, 22, said that four days before Sian's death, staff had told their father 'there was nothing physically wrong with her and that it was all psychological, that she was a drama queen'.
The family claimed staff also said the pain was brought on by problems at home, as Sian's father, Andrew, was fighting leukaemia. He has since died from the illness.
The inquest at Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, heard the medic who had most contact with Sian, Dr Nehtab Ahmad, had only started her surgical training at the hospital three days earlier.
Dr Ahmad told the hearing the surgical team, including two more senior surgeons, 'thought there was nothing amiss surgically and had been falsely reassured by a CT scan and a review from a paediatric doctor'.
The doctor added: 'With the benefit of hindsight I can see that she was getting worse, but at the time it was not so obvious. In hindsight all the factors were viewed independently and not together.
'The emotional aspect had been raised to me by my seniors and psychological issues were raised in a conversation with her father.'
The inquest continues. News Source
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The man who declared his hatred for the Welsh-speaking population has withdrawn as a parliamentary candidate for Carmarthenshire.
Rhys Williams, the chosen Labour party candidate for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, announced that he would not be contesting the seat on health grounds.
"I have not taken this decision lightly," he said. "Recently, my health has not been at its best and I do not feel I could do justice to the rigours of a Parliamentary campaign."
He said he would give active support to whichever candidate the party chose to contest the Carmarthen East and Dinefwr seat in the election, which is expected to be called within the year.
Mr Williams sparked controversy in February when he accused some Welsh speakers of using the language as a tool of exclusion. Writing in current affairs magazine Barn, Mr Williams, of Cwmann, said: "Jonathan Swift said he hates humankind but loves Tom, Dick and Harry. In my case, I hate the Welsh-speaking community but love Heledd, Gethin a Glesni." News Source
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Labour's general secretary Ray Collins today called for a review of the law to consider whether the party could be allowed to select candidates from shortlists made up entirely of black and ethnic minority candidates.
Ray Collins said evidence showed that all-women shortlists had worked to increase the number of female Labour MPs in parliament.
He suggested that the law should be examined in an attempt to achieve a similar boost in the number of ethnic minority MPs.
"My view, and the party's view, is the law ought to be examined to allow for greater representation from ethnic minorities.
"I think there are issues about that, but ... I definitely want to see that that debate should continue because we need to make much more progress. Progress has been too slow."
Collins was giving evidence to a special House of Commons committee examining diversity in parliament. Continued
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The News of the World has a stonking story which calls into question how many more lies those close to the Red Rag/McBride story have told.
The Labour Party General Secretary has been forced to admit he was at the meeting which agreed to set it up. And, what's more, so was Brown lackey Kevin Maguire. And he calls himself a journalist...
The VILE website at the centre of the vicious plot to smear top Tories was set up with the help of the boss of the Labour Party, the News of the World can sensationally reveal.
A new email shows that Labour’s General Secretary Ray Collins chaired a secret meeting to create the Red Rag website now ensnared in the Smeargate scandal.
The email’s existence links the dirty tricks site to the very TOP of the Labour Party.
And it exposes the LIE, put out by Downing Street, and repeated by government ministers this week, that the smears project was just a minor aberration cooked up by a couple of renegades acting alone—and which would never have seen light of day.
The new email, written by Labour’s then internet campaign chief Derek Draper, PROVES that the meeting took place, reveals WHO was there, WHERE it was held and WHAT was on the agenda. It shows that Collins travelled across Westminster for a summit in the offices of trade union bigwig Charlie Whelan. Whelan, one of Gordon Brown’s closest friends and his former chief spin doctor, was described last night by a Labour insider as the Prime Minister’s “unofficial Mr Fix-It”.
Joining Collins and Whelan at the meeting were the two men whose leaked smear emails later brought the scandal to light: Damian McBride and Draper.
Also in the room was the man who was to be the public face of Red Rag, Unite press officer Andrew Dodgshon, as well as political journalist Kevin Maguire, who was there in a private capacity. News of the meeting, and the presence at it of the Labour Party’s General Secretary, will horrify and appal senior party workers and Labour MPs who have already been disgusted by the smear campaign.
The email reveals the meeting took place on December 1 last year at Unite’s London HQ, on King’s Street, Westminster, seven weeks before McBride sent an explosive email to Draper outlining “stories” for the site.
Last week, after the News of the World’s revelations about the shocking extent of the smears, Collins slammed McBride and Draper, while he avoided mentioning his own role in the scandal.
Collins carefully followed a line taken by Derek Draper, husband of GMTV’s Kate Garraway, and McBride that they acted alone. Draper claimed: “The idea that it was a big project orchestrated in Downing Street is ridiculous.”
However, our revelations show that Collins knew about the Red Rag site more than four months ago and did NOTHING to stop it—in fact he did the opposite. Collins also tried to distance himself from Draper last week.
“I want to reiterate that Derek Draper does not hold a position or role with the Labour Party and this will remain the case,” he said. Yet the General Secretary himself recruited Draper last year to try to set up a unit inside the Labour Party to attack the Tories using the internet.
We can reveal that despite internal opposition Collins granted Draper a pass to Labour Party HQ in Westminster, and even allowed him a Labour Party email account. Both were quietly rescinded by Collins this week after furious protests from staff following our Smeargate revelations.
The Red Rag site was borne out out of those foundations, and was set up on November 4, 2008, weeks before the secret meeting. A shocked Labour party insider told us: “It is devastating that Collins was there. It was a meeting called to set up, run and work out how to finance the Red Rag site. “It’s no coincidence either that it wasn’t held at Labour Party HQ, or that it was at Charlie Whelan’s offices in Unite. Whelan is back as Gordon Brown's unofficial Mr Fix-it, and he’s now so powerful that he’s effectively running the party.
If anyone in the party was still daft enough to believe the Downing Street line about this being minor, this email finally exposes that lie." Whelan was copied in to the vile emails between McBride and Draper and his role in the meeting at the Unite HQ raises further questions about how closely the union was involved in the dirty tricks campaign.
He is political director of Unite, which has two million members. It is now one of the largest donor to the Labour Party, and it’s cash is effectively paying the near-bankrupt party’s wages as it struggles to manage debts topping £16million.
Last night Collins, himself a former assistant general secretary of Unite, admitted he attended the Red Rag website meeting but insisted he did not know about the McBride smears. He told us: “I have had no knowledge whatsoever of any smears and found the stories and reports of the last week absolutely disgusting.
“I did attend a meeting at the Unite Head Office on December 1 to discuss online digital campaigning and how we could support and encourage left of centre websites and bloggers.
“This meeting was not about scurrilous rumour, personal attacks or smears as I would have been furious that such things could be seen as legitimate tools of political debate.”
Oh dear. It's now clear why Collins went to such great lengths to diss Draper last week and to distance himself from him.
The meeting was held on December 1st, only a fortnight after Derek Draper had lunch with the Prime Minister at Chequers. Are we really supposed to believe that none of this was discussed at that lunch?
I very much look forward to Kevin Maguire's next blog or Mirror column. Presumably he will be explaining his role at this meeting and what his role in the Red Rag Website was to be. the NOTW story says he was attending the meeting "in a private capacity". Oh yeah? Perhaps that's why he now feels compromised by the whole thing and has so far failed to explain why he was copied in on the "dirty" emails. News Source
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City experts warned last tonight that top earners could leave Britain to avoid Labour's new 50 per cent tax on the rich.
Alistair Darling sparked fears of a 'brain drain' with a shock increase in the top income tax rate in a Budget harking back to Old Labour today.
He revealed measures aimed at punishing high earners in a bid to drag Britain out of the worst recession since the Second World War.
Westminster was stunned as he outlined a new 50 per cent tax band for those earning more than £150,000 which will come into force next year.
Personally allowances, the initial chunk of income that is tax-free, will also be withdrawn for those with incomes above £100,000 from next April.
And pension tax relief for those with incomes over £150,000 will be restricted from April the following year so that it is gradually tapered to a 20 per cent rate.
The City immediately responded with fears highly-skilled staff on top salaries will simply move abroad to avoid paying more tax, in a blow to UK industry.
Stuart Fraser, policy chairman of the City of London Corporation, claimed the measures would put the Square Mile at a disadvantage compared to other countries.
'The new top rate of income tax at 50 per cent may damage the City's competitiveness - we operate in a global market for talent, and that talent is expensive,' he said.
'Our competitive position will always depend on the stance taken by other financial centres. Thus it is essential that we keep a continuous eye on changes in other centres to make sure that we do not put ourselves at any disadvantage.' Continued - Visit website to see tax tables
Wednesday 22nd April 2009
The fortunes of Calais have been intricately intertwined with Britain for much of its history.
For several centuries in medieval times the Channel port was a territorial possession of English monarchs.
The town’s mayor Natacha Bouchart clearly thinks that little has changed, commenting yesterday that modern-day Calais is a “hostage to the British”.
Mrs Bouchart believes our lax immigration laws are to blame for her town being inundated with young men from Africa, Asia and the Balkans.
She has a point. Were it not for Britain being their preferred ultimate destination there would be little reason for people reaching France from the south to travel hundreds of miles to its northern shore.
The availability of accommodation and welfare benefits for asylum seekers in Britain is a crucial “pull factor” for these migrants.
As mrs Bouchart points out, a free flat, access to free public services and up to £40 a week spending money is a huge prize for people from countries such as eritrea where the average annual income is less than £150.
Immigration minister Phil Woolas is in denial if he truly believes that these migrants “are not queuing to get into Britain” or that their continued presence in Calais shows that our border controls are working.
The fact that they keep trying to cross the Channel and that there are new arrivals in Calais every day shows two things: they know they will get through eventually and are certain that once they reach our country they will never be made to leave.
See:
Britain's lax asylum system and benefits culture is to blame for the thousands of migrants who try to sneak into the UK from France, the mayor of Calais has claimed.
The mayor of Calais, Natacha Bouchart, has blamed Britain's asylum and benefits system for "imposing" thousands of illegal migrants on her town.
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Immigration the Super highway for Terrorism
A Birmingham care worker arrested for being an illegal immigrant had an “arsenal” of information which could have been helpful to terrorists.
One of the items seized was a video recording that Pa Jobe had taken on a mobile phone of West Midlands Police headquarters.
Jailing Jobe for three years and nine months, Judge Melbourne Inman QC said he was satisfied by the time he was arrested he had become a radical Islamist.
Judge Melbourne also said that people had to be deterred from accessing the kind of material he had downloaded from the internet.
Jobe, 29, pleaded guilty to four charges of possessing a document or recording containing information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.
Mark Heywood, prosecuting at Birmingham Crown Court, said: “The Crown’s case is that the defendant at the time of arrest in December 2006 was in possession of what amounted to an arsenal of information of a radical Islamist nature some of which crosses the line of criminal law.”
Lawrence McNulty said Jobe had come to the UK hoping to earn enough money and obtain enough skills in order to return to the US from where he had been deported. He said the video he had taken of the police headquarters would only have been of limited assistance to a terrorist. News Source
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Italy has finally agreed to take 140 migrants from a sinking ship in the Mediterranean after a four-day stand-off with Malta over who should be responsible for them.
Port authorities escorted around 30 people ashore at Porto Empedocle, in Sicily today.
Some 20 migrants, as well as a pregnant woman were transferred to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa late last night.
Antonia Cacciatore of the port authority said the remaining 90 people would be transferred later today.
Authorities have not revealed the nationalities of the migrants who were on board the Turkish cargo ship.
Italy says it accepted the migrants stranded aboard the Pinar because of humanitarian reasons.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said the deal was reached after the intervention of European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, who spoke with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his Maltese counterpart Lawrence Gonzi.
The ship spent four days in choppy international waters southwest of the small Italian island of Lampedusa while Italy and Malta refused to receive the salvaged migrants, who were plucked from two struggling boats early on Thursday.
'Malta's government has not complied with a European request from Commission President Barroso to respect the rules of search and rescue at sea,' Frattini said.
He pledged to raise the issue at the next meeting of European Union foreign ministers. Continued
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Calais police swooped on more than 200 British-bound migrants in a series of dawn raids early yesterday.
Armed officers stormed a squalid woodland camp near the ferry port known as 'The Jungle', arresting scores of bedraggled refugees.
More were arrested in squats and disused industrial buildings along the northern French coast.
Police also set up a cordon around the woodland camp,and seized hundreds of stolen items, including yards of chain link fencing and iron bars and tools used in rival gang fights.
Officials said the aim of the operation was to dismantle people-smuggling gangs who charge migrants up to £5,000 each to sneak them aboard lorries, ferries and Channel Tunnel trains to Britain.
A local official said: 'It is an attempt to dismantle and destabilise the people-trafficking networks and arrest the smugglers.'
Several dozen mainly Afghan and Kurdish suspects were still in custody this morning, while the rest were questioned and released.
Yesterday 12 migrants were arrested in Calais after they were discovered hidden in a lorry full of classic cars.
The lorry, carrying Alvis classic cars dating back to the 1920s, was stopped by the UK Border Agency before it could get on a ferry and the seven Afghans and five Iranians were handed over to French authorities.
The raids come as increasing numbers of refugees are flooding across Europe to Calais hoping to slip in Britain.
There are still around 2,000 refugees living on the northern French coast, seven years after the closure of the original Sangatte hostel - which acted as a stepping stone for up to 60,000 refugees to reach Britain.
And there are another 1,000 mainly Afghan migrants living rough near Paris's Gare du Nord train station, with regular high-speed Eurostar trains to London.
French immigration minister Eric Besson has vowed not to open another permanent hostel for refugees, but has proposed a number of day centres with food, televisions and washing facilities on the northern French coast.
Meanwhile EU officials in Brussels have announced plans to create a purpose-built 'asylum support office' in Calais, and alter the Dublin Convention to allow refugees to claim asylum in Britain while they are still living in France.
EU Vice-President Jacques Barrot said Britain had a duty to share the burden of illegal migrants, and that the UK should play its part in a European plan for resettlement of refugees within the EU.
Mr Barrot has discussed his plan with Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and hopes to have the system in operation by next year.
The plan was branded 'absurd' by Sir Andrew Green of MigrationWatchUK, who added: 'To allow claims from people who have not even got into Britain would turn Calais into a honeypot for bogus asylum seekers.'
The Home Office said they would not agree to anything that limited the UK's ability to control its borders.
Meanwhile Calais mayor Natacha Bouchart said Britain's 'enormous' state handouts were to blame for the thousands of migrants using the French port as a staging point to cross the Channel illegally.
She said the UK government's policy was 'imposing' migrants on the town, costing the local economy millions.
What the UK offers Asylum Seekers
Cash Support
- Single Person: Upto £42.16 a week
- Married Couple: £66.13 a week
- Parent with baby: under the age of 12 months receives an extra £5 a week
- Pregnant Women: and children between one and three years receive an extra £3 a week
- Pregnant women: can receive a one off £300 maternity payment, to help with cost of having a baby
Healthcare
- Free NHS Care and prescriptions
- Dental care, sight test and glasses
Housing
- Free Housing: Depending on the size of family and other needs, £100 a week
Education
- Compulsory for children aged five or over. Average value £5,000 a year
What they get in France: NOTHING!
Spin: But British immigration minister Phil Woolas dismissed the claims.
Spin: He said: 'The illegal migrants in Calais are not queuing to get into Britain. They have been locked out by one of the toughest border crossings in the world. These successful controls have been possible thanks to the close co-operation of the French government.
Spin: 'Benefits are only available to those who play by the rules, work hard, pay taxes and learn to speak English.
'I have made it clear that those trying to cheat our system will not be tolerated, which is why last year UK Border Agency staff worked tirelessly at our French and Belgium controls, stopping more than 28,000 attempts to cross the Channel illegally.'
The Home Office said the number of refugees caught sneaking into Britain from Calais fell from 10,000 five years ago to 1,500 last year, a fall of about 88 per cent. News Source
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Beg your pardon Mr Woolas? See Also:
Migrants trying to cross the Channel illegally will soon be able to claim asylum in Britain while still in France under a controversial EU plan. Brussels intends to create a purpose-built “asylum support office” in Calais and alter the Dublin Convention to allow refugees to demand sanctuary in one country while in another.
Failed asylum seekers are winning the right to stay in Britain because of "shambolic" failings in the immigration hearing system. Hundreds of appeal hearings are going ahead without a representative from the Home Office to defend its original decision to deny asylum. The disclosure could help explain why the percentage of asylum seekers winning their appeals has risen from 17 per cent in 2005 to 25 per cent for the third quarter of 2008.
The number of migrants caught trying to sneak into Britain on ferries has more than doubled in the past year, French border officials revealed. Statistics show a 106 per cent jump in the number of economic immigrants and asylum seekers trying to breach security at the ferry port in Calais.
The Royal Navy, once the scourge of brigands on the high seas, has been told by the Foreign Office not to detain pirates because doing so may breach their human rights. Warships patrolling pirate-infested waters, such as those off Somalia, have been warned that there is also a risk that captured pirates could claim asylum in Britain.
A growing number of the African slave children arrive in Britain unaccompanied, as asylum-seekers, or with “private foster parents.” Once brought to Britain, the children are used as a fraudulent means by Nigerians already present in this country to obtain illicit housing and other welfare benefits, totalling tens of thousands of pounds each a year.
Labour has been blasted for trying to blame the deluge of illegal immigrants into Britain on the French. Minister Phil Woolas said the flood could be stopped if illegals in Calais and other ports were deported to their country of origin. He said: “These people are economic migrants. “If they were genuinely fleeing persecution they would seek asylum in France or one of the other EU countries.
The Draw backs:
Soaring population will force millions to flee water shortages in search of refuge - and, according to new figures, Britain will be one of the world's 'lifeboats'. On the eve of a major population conference, Science Editor Robin McKie asks: could the UK cope? Britain will become one of the world's major destinations for immigrants as the world heats up and populations continue to soar. Statistics from the United Nations show that, on average, every year more than 174,000 people will be added to the numbers in the UK and that this trend will continue for the next four decades.
Worst Still
Many criminals are fleeing the Law from their prospective countries amongst Asylum seekers and Immigrants! The UK has become a safe haven for International Criminals, Rapists and murderers! One such example follows.
An asylum seeker from Afghanistan has admitted he was the sex attacker who brought terror to the streets of Sneinton. A sudden wave of incidents in December, 2006, sparked police warnings for women to be vigilant and repeated appeals for information. Police issued a CD-fit of the sex attacker and put up posters appealing to local people to help them catch him.
What YOU know will affect the way you vote!
(Extract from Daily Telegraph Article)
WHAT IS THE IMPACT OF ASYLUM?
Understandably, many migrants are desperate and will use any means they can to ensure they can settle here. From 1997 to 2002, it seemed that claiming asylum – claiming that you are a refugee fleeing persecution – was the most effective way of gaining the right to settle here. In 2002, 84,000 people claimed asylum. Add their dependents and the number was more than 100,000. The majority had their claims rejected, but very few of them were deported: most were allowed to stay, even if they were not given an officially recognised right to do so.
Since then, the Government has taken steps to tighten up the asylum system, and last year fewer than 22,000 people claimed asylum in Britain. But the proportion of asylum-seekers who are deported after their claim is rejected remains tiny, so asylum-seekers remain a significant source of migrants.
WHAT ARE THE ELECTORAL ADVANTAGES OF IMMIGRATION FOR LABOUR?
The migrants' desire to get into Britain is only half the story of why so many are here. The other half is the explanation of why the Government decided to let so many migrants into Britain. For the past 12 years, Labour has been convinced that allowing high levels of immigration should be a policy priority, and it has taken steps to ensure that it is relatively easy for migrants to get permanent, legally recognised residence here. Why has Labour done that?
In 1997, Tony Blair and his Cabinet had several reasons for wishing to increase the number of immigrants into Britain. One was that they perceived an electoral advantage. The outcome of elections in an increasing number of constituencies was, and is, dictated in large part by the votes from relatively recent immigrants. People who have moved here from, say, the Indian subcontinent understandably hated the rules that prevented their families joining them in Britain.
But.. There's Hope:
(Extract from 'Ten Good Reasons for