Archive 20
UkTabloid
The People's News Portal
Saturday 11th July 2009
At least 144,000 asylum seekers are to be allowed to remain in Britain in a desperate attempt to reduce a massive backlog of applications, figures revealed yesterday.
The Home Office decision means many suspected border cheats are effectively being given an amnesty from deportation.
Officials fear that many have been in the country for so long that forced removal could infringe human rights laws.
But the move ignited another storm of criticism over Labour’s soft-touch border controls last night.
Critics accused the Home Office of “incompetence” and argued that the figures confirmed that the asylum system remained in chaos.
Tory immigration spokesman Damian Green described the move as effectively “a back-door amnesty”.
Sir Andrew Green, of the think tank Migration watch, said:
“This is an appalling outcome from unbelievable incompetence that allowed files to stack up in a warehouse for years.
“Nor is it the end of the matter. A lot of these people will be able to bring over their families and acquire full access to the welfare state.
“This will cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds for people whose asylum applications were almost certainly bogus.”
Officials have been working through a mass of so-called “legacy cases” for three years under an initiative known as the Case Resolution Programme.
In 2006, a backlog of 450,000 asylum applications came to light. Many are claimants who should have been deported as far back as the mid-1990s.
Ministers have pledged that the backlog will be cleared by 2011, although officials will also have to deal with tens of thousands of new claims every year.
Lin Homer, the chief executive of the UK Border Agency, told MPs that 197,500 of the outstanding cases had now been dealt with.
Around 63,000 had been given permission to stay, with human rights understood to be the main reason.
If the current rate of around a third of the “legacy cases” getting approval is applied to the entire backlog, at least 144,000 are likely to be allowed to stay.
Officials claimed the 144,000 figure was “speculative” but confirmed an approval rate of 32 per cent in the legacy cases.
The list includes 5,150 from Zimbabwe, 4,900 from Pakistan and 4,500 from Somalia.
Miss Homer also revealed that at least 7,000 of those on the list may never be traced.
A recent report suggested that granting an amnesty to up to a million “irregular” migrants could cost £6billion in housing costs alone.
Mark Wallace, of campaign group the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “It’s ridiculous that who gets to live in Britain is going to be decided based on Government incompetence rather than fair assessment of the original case.” News Source
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Police will be told not to charge Islamist extremists who are in the “grey area” of criminality in an attempt to stop them becoming radicalised further.
New guidance will instruct forces to avoid prosecution in cases where it is a borderline decision as to whether a suspect has committed a crime.
Examples could include allegations of incitement or the viewing of extremist material on the internet.
Government officials insisted there was no question of letting off those who committed clear offences.
They said the policy would help ensure marginal offenders were diverted away from further extremism by keeping them out of the criminal justice system.
(In order to mislead the public on crime figures! (Ed)
One concern is that those sent to jail risk being further radicalised by terrorist convicts. Officials also want to avoid alienating those facing court over minor allegations who could be persuaded away from extremism.
Critics who accuse the Government of excessively using its anti-terrorist powers are likely to welcome the strategy. A senior Whitehall official said it was being prepared as part of a drive to use persuasion rather than the criminal justice system to fight extremism.
“The aim is to stop people being dragged into extremism. We are not talking about letting someone off who has committed a clear offence, but there is a grey area where it is unclear if an offence has been committed,” he said.
“For instance, where there has been incitement or someone has been on the internet there can be a grey area where there is some discretion and it would be more sensible to avoid going down the criminal route.”
The guidance is being drawn up by the Government's policing counter-terrorism board and will be sent to major police forces, including the Met, later this year.
An updated Home Office counter-terrorism strategy earlier this year said preventative measures to win round potential extremists should be considered instead of arrest and prosecution. “We need to be able to provide support for individuals who are drawn into criminal activity,” the document said.
Councils, community groups and the Government's youth justice board will be asked to help identify those drawn into extremism or at risk. Staff in areas such as social services, health, housing and education will try to work with individuals to cut the likelihood of their becoming further radicalised.
The initiative builds on the Home Office's 2007 Channel Project, under which police, teachers and youth workers seek to identify children vulnerable to extremism.
How troop protesters would be affected
Today's new strategy will make it less likely that charges will be brought against Islamist radicals taking part in protests such as the anti-troop demonstration in Luton earlier this year.
There was public anger after a group of about 15 gathered at the 2nd Battalion, Royal Anglian Regiment's Iraq homecoming parade on 10 March. They carried placards calling the troops “butchers” and “animals”.
There were no arrests for incitement. An 18-year-old, who was opposed to the protest, was charged with racially-aggravated harassment — but police dropped the inquiry. Tarique Ghaffur, formerly Britain's most senior Muslim police officer, called for the demonstrators to be brought to justice and wrote to the chief constable of Bedfordshire to demand a “robust” investigation.
Under the new strategy they would be even less likely to face charges. Although officials insist those guilty of a clear offence — such as urging another to carry out a terrorist act — will be prosecuted, police will be asked to avoid action where the link between words and possible violent consequences is less certain.
They say dragging borderline offenders through the courts, and risking the possibility of them being jailed, could backfire by fuelling their extremism and by fostering resentment against Britain in their communities. News Source
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What can one say, they have not the decency to apologise and admit outright that they run the story without any evidence whatsoever! Visit for the Sun's the meager amendment here
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Murder, serial burglars, border invasions, fraud, sex attacks, fake passports and drug farms - this is the shocking record of one week’s foreign crime in Britain.
Case One: 2 July 2009 - Illegal invader deported for sex attacks returned to UK with false passport to continue terrorising women. An illegal invader deported for a string of sex attacks was jailed for 15 months after he returned using a fake passport to target more women.
Daniel Samson, 44, initially came to Britain 10 years ago on a family visa obtained in Germany. He was first imprisoned for 15 months in 2002 for groping a total of 18 women in the street.
After his release he was driven to Heathrow and put on a plane to Lagos, Nigeria, London’s Southwark Crown Court heard. But he later slipped back into Britain to commit a further eight sex offences against bus passengers, including fondling a 17-year-old schoolgirl, between last September and January this year, Nick Wells, prosecuting said.
He said the defendant used his fake passport to get a job as a London Underground cleaner and then “followed the same pattern” in his latest crime spree.
Officers tracked down his Oyster card number, linked it to the Barclays Bank card used to top it up, and traced him to an address in Peckham, South East London.
Mr Wells said: “Officers were greeted by a female who said only she and a child were there. But they then heard someone else in the house and found the defendant trying to leave through a window at the back.”
The barrister said London Underground was contacted and his work locker searched. He added: “Numerous passports were found in different names but all with his photograph in them.”
He was originally charged under one of his aliases, but after a fingerprint check linked him to the earlier offences he was properly identified.
Case Two: 6 July 2009 - Jail for Romanian gypsy who did three burglaries in three days. Romanian Gypsy Ovidiu Iacob (24) has been jailed for 18 months after admitting a string of burglaries, shoplifting and carrying a knife.
Iacob, living in Plymouth, took part in three burglaries in the Yelverton area within the space of three days. The court heard that Iacob burgled the Chez Vous computer company and stole £5,000 worth of laptops, which have not been recovered.
He also burgled the Forest Inn in Hexworthy, taking a phone and about £200 in cash, and entered a nearby house, where he drank a bottle of gin and stole a pair of binoculars. Iacob also admitted stealing £46 of cheese from a Co-op store on Southside Street, and a number of joints of beef from Marks and Spencer in Plymouth.
Case Three: 8 July 2009 - Welsh ports targeted by illegal immigrants.
Ports in Wales are increasingly targeted by illegal immigrants who fly to Ireland and then try to enter the UK on ferries, said the UK Border Agency’s director for Wales, John Whyte.
Mr Whyte said Ireland was being used as a “back door” to Britain, with immigrants travelling to Holyhead, Fishguard and Pembroke Dock.
“We’re finding attempts to enter the UK illegally on virtually every crossing,” Mr Whyte told MPs on the Welsh Affairs Select Committee. “Our impression is that this has grown over the past few years.”
Ireland and the UK have an agreement allowing free travel between the two countries with minimal documentation, a deal known as the Common Travel Area (CTA).
Travellers who have successfully negotiated, or evaded, immigration controls in the Republic of Ireland can therefore cross to the UK with relatively little difficulty.
Mr Whyte said: “I think they are coming from the major [Irish] airports. We ask why they [Irish authorities] are letting them in.”
Case Four: 8 July 2009 - Cannabis Farm in Lincoln run by illegal Vietnamese invader. An illegal invader from Vietnam has appeared at a Lincoln court after police found more than 500 cannabis plants in his house. Lincoln Magistrates’ Court heard that Duc Phan (19) was arrested after officers raided the three-bedroom property in Bettesworth Road in Hemswell Cliff, near Gainsborough, on Monday night.
Phan, who was smuggled into the country three years ago, was responsible for looking after the 549 cannabis plants at the property - which are worth around £50,000.
The court heard that Mr Phan had also bypassed the electricity meter at the house and was not paying for the energy used to power the lights used in the cultivation process.
He pleaded guilty to abstracting electricity under the Theft Act and cultivating cannabis under the Misuse of Drugs Act.
Case Five: 9 July 2009 - Failed asylum seeker Mossab Belhocine, guilty of murder. Failed asylum seeker Mossab Belhocine (19) has been found guilty of kicking sales assistant 28-year-old David Cooper to death.
The Algerian national kicked his victim so hard an imprint of his trainer was left on Mr Cooper’s face.
The killer says he punched and kicked the sales assistant to stop him from raping him, but the court was told the Algerian had been planning a robbery. Belhocine, from Walthamstow, ransacked the flat for valuables while Mr Cooper lay dying on the floor. He stole a silver bracelet, a DVD player, a computer console, a television, a laptop and an Oyster card before stuffing the items in two bags and leaving the flat.
Police traced the killer on Mr Cooper’s Oyster card and arrested him shortly afterwards.
The failed asylum seeker came to the UK on a visitor’s visa in 2007.
The court heard he was part of a network of Algerian pickpockets operating in the Finsbury Park area.
Case Six: 9 July 2009 - Family of refugees guilty of £7m DVD scam. A family of Paksitani ‘refugees’ have been found guilty of a pirate DVD scam that raked in £7 million in three years. Pakistan-born Khalid Sheikh, 53, and sons Rafi, 26, and Sami, 28, of Chingford, Essex, sold thousands of DVDs of Hollywood blockbusters - often before they were in cinemas here.
* It would have been better if these foreign criminals were not even allowed into Britain in the first place, as Mr Nick Griffin MEP suggested. News Source
See Also:
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The number of convictions for carrying a knife has leapt by almost two thirds since Labour took office, it emerged last night.
Some police forces in England and Wales have seen the level of successful prosecutions treble.
Opposition critics warned last night that the latest data exposed the true scale of the 'epidemic' of knife crime which has claimed dozens of young lives in major cities over recent months.
In 1998 there were 3,805 successful convictions, but in 2007, the last year for which figures are available, the total hit 6,169 - a rise of more than 62 per cent.
The figures only include cases where knife possession was the most serious offence - and does not cover violent knife attacks including murder or serious wounding, or cases where arrests for possession did not lead to a conviction.
The largest rises among individual forces included West Yorkshire where police saw convictions more than quadruple, from 38 in 1998 to 190 in 1997.
Suffolk saw a rise of 300 per cent, from 22 to 89, and in Humberside by 226 per cent from 45 to 147. Only Northamptonshire and Kent recorded falls.
Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling - who uncovered the figures through Parliamentary questions - said: 'Knife crime blights our society.
'The figures are awful for the Government as they show yet again how Labour Ministers have failed to get knives off our streets.
'We have to create a real disincentive for people who carry knives, and the fact that the supposed tough sentences just aren't happening sends out all the wrong messages.
'The Government also needs to stop wrapping up our police in unnecessary paperwork and get more officers back on to the streets.'
Liberal Democrat spokesman Chris Huhne said: 'These figures highlight the knife crime epidemic sweeping the country.
'However, they are only the tip of the iceberg. Labour's continuing quest to sound tougher than the Tories is doing nothing to get knives off our streets.
'The key to stopping knife crime is to increase the likelihood of being caught, through intelligence-led stop and search and hotspot policing.'
A disturbing study published last month by the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee last month warned of what it called an 'arms race' among young people, who feel increasingly threatened by others carrying blades, and have little faith in the ability of parents, police or teachers to protect them.
And it highlighted a trend of children as young as seven being used as 'golf caddies' to carry deadly knives for older criminals seeking to avoid arrest for possession.
The study warned that carrying a knife is increasingly becoming the norm in the worst-affected deprived areas of Britain's cities, and called for action to tackle the root-causes. News Source
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David Cameron's favourite Tory town hall is being accused of planning a "social cleansing" programme of demolishing council estates.
Hammersmith and Fulham council is plotting a Dame Shirley Porter-style programme to move out the poor and replace them with private homes and retail developments, critics claim.
Residents hit out as secret documents, obtained by the Standard, revealed how the borough's leader and officials worked on a radical policy to end "homes for life" and turn council housing into a safety net service for just the old and disabled.
Under the plans, new homes will be built to attract residents with higher incomes and areas that have traditionally voted Labour will be broken up as more than 3,500 flats and houses are demolished. Council leader Stephen Greenhalgh, who also heads Mr Cameron's Conservative Councils Innovation Unit, believes council housing is "warehousing poverty" and entrenches welfare dependency.
Mr Greenhalgh denied he plans to ship low income residents out to other areas of London, but tenants and leaseholders fear they will be left with nowhere to go once their homes are demolished and fewer replacements built.
Hammersmith and Fulham's newly published Local Development Framework includes options to demolish large council estates such as those in White City, West Kensington, Hammersmith and Fulham.
Critics say the plan is based on a radical policy paper, which Mr Greenhalgh produced in association with the Localis think tank.
The report says council estates "deliver a risible return on assets". It calls for council rents to be increased to market levels, a move that it estimates would raise £5billion a year nationwide in extra income that could then be spent on building new homes.
One document shows that if rents in Hammersmith were increased to private levels, a two-bed council flat currently costing £85 a week would go up to £360 a week. To placate tenants, extra housing benefit would be paid but the aim would be to end the divide between public and private housing.
Papers obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal how Mr Greenhalgh and town hall officers helped to draft the Localis ideas and how to handle a backlash from residents.
One memo describes a council estate as "barracks for the poor", while another says social housing is "not about giving somebody a £1million home for life". A note of one meeting points out that it is "hard to get rid of people" and that "Porteresque accusations of gerrymandering or social engineering need to be faced head on".
It adds that "funding [is] needed for political problem of management" and warns that "political pain is a factor -can local pols accept the level of pain involved in making it happen?"
Under current laws, Hammersmith cannot impose huge rent rises and is required to find alternative accommodation for all residents if estates are cleared. But Mr Greenhalgh hopes to relax rent controls and change legislation that gives tenants the right to a home for life.
Andrew Slaughter, the Labour MP for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush who submitted the FoI request, said: "Using the language of social cleansing, and with no respect for age, vulnerability or human rights, the Tories propose to destroy communities. This is social engineering on a grand scale and it is being recommended to David Cameron as the way forward in housing."
Mr Greenhalgh said there would be no reduction in the number of "habitable rooms" in any redevelopment.
"It's ludicrous to talk about 'social cleansing'. That's rubbish from neanderthals in the Labour Party. Every time someone comes up with an idea on housing, they are branded as having an ulterior, nasty motive. I make no apology for having a bold vision. We are not stepping back and as and when we have specific plans, we will talk to people about it."
He said Localis was an independent think tank, "not an extension of the Conservative Party" and the council officers' involvement was entirely appropriate. Continued
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'EXTREMIST' Muslims have been invited to speak at a Hounslow school in a move council chiefs claim is designed to spread 'fear and mistrust'.
Dr Daud Abdullah, assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, is among the controversial speakers lined up for a debate at Lampton School tomorrow (Saturday) night.
He was widely condemned in February for advocating attacks on the Royal Navy if it tried to stop arms for Hamas being smuggled into Gaza.
Hounslow Muslim Forum (HMF), which organised the event, has also been linked with the group Hizb ut-Tahrir – accused by opponents including Tory leader David Cameron of attempting to 'radicalise' young people in the UK.
The third speaker is former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg, another controversial figure.
Council leader Peter Thompson this week wrote to the secondary school in Lampton Avenue urging staff to cancel the booking 'before it is too late'.
“We have real concerns that the lack of balanced debate could inflame perceived grievances and lead to a breakdown in community cohesion,” he said. “In truth the only purpose of the event appears to be an attempt to increase fear and mistrust amongst Muslims in the UK and in our borough.
“The use of publicly-owned premises such as your school by groups holding extreme religious, ideological or political views, who aim to create or exploit grievances and community tensions to the detriment of the whole community, should not be permitted.”
Inspector Alan Murphy, of Hounslow Police, was also lined up to talk but has pulled out due to concerns about the event.
However, organisers defended the meeting, describing it as a 'balanced and informative debate' about the government's latest strategy for tackling terrorism (known as Contest 2).
Mohammad Chaudhry, chairman of HMF, said: “There's a lot of misinformation out there and we wanted to hold a public meeting to inform Hounslow's Muslim community that the Government's new policy wasn't focused against them.
"Despite the fact the council talks about community cohesion, it's decided to oppose this meeting without even attempting to discuss any reservations with us.”
Although the original poster for the event 'Putting Contest 2 in Context' listed Hizb ut-Tahrir as members of the forum, Mr Chaudhry added that the controversial group had since been expelled.
Satvinder Buttar, chairman of Hounslow Racial Equality Council, said the forum's founders were respected members of the community and he would wait to see the tone of the debate before making any judgement.
Asif Hanif, Britain's first suicide bomber, and suspected terrorist Zeeshan Siddique both grew up in Hounslow and studied at Cranford Community College.
But Hounslow Council has been widely praised for its efforts to prevent the rise of extremism in recent years.
Tomorrow night's meeting was due to go ahead as planned from 7.30pm as the Chronicle went to press on Thursday morning. News Source
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CDC and WHO are predicting that the H1N1 “Swine Flu” will be back this fall in a new and deadly form.
WHO*, after changing the definition to fit current conditions, declared a “Level 6? pandemic in mid-June, 2009. Since the organism appears to have been man made, this prediction may be one they can make “accurately.”
They also say that a new vaccine will be ready for deployment at the very time when the H1N1 Pandemic virus circulates around the globe and are proposing universal (mandatory) vaccination, starting with our most vulnerable: the very young and the very old.
The White House is proposing vaccination for both seasonal flu and H1N1 flu, although the total number of US fatalities to date from H1N1 has reached a total of about 2.
State Emergency Medical Powers Acts and Federal legislation, including the Patriot Acts I, II and III, BARDA and others provide for mandatory vaccination or drugging.
No exemptions (religious or otherwise) are provided. Those who refuse will be classified as felons at the State level, subject to immedate incarceration and quarantine of indefinite length in jails or other facilities reserved for such “vaccine refusers.
” In a frightening “Big Lie” propaganda move, those who doubt the effectiveness of unproven, uninsurable vaccines are being called ” Vaccine Resisters” and being equated to a new form of “terrorism.”
Those who refuse at the Federal level will be subject to immediate incarceration and quarantine of indefinite length, probably in FEMA camps set up across the US.
That means that untested, potentially lethal vaccines and dangerous drugs like Tamiflu could be forced upon people who do not wish them and who would face incarceration or worse if they choose not to accept them.
The CDC has said that there would be no exemptions and that there would be “a certain amount of human wastage”. We reject such vile, anti-human, and anti-human rights views that we thought had been discredited with the fall of the Third Reich.
Vaccine manufacturers are exempt, thanks to Congress and the FDA, from any legal liability for damage or death from these dangerous, uninsurable drugs.
The vaccines produced for the bioengineered H1N1 Pandemic will not have been tested in any meaningful way by the time they are delivered into our bodies and those of our children in the fall of 2009, if the World Health Organization and CDC are to be believed.
The US Constitution prohibits both slavery and indentured servitude, two conditions in which the body of one person is controlled totally by another person, the “master”.
Please send the Action Item email below to help educate decision makers, modified as you prefer.
Then send this action item link, to every person on your list, all organizations which care about health, freedom and liberty and urge them to do the same!
We must make this demand that the government respect our rights become “viral” through your efforts and result in many hundreds of thousands of messages to decision makers, on the State and Federal levels!
Our White Paper on the Right to Self-Shielding (and self-quarantine) is at: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=2752
Here is the link to the text of the bill for which we are seeking congressional sponsorship, the Protecting Americans’ Self-Shielding Act [Protecting Americans Act] – http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=2888 [text excerpt below**]
Thank you for your strong and immediate action!
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
* – Our Medial Release condemning the WHO action is at: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=2851
** Operative language from the proposed Protecting Americans Act:
“In the event of any declaration of pandemic emergency, nothing in Federal law or regulation shall be interpreted by any agency of the United States, or any Court thereof, to forbid self-shielding or self-quarantine at home, nor shall any Federal funds, or materials, supplies, and support materials purchased with Federal funds be expended to remove any person involuntarily from his or her home, place of residence, school, work or other location in order to prevent or interfere with self-or self-quarantine.
The Armed Forces of the United States, their agents or any agent of the US Government, Department of Homeland Security, any Department of Public Health, State or local authorities, shall not remove any person involuntarily from his or her home or other location voluntarily chosen for self-shielding or self-quarantine while such person is self-shielding or under self-quarantine.” News Source
Reader Submitted Link. Thank You Jim
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The death toll from Britain’s swine flu outbreak has doubled in the past week.
It has now claimed the lives of 14 people, with another 43 critically ill in intensive care.
A further 335 are in hospital with the disease, chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson revealed yesterday.
He said the number of cases in London and the West Midlands was approaching an epidemic. The UK total is nearly as high as that of Mexico, where the outbreak began, and an official epidemic is set to be declared in London within days.
But Sir Liam confessed that the true extent of the outbreak is likely to be much worse because many sufferers are staying at home and not contacting their GP.
“We do know something about the people seeking help from the NHS but there will be many other people who look after themselves, don’t realise they have it, and don’t show up,” he said.
“We have to acknowledge the problem is bigger than surveillance is showing us.”
There are 9,718 confirmed cases of swine flu in the UK but officials fear the real figure could be 10 times higher. The US has the biggest outbreak, with 33,902 confirmed cases, followed by Mexico, with 10,262, and the UK third.
The World Health Organisation said there had been 429 deaths from the virus worldwide and nearly 95,000 infections since it was first reported in Mexico in March.
Figures for the rates per 100,000 people in Britain show youngsters aged five to 14 are being particularly badly affected by swine flu, followed by those aged one to four.
Of the 14 deaths in the UK, 12 were in England and two in Scotland. All the victims had serious underlying health problems.
Health Secretary Andy Burnham has said new cases would happen at a rate of 100,000 a day by the end of August.
It is widely expected that the number of cases will see a surge in the winter months when flu is more prevalent.
The soaring death toll came on the same day it was announced there would be no inquests into the deaths of two people who died after contracting swine flu.
The Ministry of Justice said it was not necessary for coroners to investigate the deaths last week of a nine-year-old girl and a 19-year-old man, both from south London.
“There’s no requirement to hold an inquest into a natural death. Deaths from swine flu would be regarded by coroners as natural,” a spokesman said.
Although it is not compulsory, individual coroners may hold inquests into natural deaths if they choose.
The Birmingham coroner is looking into the death of six-year-old Sameerah Ahmad after she contracted swine flu.
About 15 per cent of calls to NHS Direct are currently about colds and flu.
Sir Liam said latest data from 100 GP surgeries around England showed that about 27,000 people a week were being diagnosed by their GP as having a flu-like illness.
Of these, an estimated 8,000 a week will have swine flu. The number of flu cases being seen every week works out at 51.9 per 100,000 people – almost as bad as the winter flu season.
In London, however, the rate is 180 per 100,000 – just short of the 200 cases which denotes an epidemic. The West Midlands is not far behind, at 140 per 100,000 cases.
Suspected cases of swine flu are now no longer being sent for lab tests. The number of cases is being estimated from laboratory testing on sample groups, some GP practices and the number of calls received by NHS Direct.
Lib Dem health spokesman Norman Lamb said the number of deaths was “extremely worrying”. He added: “The Government has to make sure that GPs and hospitals have the resources to cope with the rise in the number of patients.”
It emerged yesterday that a third case had been recorded of the swine flu virus becoming resistant to Tamiflu, the major drug to combat it. The new case is in Hong Kong, to add to cases in Japan and Denmark. News Source
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A £2.3billion Government fund for the ailing car industry has not paid out a single penny despite thousands of jobs being lost in the delay.
Struggling firms and trade unions are 'angry and frustrated' at the failure to hand over any money under the Automotive Assistance Programme (AAP).
Lord Mandelson announced the scheme in a blaze of publicity in January, with confident predictions it would help more than 100 carmakers and supply-chain companies safeguard jobs.
But since then nearly 10,000 workers in the struggling industry have lost their jobs or are facing unemployment.
Officials from the Business and Innovation Department are studying just 19 'detailed' applications for cash, and there is no predicted date for paying out the first loan.
Last night the Liberal Democrats condemned ministers for failing Britain's struggling motor manufacturers.
Lorely Burt, the party's business spokesman, said: 'The Government announced a £2.3billion support scheme for the car industry in January and yet five months later not one British company has received so much as a penny of aid.
'Yet since the start of this year we have discovered that nearly 10,000 automotive jobs have been lost or are at risk.
'The automotive industry has been knocked for six by the recession and it sticks in the gall to think that livelihoods have been lost whilst a much trumpeted assistance scheme remains unused.
'Lord Mandelson needs to make an urgent statement to explain the lack of action from the government and to set out clear steps as how this aid will be delivered to those most in need.'
The AAP pledged to unlock £1.3billion of loans from the European Investment Bank (EIB) for investment in 'greener' vehicles, with the Government guaranteeing a further £1billion of bank loans for low-carbon initiatives.
By promising to safeguard the repayment of up to 75 per cent of loans, the Government is aiming to ensure major investment projects are not abandoned or relocated overseas.
Meanwhile, evidence that nearly 10,000 car industry jobs had been lost or were under threat since January were slipped out by Business Minister Ian Lucas in a Parliamentary written answer.
One of the detailed applications has been made by Jaguar Land Rover, which employs 15,000 in the West Midlands and on Merseyside.
A £340million loan for the company to develop 'clean cars' has not been paid out - despite being approved by European chiefs in April.
Tata Motors, which owns the firm, and the Government have so far failed to agree on details of the guarantee.
The Business Department said officials were 'working at the pace set' by the motor industry, indicating that car firms were taking their time putting together detailed applications for funds.
They also partly blamed the banks for still refusing to make loans that are guaranteed. But the department has the power to make its own loans to car companies if the banks refuse to act.
A spokesman said as well as 19 detailed applications being considered, there had been more than 70 'expressions of interest' for funds from under-pressure firms.
Dave Osborne, the Unite union's officer for the automotive industry, told MPs last month: 'The company [Jaguar Land Rover] is frustrated, and our members are angry at the lack of progress.'
Ministers insist they consider the £9.5billion automotive industry 'essential', not least because it employs 74,000 people, plus a further 106,000 in the supply chain. News Source
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The bagman's secret deal
A secret deal hatched by the News of the World to hush up details of phone-tapping was sealed in a tiny room at the Royal Courts of Justice, the Standard has discovered.
The newspaper agreed to pay Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, £700,000 in damages and legal fees after his mobile phone was hacked into by a private investigator.
News of the settlement emerged today, along with claims that “thousands” of public figures had had their phones tapped. At least two others from the world of football were also believed to have been paid £300,000 in costs and damages.
The out-of-court deal was struck on the basis that Mr Taylor and the two others agreed to a gagging order banning them from talking in public about the case.
Mr Taylor had sued News Group Newspapers Ltd, owners of the NoW, and the case proceeded in a series of hearings in Room TM7.06 between June 2007 and September last year.
Instead of taking place before a judge in one of the prestige courts in the Strand, the case was held in its Thomas More annexe.
The innocuous-sounding Taylor v News Group Newspapers Ltd was heard before Master Moncaster.
A Master has the status of a judge but sits without robes, hears specialist issues and is rarely involved in high-profile cases. Although in principle these hearings are meant to be in open court, the rooms are so small that there are no Press benches or space for a public gallery.
One leading QC said: “The purpose of running everything past a Master is that it denies the Press and public the oxygen of publicity. It sweeps it all under the carpet and enables the defendants to escape the carbon monoxide that would cause them to expire.”
Mr Taylor had had his phone hacked into by private investigator Glenn Mulcaire and sued News Group. It had denied all knowledge of the illegal activity but he claimed that it must have known about it.
Six months into the court hearings Mr Taylor applied for key documents to be disclosed about Scotland Yard's criminal investigation of NoW reporter Clive Goodman and Mulcaire, who had admitted bugging the phones.
The application was again heard by Master Moncaster on 7 December 2007 in the same small courtroom.According to the Guardian, News Group agreed to the out of court settlement including the gagging clause.
At the end of the proceedings Master Moncaster was persuaded by News Group lawyers to “seal” the key evidence submitted to the court preventing it being made available to the public. A sealing order can be overturned “in the public interest” but only after counsel makes a costly court application. News Source
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A company will begin offering a directory service from next week that allows people to find the mobile phone numbers of people they don't know.
Run by 118800, it will cost £1 and use databases of numbers it said are freely available for purchase and in the public domain.
Anyone searching for a number can type the name and location of the person into the 118800 website.
It claims to have some 15m numbers in its database.
Privacy campaigners have been angered by the system despite it getting the all-clear from the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).
The ICO ruled that the system did comply with current law and was little different from companies who use such contact lists for cold calling.
It said that opting out of the service should be made easy for those not wanting their details to be used in the directory.
Privacy concerns
118800 gets numbers from three sources. First, market research companies who contact individuals and ask if they would be prepared to allow their numbers to be used for commercial purposes.
Second, from online businesses who often ask customers to tick boxes during the normal course of online transactions.
Thirdly, 118800 gets them from brokers who buy and sell lists of phone numbers.
118800 said that has about 15m phone numbers on its databases which is just a fraction of the 40m adults who have one or more handsets in the UK.
Some legal observers are concerned by the precedent the system sets.
"You are supposed to have people's consent if you are going to pass their number around and they need to know where it is going to go," says Chris Watson, a lawyer at CMS Cameron McKenna.
"When people tick a box, saying they have no objection to their number going to the company they are dealing with, they don't anticipate that it could then be sold.
"Not just possibly to trading partners, but to anybody under the sun".
Connectivity - the company operating the 118800 service - said that privacy is paramount to them, and that it's easy to withdraw your mobile phone number from their databases should you choose to do so.
To unsubscribe, you can either click on the ex directory button on the their web homepage, or you can text the letter 'E' to 118800 from the mobile phone you want to be made ex-directory. 118800 will send you an SMS message confirming you've been taken off.
"We are accessing data in the same way that lots of other companies do for marketing purposes", Shona Forster, 118800's Marketing Director, told Working Lunch.
"The difference is that we don't use that data for marketing purposes and we don't sell it on to anybody else".
How it works
If the company has it, contact details will be sent in a text message to them.
On the phone version, you call the number, and again they will check whether they have the person's details on their database.
If they do, they will call them up while you are still on the line and ask them whether they are prepared to have your call put through to them.
In neither case is the mobile phone number given over to the person making the request.
Both services cost £1.
For most of the 20th century, the landline was the only phone around. With the mobile you're always available, so it's the number most of us dial first.
So it is perhaps not surprising that a directory service is starting up that allows people to find out someone else's mobile phone number in the same way we've always been able to do for landlines. News Source
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A £1.2million council house occupied by an Afghan family and paid for by the taxpayer was raided by customs officials yesterday.
Twelve officers entered mother-of-seven Toorpakai Saiedi's home in Acton, West London, at 7am and later emerged with documents and suitcases.
HM Revenue and Customs refused to discuss the case due to 'taxpayer confidentiality' but did confirm a property in Acton was visited yesterday morning.
The 36-year-old moved into the detached property last July and receives £170,000 a year in benefits, which includes £12,500 a month for her rent.
Ealing Council has been unable to find suitable council housing, forcing it to pay a private landlord to re-house the family.
Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell promised to stamp out the practice when the case was exposed last year.
Mrs Saiedi moved to London seven years ago after she fled her native Afghanistan during civil unrest.
She was made homeless from a five-bedroom house in Ealing, West London, in 2008 and pleaded with the council for a suitable home but there was nothing available.
As well as seven bedrooms, the house in nearby Acton has two reception rooms, a dining room, two kitchens and an extensive back garden.
The landlord, Ajit Panesar, is being paid double the normal market value of the property because of another government loophole.
Despite the outcry, the council said its hands were tied until this month when the case comes up for review.
Three Ealing council offers were sacked for placing the family in the house although they claim they were made scapegoats.
Mark Wallace, campaign director of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said when the case came to light: 'The system has gone seriously wrong when one family is costing taxpayers so much. The family could be helped without such a large bill.' News Source
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There is something in Danny Eaglesfield's pale blue eyes that wasn't there a week ago. He still looks ridiculously young. And, at only 5ft 4in in height, he seems barely tall enough to lift his rifle.
But the wide-eyed youthfulness I saw when I first met him on the eve of battle last Friday has been replaced.
A loss of innocence? Certainly. For Danny Eaglesfield has experienced a great tragedy this past week. His closest friend, Robbie Laws, was killed by a Taliban rocket as the pair of them travelled in the same vehicle, side by side to the last.
Danny and and Robbie had gone through basic training together, became best mates and were posted to the same infantry unit.
Exactly a week ago, having barely turned 18, they went into battle for the first time - together, of course.
They were at the spearhead of the biggest British ground offensive against the Taliban, Operation Panther's Claw, when fate flipped a coin.
One friend was wounded but survived; the other did not. Yesterday Danny Eaglesfield was recovering from minor wounds.
But he wanted to talk about what happened to him and Robbie. Like many of the infantry soldiers I have met out here, he wants the people 'back home' to know what it is like to be a very young Briton fighting in 'Afghan' as the casualties mount and the daytime temperature heads towards 50c.
This is the story of two boys who went to war.
Danny comes from a hard-working, working class family in Derby. His father, Danny senior, works night shifts at a factory. His mother, Sharon, holds down two jobs, at a hospital and in a packing plant.
Danny has a teenage younger sister and a brother who has just started school. Danny loved sport and fishing. But he was not academic. Leaving school at 16 with two GCSEs, having 'messed around too much', he could have drifted into unemployment like many of the lads he knew. But that was not for him.
'My grandad was in the artillery and he was always going on about his war stories.' So Danny went to the Army careers office in Derby and joined up, hoping he could follow in his grandfather's footsteps.
In January last year he found himself at the Army Foundation College in Harrogate. And it was there that he met another 16-year-old, Robbie Laws, from Bromsgrove in Worcestershire.
They were in the same company in Harrogate. And when they were posted to the Infantry Training Centre in Catterick in January this year, they found themselves in the same platoon.
The close friendship was sealed in April when both boys - for one glance at their pictures will show you that's all they are - were posted to the same infantry unit.
Danny had decided to switch from the Royal Artillery to the infantry, because it would fast from track him to the action. 'I wanted to be able to say I'd seen action.' Continued
Friday 10th July 2009
British taxpayers are to provide £1million for a comfortable jail in Nigeria to take convicts whose crimes were committed in the UK.
The prison would house 400 Nigerian inmates incarcerated in our own packed prisons who cannot be forcibly sent home to complete their punishments.
Jails there are considered so rough that any prisoner the UK tried to deport could oppose their removal on human rights grounds.
But the Government hopes that by spending as much as £1million turning a rundown Nigerian prison into something approaching British standards, the convicts could be repatriated.
Lin Homer, the chief executive of the UK Border Agency, told MPs the deal would save taxpayers' money, because the UK would no longer have to pay the £30,000-a-year cost of keeping inmates in our own jails.
'We are in negotiations with Nigeria to help them establish better prison conditions,' she said.
'It's about helping them generate a structure that can cope with the prisoners. It would be well worth the money to do so.'
But Matthew Elliott of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: 'It's an absolute scandal that British taxpayers may foot the bill for a Nigerian prison.
'The Government should not even entertain this nonsense proposal, particularly at a time when our own prison service is so desperately in need of funds.
'If Nigerians are here illegally and are going to be deported, we should be sending them home immediately.'
Damian Green, the shadow immigration minister, said: 'This should not mean in the long term we build prisons all around the world instead of sorting out our own deportation processes.'
Ministers have been frantically searching for a solution to the UK's chronic prisoner overcrowding crisis since 2005, when the number of foreign criminals soared past 11,000 - the equivalent of more than one in every eight inmates.
Prisoners have been offered cash windfalls - which some say are bribes - if they returned home voluntarily.
But this is the first time the Government has announced firm plans to provide funding for a jail overseas.
The idea had been suggested in relation to Jamaica, but never got off the ground.
It would require Nigeria to change its laws so prisoners could be sent back without their consent.
Human rights groups say current conditions in Nigerian prisons are appalling.
Amnesty International said there was severe overcrowding, and more than half of prisoners are awaiting trial - some for up to ten years.
During the same home affairs committee evidence session yesterday, Mrs Homer updated MPs on how the Home Office is dealing with two scandals - the 2006 foreign prisoner fiasco, and the discovery of up to 450,000 outstanding asylum claims.
Three years on from the mistaken release of 1,000 overseas inmates without them even being considered for deportation, almost two-thirds are still in the UK.
Incredibly, 87 of the 1,000 convicts - who included killers and sex attackers - have yet to be even traced. Of those who have been located, only 348 have been deported or removed.
The remainder have either been told they can stay - often because removal back to their homeland would be a breach of human rights law - or are still going through the deportation process.
Mrs Homer also revealed that, so far, 197,500 of the 450,000 asylum 'legacy' cases discovered by the Home Office in 2006 had been processed.
More than 30 per cent have been awarded asylum, in an exercise that has been described an amnesty by opponents. At current rates, more than 100,000 people with claims dating back years will be awarded permission to stay in the UK. News Source
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The mortality rate of the swine flu is significantly lower than the normal flu. The normal seasonal flu kills over 690 people a week in the United States alone unlike the swine flu which has contributed to 141 deaths over a couple of weeks globally.
That figure comes from a U.S. government department, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) which states: “Every year in the United States, on average 5% to 20% of the population gets the flu; more than 200,000 people are hospitalized from flu complications, and; about 36,000 people die from flu-related causes.” - http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/index.htm
At the start of the World Health Organisation’s flu hype (helped by the global media) one little article in Reuters reported vaccine company shares are soaring: “Viral vaccine maker Novavax rose more than 75 percent to $1.42 per share.” But it’s not all about money, injecting the entire population with a rushed vaccine which effects the immune system is far more dangerous than getting the normal flu or the weak swine flu.
All nations under the UN have adopted laws from the World Health Organisation on what your government should do when the WHO tells them. Looking at Irish law on what they will do if the WHO gives the order allows other countries to see what their governments will do.
The Department of Health & Children’s National Pandemic Influenza Plan: “The World Health Organization has identified and categorised non-pharmaceutical public health interventions as follows: Requirement for adults and children to stay in their homes. Requirement for adults and children to submit to examination, vaccination, immunisation.”
Irish law (show below) states the entire population will be injected with a rushed vaccine not just the infected and uninfected population quarantined at hospitals and “other places”.
Part IV of the the Irish Health Act:
“The Minister may by order declare that-”
“it is necessary, for the purpose of preventing the spread of a particular infectious disease, that all adult persons should submit themselves to a specified measure in relation to their protection or immunisation against such infectious disease”
“The Minister may by order declare that—”
“it is necessary, for the purpose of preventing the spread of a particular infectious disease, that all children should be submitted to a specified measure in relation to their protection or immunisation against that infectious disease”.
The title of Section 38 is “Detention and isolation of person who is probable source of infection” and it states the following, “force may, if necessary, be used for the purpose of carrying out any provision of this subsection.” Part 2 of Section 38 redefines the word person into patient: “(2) Where an order is made under this section in relation to a person (in this subsection referred to as the patient), the following provisions shall have effect[….]”. Being classified as a “patient” brings in all other laws on what the state can do to a person.
The following line in Section 38 legally allows the government to detain people in government facilities not just hospitals: “the order to allow for the patient’s isolation in a hospital or other place convenient“. Now you see that anything can be made legal.
When a certain percentage of people die from these rushed vaccines don’t expect governments to be sued as there is ‘reasonable doubt’ that it was the ‘pandemic’ that killed those people and world’s governments acting together did nothing ‘illegal’.
The last thing you or your family want is to be injected by the state so it might be wise to raise this issue with influential members of your community so when the time comes you can stand together and say “no”.
Keep in mind that the National Pandemic Influenza Plan says when a pandemic (false or otherwise) is completely over “it may be a long time before the health services recover”. Business, farming, and food supplies will take just as long if not longer to recover. How will a family feed themselves when public gatherings will be ‘illegal’, when food markets will be closed and leaving the home is forbidden? There are other ways doing things to save more lives but as you’ve seen the texts above are the law and with regards to food; big corporate supermarket stores are going to do what they are told regardless of the consequences or if the ‘pandemic’ is justified or not. As you now know plans to deal with the swine flu are more dangerous than the flu it’s self.
Reader Submitted Link. Thank You Jim
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Canadian doctor Ghislaine Lanctôt, author of the Medical Mafia, has underscored the lawsuit recently filed by Austrian journalist Jane Bürgermeister against the WHO, the UN, and several high ranking government and corporate officials.
Bürgermeister has documented how an international corporate criminal syndicate plans to unleash a deadly flu virus and institute a forced vaccination program.
“I am emerging from a long silence on the subject of vaccination, because I feel that, this time, the stakes involved are huge.
The consequences may spread much further than anticipated,” writes Lanctôt, who believes the A(H1N1) virus will be used in a pandemic concocted and orchestrated by the WHO, an international organization that serves military, political and industrial interests.
Lanctôt warns that the elite and their minions will introduce a compulsory vaccination that will contain a deadly virus and this will be used specifically as a eugenics weapon for “massive and targeted reduction of the world population.
” Moreover, a pandemic will also be used to further establish martial law and a police state, according to Lanctôt, and activate concentration camps “built to accommodate the rebellious” and eventually transfer power from all nations to a single United Nations government and thus fulfill the sinister plans of the New World Order.
In her book The Medical Mafia, Lanctôt writes about the ineffectiveness and dangers of vaccination.
“Because of my professional status, my words weighed significantly in the public eye.
The Medical Board’s reaction was immediate and strong. Its leaders demanded that I resign as a physician. I answered that I would do so as long as they could prove that what I had written was false.
The Medical Board replied with a call for my expulsion,” she writes. “As I witnessed the disproportionate reaction of the Medical Board, I realized that, for the health establishment, the subject of vaccination was taboo. Unknowingly,
I had opened a Pandora’s box. I discovered that, despite official claims, vaccines have nothing to do with public health. Underneath the governmental stamp of approval, there are deep military, political and industrial interests.”
During her trial in 1995, Lanctôt used an episode from the March 11th, 1979, 60 Minutes TV show covering the massive vaccination program foisted on the American public supposedly in response to the 1976 swine flu outbreak.
It was later established by the CDC that the virus originated out of Fort Dix in New Jersey.
“The Fort Dix outbreak may have been a zoonotic anomaly caused by introduction of an animal virus into a stressed population in close contact in crowded facilities during a cold winter,” note Joel C. Gaydos, Franklin H. Top, Jr, Richard A. Hodder, and Philip K. Russell.
It was also characterized “a rare example of an influenza virus with documented human to human transmission,” according to Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.
The virus is “thought to be a direct descendant of the virus that caused the pandemic of 1918,” explained Richard Krause, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the time.
“Public health experts, fearing a possible replay of the 1918 pandemic, engaged in an intense debate about how to respond. Eventually they launched a nationwide vaccination campaign, which was announced by President Gerald Ford in March.
By the end of the year, 48 million people had been vaccinated,” write Robert Roos and Lisa Schnirring of the Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy. “But the feared pandemic never materialized.”
Instead, numerous people came down with Guillian-Barre syndrome, a paralyzing neurologic illness, after receiving the government-hyped vaccination.
More than 33 years later, according to Dr. Russell Blaylock, a board certified neurosurgeon, “we are hearing the same cries of alarm from a similar lineup of virology experts.
The pharmaceutical companies are busy designing a vaccine for the swine flu in hope that this administration will make the vaccine mandatory before another vaccine-related disaster can ruin their party…. Like SARS and bird flu before it, this swine flu scare is a lot of nonsense.
Just take your high dose vitamin D3 (5000 IU a day), eat a healthy diet and take a few immune boosting supplements (such as beta-1, 3/1, 6 glucan) and you will not have to worry about this flu.”
According to a source known to former NSA official Wayne Madsen, “A top scientist for the United Nations, who has examined the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Africa, as well as HIV/AIDS victims, concluded that H1N1 possesses certain transmission “vectors” that suggest that the new flu strain has been genetically-manufactured as a military biological warfare weapon.
See video Left Video Pane 6th down (1979 CBS 60 Minutes)
Reader Submitted Link. Thank You Jim
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Rupert Murdoch' s newspapers allegedly paid out £1million to settle legal cases brought by public figures whose phones were bugged.
Two or three thousand mobiles belonging to senior politicians, actors and sports stars were breached, according to the Guardian.
The paper claims £700,000 was paid out of court to Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association.
News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman was jailed in January 2007 for illegally hacking into the telephones of three royal staff along with a private investigator. According to the Guardian, the full extent of the hacking was found by the Metropolitan Police.
Targets allegedly included MPs from all three parties and cabinet ministers, including former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and former Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell.
The claims relate to a period when the News of the World was edited by Andy Coulson, who is now director of communications for the Conservative Party.
Senior Tories last night dismissed the revelations as a Labour smear campaign designed to damage Mr Coulson.
Conservative MP John Whittingdale, chairman of the Commons Culture Select Committee, said he was 'concerned' by the Guardian claims and that his committee would consider an investigation.
The Guardian said Murdoch journalists hacked into mobile phone messages to gain access to confidential personal data including tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemised phone bills.
A senior source at the Metropolitan Police is quoted as saying that, during the Goodman inquiry, officers found evidence of newspaper staff using private investigators who hacked into 'thousands' of mobile phones.
Another source with direct knowledge of the police findings put the figure at 'two or three thousand' mobiles.
A spokesman for Murdoch's News International said a comment on the matter was not appropriate at this time.
Mr Prescott told Channel 4 News he had no idea his phone had been tapped but suspected journalists had inside information about him.
'Seeing some of the stories in the press that are always printed about me, and the family, I couldn't help but feel that they had more access to private information,' he said. News Source
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- Scotland Yard 'failed to alert targets in hacking scandal'
- Celebrities and politicians 'had phones tapped by journalists'
- John Prescott 'staggered' at Cameron's 'relaxed' reaction
- News of the World 'covered up' legal cases involving tapping
- MPs and Met Police to launch probes into claims
David Cameron was today dragged into a row over claims that News of the World journalists routinely hacked into the phones of celebrities, sportsmen and politicians.
The Tory leader came under huge pressure to sack his chief media advisor Andy Coulson who edited the paper when people's phones were hacked by private investigators.
The Guardian today revealed that the Rupert Murdoch-owned paper had secretly paid more than £1million to cover up legal cases involving the intercepted messages.
Targets allegedly included MPs from all three parties, Cabinet ministers and celebrities such as George Michael, Gwyneth Paltrow, Nigella Lawson and Patsy Kensit.
The scandal raises questions about Mr Cameron's judgment in hiring the former News of the World editor to be his communications chief.
And today former John Prescott attacked the Tory leader for failing to take action against his director of communications over the allegations.
But Mr Cameron insisted that Mr Coulson would remain in his job and that he was 'relaxed' about the claims.
Today Scotland Yard announced that it was to launch a probe into the case. Continued
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The leader of the Italian Northern League, Umberto Bossi, called for invader boats from Africa to be sunk with gunfire in June 2003, and yesterday’s comments by British National Party leader Nick Griffin MEP were merely echoing Mr Bossi’s sentiments, observers have pointed out.
The controlled media has worked itself up into a frenzy over Mr Griffin’s suggestion that invader boats be sunk to stop the invasion, but are strangely silent over Mr Bossi’s much more strident comments, possibly because the Northern League is in alliance with the UKIP party in the European Parliament.
During an interview with the Corriere della Sera newspaper, Mr Bossi said he wanted the action because he was “sick” of illegal immigrants. Corriere della Sera quoted Mr Bossi as saying that weapons should now be used because there was no other solution.
“After the second or third warning, boom… the cannon roars,” the paper quoted him as saying.
“Without any beating about the bush. The cannon that blows everyone out of the water. Otherwise this business will never end.”
The paper says Mr Bossi was then asked whether it would be right to fire on immigrants when most boats carry mainly women and children.
“Illegal immigrants must be hounded out, either nicely or nastily. Only those with a job contract can enter the country. The others, out!” he is quoted as saying.
“There comes a time when it becomes necessary to resort to the use of force.
“The navy and the finance police are going to have to line up in defence of our shores and to use guns. Those are the proper regulations for implementing the law. No escape clauses and no postponement.”
Although Mr Bossi later claimed that his words had been ‘misrepresented,’ he never questioned the accuracy of the newspaper’s report.
The new UKIP-affiliated group in the European Parliament is called the ‘Europe of Freedom and Democracy’ and is made up of the Danish People’s Party, the True Finns, Libertas France, LAOS from Greece, the Northern League, the Reformed Political Party from Holland, the Slovak National Party and UKIP.
It waits to be seen how long this group will last, particularly in the light of recent developments. News Source
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Europe must close its borders or it will be swamped by the Third World, said British National Party leader and Member of the European Parliament Nick Griffin.
Speaking on a Brussels-based BBC show The Record Europe, Mr Griffin said the only way to make sure that the mass immigration invasion stopped was to sink some of the invaders’ boats before they got to shore.
“The EU should sink boats carrying illegal immigrants to prevent them entering Europe,” Mr Griffin told the BBC.
“If there are measures to set up some kind of force or to help, say the Italians, set up a force which actually blocks the Mediterranean, then we’d support that.
“But the only measure, sooner or later, which is going to stop immigration and stop large numbers of sub-Saharan Africans dying on the way to get over here is to get very tough with those coming over. Frankly, they need to sink several of those boats,” he said.
“Anyone coming up with measures like that we’ll support but anything which is there as an ‘oh, we need to do something about it’ but in the end doing something about it means bringing them into Europe, we will oppose.”
Mr Griffin said that if some boats were sunk before they reached the southern European coast, the people on the boats could be given a life raft “and they can go back to Libya.”
“But Europe has sooner or later to close its borders or it’s simply going to be swamped by the Third World.”
Speaking to BNP News after the interview, Mr Griffin said the move would actually save lives. “Thousands of Africans drown every year in their attempts to cross the Mediterranean in their rickety unseaworthy boats,” he said. “They undertake this hazardous journey because they are convinced that if they get to Europe, they will be allowed in.
“If they get the message very clearly that they will under no circumstances be allowed in, they will stop coming. Ultimately, it is the only solution to this ongoing problem.” News Source
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Yup! Under Labour!
More than 63,000 of the 450,000 historic cases that were found to have slipped under the radar for years have now been told they can stay.
Many are because they have been in the country for so long hat the Home Office would have difficulty trying to remove them on human rights grounds because they have effectively settled here.
Officials working through the so-called legacy backlog have so far examined 197,500 cases and there has been a 32 per cent approval rate, Lin Homer, the chief executive of the UK Border Agency, told MPs yesterday.
If that continues then some 144,000 will be able to stay once all the cases files have been looked at, in what the Tories have labelled an amnesty by the back door.
Damian Green, the shadow immigration minister, said: "Any progress is painfully slow on this."
The 450,000 files in the Case Resolution Programme were unearthed in 2006 after the foreign prisoners scandal.
Among them are claimants who should have been deported as far back as the mid-1990s.
Ministers have promised to work through all the cases by 2011, while also having to deal with all fresh asylum claims and those failed cases still awaiting deportation.
Miss Homer told the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee that she is confident that target will still be met.
Human rights laws will be the reason most cases were approved, either because it is unsafe to return the asylum seekers or because they have been here so long they now have families and are protected under the right to family life.
The list includes 5,150 from Zimbabwe, 4,900 from Pakistan and 4,500 from Somalia.
Miss Homer revealed that at least 7,000 so far may never be traced and their files have been archived. News Source
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A Failed asylum seeker has been found guilty of kicking a sales assistant to death.
Mossab Belhocine, 19, of Forest Road, Walthamstow, kicked and beat 28-year-old David Cooper to death in November last year.
The Algerian national kicked his victim so hard an imprint of his trainer was left on Mr Cooper’s face.
During the eight-day Old Bailey trial the court heard how Belhocine, also known as Adam Saidi, met Mr Cooper in Soho before the pair travelled to the victim's flat in Calderwood Street, Woolwich.
The killer says he punched and kicked the sales assistant to stop him from raping him, but the court was told the Algerian had been planning a robbery.
Belhocine, from Walthamstow, ransacked the flat for valuables while Mr Cooper lay dying on the floor.
He stole a silver bracelet, a DVD player, a computer console, a television, a laptop and an Oyster card before stuffing the items in two bags and leaving the flat.
Police traced the killer on Mr Cooper's Oyster card and arrested him shortly afterwards.
Belhocine, who denied murder, had claimed he was sexually abused as a child and believed this memory may have triggered his anger on the night of Mr Cooper's death.
The failed asylum seeker came to the UK on a visitor's visa in 2007.
The court heard he was part of a network of Algerian pickpockets operating in the Finsbury Park area, which he denied.
Belhocine was convicted of murder and robbery and will be sentenced tomorrow. News Source
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More than one million jobless Britons have been living off state handouts for more than 12 years, it has emerged.
A hardcore army of unemployed have failed to find any sort of work since Labour came to power in 1997.
The true scale of the crisis has been laid bare by figures which break down for the first time the length of time people have been out of work.
A further 1.9million have been on benefits for seven years or more, according to the Department of Work and Pensions.
The 1.1million unemployed since 1997 amounts to more than a fifth of the 5.2million currently claiming out-of-work benefits.
The figures also reveal that youth employment has soared under Labour from 665,000 in 1997 to 888,000 today - a staggering 34 per cent.
Opposition MPs said the cost to the public purse could be as much as £4billion. They added that an entire generation has
permanently dropped out of society, leading to increased family breakdown and crime.
Official statistics show that the gap between rich and poor has widened under Labour, with the poorest 10 per cent forced to survive on an income of just £87-aweek compared to £96 in 1997.
Health inequalities have also increased, growing 4 per cent for men and 11 per cent for women.
The revelations will fuel anger on Labour's backbenches that the party has betrayed the most vulnerable in society.
Frustration boiled over earlier this week when Labour MPs launched a fresh assault on Gordon Brown's controversial decision to abolish the 10p tax band.
Many fear a backlash from voters on low incomes.
The figures also make a mockery of Peter Mandelson's claim in 1997 that 'one of the fruits of Labour's success will be that Britain has become a more equal society.'
Shadow Chancellor George Osborne condemned the statistics, saying: 'The bills of social failure have never been higher than under this Prime Minister.'
Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokesman Steve Webb said: 'These people have lost all self esteem and the ability to find work and have been written off by this Labour Government.'
Mark Wallace, from the Taxpayers' Alliance, added: 'The way the Government have structured benefits means there is precious little incentive to start work and people are penalised for doing so.
'It is time we raised the bottom income tax thresholds to help poor people back into work.'
The statistics also show that the number of immigrants working in the private sector has doubled since Labour was elected, from-1.4millon to nearly 3million. This rise is the same as the number of jobs created in the sector over the same period.
In contrast, the number of British-born private workers has dropped slightly, from 17.9million to 17.8million.
Tory MP Michael Fallon, who sits on the Treasury select committee, said: 'The interesting thing is that in Labour's heartlands where people claim they cannot find jobs or are off work with stress, there are plenty of Poles and Lithuanians finding work.'
A Department of Work and Pensions spokesman said: 'As a result of Government reforms the number of people on incapacity benefit has fallen after it trebled in the '80s and '90s.
'Of course some people suffer from serious long-term health problems which prevent them from working but our welfare reforms mean most people are expected to do something in return for support. And the extra help is working to get more people into jobs.' News Source
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Yes it's all happening under Labour.. And it's ALL BAD!
The number of people drinking themselves to death has soared by 40 per cent under Labour.
Critics blame the relaxing of licensing laws and the availability of cheap drink in supermarkets.
Worryingly the under-40 age group has seen a 24 per cent increase in deaths from alcohol-related causes.
The toll among men in their 20s has risen by a staggering 41 per cent.
Tory Home Office spokesman James Brokenshire said last night: 'I am increasingly worried that the Government's decision to allow 24-hour drinking is having a real impact on antisocial behaviour in our town centres and not nearly enough is being done to tackle it.
'The impact on services like the NHS really can't go on.
'The Government seems to be completely unaware of the enormity of the problem of binge drinking in our society and its effects on our communities, and its tragic consequences.'
The official figures, obtained by the Tories, show that there were 7,341 deaths last year directly resulting from drinking. In 1999 the figure was 5,287.
These include deaths from cirrhosis of the liver, alcoholic liver disease, mental and behavioural disorders due to drink, degeneration of the nervous system, chronic hepatitis, pancreatitis, and alcohol poisoning.
Experts warn the true toll will be far higher, when deaths to which alcohol has contributed - such as cancers and heart attacks, as well as drink-fuelled accidents and violence - are taken into account.
The Royal College of Physicians claimed that the true figure may be as high as 40,000 a year.
A Health Department spokesman said it estimated that around 15,000 die from alcohol every year, if secondary causes of death are included.
Of particular concern for doctors is the sharp rise in younger people dying from drink. Traditionally, it has been the middle-aged and elderly who have died from alcohol - but the victims are becoming younger.
Last year, 788 people in their teens, 20s or 30s died from drink, more than two every day.
The largest increases were seen among those in their 50s - up 48 per cent among women and 49 per cent among men in the past ten years.
Last night Professor Ian Gilmore, of the Royal College of Physicians, said: 'These latest figures are a stark reminder of how alcohol, when used to excess, can have a devastating effect not only on hazardous drinkers but their loved ones as well.
'Government can and should do more. A good place to start would be by ensuring that their proposed mandatory code allows local authorities to finally get a handle on irresponsible sales practices.'
Norman Lamb, the LibDem health spokesman, said: 'Ministers cannot continue to ignore the fact that thousands of people are dying because of excessive alcohol consumption. The drinking culture in this country has to be changed or the number of people dying because of alcohol will continue to soar.' News Source
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A Muslim who claimed he was being victimised for his religion after anti-terror raids on his home took part in a fundamentalist protest against British soldiers which caused nationwide outrage, the Mail can reveal.
Zakeel Abbas’ Sydney Street home was raided by police in April, 2008, during an investigation into an extremist poster campaign in Burton, urging Muslims to attack non-believers, the White House and Rome.
However, no charges were subsequently brought against he and three other men whose homes were also raided.
The 32-year-old demanded an apology and even set up a support group for others ’persecuted for being Muslim’.
But, on May 5, during a parade in Luton
for soldiers returning from Iraq, Mr Abbas was pictured
protesting with Islamist extremist group Al Muhajiroun.
The group greeted the soldiers with a barrage of abuse, holding signs declaring them ’murderers’ and ’baby killers’.
The protesters — who then had to be protected by police from being attacked by supporters of Anglian Regiment soldiers — made national headlines and were greeted with abhorrence and disgust by the majority of the UK Muslim community.
Mr Abbas — who initially denied being present at the Luton incident until photographic evidence was produced, even showing him wearing the same top he was pictured in when he was interviewed in The Mail — subsequently conceded he took part but defended his involvement, claiming there is a ’campaign against Islam’ by police, the media and the Government.
He said: "I was invited to a meeting about the atrocities committed against innocent Iraqis, including the children who have been killed during the war.
"If a Muslim is attacked in any way, shape or form, we have the right to defend ourselves. We are all part of the nation of Islam.
"It was a completely peaceful demonstration and I went along to show my support for all the Muslims butchered in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I do not believe I have any extremist views, I follow a ’middle path’ in terms of my Muslim beliefs."
Mr Abbas denies his action will fuel tension between whites and Asians in Burton — even though the Luton protest has been blamed for heightening racial tensions in the Bedfordshire town and sparked retaliatory marches and protests against the extremists, which led to breakouts of violence, arrests and rumours of infiltration by extreme right-wing groups. He believes notions of hatred between ethnic groups are ’invented and perpetuated by the media’.
He said: "We do not believe there is any difference between people of different-coloured skin and I don’t think the protest has created any hatred.
"The police, Government and media have done a fine job of creating that themselves by making people wary of us."
However, Mr Abbas’ actions were condemned by East Staffordshire Racial Equality Council director Amir Kabal.
He said: "I can’t condone that protest — it was quite terrible. Soldiers are putting their lives at risk for the country and to go and ruin a parade celebrating what they do is disgraceful. Any individual using religion to promote hate is doing something unacceptable. It’s the politicians who made the decision to go to war and you can’t blame the soldiers for that." News Source
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A British soldier was hailed a hero yesterday for shooting dead a Taliban fighter from his field hospital bed.
Private Anthony Myers, 19, was being treated for his wounds after being shot in the shoulder as he battled insurgents in Afghanistan.
As he lay bleeding and in pain in a medical centre tent, he spotted two armed Taliban preparing to kill injured troops. He leapt up and shot one, alerting colleagues who shot the second.
Pte Myers saved not only his life but that of a wounded colleague in the bed next to him.
The Territorial Army soldier has been dubbed an “inspiration” by Army chiefs.
Pte Myers, of the Mercian Regiment 4th Battalion, is now recovering and worried about his family’s response – as they did not expect him to be on the frontline.
He said: “I rang them and they were in shock at the news. They thought being in the TA, I would be doing sentry duty and quite safe. My mum is not best pleased.”
But his father, also Anthony, said: “We are very proud of him. He’s usually a quiet and reserved lad at home. We’ve spoken to him and he seems in fine fettle, and a little bit bored.
“We know he was very, very lucky. There are a lot of fellas who have been shot and not come back.
“We never thought he’d be on the front line. When he rang us after his operation we were just in shock. We just thought he wouldn’t be up to much, driving a vehicle or on guard duty at a secure base.”
Pte Myers and his battalion are currently serving in Helmand Province. He jetted out to Afghanistan earlier this summer after finishing his A-levels at St Peter and Paul Catholic High School, in Widnes, Cheshire.
About a week ago he was caught up in a fierce firefight with insurgents. A bullet went straight through his shoulder muscle, narrowly missing an artery. Emergency surgery at Camp Bastion revealed he suffered no nerve damage and he is expected to make a full recovery.
But the teenager wants to go back to the front line before he returns home on leave to Speke, Merseyside, in August.
His operation coincided with an Army News camera crew filming a general story about Camp Bastion. Footage of his surgery taken by the crew has since been posted on YouTube. News Source
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Ireland will vote in October on whether to accept the controversial Lisbon Treaty, it was confirmed yesterday.
Irish PM Brian Cowen believes new “legal guarantees” he secured will help him reverse the shock “No” vote delivered last year in the first referendum which plunged Europe into crisis.
An Irish “Yes” makes it likely the treaty, which has to be approved by all member states, will come into force around Europe before Britain’s next general election.
That will put pressure on David Cameron to decide his next move, as well as triggering the appointment of the new European President – a post Tony Blair is said to be eyeing.
Mr Cowen set the date after agreeing with fellow EU leaders a set of “legal guarantees” that Ireland will keep control over its own taxes, military neutrality and ethical issues such as abortion.
Despite a manifesto pledge to hold a referendum in Britain, Labour has ruled one out saying it is unnecessary since constitutional changes proposed previously were scrapped and that the treaty will simply streamline the running of the 27-member bloc.
Opponents say it fundamentally shifts power from Westminster to Brussels. Shadow Europe Minister Mark Francois said: “The Irish people are now being asked to vote for a second time when the British people have not even had a chance to vote once.”
The Irish vote is seen as the last major hurdle for the treaty although Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic have yet to endorse it. News Source
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Stand up to the state and.. Work the rest out!
A couple who say their daughter was 'kidnapped' by social services yesterday lost a two-year legal battle to stop her being adopted.
The child was taken away from her parents at the age of five after they were arrested for failing to co-operate with police during a raid on a dog-breeding business run from their home.
But the girl had never been physically harmed and was 'thriving and happy' before being taken away, the Court of Appeal was told.
The mother, a 43-year-old former vice chairman of the local Conservative Association, and her husband, 31, launched a desperate legal fight to try to get their child back.
But yesterday, after 74 separate court hearings, they were told that they had failed to show they could put their daughter's 'emotional well being' before their own and that she should be adopted.
Alison Ball QC, for the mother, told the hearing: 'As the parents saw it, their child had been kidnapped.
'They woke up one morning and the police came into their house and within a few hours their child was taken into care and has not been returned since.
She acknowledged there 'may have been some behavioural issues' but added: 'This was not a case where the parents have broken the children's bones.'
As the judge refused permission to appeal, the tearful mother cried out: 'Why can't you let me fight for my child?'
Concerns about the parents had been raised when the father threatened staff at her school after an unfounded claim that a teacher had hit the child, the court heard.
A few weeks later, in March 2007, the police and the RSPCA raided the family home after a tip-off that the father was mistreating dogs.
After the parents refused to allow a search, 18 officers using pepper spray descended on the house, prompting 'chaotic scenes'.
In front of their daughter, both parents were handcuffed and arrested, with the father hurling abuse at the officers.
Police who carried out the raid said the house was covered in rabbit entrails and animal excrement.
The child's bedroom also had a hole in the roof and the duvet was filthy.
The couple claimed most of the mess was caused during the raid and that they were about to move house, which is why the bedroom was in such a state.
A policewoman who had visited the house a month earlier on an unrelated matter said that it was a clean and tidy house and that the girl seemed 'happy.'
The child was taken into care by East Sussex County Council following the raid, and later put into the care of foster parents.
When the couple were allowed to see their daughter a week later the father 'lost it' and confronted social workers, which scared his daughter, the court heard.
Miss Ball said this was because he feared for his child's welfare after the building they met her in was surrounded by 'rubbish, dirty nappies and syringes'.
The parents also underwent psychological tests to assess if they were fit to look after their child. The results were conflicting and a judge ordered a fifth test.
When the parents refused, the judge ordered the child to be put up for adoption at a hearing in March.
Yesterday the mother said she was willing to undergo the new psychological test. But the father said he did not want to as this would further delay getting their daughter back.
But Appeal Court judge Mr Justice Bodey said the parents had been given every opportunity to help the court. The fact that the mother was now prepared to have the assessment was 'too little too late', he said.
The couple released a joint statement vowing to fight on. 'If it is a case of taking it to the next step, the European Court, then so be it,' they said. News Source
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An elderly widow died after she broke her hip and was left in agony without medical attention for 14 hours at a private nursing home.
When Winifred Mitchell was eventually taken to hospital with an 'obvious' fracture, she contracted pneumonia and died eight days later, an inquest heard.
A pathologist said the broken hip contributed to her death.
Mrs Mitchell, 87, had gone to stay at the residential home only to allow her carer daughter to go on holiday.
She was 'screaming out in pain' and pressing her alarm buzzer throughout the night after falling from a wheelchair which had been left without its brakes on, the Sheffield coroner was told.
Her family said the grandmother told them she broke her hip when she banged herself against a wardrobe as she fell.
After the hearing, Mrs Mitchell's daughter Pauline Wilson, 56, said: 'When we saw her in hospital my mother was distraught and crying.
'She kept repeating that the staff at the care home would not believe her when she said she was in pain.
If she had been taken to hospital earlier
she might still be here today.'
Mrs Mitchell had a fall on her second day at the Valley Park Nursing Home in Wombwell, South Yorkshire, which is run by Mimosa Healthcare Holdings.
Her medical notes from the night record that she was 'constantly buzzing stating she was in pain and screaming out although she was not being touched'.
Although staff claimed to have checked, Mrs Mitchell's broken right hip went undetected until she was admitted to Barnsley District Hospital 14 hours after the fall.
The hospital reported an 'obvious' break when she was admitted in August last year. Continued
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MPS faced a furious backlash over their 12-week summer break last night, with some planning two luxury holidays while many hard-up taxpayers stay at home.
The House of Commons rises for an 82-day summer recess on July 21. It will last until mid-October – one of the longest breaks in Parliamentary history.
After the wave of revulsion at the expenses scandal, dozens of MPs are preparing to turn their backs on their constituents to head for the sun.
Among those with two holidays booked are Foreign Secretary David Miliband – on a visit to Pakistan yesterday. He will head for Italy and Ireland while Health Secretary Andy Burnham will visit Spain and Scotland.
Tory leader David Cameron has lined up 10 days in France and a further week in Greece.
Shadow Chancellor George Osborne is planning trips to Cornwall and Spain.
Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell has a walking holiday in Scotland lined up, plus a spell at a fitness camp in the Peak District.
She will also fly to India – at her own expense – to join 40 impoverished children on an adventure holiday. Dozens of other MPs are said to be taking at least two holidays.
Susie Squire, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “It’s absurd that MPs are having months off at a time when they should be in the House scrutinising legislation and getting us out of the economic mess we’re in.
“Many MPs are going on multiple luxury trips, at a time when ordinary taxpayers can’t afford a holiday at all, and therefore will hardly be working round the clock for their constituents during the break – as they claim.”
Former Independent MP Mar- tin Bell, a prominent campaigner against Westminster sleaze, said: “The more time MPs spend with constituents, the more they will realise the extent to which Parliament has fallen into disrepute.”
Downing Street refused to discuss Gordon Brown’s holiday plans for “security reasons.” Last year, he went to Southwold in Suffolk. Chancellor Alistair Darling is understood to be planning a trip to the Western Isles.
Last year, Business Secretary Lord Mandelson sparked controversy when he stayed aboard the luxury yacht of Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska.
Home Secretary Alan Johnson is flying to Portugal and Transport Secretary Lord Adonis is going to Bordeaux in France.
Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward, whose supermarket heiress wife Camilla Sainsbury has a £5million holiday home on the Caribbean island of Mustique, is keeping his holiday plans secret.
Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg is staying with his in-laws in central Spain while his party’s Treasury spokesman Vince Cable is going climbing in Scotland.
MPs insist that most of their time away from the Commons is spent on constituency duties rather than on holidays. However, many MPs were known to have gone on skiing trips during their 24-day break last Christmas. News Source
Thursday 9th July 2009
Ministers were plunged deeper into scandal last night as it emerged almost 200 of the dangerous criminals who are wrongly at large are foreign nationals.
Incredibly, a third of the convicts were released from jail on licence despite being told they were liable for deportation. Facing removal from Britain, the men - who include a rapist - went on the run.
Critics said it 'beggared belief' that ministers had been prepared to release on to the streets criminals who should have been booted out of the country.
The revelations followed the announcement on Monday that 954 criminals who were released early had been recalled to jail for breaching their licence requirements, but had never been tracked down by police.
The Government made no mention of the nationality of the convicts, who include murderers, rapists and paedophiles.
But the Daily Mail has discovered that 192 of the 954 are classed as foreign nationals.
Some 64 had committed crimes which were so serious they should have been deported at the end of their sentence.
But instead of being held in detention until they could be kicked out, they were allowed to walk free on licence instead.
The scandal for the Home Office now moves significantly closer to the foreign prisoner fiasco, which claimed the scalp of Charles Clarke in 2006.
In that year, it emerged that 1,000 overseas inmates were freed without even being considered for deportation. Last night, Tory home affairs spokesman Chris Grayling said: 'This is fast turning into a major scandal.
'The failure to deport foreign criminals after they are released from jail has already cost the job of one Home Secretary, people simply will not understand why ministers have failed to get to grips with this problem.'
Critics said inmates were now being assessed for removal, but this did little good if they were being allowed to walk free.
The Mail reported yesterday how an urgent police manhunt was under way to trace the 954 criminals wrongly at large.
They include 20 murderers, 15 rapists and five paedophiles. At least 59 have reoffended, including crimes of rape.
One murderer has been on the run for 25 years, and is understood to have escaped abroad, and is living in mainland Europe.
The Government knew little or nothing of the fiasco until after a review of the recall process was ordered two years ago.
The findings were made available on Monday, in a statement to Parliament. Criminals freed early on licence can be sent back to jail if they reoffend, or breach the terms of their early release.
Lin Homer, chief executive of the UK Border Agency, said: 'The system for dealing with the consideration and removal of foreign national prisoners has been made more and more secure, with every individual considered before the end of their sentence.
'Any foreign criminal serving more than 12 months in prison is automatically considered for deportation - last year we sent home a record 5,400 lawbreakers.
'We are working closely with the police and probation service to assist in returning to prison those foreign national prisoners who have broken their licence conditions.'
Liberal Democrat spokesman Chris Huhne said: 'The Home Office may have been split in two since the last foreign prisoners scandal but it seems the lessons still haven't been learned.'
At least two police forces have refused to publish the names and pictures of local criminals who had absconded.
But last night, the the Information Commissioner's Office said data protection rules should not stop them releasing such details. News Source
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(Recap: 26th June 2009)
The country's shambolic immigration laws were under the spotlight yesterday after the High Court ordered the release of a prolific criminal who has been fighting deportation for three years.
A judge ruled that the 'undesirable' immigrant, who 'embarked on a criminal career' in the UK and still poses a threat of further offending, must be freed from detention.
The High Court was told Ahmed Daq, 32, must be released on bail because the Home Office has already held him for three years to facilitate his removal from the UK but there is still no prospect of deportation.
A judge ruled: 'Removal is not going to be possible within a reasonable time. Therefore his detention has become unlawful.'
Daq, an alcoholic and drug addict, committed 18 offences between 1998 and 2004, using 13 aliases. They included robbery, assault and burglary.
He was due to be released in June 2006 but was immediately served with a further notice of intention to deport, and detained pending removal.
He had been in custody ever since, challenging moves to deport him to Somalia in the Court of Appeal.
Over the past three years, he has been repeatedly in trouble for violent outbursts against other inmates, and detectives fear he will be a menace on the streets.
His latest appeal hearing has been delayed as the legal debate continues over whether it is safe to return criminals and failed asylum seekers to the violent and war-torn east African state. Continued
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(Recap: 22nd June 2009)
Rapists and Terrorists are among foreign criminals being treated to GOURMET GRUB on the Taxpayer as they wait to be booted out of Britain.
Posh nosh dished up for 383 inmates at a luxury £47million detention centre includes oriental poached fish parcels, beef goulash and mouthwatering mint lamb stew.
The menus came in last month after the CHEAPER old prison-style servery was axed.
A source raged last night: "Some of the dishes are so exotic they put Gordon Ramsay to shame.
"The grub's certainly better than the local hotels.
"Now every foreign con wants to come here because the food is so good."
The scandal is the latest to hit the Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre in Berkshire - run by private firm Serco.
The Sun last year told how detainees had access to Nintendo Wiis and plasma TVs. And in January we revealed thousands of pounds were being stumped up in prizes for BINGO nights.
Each detainee now gets four choices for lunch and dinner, plus three vegetable options and a dessert.
They are handed a menu at the start of the week and asked to mark their choices for the next seven days - with food cooked to order.
Other delicacies include chicken chasseur, fish gumbo and beef and onion pie.
Menus bear a cheery message: "More fruit and vegetables is the best way to stay healthy. Eat more!"
The source said: "It's totally out of proportion.
"You'd think every detainee would be happy with the meals - but we've already had complaints about portion sizes."
Shocked Matthew Elliott, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, declared: "The idea that these people should enjoy hotel-style standards of service and food is preposterous.
"Given the recession we're living in, most people will think this type of arrangement is outrageous."
A UK Border Agency spokeswoman said: "Colnbrook deals with some of the most challenging detainees in a secure and humane environment.
"All care and food is provided with value for money for the taxpayer in mind.
"We pay the contractor a set fee and the cost of any changes to food provision is borne by them." News Source
- TAXPAYERS forked out £73million last year to feed and house failed asylum seekers who should have been deported - up from just £4million four years ago, it has been revealed.
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(By The Informer from Green Arrow website)
The Daily Trash reports that the latest terrorist threat that we face is from the far right.
Counter-terrorism chiefs are worried neo-Nazis are plotting a 'spectacular' terrorist attack on Britain to fuel racial tension.
Senior officers have increased their surveillance of suspects to monitor their ability to carry out a deadly attack.
They then go on to say that;
The chilling warning comes after last month's startling gains by the BNP at the recent local and European elections which many fear may 'embolden' Far-Right extremists.
Commander Shaun Sawyer, from the Met's specialist operations wing said: 'I fear that they will have a spectacular ... They will carry out an attack that will lead to a loss of life or injury to a community somewhere. They're not choosy about which community.'
Firstly there is no such thing as the Special Operations Wing, but there is a ‘Command’, and Commander Sawyer is the boss of that command.
However upon managing to get through on the telephone to his office and speaking to a very polite person by dialling 0300 123 1212 I was left in little doubt that they did not know what I was talking about, and would have to ring me back.
Now after serving over 20 years in the old bill I know that they are cautious about what they say on the blower. I also know that they do not make public statements via the press about what enquiries they are carrying out, and that something as monumental as this claim by the Mail, would only be made openly in Parliament.
There are after all proper procedures to be followed.
This is without doubt another crass attempt to frighten the public into believing the BNP to be a terrorist organisation.
There can be no doubt the Police have infiltrated the BNP up to the highest level, or close to it, and will be regularly briefed about the goings-on within the party. This only serves to make the Mail’s allegations even more fairy tale like.
Regarding the threat to Jews in the article, I know many many Jewish who have gone their whole lives without being abused or attacked, and it is well known within Jewish circles that any attacks are most likely to come from the Socialist Workers types who detest the Jews for their wealth status, or unintelligent low life.
There are around 270k Jewish people living in Britain, somewhat less than the population of Coventry. Many of these are in influential jobs and have a lot to protect. By their silence one can take it that nothing adverse is imminent. And I can tell you that they have a better intelligence service that M1 or whatever you want.
If Commander Shaun Sawyer did say what he is quoted as doing, let us see the evidence. If it was just a snippet heard by a nameless reporter, let us know.
Bye the way as I expected, no one has phoned me back from the Met. News Source
Perhaps the intent is to take the emphasis off REAL Extremists by creating the fantasy above? And simply covering up the real extremism as in the video link below?
The Far Right Extremists?
WARNING derogatory language and of very Sensitive nature
May harm sensitivities
Unfortunately this is the world and the times we live in.
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"What had started as a several dozen turned into a hundred or so and the officers were being attacked with missiles including glass bottles, balloons filled with paint, scaffolding clips and metal poles, and a couple had been dragged into the crowd and were beaten to the floor.
One officer was knocked unconscious by a scaffolding pole, two received really bad facial injuries and the other officers (male and female) were kicked and punched repeatedly until a couple of PSU's managed to get to them.
At the time we were not allowed to wear our protective helmets and were still marching towards the Embassy."
Footage showing the humiliation of the Metropolitan Police at the hands of the demonstrators in London.
This footage just goes to show that if it came to serious riots, our police are totally defenceless against situations like this.
"Israel declares cease fire; Hamas says it will fight on" Hamas will NOT stop, they have not stopped for 8 years or more.
See video Here
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Ken Livingstone's £16,000 bill for dining in lavish restaurants - and paid for by YOU the Taxpayers!
Ken Livingstone racked up huge bills for the taxpayer at a string of lavish restaurants while mayor of London, his official credit card bills reveal.
Details obtained by the Daily Mail show that over four years he ran up total expenditure of more than £16,000.
The revelations are a blow to the Labour politician's carefully cultivated image as a 'man of the people'.
They reveal that the socialist firebrand was a regular visitor to Le Pont de la Tour restaurant, described as combining 'the very best of modern French cuisine with elegant, luxurious surroundings and magnificent river views'.
In January 2007, he ran up an extraordinary £1,267.59 bill there - the largest single expense in the credit card files.
In January 2005, he billed the taxpayer for a £761.88 meal at the restaurant, in June 2007 a £303.58 bill, and in December 2007, £320.79.
Other venues included the luxurious Italian restaurant Quirinale in Westminster and Langan's Brasserie.
Further large bills included a £523.58 meal at the Cinnamon Club and £450 at Gran Paradiso in Westminster. On an official trip to Cuba he put in a £510 bill for a meal at the Hotel Nacional.
Smaller expenses included trips on the Heathrow Express and other rail tickets, bills for shopping at Waterstone's and a 'cash advance' of £246.78.
Andrew Boff, a Tory member of the London Assembly, said: ' Langan's, Pont de la Tour, the Cinnamon Club. They're some of the finest and best in London.
'Ken seems to have been living a high old life on the taxpayer. He might well maintain that it was all official entertaining, but why couldn't he have been more modest?
'There are catering facilities at City Hall he could have used - they're good enough for the staff here. Why wasn't it good enough for Ken? The Mayor of London enjoys a pretty good salary.'
The mayor's salary rivals that of a Cabinet minister. Current mayor, Tory Boris Johnson, is on £137,579.
There is no suggestion that Mr Livingstone broke any rules, since the mayor is provided with a credit card for official business.
But he is understood to have repaid two items of expenditure that were personal, including a meal while on holiday and grocery shopping. Continued
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Thousands of paramilitary police poured into China's Xinjiang province today as the government prepared to quash ethnic violence which has torn the region apart.
After days of rioting, these extraordinary pictures indicate Beijing is no longer prepared to tolerate bloody clashes between the ethnic Han and Muslim Uighurs.
So far at least 156 people have died and 1,000 have been wounded.
Chinese president Hu Jintao has cut short his visit to the G8 summit in Italy to return home to deal with the crisis.
Yesterday, hordes of Han armed with iron bars, machetes and even spades spilled on to the streets looking for Uighur targets.
Riot police used tear gas to try to break up protests in the capital of the Muslim region of Xinjiang and enforced an overnight curfew.
Hundreds of protesters from China's predominant Han ethnic group, many clutching meat cleavers, metal pipes and wooden clubs, smashed shops owned by Uighurs, a Turkic largely Islamic people who share linguistic and cultural bonds with Central Asia.
Some Han Chinese shouted 'attack Uighurs' as both sides hurled rocks at each other.
Some entered the stairwell of one apartment building and tried to smash open the door of another as residents rained down rocks from the roof. Police eventually dispersed the crowd.
Police used tear gas to try to disperse the crowd, but for a while it only emboldened the demonstrators, caught between two sets of anti-riot police 600 yards apart.
Some used water to wash the gas out of their eyes as they pressed towards police at the mainly Uighur end of the street.
'They attacked us. Now it's our turn to attack them,' a man in the crowd told Reuters. He refused to give his name. Continued
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Firefighters battling the Camberwell tower block inferno that killed six people were forced to pull out of the building because of health and safety rules, it has been claimed.
A Fire Brigade source said crews were on the 11th floor of the 14-storey tower and about to rescue a group of trapped residents when the order came to withdraw amid fears of an explosion.
When it was finally deemed safe to go back in, it was too late to save Helen Udoaka, 34, her three-week-old daughter, Michelle, and Dayana Francisquini, 26, her son Filipe, three, and daughter Thais, six, who were trapped in a bathroom.
The sixth victim, Catherine Hickman, 31, was in the flat next door.
The source said that the health and safety rules could be blamed for the deaths, and added: 'I wasn't on this job, but there is growing frustration among my colleagues over health and safety laws.
'A large gas pipe had fractured inside the block, and because of this a decision was made that it was too dangerous to be there.
'The guys didn't want to quit but they had to obey orders.'
Rafael Cervi, whose wife Danya Francisquini and two children Filipe and Thais were killed in the fire, criticised the fire brigade's 'unwillingness' to attempt to rescue his family and for taking two and half hours before they reached his flat.
'They had masks and oxygen and there were no flames in my flat,' he said. 'Why couldn't they go in?
'They said they had to go flat by flat, but some of them were empty. There were 100 firemen there. Why didn't one of them go to save my family?'
Rasheed Nuhu, whose family was trapped in the bathroom of their flat for 90 minutes, echoed Mr Cervi's criticism of the fire service's response to the blaze
'You think they will have enough ladder to get to the 13th floor, and before you know it the ladder was sitting on the roof of the vehicle there and they were not using it,' he told Channel 4 News.
A London Fire Brigade spokeswoman did not deny the claims but said she was unable to comment due to the ongoing probe into the blaze, believed to have started on the ninth floor on Friday afternoon.
Communities Secretary John Denham yesterday told MPs he had ordered an urgent report into the fire, while police asked for anyone who filmed or took photographs at the time to get in touch with them on 020 8721 4906. News Source
See Also:
A grandfather was left dying while a paramedic spent 16 minutes carrying out a health and safety check on his flat.
Roy Adams, 61, was told to leave the entrance to his home open for emergency workers after he dialled 999 for medical help following a suspected heart attack.
He waited outside and conducted a risk assessment while waiting for police support vehicles to arrive.
By the time he entered the property Mr Adams had collapsed to the floor, unable to breathe. He died on the way to hospital. Continued
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Nine teenagers have appeared in Rochdale Magistrates’ Court charged in connection with a gang attack on a teenage boy in Denehurst Park.
Three of the defendants have been charged with attempted murder after a 17-year-old boy was left with bleeding on the brain and needed emergency surgery following the attack in Greave on 23 May last year.
Ajay Gurparthab Singh, aged 18, of Fulford Street, Old Trafford, and two 17-year-old boys from Old Trafford, were also charged with robbery, violent disorder and affray.
Faizan Samirudin, aged 18, of Stanford Street, Old Trafford, was previously charged with attempted murder and he has now been further charged with violent disorder, robbery and affray.
Three 17-year-old boys from Old Trafford, a 17-year-old boy from Whalley Range, and a 17-year-old boy from Stretford were all charged with violent disorder, robbery and affray.
The defendants were sent on conditional bail to Bolton Crown Court.
They will appear for plea and case management hearing at 9.45am on Tuesday 22 September. News Source
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A brawl in an East Oxford street after two major community events on Sunday has sparked a police investigation.
Dozens of teenagers clashed in Cowley Road and nearby streets shortly after the Cowley Road Fringe Festival and the Carnival in the Park.
Both events had been enjoyed by thousands of people, without any major problems reported. However, one East Oxford resident – who shot a video of the incident which can be seen online at oxfordmail.co.uk – said hundreds of teenagers were involved in clashes on the streets at about 7.45pm.
The man, who did not want to be named, filmed part of the incident from Cowley Road, opposite James Street. He said: “There were about 300 or 400 kids, about 14 or 15 years old – it was huge.
“I heard somebody shout ‘we’re going to kill you...’ and then swarms of kids ran down the road by Blockbuster. “I was trying to get some footage but an older Asian man said it was probably best I got out of there.
“As I started to walk away, about four, five or six police cars came down the road. “I spoke to one lad who said it had been planned for months and they do it once a year. “You could tell it was definitely organised.
“One kid had cuts, really long cuts, across his face and was covered in blood. He was being attacked with an umbrella.” The witness, who lives off Cowley Road, believed the clashes had started in South Park before the trouble spread towards the Cowley Road area. Continued
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At least one in every 10 immigrants in Britain is given a council house, a report revealed yesterday.
But last night critics of the report branded it a “whitewash” and said it ignored the worsening impact of mass immigration on housing supply.
The reaction came after the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, which commissioned the report, claimed the figures proved immigrants were not “jumping the queue” for council houses.
In the past five years two per cent of new arrivals in Britain have been given social housing, it said.
But the actual total of those who were born aboard and now living in low-cost public housing is 11 per cent.
Critics of the report pointed out that council-house waiting lists in England had risen by 60 per cent in six years, while immigration accounted for nearly 40 per cent of new UK households.
The controversy followed Gordon Brown’s pledge of Government measures to ensure “locals” got priority in the distribution of council houses.
The report – by the Institute of Public Policy Research for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission – said only two per cent of publicly provided rented houses and flats were occupied by immigrants who had arrived in the previous five years.
Most immigrants settling in the UK can apply for benefits and social housing after five years. After that, the proportion of immigrants in social housing was the same as the wider population, the report said. Equalities Commission chairman Trevor Phillips said: “Much public concern about the impact of migration on social housing has, at its heart, the failure of social housing supply to meet the demands of the population.”
But Sir Andrew Green, of the think tank MigrationWatch, said:
“This report is the usual whitewash. It fails to address the huge pressure immigration has placed on housing demand.
“The Government is failing to ensure that there is sufficient housing, let alone social housing, to meet it.”
Former Labour minister Frank Field and senior Tory MP Nicholas Soames, co-chairmen of the House of Commons Cross Party Group on Balanced Migration, said: “The Government has lost control of immigration and does not have a housing policy to cope with the consequences.
“Waiting lists for social housing in England have risen 60 per cent in six years and now include nearly five million people.
Official statistics show we will have to build a new home every five minutes for the next 20 years or so just for future migrants.
“With public spending under such pressure, the first step must be to reduce this major source of housing demand.”
Housing Minister John Healey seized on the report to claim that allegations of immigrants jumping council-house queues were “a myth”. But he rejected suggestions that letting councils give priority to locals was addressing a mythical problem.
“Those people with the most serious housing needs get priority. We are not changing that. But there is more we can do to give local authorities freedom to give more preference,” he said. News Source
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Independent and respected think thank Migrationwatch has confirmed the accuracy of the British National Party’s analysis that immigrants are given priority over indigenous British people in the social housing ladder.
Writing on the Migrationwatch website, that organisation’s chairman, Sir Andrew Green, said that the facts showed that “white working-class people were indeed being leapfrogged by new arrivals with large families.”
Under a heading called “At last, the truth about immigration and council house queue jumping,” Sir Green said the Government’s announcement that they are handing councils new powers to give local people priority on the waiting list for social housing “is a clear admission that they have been misleading us over the huge impact of immigration on housing.”
Pointing out that the supply of social housing has fallen far behind the demand because waiting lists have grown by over 60 percent in six years, Sir Green said that one of the major reasons is the “number of asylum seekers who have been granted asylum - or other forms of protection which entitle them to remain in Britain - and offered social housing.
“Politicians frequently assure us that asylum seekers do not get social housing. This is true up to a point, as they are given private rented accommodation at public expense while their cases are decided.
“But as soon as they are granted permission to stay, they can go on the housing lists,” said Sir Green.
“Astonishingly, over the past ten years the Government has granted more asylum seekers permission to stay in Britain than they have actually built social housing for. So, inevitably, the waiting lists have got ever longer.
“So who on these bulging lists actually gets a council house? Currently, it is decided on the basis of ‘need’ which, in turn, is heavily influenced by family size.
“And once granted residence, a migrant or an asylum seeker can bring over his entire family and thereby move up the priority list.”
Sir Green referred to a major study called “The New East End”, published in 2006, which revealed the true extent of the problem. The researchers from the Young Foundation looked at what had happened in Bethnal Green in London’s East End over the past generation.
“They found that the Whitehall concept of ‘need’ had, in practice, favoured Bangladeshi workers who were beginning to bring over their families.
“Young British workers with smaller families were pushed out to Essex, away from their roots and away from their parents, who stayed put in their council houses in East London.
“The outcome was that family and social bonding between Bangladeshi families was strengthened - while the traditional working-class family structure of the British workers, especially the role of grandmothers, was severely weakened. The researchers found that the white working class were seething with resentment.
“The Government rushed to assure their supporters that there was no truth in any of this, insisting that it was all down to scare tactics.
“A report was subsequently commissioned by the then Commission for Racial Equality which conveniently concluded that there was no evidence that newly arrived migrants were being allocated housing in preference to UK-born people. But that was to dodge the real issue.
“The rules for allocating social housing might have been administered scrupulously. But it was the system itself that was unfair. Little or no credit was given for the length of time people had been waiting for housing, nor for the strength of their ties to the locality.
“As a result, white working-class people were indeed being leapfrogged by new arrivals with large families. Only now have the Government been forced into long-overdue action because their own supporters are deserting them in droves,” he said.
Sir Green went on to say that it was not just social housing that has been coming under such pressure because of immigration.
“All housing has been affected - yet the Government refuse to acknowledge this, let alone discuss it,” he continued.
“All over the country, despite deep opposition, planning authorities have been told how many more houses they must build. They have no idea how much of this is caused by immigration - nor do the local residents.
But Migrationwatch dug out the figure from the last line of the last table of a technical paper produced by the then Office of the Deputy Prime Minister - and, astonishingly, it is nearly 40 percent of all new homes.
“This figure comes from the Government predictions of new households which are issued every two years. The latest set shows that 252,000 households will be formed every year until 2031.
“They also show that without immigration, there would be only 153,000 households. In other words 99,000 households, or 39 percent, will be caused, not by existing immigrants, but by future immigrants and their families.
“Put another way, that is a requirement for a new home every five minutes for new immigrants over the next 23 years. This is an astronomical number. No wonder the Government avoid any discussion of it.
“As we face the most serious financial crisis for two generations and as the Government find themselves virtually broke, one has to ask, who is going to pay for all this? That is another subject the Government do not wish to discuss,” Sir Green concluded. News Source
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Islamic courts have been set up in Coventry and Warwickshire to issue rulings under strict sharia law, it has been claimed.
Thinktank Civitas claims there are 85 sharia courts across the country, with more than a quarter based in the Midlands, including Hillfields Mosque, in Coventry, and Frank Street mosque in Nuneaton.
The tribunals usually settle financial or family disputes according to Islamic principles, but cases are heard behind closed doors and women are not given the same legal status as men.
Decisions are legally binding and can be enforced in county courts and the high court if both parties have agreed to be ruled by sharia.
But judgments published online by some self-styled Muslim scholars based elsewhere in the Midlands have offered illegal advice.
Rulings have included condemning homosexuals to harsh beatings, ordering a wife to have sex with her husband “even if she is busy in the kitchen” and warnings that Muslims must not join the police.
Civitas director Dr David Green has now called for an immediate end to the recognition of Islamic courts by British law.
He said:
“The reality is that for many Muslims, sharia courts are in practice part of an institutionalised atmosphere of intimidation, backed by the ultimate sanction of a death threat.”
Islamic studies expert Denis Maceoin, who compiled the report, said there could be more Muslim tribunals operating without the government’s knowledge.
“Some are relatively small and putting an exact figure on them is difficult. There is no transparency.
“They don’t have to register at all.
“Among the rulings we find some that advise illegal actions and others that transgress human rights standards as applied by British courts.” Continued
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Four years ago the last of the 7/7 bombs exploded, a father falls to his knees at the grave of the son who died in the blast.
Yet the young man he is mourning at this unmarked grave in a Leeds cemetery was no victim.
He was Hasib Hussain - the 18-year-old who took 13 lives as well as his own when he detonated his bomb on the number 30 bus in Tavistock Square.
At precisely the same time that Mahmood Hussain mourned the death of his youngest son, 200 miles away relatives and friends of the victims of the attack gathered for the unveiling of a permanent memorial.
Prince Charles, the Duchess of Cornwall and Gordon Brown joined mourners in the rain at 9.47am, the exact moment when the last of the four bombs was detonated, at the unveiling of a memorial in Hyde Park.
In Leeds, Mr Hussain was remembering his son. An onlooker said: 'He arrived around alone at 9.30am and was waiting around calmly. But as soon as it reached 9.47am he fell to his knees, burying his head in his hands. He seemed utterly devastated.'
At that moment, relatives of the 52 victims of the 7/7 Tube bombings were paying special tribute to their lost loved ones.
The Prince told the crowd: 'I believe the date of the London bombings is etched vividly on all our minds, as a brutal intrusion into the lives of thousands of people.
'Tragically, as we know, some were not so fortunate as to walk away from what happened on that awful day, and it is them that we seek to honour with the memorial which has been erected here in Hyde Park in their memory.'
A minute's silence was then held as the rain, which had held off for much of the ceremony, began to fall heavily. The crowd stood with their heads bowed as traffic from nearby Park Lane rumbled by.
The Prince and the Duchess were then invited forward to lay wreaths, with Charles placing a floral tribute made up of his Prince of Wales feathers on behalf of the nation in front of a plaque bearing the names of all 52 victims, while Camilla left her own tribute of flowers on behalf of the families. Continued
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Another British soldier has been killed in Afghanistan, taking the number of UK deaths in the country to seven in a week.
The serviceman, from the Light Dragoons, died in an explosion near Gereshk in Helmand Province last night.
The death comes as Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth admitted today there is 'gloom and worry' about the British death toll in Afghanistan.
But he insisted troops on the ground have a sense of momentum and rejected comparisons with the Vietnam conflict.
He said: 'There is, of course, gloom and worry back here in London with the numbers of people that we've lost. If people weren't (worrying), there would be something seriously wrong with them.
'But when you go out to Afghanistan, as I did last weekend, there is a very real sense of momentum.'
The latest tragedy brought the UK toll to 176, just three fewer than the number of servicemen and women killed in Iraq.
Mr Ainsworth's comments come after a difficult few days for British forces in Afghanistan.
The seven fatalities included Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, the commanding officer of the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, who became the most senior Army officer to be killed on operations since the Falklands War.
The Defence Secretary insisted the troops were clear about their mission and were making progress.
'There is no doubt in their minds that they are achieving something, and that they are there for a purpose and that purpose is - boil it down - to help the Afghans and to protect national security," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
'There is no misunderstanding on their part that they are making progress, that they are there for a good cause. No doubt whatsoever.'
He said the Taliban's abilities had been significantly 'degraded' while the Afghan government was better able to 'reach its own people'. Continued
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A fanatic who once paraded his baby in an 'I love Al Qaeda' hat was yesterday jailed for firebombing the home of the publisher of a novel about Mohammed.
Sentencing Ali Beheshti, 41, and two accomplices to four and a half years, Mrs Justice Rafferty told them: 'If you choose to live in this country, you live by its rules.'
'There is no such thing as "a la carte citizenship" and, in your case, there is no such thing as "a la carte obedience" to the law.'
Beheshti, a follower of hate cleric Abu Hamza, poured diesel through the letterbox of Martin Rynja's £2.5million house and set it alight to 'punish' him for agreeing to release The Jewel of Medina, a fictional account of the Prophet's child bride.
Beheshti achieved notoriety three years ago at a protest against Danish cartoons of Mohammed when he was photographed with his 18-month-old daughter, Farisa, whom he had dressed in a pink bonnet celebrating Al Qaeda.
Beheshti, who has a previous conviction for the attempted murder of his father, described her to reporters as the youngest member of the network.
Last September, with accomplices Abrar Mirza, 23, and Abbas Taj, 30, he attacked the five-storey home and office of Mr Rynja in Islington, North London.
Cab driver Taj of Forest Gate, East London, acted as the getaway driver as Beheshti and Mirza, a mobile phone salesman of Walthamstow, North East London, poured diesel into the house.
A small fire began but nobody was hurt because police and fire crews arrived in time to smash down the door and put it out.
The arsonists were seized by armed police as they fled the scene in what officers described as an ' intelligenceled operation'.
Yesterday Andrew Hall QC, for Beheshti, said it was 'an act of protest born of the publication of a book felt by him and other Muslims to be disrespectful, provocative and offensive'.
Before his arrest Beheshti lived with his family in Ilford, East London. He described himself as a pilot on Farisa's birth certificate.
Beheshti and Mirza had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to recklessly damage property and endanger life at a hearing in April. Taj was convicted of the same offence at Croydon Crown Court in May.
At a sentencing hearing yesterday Mrs Justice Rafferty, sitting at London's Royal Courts of Justice, praised Mr Rynja as a 'principled man' who had exercised critical judgment on a literary work, and stood up to be counted, knowing that publishing it put him at risk.
Mr Rynja's publishing company, Gibson Square Books, bought the rights to the novel after Random House dropped plans to publish it, fearing it could 'incite acts of violence'.
Miss Jones said her book was respectful to Islam, and Mr Rynja said last October that he felt its publication was part of a liberal democracy.
Before his arrest Beheshti lived with his family in a smart semi detached house in Ilford, east London, where a 2007 Mitsubishi 4x4 sits on the drive. He described himself as a pilot on Farisa¹s birth certificate.
His wife, Hannah, 28, is the daughter of a sales consultant for an engineering firm who grew up in a smart home in a Bristol suburb.
Beheshti and Mirza, a mobile phone salesman of Walthamstow, North East London, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to recklessly damage property and endanger life.
Cab driver Taj of Forest Gate, East London was convicted of the same offence at Croydon Crown Court in May .
They were sentenced at the Royal Courts of Justice for administrative reasons. News Source
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The previous estimate of £12.8 billion per year of the cost of immigration to Britain has been underestimated by £4 billion, which is the total amount sent out of Britain in each year by immigrants.
According to a new report titled “The Invisible Cost of Immigration” published by independent think tank Migrationwatch, immigrants are sending home a record £4 billion a year. This figure has doubled over the last decade and constitutes almost £11 million a day.
This is all money lost to the British economy, and is nearly two thirds the amount that the Government spends on its lavish foreign aid budget. According to Migrationwatch, the £4 billion is “likely to be an underestimate as it does not include money sent from the UK by unofficial banking channels.”
The new figures show that the economic ‘benefits’ claimed by supporters of record immigration levels are “at best illusory.”
Last year the House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs found “no evidence” that net immigration generates significant economic benefits for the existing UK population.
The Government’s own evidence showed that the benefit of immigration is marginal - annual extra production equivalent to just 62p per head a week.
In addition, a marked surge in remittances to Pakistan has shown that the number of illegal invaders in Britain from that region could be as high as 200,000.
This figure has been calculated by comparing official statistics on the number of Pakistani born workers in Britain with the increased level of remittances being sent to that country.
Assuming that remittances per head have doubled since then as wages have increased and workers have moved up the ladder, the current flow of $520m a year would require about 350,000 workers to send home $1500 each year.
However, only 180,000 Pakistani born workers appear in the official Labour Force Survey so the remaining 170,000 workers needed to reach this level of remittances are likely to be working in Britain illegally. Illegal workers are likely to be paid less than those here legally, so there could well be, on this very rough calculation, as many as 200,000 Pakistanis working illegally in Britain, said Migrationwatch.
“We already know from investigations by newspapers that there are significant numbers of fraudulent students from Pakistan but not all will have come via this route,” said Sir Andrew Green, chairman of that organisation.
“As there are still no checks on departure, a proportion of those coming as visitors might well stay on after their visas expire. In the five years 2004-8 over half a million visas were issued in Pakistan, including nearly 60,000 student visas. Others could have arrived on the back of a truck.
“In our view the only plausible explanation for such a rapid increase in remittances from Pakistan is a sharp rise in the number of illegal immigrants sending money home. Not only are illegal workers undercutting the wages of British workers but, in the case of Pakistan, there are serious security aspects to an immigration system that has more holes than a Swiss cheese. This requires a root and branch review of the visa system for Pakistan,” he said. News Source
Wednesday 8th July 2009
Nearly 400,000 homes have gone to tenants who were born abroad, the Government's equality watchdog has said.
One in ten state-subsidised homes is occupied by an immigrant family, according to the first estimate of the impact of immigration on social housing.
More than half of the immigrants who live in council or housing association houses and flats are in London, the report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission found.
It added that four out of ten people born abroad who live in the capital are living in subsidised housing - a figure that suggests a million people in immigrant families have found homes in social housing in London.
The report blamed Home Office decisions to house asylum seekers in empty social housing around the country for 'fuelling misconceptions that asylum seekers are queue jumping and being allocated social housing ahead of white British applicants.'
It acknowledged that there is tension over who gets social housing in London and other cities including Birmingham.
But despite evidence of increasing anger over the allocation of housing in poorer and traditionally Labour-voting areas, the report insisted that there is no prejudice against the existing population in the decisions over who gets increasingly scarce homes.
It said the tension that has led to a growing vote for the far right British National Party in some parts of the country should be dealt with by fostering more positive attitudes to immigration and enforcing equality laws.
The conclusions will undermine Gordon Brown's latest plans to allow local authorities to give longstanding local residents priority in the queue for homes.
The report was drawn up for the Equality Commission by the Labour think tank Institute for Public Policy Research, which has a long record of support for large-scale immigration.
The Commission's chief, Trevor Phillips, is said to be likely to be forced out of his job this autumn.
Two years ago former minister Margaret Hodge, MP for Barking in East London, began a Labour row when she complained that migrant families were being given priority for homes over those with a 'legitimate sense of entitlement'.
Shortly afterwards Whitehall published the first estimate of numbers of foreigners in social housing, which suggested that one in 12 people in subsidised homes are foreign citizens.
However the figures published by the Equality Commission yesterday are based on the large-scale Labour Force Survey run by the Government's Office for National Statistics.
They count people born abroad, the measure accepted by statisticians as a better estimate of real numbers of immigrants.
The one in ten national estimate for social homes occupied by immigrants obscures much higher proportions of migrants in council and housing association property in some areas.
The report said that more than half of immigrant social tenants are in London, partly because of the high cost of renting or buying private homes.
It added: 'The most hostile attitudes about migration and social housing allocation were evident in places where there was a high proportion of the population on social housing waiting lists and where owner occupancy was most unaffordable, for example in Barking and in Birmingham.'
Some migrant groups, the report said, were highly dependent on social housing because their families had higher numbers of children and were more likely to be without work.
They included families from Afghanistan, Somalia and Bangladesh.
However Poles and other eastern Europeans who have arrived since 2004 are less likely to occupy social homes, it found, possibly because many see themselves returning home in future rather than staying long-term in Britain.
Only 11 per cent of migrants over the last five years live in social housing, the report said.
New immigrants with the right to live in Britain have been entitled to social housing since the 70s, when waiting lists which favoured local families were abolished and replaced with systems that allocated homes on the basis of need.
Homelessness, several children, pregnancy and poverty have since been factors that automatically push people towards the head of the queue.
But Robert Whelan, housing expert at the Civitas think tank, said: 'In some areas most units of social housing are going to immigrants, which provides fertile soil for the BNP.
'This report does not reflect the concerns of working class people and it is extremely unhelpful at a time when the BNP is hoovering up votes.
'It does not recognise the claims of longstanding local residents whose families have contributed to communities for generations.'
Equality Commission chairman Trevor Phillips said: 'Much of the public concern about the impact of migration on social housing has, at its heart, the failure of social housing supply to meet the demands of the population.
'The poorer the area, the longer the waiting lists, therefore the greater the tension.
'Government and social housing providers need to work with the communities they serve to address these issues.' News Source
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Statistics from the Labour Party-affiliated Institute of Public Policy Review have revealed the latest claims by the anti-white ‘Equalities and Human Rights Commission’ to be a pack of anti-British lies, BNP News can reveal.
A report entitled “Britain’s Immigrants, An economic profile”, produced by the IPPR in September 2007 for Class Films and Channel 4 Dispatches, shows that huge numbers of immigrants living in Britain are in social housing, contrary to the EHRC’s claims.
The IPPR report shows that 80% of Somalis, 49% of Turks, 41% of Bangladeshis, 39% of Ghanaians, 35% of Jamaicans, 33% of Iranians, 29% of Nigerians, 21% of Ugandans, 20% of Zimbabweans, 15% of Filipinos, 15% of Pakistanis, 14% of Sri Lankans, 12% of Kenyans, and 9% of Chinese immigrants live in public housing.
These figures are, of course, already three years old, and the figures are likely to have increased substantially since then, as Third World immigration has continued unabated since the IPPR compiled those figures.
Despite these figures showing clearly that immigrant groups occupy a massively disproportionate amount of public housing compared to their percentage of the population, the EHRC has, in its latest outpouring of hate against the BNP, commissioned the IPPR to quickly manufacture new statistics which try to prove that immigrants are not given precedence in the housing queue.
The IPPR quickly obliged the EHRC, and, ignoring its own earlier report which showed precisely how many immigrants are in receipt of social housing produced the new figures which claimed that “only 1.8 percent of social tenants had moved to Britain within the past five years.”
Unfortunately for the EHRC, the IPPR’s earlier report shows their new claims to be the politically motivated lies which they are.
Even according to the ‘new’ figures, the EHRC has admitted that 87.8 percent of social housing claimants are “British-born.” This, of course, means nothing, as the IPPR’s earlier report specifically classified second and third UK-born immigrants as claimants of social housing in its figures.
Even discounting that deliberate ‘British-born’ distortion, the EHRC has been forced to admit that ten percent of current social housing claimants are “foreigners who had been living in Britain for more than five years.”
Another factor which has allowed the EHRC to distort the figures even more is the fact that hundreds of thousands of bogus asylum seekers, both those awaiting decisions and those whose applications have already been rejected, do not live in social housing.
Asylum seekers are accommodated in private residential hotels, paid for by the taxpayer, and do not thus feature in the social housing statistics.
The EHRC also claimed that it found no evidence of ‘queue jumping’ by immigrants. This is also a deliberate distortion. Currently, social housing is allocated on the basis of ‘need’ and specifically the size of the family which is seeking accommodation.
In the 2007 IPPR report, a study was made of the immigrant groups’ percentage claims for child support. The higher the percentage, the greater the number of children - and once again the figures show clearly that immigrant groups will automatically ‘queue jump’ for social housing over indigenous British people who have fewer or no children.
The IPPR study found the following percentages for the “proportion of population claiming child benefit by country of birth” in 2005/2006: Somalia 40%, Bangladesh 33%, Pakistan 29%, Portugal 27%, Turkey 26%, Uganda 25%, Kenya 24%, Ghana 24%, Nigeria 22%, Sri Lanka 21%, Iran 20%, Cyprus 20%, Philippines 17%, India 16%, Jamaica 16%, Zimbabwe 16% and the UK 14%.
Furthermore, the IPPR report produced a percentage list of ‘economically active’ sections of each immigrant community, which also dramatically influences the allocation of social housing. Preference is given to those who can least afford housing, so the higher the unemployment rate amongst a particular group, the higher up on the ‘needs list’ it will feature.
This in turn will also automatically ‘queue jump’ these groups over those who are working, even if only in low paid jobs.
Once again, the IPPR figures from 2007 reveal precisely who is working and who is not. The figures below are the country of birth followed by the total unemployed for each community: Uganda 23%, Kenya 23%, Nigeria 24%, Sri Lanka 27%, India 29%, Portugal 30%, China 31%, Jamaica 31%, Cyprus 32%, Iran 49%, Pakistan 55%, Bangladesh 56%, Turkey 59% and Somalia 81%.
Finally, the most compelling argument against the false EHRC claims lies in the fact that the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has seen fit to announce a ‘policy change’ in social housing to give preference to local populations over immigrants. Effectively Mr Brown was admitting that the previous policy was to discriminate against British people in favour of immigrants - otherwise why the need for the policy change?
The 2007 IPPR report is available for download by clicking here.
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And now.. Perks for Simply doing the Job they already get paid for!
Senior police officers are receiving secret perks totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds - including private school fees, stamp duty and car allowances.
The gold-plated top-ups are negotiated 'off book' and paid in addition to salaries agreed in the public eye.
Cleveland Police's chief constable received a £74,000 bonus bringing his salary to £200,000, while the head of Norfolk Police got £70,000 to lure him from his previous post.
The revelations come amid intense scrutiny of how taxpayers' money is used following the MPs' expenses scandal and after Chancellor Alistair Darling's refusal to detail spending cuts after the next election.
Sean Price, chief of Cleveland Police, was paid a £50,000 'retention package' and an 'honorarium' of £24,000 - a bonus for cutting crime by 17 per cent.
His original salary of £125,000 already included a £32,000 car allowance, £4,000 a year towards private school fees for his children, and £1,000 towards private health insurance.
His total pay of £200,000 at the head of a 1,700- strong force exceeded the packages for chiefs of larger neighbouring forces.
According to a survey in Police Review magazine, Sean Price's £14,000 expenses claims in 2008 were the highest declared by a chief constable in England and Wales.
Cleveland Police Authority said the incentives reflected Mr Price's performance and insisted he 'fully deserved' the package.
Spokesman Dave McLuckie said: 'We have always been quite open about our decision to agree a package in order to retain the services of our chief constable.'
When the authority met to decide the deal in 2002, Alf Illingworth, an independent member of the authority, said it was outrageous, it was reported. Continued
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Senior police officers are receiving “off-book payments” and secret perks totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds, including private school fees and cars for their spouses.
The Times has discovered that one chief constable heading a force of just 1,700 officers was paid a £74,000 top-up on his salary last year. Sean Price, of the Cleveland force, was paid a £50,000 “retention package” and an “honorarium” of £24,000, raising his income to £200,000.
The private deals, sometimes referred to as debentures or supplements, are negotiated with police authorities behind closed doors and paid over and above salaries agreed in national negotiations. Continued
The revelation of significant differences between what a chief constable is said to earn and what he or she actually receives creates an element of murkiness in a public service that should be transparent.
The salaries of police chiefs are set by the Police Negotiating Board, based on the difficulties and challenges of each post across the country.
But the addition of fringe benefits to those salaries is eroding the differentials.
The situation has arisen because of a significant change in the job market for top cops. In the late 1990s competition for these roles was fierce but that is no longer the case. Continued
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Nearly 1,000 convicted criminals including murderers and rapists are roaming free, despite breaching terms of early release from jail.
Ministry of Justice figures revealed yesterday that 954 offenders recalled to prison before March this year had not surrendered to custody by the end of last month.
Among those on the run are 20 murderers, 15 rapists, 72 robbers, 140 burglars and five paedophiles. And last night critics branded Labour’s early release scheme as “reckless” and urged ministers to get a grip on the crumbling prison system.
The blunders are being seen as a huge embarrassment for Jack Straw, the Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary.
He came under pressure last month over the case of double-killer Dano Sonnex, who was allowed to roam the streets and butcher two French students when he should have been recalled to jail. Dominic Grieve, the Shadow Justice Secretary, said: “The whole point of releasing prisoners on licence is that they can be monitored and returned to prison if they breach.
“The public will be shocked that the Government has lost track of almost 1,000 criminal fugitives, including murderers, paedophiles and sex offenders.”
He added: “Labour’s reckless early release scheme and lax approach to probation is putting the public at greater risk. And cuts to frontline probation services will only make this situation even worse.”
Lib Dem justice spokesman David Howarth said: “Ministers should come to Parliament and explain why nearly a thousand recalled prisoners are being allowed to run free.”
Official figures, which cover England and Wales, also reveal that some offenders recalled to custody up to 25 years ago were still on the run. Altogether, 142 have been on the loose for more than five years.
A total of 158 offenders on the run listed in yesterday’s figures were convicted of violent crimes.
Most prisoners serving a jail term of 12 months or more are released automatically at the half-way point of their sentence, the Ministry of Justice’s report said. They are expected to regularly report to probation officers, live at an approved address, keep out of trouble and may face other restrictions such as curfews or exclusions orders.
Those who breach the terms of their licence are supposed to be returned to jail to finish their sentences in custody. But Ministry of Justice officials admitted that Government targets for returning such offenders to jail are not being met.
Police are expected to find three quarters of prisoners within six days of recall, or within 74 hours in “emergency” cases involving serious crimes. During the year 2007-08, only 58 per cent of recalls were carried out within the official time limit, meaning 5,307 were not back in cells when they should have been.
A Ministry of Justice spokesman defended the performance on recalls as “creditable” despite the failure to hit official targets, adding: “The largest majority of reasons for recall in this data are for being out of touch with their probation officer.”
And Mr Straw said: “The recall system works well. Of those recalled between 1999 and June 2008, just 0.7per cent of offenders have not been apprehended.
“But we are far from complacent, and recognise that the system has to be strengthened further, not least in respect of those serious offenders who remain at large.” But Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of probation officers’ union, Napo, said: “It is of real concern that nearly 1,000 offenders who have been recalled to custody have gone missing. Many pose a threat to the public.
“The numbers will only be reduced if chasing warrants becomes a priority for the police – which won’t happen – or additional resources are made available for the probation and police services.”
But the Association of Chief Police Officers told forces to take “priority action” to urgently arrest sexual and violent offenders. News Source
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Police must urgently review their tactic of 'kettling' demonstrators, MPs investigating the G20 protests say today.
In a damning report, the Commons home affairs committee says holding protesters in a small area for hours is unacceptable.
The first major review of the £7million operation also said officers who work with their identity numbers hidden or missing should face the 'strongest possible' disciplinary measures.
It concluded: 'Above all, the police must constantly remember that those who protest on Britain's streets are not criminals but citizens motivated by moral principles, exercising their democratic rights.
'The police's doctrine must remain focused on allowing this protest to happen peacefully. Any action which may be viewed by the general public as the police criminalising protest on the streets must be avoided at all costs.'
Police have been heavily criticised for their conduct at demonstrations by 35,000 people during the visit of world leaders to London in early April.
Newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson, 46, died in clashes in Central London, after being pushed to the ground. The officer who allegedly shoved him has been suspended and could face criminal charges.
Amateur videos appear to show protesters being pushed or hit by officers. More than 200 complaints of alleged police brutality at the protests have been made.
Today's report condemns the tactic of kettling, saying it is unacceptable to impose a blanket ban on movement.
Frontline officers must be given discretion to allow peaceful protesters to escape highly-charged events, MPs said.
They added that 'urgent action' is needed to ensure ID numbers are displayed at all times, on pain of the 'strongest possible' disciplinary action.
Senior officers have a 'personal responsibility' to enforce this.
MPs expressed concern that untrained and inexperienced officers were left in such a 'highly combustible atmosphere' at the frontline of the protests.
Overall the report found the operation was 'remarkably successful' with little disruption-to the capital, but said this may have been down to an 'element of luck'.
Committee chairman Keith Vaz said: 'It is clear that concerns about the policing of the G20 protests have damaged the public's confidence in the police, and that is a great shame.
'The ability of the public and the media to monitor every single action of the police through CCTV, mobile phones and video equipment should mean they take even greater care to ensure that all their actions are justifiable.'
LibDem home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said: 'Using untrained and inexperienced officers for such a high-profile and large policing operation is not only completely unacceptable, but dangerous, and obviously contributed to the breakdown in communication between officers and protesters highlighted by the report.'
Paul McKeever, chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, said officers need a range of tactics to police public order situations, adding that ' containment must be proportionate to the circumstances and intelligence gathered' while being 'balanced against the need to take measures against the potential for much greater disorder'.
Anarchists who plotted to tear down security fences around the port at Calais and the Channel Tunnel in support for illegal migrants were thwarted by a massive police presence at the weekend.
The 2,000 protesters were almost outnumbered by French riot police. Ten of them, mostly British, were arrested. News Source
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Radical Islamic preacher Abu Izzadeen has been recalled to jail after breaking the terms of his release, prison sources said today.
Izzadeen, who is also known as Trevor Brooks, was jailed last year for four and a half years for inciting terrorism but released in May this year after his sentence was cut on appeal.
The 34-year-old gained notoriety when he heckled former home secretary John Reid at a public meeting four years ago.
He was found guilty in 2008 of urging worshipers at a London mosque to join the mujahideen to fight British and American troops in Iran.
But he is now back in jail after breaking the conditions of his release relating to good behaviour, prison sources confirmed today.
He was recalled after he swore at police officers who were checking that he was keeping to the terms set out when he was freed, according to the Sun.
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: 'We do not comment on individual prisoners.'
Izzadeen - who was born a Christian with the name Omar Brooks, later changing his first name to Trevor - was jailed for four and a half years last April for inciting and raising funds for terrorism.
He and fellow British-born Muslim convert Simon Keeler were handed the same jail term after making a series of rabble-rousing speeches at a central London mosque. Four fellow fanatics were also jailed.
The defendants were all members of an extreme Islamist group known as Al-Muhajiroun, which has been banned only to allegedly regroup under a different name.
They made speeches in November 2004 outside the Regent's Park Mosque in London - at the same time as U.S. and British soldiers were fighting fierce battles against insurgents in Fallujah, Iraq.
The court heard the men urged their audience to join the fight against coalition forces and to donate money to insurgent groups. Izzadeen was also recorded voicing his support for Osama Bin Laden.
Izzadeen shot to prominence in 2006 when he launched a furious tirade during a speech to Muslims by then Home Secretary Mr Reid in East London.
In front of TV cameras, he denounced Mr Reid as a "tyrant" and an "enemy of Islam" before being escorted out by security guards.
Izzadeen was born in Hackney, East London, and has a Jamaican background. He was raised as a Christian but converted to Islam when he was 17. He became a hard-liner after coming across the preachings at Finsbury Park mosque of "Tottenham Ayatollah" Omar Bakri. News Source
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A grandfather was left dying while a paramedic spent 16 minutes carrying out a health and safety check on his flat.
Roy Adams, 61, was told to leave the entrance to his home open for emergency workers after he dialled 999 for medical help following a suspected heart attack.
But it is thought that the rapid response medic who was first at the scene feared the open door and another on the latch meant the flat was being burgled.
He waited outside and conducted a risk assessment while waiting for police support vehicles to arrive.
By the time he entered the property Mr Adams had collapsed to the floor, unable to breathe. He died on the way to hospital.
His daughter Catherine, a security worker, said she believed the delay might have cost her father his life.
'I keep picturing him in agony on the floor taking his dying breaths as he could hear the paramedic outside,' she said.
'He must have been thinking: "Please, just come in, just come in".
'It's heartbreaking. I can't understand why the medic waited so long.'
Miss Adams said it was ' ludicrous' to suspect that her father, a civilian police driver from Morden in South London, posed a risk. She added: 'My dad had been instructed to put the doors on the latch by the operator. Vital minutes were wasted.
'He might well have survived if the medic had gone in and treated him as soon as he arrived, but now we will never know.
'We haven't been given any explanation from the ambulance service. I find it baffling.
'We've got to get answers. We've got to find out. We don't want any other family to have to go through what we are going through.
'My dad was a pillar of the community. He spent his life serving others, but when he desperately needed help he was made to wait for heath and safety reasons.
'The image of him lying there desperate for help as the paramedic waited outside keeps going round and round in my head.'
Doctors attributed Mr Adams's death on June 29 to coronary artery disease.
A London Ambulance Service spokesman said: 'We have a duty of care to treat patients but we also have to look after our staff.
'In this case the medic conducted the on-scene risk assessment and had safety concerns and decided to call for back-up.'
He said the assessment was a 'mental check list' which paramedics are required to go through when they arrive at an emergency.
Questions include: does the scene look safe? Are there any obvious risks? Will I require extra help? Will I need a stretcher? Will I need extra equipment? Are there any steps or other obstacles that could cause a problem?
The spokesman said the paramedic entered Mr Adams's flat after the risk assessment while 'maintaining telephone contact with our control room'.
He added: 'One patient - a man - was taken to hospital. We are currently looking into the circumstances surrounding the incident.'
The paramedic took just six minutes to reach the communal entrance to the block of flats where Mr Adams, who was divorced, lived.
Mr Adams, who was alone at the time of his collapse, had two daughters and three grandchildren.
He had spent 17 years with the Met, chauffeuring Scotland Yard commanders, driving police vans and taking high-profile witnesses to court. He also drove in support of fraud squad raids.
A talented amateur singer, he had appeared at the Royal Albert Hall with the London Welsh Male Voice Choir. News Source
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People were urged today not to panic as a teacher and a nine-year-old girl became the latest Britons to die after contracting swine flu.
The victims from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire - named locally as Abdullah Patel, in his 40s, and Asmaa Hussain - were said by officials to have “underlying health issues”.
Local MP Shahid Malik said: “Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of those who have tragically passed away. This is an incredibly sad time as families come to terms with their loss.”
He added: “It is also important to stress that for most people swine flu has been a mild illness that has passed in a few days and there is absolutely no need to panic.”
No link has been established between the two victims, who bring the UK total of swine flu patient deaths to seven.
Another nine-year-old girl, from south London, was yesterday also confirmed to have died over the weekend after contracting the illness.
Asmaa, who died on Thursday, suffered from epilepsy and attended a special school, while Mr Patel was said to have worked at the Institute of Islamic Education (IIE) in Savile Town, Dewsbury.
Asmaa’s uncle Ghulam Rasoo told reporters she died 15 minutes after she a massive epileptic fit. He said a doctor had diagnosed flu symptoms and prescribed the anti-viral Tamiflu but she died before taking them.
Asmaa’s father Merban Hussain reportedly died from a heart attack two months ago.
The IIE, a small independent boarding school, was closed last week after a swine flu outbreak. No-one was available for comment at the school last night.
Health officials said they could not confirm whether swine flu was the cause of death in either case. News Source
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Michael Jackson was a pervert and Americans should stop hero worshipping him, a U.S. Congressman has declared.
New York State Republican Peter King's decision to say what many may not have dared to triggered a furious backlash from the singer's mourning fans yesterday.
Mr King declared that society was glorifying a 'low-life' while ignoring the achievements of teachers, police officers, firefighters, war veterans and volunteers.
Many Americans praised him for taking a stand against the idolatry which has marked an 11-day wave of public grief since the singer's death.
Mr King, 65, was speaking outside a Long Island fire station that has a memorial to firefighters who gave their lives in service.
'This guy was a pervert,' he declared. 'He was a child molester, he was paedophile, and to be giving this much coverage to him day in and day out, what does it say about us as a country?'
Six years ago Jackson admitted in a TV interview he invited children into his bed but denied that he interfered with them. Among the comments flooding the internet, one said: 'Peter King, clean up your act or if you can't say nothing nice, shut your mouth.'
However, a comment backing the politician said: 'Thank you Peter King for saying what many of us are thinking. Finally someone has the guts to say it!'
The 65-year-old congressman's internet outburst was made in the run-up to a memorial service being staged for Jackson today, opening him to claims of 'gross insensitivity'.
Among the many comments flooding the internet, one US emailer wrote: Peter King, you need to look at the man in the mirror. Clean up your act or if you can't say nothing nice, shut your mouth. I'm sure mother taught you that... or were you hatched? Another said: What a Racist, insentive public figure. You have nothig to say, IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO RESIGN.
But there was also an avalanche of backing for the controversial politician, including these on YouTube: Thank you Peter King for saying what many of us are thinking.
Finally someone has the guts to say it! Enough of Michael Jackson!
More than a million fans learned today they would not get tickets for the event in Los Angeles, for which 11,000 seats were allocated in an email-based lottery. Continued
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Gordon Brown's creaking Cabinet suffered another blow last night after it was revealed that Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell is poised to quit the Commons at the next Election.
Party insiders said that Ms Jowell, 61, has told friends she believes it is time to step down after 17 years as MP for Dulwich, South London, and move to the House of Lords.
Ms Jowell attempted to play down the claims last night, saying: ‘I have been reselected as the Labour candidate for Dulwich and it is my current intention to stand at the next Election.
‘I believe in politics and am 1,000 per cent committed to a successful Olympics in 2012.’
However, well-placed Labour sources said it was an ‘open secret’ that Ms Jowell, who has remained a Labour Minister since the party won power in 1997, is planning to step down.
It comes just weeks after several prominent Labour politicians confirmed they are to leave politics amid a growing belief that Tory leader David Cameron will beat the Prime Minister at the next Election.
Former Cabinet Ministers and staunch Blairites John Reid, Alan Milburn, Ruth Kelly and John Hutton are, like Ms Jowell, all stepping down at the General Election, expected next year.
However, Ms Jowell is the first serving member of the Cabinet to head for the political exit, which will do little for confidence in the Government.
Last month, Mr Brown narrowly survived an attempted Cabinet coup, in which two senior Blairite Ministers, James Purnell and Hazel Blears, resigned.
Ms Jowell’s decision not to walk out on Mr Brown proved crucial in saving him – and she was rewarded for her loyalty with a new Cabinet Office job to go with her 2012 Olympics role.
One of her tasks is to act as Mr Brown’s unofficial ‘nanny’, making sure that he gets more rest and stops firing off emails to Ministers at 3am.
Ms Jowell, who has four grandchildren, split from her businessman husband David Mills in 2006 after he was accused of tax fraud and money laundering as a result of his links to Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
However, the pair did not divorce and have stayed close, prompting claims that the break-up was a ruse to save her career.
Ms Jowell, who was educated at St Margaret’s public school in Aberdeen, was a social worker before she became an MP.
She married her first husband, Camden Labour councillor Roger Jowell, in 1970, but the couple divorced six years later.
She entered Parliament in 1992 and was among a small group of Blairites who persuaded Tony Blair not to stand down as Prime Minister in favour of Mr Brown in the aftermath of the Iraq war.
Ms Jowell is said to have claimed she would ‘jump under a bus’ for Mr Blair. However, her loyalty to him made her enemies in Mr Brown’s circle.
As a result, when he became Prime Minister in 2007, he demoted her, only to restore her full Cabinet status last month when he was in danger of running out of experienced Ministers.
Ms Jowell’s open nature and good humour have made her very popular with most Labour MPs.
She was a member of the so-called ‘Labour WAGS’ – Women Against Gordon – which also included ex-Ministers Caroline Flint and Jacqui Smith.
As Culture Minister, Ms Jowell was forced to backtrack on plans to open a network of Las Vegas-style super casinos in Britain after a public outcry.
She was also accused of raiding National Lottery funds to pay for Government projects.
More recently, she has faced criticism over the soaring cost of the London Olympics. News Source
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The European Union has been hit by a renewed crisis of confidence as the full implications of last week’s German Constitutional Court ruling on the Lisbon Treaty have hit home.
In their initial rush to portray the court ruling as favourable towards the Lisbon Treaty, most of the media pretended that all the German government had to do was make a few amendments and all would be well.
Now, however, the full text of the ruling has been analysed and its implications have dawned upon the pro-EU parties - and they are not pleased.
The court ruling - made after a case against the Lisbon Treaty brought by the leader of the CSU party in Bavaria, Peter Gauweiler - contains the following far-reaching statements:
- The initial ratification by the German parliament of the Lisbon Treaty was “negligent”;
- By passing the so-called ‘accompanying law’ to the Lisbon Treaty, which determines the rights of German parliament to participate in European legislation, the German parliament representatives had “relinquished significant monitoring rights to Brussels”;
- This “unconstitutionally subjects the people that they represent to the whims of a bureaucracy that lacks sufficient democratic legitimacy,” the court ruled.
- Germany’s future lies not in “a united Europe but in Germany”;
- The EU is described as an “association of sovereign national states” and not as an integrated state, which is the purpose of the Lisbon Treaty.
- The EU is not a “representative body of a sovereign European people.”
The court ruled that EU members of parliament “are not elected according to the principle of electoral equality” but according to “national contingents” which are in contradiction to EU law itself which prohibits discrimination based on nationality.
In this way, the court said, it is inherently unfair that an MEP from Malta represents only 67,000 Maltese residents, while an MEP from Sweden represents 455,000 Swedes and a single German MEP represents 857,000 people.
This state of affairs, the court said, “can only be explained by the fact that the EU is not a state but an association of sovereign states.” Constitutionally, this means that there is no ’sovereign citizens’ union’ in the European Parliament, and therefore, the court ruled, the German parliament must receive substantially more rights in lawmaking than the EU parliament.
In particular, the court has ruled, Germany must remain sovereign in the areas of “political decisions that particularly depend on a previous understanding of culture, history and language . . . (comprising) the citizenship, the civil and military monopoly on the use of force, revenue and expenditure, including external financing and all elements of encroachment that are decisive for the realisation of fundamental rights, above all as regards intensive encroachments on fundamental rights such as the deprivation of liberty in the administration of criminal law or the placement in an institution.”
In addition, the court ruled, the German state has the right to decide for itself on “cultural issues such as speaking a language, shaping the circumstances concerning family and education, ensuring freedom of opinion, of the press and of association, and accommodating professions of faith or ideology.”
All of these go directly against many of the provisions and intent of the Lisbon Treaty.
Finally, the court has requested the German parliament to pass a new law which would allow every citizen the opportunity to file a suit with the German Constitutional Court against any or all EU regulations.
The court’s ruling is so far-reaching that it may jeopardise the German government’s schedule for the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty and even European integration.
Mr Gauweiler is not letting his success rest. His party - a partner in the government coalition - has now submitted a new set of demands over and above the constitutional changes demanded by the court.
Unless these conditions are met, the CSU will not lend its support to the ratification process, and the whole treaty may stall in what was the EU’s biggest supporting nation.
Amongst other demands, the CSU will only ratify the Lisbon Treaty if it is constitutionally enshrined that the German parliament has “maximum” influence over future EU policy and that a referendum be held on the issue.
Any delays in ratifying the treaty will have a negative knock-on effect for other European countries who have yet to ratify the treaty, including Ireland, Poland and the Czech Republic. News Source
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A British soldier and two Canadians have been killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan, taking the toll of UK forces deaths there to four in as many days.
The latest Briton to die was from 22 Engineer Regiment, Royal Engineers, the Ministry of Defence said. His next of kin have been informed.
The Griffon helicopter crashed on takeoff at an American forward operating base in the southern Zabul province, 50 miles north-east of Kandahar.
The cause of the crash in was not yet clear but Nato spokesman Lieutenant Commander Chris Hall said it was not the result of an attack by the Taliban.
It came as hundreds of people turned out to pay their respects to two other British soldiers killed in Afghanistan - including the highest-ranking Army officer to be killed since the Falklands War - as their bodies were returned to British soil.
The Canadians who died in the helicopter crash were named by media as Master Corporal Pat Audet and Corporal Martin Joannette. Three other Canadians were hurt in the crash, including the two pilots.
A Task Force Helmand spokesman said the latest British death had saddened fellow servicemen.
'Today has been a sad day in the history of Task Force Helmand and this death has deeply moved us,' said Lieutenant Colonel Nick Richardson.
'The loss of a soldier, friend and colleague is tragic and our thoughts are with his family and friends at this sad time.'
His death takes the number of UK service personnel killed in the country since the start of operations in October 2001 to 175. Six have died in less than a week.
With another seven American troops killed on the same day, yesterday was one of the worst for coalition troops in Afghanistan since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001.
Yesterday hundreds of people turned out to pay their respects as the bodies of two of the men - including the highest-ranking Army officer to die on operations since the Falklands - were returned to the UK. Continued
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Former Cabinet minister Stephen Byers has been assaulted over an apparent protest against his expenses claims, it emerged yesterday.
Mr Byers was attacked on Saturday morning as he arrived to take a surgery in his North Tyneside constituency.
The ex-transport secretary was sprayed with a bottle of blue energy drink as he got out of his car at a housing complex.
A man was arrested and later accepted a caution.
Mr Byers, 56, sparked controversy after it emerged that he had claimed more than £125,000 in second homes expenses over five years for a London flat owned by his partner, where he lived rent-free.
He spent £27,000 of taxpayers' money on redecoration, maintenance and appliances at the basement flat in Camden, north London, including more than £12,000 towards extensive renovations to the building.
One local Labour party member said yesterday: 'People are genuinely disgusted.'
Since then Mr Byers has held a number of surgeries and gone to great lengths to explain his actions to voters.
But moments after arriving at Emmerson Court in Shiremoor, Newcastle, at the weekend, he was sprayed with the blue Powerade drink.
After a brief scuffle, the police were called and a 64-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of common assault.
He was driven to a nearby police station where he later accepted a caution. Continued
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More than 1,600 Royal Mail staff have been caught stealing from the post in the last five years.
It means that on average one Post Office employee is sacked for theft for every working day of the year.
Last year saw a rise of 26 per cent in the number of staff prosecuted or cautioned for theft. In 2008/09, a total of 276 employees were prosecuted for stealing, and another ten were cautioned, compared with 226 in 2007/8.
The figures show a marked drop, however, from figures in previous years. In 2004/5, 443 employees were prosecuted for stealing.
The editor of the postal industry website, Hellmail, Steve Lawson, said: 'There can be no plausible excuse for the actual theft of mail and whilst Royal Mail is rightly tough in its response to such cases, all too often the courts let them down by issuing community orders.
'It is essential that the security of mail is given the highest priority and that courts match this in sentencing, otherwise it not only downgrades the offence, but the role of a delivery worker which after all depends heavily on trust and should be respected for the job he or she does.
'Theft plays a large part in the perception that customers have of the service and unfortunately one case can taint the reputation of hundreds of other delivery workers in a given area which is why it is frowned upon internally.
'Better monitoring would obviously improve things and in an ideal world a fully-tracked system but in an increasingly dishonest world, everyone should be on their toes.
'Any occurrences, even minor ones, undermine trust in the service by customers, including business.
'What is not clear from these figures is how many suspected of theft, slip through the net because they resigned or were simply asked to leave.
'Investigations are expensive to execute and frequently cost significantly more than the recovered mail.'
A spokesman for the Royal Mail said: 'We have a zero tolerance approach to any dishonesty and, where there is evidence, we seek to bring offenders before the courts.
'While the overwhelming majority of all letters posted arrive safely at the correct destination, we remain very vigilant to any risk to the operation, including any threat from criminals outside Royal Mail who target postmen and women to steal the mail they are carrying.
'Royal Mail Group employs around 180,000 people in the UK and it remains the case that the huge majority of our people are scrupulously honest and take huge care over the mail entrusted to them by our customers.' Continued
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It's as easy as not boiling an egg. Now you don't even have to go to the trouble of heating the water and keeping an eye on the timer.
You can buy your eggs already boiled and shelled at the supermarket. The Happy Egg Company believes its hard-boiled free-range eggs are just the thing for a summer picnic, salad or school lunch box.
And considering that so many of us admit we can barely boil water, they could be on to something. The eggs will be available at Waitrose, Asda, convenience chain One Stop and through home delivery firm Ocado.
They cost 89p for a pack of two or £1.49 for four. That works out at between 37p and 45p an egg. In contrast, Asda's cheapest eggs are sold in a 15-pack costing £1.45 - or 9.7p per egg. Continued
Tuesday 7th July 2009
More of YOUR Taxes frittered away overseas
including provisions of police, security and justice systems as well as funding to provide jobs as an alternative to war for ex-soldiers
Is it not time to sort out the same as above here in their own backyard first?
The UK is to spend £1bn ($1.6bn) a year in overseas aid on countries that have recently emerged from conflict.
The money will target security and job creation rather than traditional areas such as health and education.
International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander is expected to unveil the move in a White Paper on Monday.
His department will also get a new look - branded UK Aid - to try to raise the profile of British government spending on international development.
BBC international development correspondent David Loyn says the government will double the amount it spends at the "harder end" of aid priorities.
This includes police, security and justice systems as well as funding to provide jobs as an alternative to war for ex-soldiers.
The aim is to try to prevent conflicts in 20 fragile states where about one third of the poorest people in the world live.
Poverty goal
The change in emphasis is based on what are seen as success stories in Sierra Leone and Nepal which are both coming out of long and bitter conflicts.
Our correspondent says the challenge will be harder in places such as Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Chad.
But the view is that the goal of halving the number of people in the world living in poverty by 2015 will not be met without such a change, especially during the global economic downturn.
The Conservatives have announced their own plans for overseas aid.
They are said to include the possibility of "aid vouchers" to let people in poor countries shop around for the best schools and services.
Another reported Tory proposal is to spend £9.1bn of overseas aid on funding for private schools. News Source
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The Government has announced a rebranding of the foreign aid swindle in order to try and justify it to an increasingly sceptical public who see their tax money taken away from essential services in Britain and dished out to an increasingly ungrateful Third World.
According to a White Paper to be released tomorrow by Secretary of State Douglas Alexander, overseas aid is to be rebranded in a bid to “help maintain support for spending during the downturn.”
Apparently the Department for International Development (DFID) will from now on use the name “UKaid” for its funding of projects.
The name change was suggested in an earlier report from the House of Commons International Development Select Committee. The change to a new name would heighten awareness of DFID’s work among voters in the UK and aid recipients overseas, said the cross-party committee.
According to the Select Committee’s report, 54 percent of people questioned in the UK had never heard of DFID. To make matters worse, the report said, Africans in Kenya benefiting from one of the department’s projects told the MPs they did not even know what DFID was or where it came from.
The latest handouts to the Third World, courtesy of the British taxpayer, include 30 million bed nets, the development of new treatments and new funding to increase access to anti-malarial drugs, according to the DFID website.
This includes £19 million from 2010 to the Medicines for Malaria Venture to support the development of new drugs and further financial support for the Affordable Medicines Facility for Malaria (AMFM) pilot which subsidises medicines across the world to the tune of £40 million.
The DFID has also announced that it is giving an unnamed amount of cash to sponsor a back patting ceremony called the “Guardian Achievements in International Development Award.”
This weird waste of money idea is the product of the extremist leftist Guardian newspaper and international abortion clinic provider Marie Stopes. The award will, according to the announcement, “celebrate the work of individuals who have made an exceptional contribution to alleviating poverty in the developing world.”
The winner of the award, no matter where in the world he or she might be, will be flown to London, wined and dined and given the unspecified reward, all courtesy of the British taxpayer.
* Meanwhile, unemployment increases across Britain and new cuts in spending on social services here are inevitable due to the recession. News Source
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Most people have a commonsense approach to fraud. We know cheating, lying and stealing when we see it.
The law does not work in such a simple way.
The case of the London woman who claimed a false address in order to get her child into a desirable school illustrates the point.
She may or may not have cheated but charges against her were dropped because of legal doubts about whether she was technically guilty of fraud.
Cheating over a school place is not, it was argued, like a bank clerk fiddling the accounts to make a bit on the side.
To many of my constituents for whom access to a good education is a prime concern, that will be a bewildering conclusion: an acceptance that anything goes and dishonesty won’t be punished by the law.
I don’t particularly want to single out this family for criticism since there are countless cases of parents resorting to dishonest little tricks to get their children into schools of their choice.
My point is a more general one: fraud, in the broad sense, is all around us but is tolerated. Every week I have people coming to my advice surgery telling me that they are victims of fraud.
They have lost a lot of money to a dodgy builder or bank or lawyer or travel company but cannot persuade the police to investigate or are told that there is insufficient proof of intent to defraud.
They are not rich enough to hire lawyers for a civil action and often may not be eligible for legal aid. They may suffer grievous loss and ruin. Yet nothing can be done to remedy the injustice, under the law.
At a time when many people are losing their jobs and homes and others are making fortunes, the frail protection we have is the law. And the law is what determines whether the fortunes have been made honestly and not by theft.
Yet we see what looks like fraud and cheating on a large scale and crooked people getting away with it while thousands of perfectly honest people go before courts every week to face the dire consequences of home repossession or bankruptcy.
I seriously worry that there is now a massive disconnect between what most people would regard as justice and fairness and what actually happens under our law.
Last week, we had one case where justice was done. The world’s biggest fraudster went to jail in America. Bernie Madoff stole money in clever ways from - mostly - rich people and from charities he patronised.
For this crime he has been sentenced to several lifetimes in jail.
He has been treated more severely than a murderer or rapist. The US authorities were, I think, trying to give the public a reassuring message: that white-collar crime, notably fraud, has victims just as much as bank robbery or burglary; and that the law will eventually catch up with crooks.
Good messages. But messages that ring a little hollow, especially in Britain.
Madoff’s technique was what was called a Ponzi scheme. He stole money from investors who entrusted their cash to him and kept enough back to pay out reasonable returns on investments and those who asked for their money back. The rest of the money disappeared.
As in the US, Ponzi schemes and other forms of pyramid selling are criminal here in Britain. What the public finds strange is that the Madoff Ponzi scheme is not very different from the way many of our financial and other banking institutions function.
People have made fortunes in the City on the basis of promises to investors that were as improbable as Madoff’s. Their banks duly collapsed; the taxpayer has compensated the victims (or not, in the case of Equitable Life); and the operators have walked away with their loot.
A couple of months ago, I visited the head of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) to ask why more fraud was not being prosecuted. I believe that there are several Madoff-type schemes in the City now being investigated which will be brought to court.
Misconduct of a more general kind is difficult to prove. It is striking that despite the substantial criminal powers available to the police and the financial regulators (the FSA), these are rarely used.
The SFO also has a sad history of failed prosecutions (and its authority was badly undermined when Tony Blair stopped it investigating alleged large-scale bribery involving arms contracts and Saudi princes). The public has, I think, drawn the correct conclusion: Madoff was the exception. My career advice for British crooks is to stick to finance: you’ll never get to court, let alone prison.
One man who did not follow such advice is Ronnie Biggs, the Great Train Robber. Despite advancing years and poor health, he cannot be released from jail.
Paedophiles and murderers go free but he remains behind bars. I am not trying to defend Mr Biggs, who violently assaulted a train driver and stole a lot of money.
What the authorities can’t forgive is not the assault (worse happens every day and doesn’t even attract a custodial sentence) but his two-fingered salute to the powers that be.
He sends out the dangerous message that he isn’t sorry for helping himself to other people’s money. He was just unlucky enough to be caught.
The public’s cynicism grows by the day as they judge that there is a yawning gap between justice on financial abuses and crime in general. The parliamentary expenses scandal, for example, is sliding into the long grass apart from the revelations just surfacing about Mr George Osborne.
There is a large grey area between the ethical and the illegal but the two are interwoven. Unless justice is seen to be done, there is no legal underpinning for ethical behaviour.
The public sense that this recent financial – and parliamentary – crisis is part of a wider collapse of standards and decline in honesty and that the authorities are too weak or lazy or incompetent to ensure justice is done.
Before we settle back down to ‘business as usual’ it is vitally necessary that the mini-Madoffs who populate the financial community and their equivalents in public life who have been dishonest are brought before the courts and sentenced.
The SFO, the anti tax-dodging operations of HM Revenue & Customs, the police and other enforcement bodies, must be built up, not cut back. The law cannot be blind to fat-cat criminals and eagle-eyed to everyone else. News Source
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A leading Church of England bishop yesterday called on homosexuals to 'repent and be changed'.
The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, said homosexual behaviour was a sin and called for the Church to return to its traditional teachings on sexuality.
On a weekend that Labour and Tory leaders vied to demonstrate the depth of their support for the gay rights movement, Dr Nazir-Ali said: 'We don't want to be rolled over by culture and trends in the Church.'
The stand by the bishop - who is to retire from his diocese later this summer - brought bitter condemnation from gay pressure groups.
It also came as Sarah Brown, the Prime Minister's wife, joined a Pride London march to celebrate gay culture on Saturday, and last week David Cameron apologised for his party's enactment of Section 28, the 1988 law that forbade schools from promoting homosexuality.
Dr Nazir-Ali's move is also another step towards a split in the Church between liberals who dominate its leadership and those who demand traditional teaching.
Today he will figure in the launch of a Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans which attempts to rally traditionalist churchgoers.
The bishop told the Sunday Telegraph: 'We want to uphold the traditional teaching of the Bible. We believe that God has revealed his purpose about how we are made.
'People who depart from this don't share the same faith. They are acting in a way that is not normative according to what God revealed in the Bible.
'The Bible's teaching shows that marriage is between a man and a woman. That is the way to express our sexual nature.'
Dr Nazir-Ali added: 'We welcome homosexuals, we don't want to exclude people, but we want them to repent and be changed.'
The Bishop of Rochester was considered a front-runner for the job of Archbishop of Canterbury in 2002 but lost out to Rowan Williams, who has sympathy for the gay rights cause.
Derek Munn, of gay rights group Stonewall, said: 'It is unfortunate that, in 2009, a church leader should continue to promote intolerance.
'Stonewall knows that most people of faith are accepting of lesbian and gay people. We also know that many lesbian and gay people who are themselves religious believers are not well served by some of those who claim to speak on their behalf.' News Source
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Almost 1,000 criminals who should have been returned to prison because they breached the terms of their release are still at large, figures revealed today.
The Ministry of Justice said 954 offenders recalled before March this year had not been returned to jail by the end of last month.
The total included 72 robbers, 19 murderers and 12 rapists.
The shocking figures come after it was revealed that the authorities failed to jail pyschopath Danno Sonnex who tortured and stabbed to death two French students while out on remand.
Thanks to a catalogue of blunders by the criminal justice system, Sonnex was allowed to walk free after having breached his parole conditions just weeks before he subjected Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez to their terrifying ordeal.
Today's figures show that there are still some offenders who were recalled to custody up to 25 years ago but are still on the run.
A total of 19 offenders recalled between 1984 and 1999 had not been returned to prison by last month.
A spokeswoman for the Conservatives said: 'These are clearly shocking figures and are a by-product of the Early Release Scheme and the enormous pressure on our probation services.'
The figures, which cover offenders in England and Wales, also showed that nearly 150 were on the loose despite police being told to re-arrest them more than five years ago.
Some 142 offenders recalled between January 1999 and March 2004 are still at large.
Provisional figures for the last financial year show that more than 400 criminals who should have been behind bars were not found.
And every year since 2007 thousands more were not returned to custody within target timescales.
It is the first time data on offenders released from prison and recalled but not returned to custody have been released.
Of the 612 criminals still at large by June last year but not yet in jail, 99 were originally convicted of violent crimes.
That includes 32 convicted of causing GBH, 19 murderers and three with offences for assaulting police officers.
Some 26 were sexual offenders, including five paedophiles, eight with indecent assault records and 12 rapists.
The remainder include 72 robbers, 60 burglars, and 122 with drug offences.
The Ministry of Justice said details of the offences committed by the 342 who should have been returned to prison in the last 12 months were not immediately available.
Offenders are recalled to prison if they breach the terms of their release - such as by committing further crimes, or not meeting their probation officer.
Most criminals who serve sentences of 12 months or more are automatically released at the half point of their sentence.
They are 'on licence', meaning there are conditions they must comply with to stay out of prison while finishing the rest of their sentence.
Police must find 75 per cent of recalled prisoners classified as 'emergency' cases within 74 hours.
Three-quarters of 'standard' recalls should be completed within six days.
But in 2007/08 only 59 per cent of recalls were completed by police within the target time.
That means 5,307 criminals were not back in jail when they should have been.
In the last financial year, the figure was 65p per cent, meaning 4,499 were not returned to prison within target times. News Source
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Birmingham City Council has been at the forefront of PVE trials after intelligence sources claimed that the city was a major recruiting base for al-Qaida.
Dr Naseem’s comments come just two days before the fourth anniversary of the July 7 atrocity, which was carried out by British-born suicide bombers Mohammad Sidique Khan, aged 30, Shehzad Tanweer, aged 22, Germaine Lindsay, aged 19, and Hasib Mir Hussain, aged 18.
Last night Dr Naseem’s remarks were met with disgust by Muslim community leaders, including Mr Mahmood and Respect party leader and Birmingham City councillor Salma Yaqoob.
Mr Mahmood, MP for Perry Barr, said: “This conspiracy is just complete and utter nonsense.
“If anyone had any facts to prove it I would be the first one to take them to Parliament.
“But they don’t, because it isn’t true.
“Dr Naseem has peddled preposterous nonsense like this time and time again, and this time he has gone too far.
“All he is doing is inciting hatred among the community and bringing the Muslims of Birmingham into disrepute. A person in his position should think twice before coming out with such disgraceful lies.
“I think it is time for him to resign.
“The trustees of Birmingham Central Mosque should take action immediately if they want to be taken seriously in the future.
“His outrageous comments couldn’t have come at a more sensitive time and are sure to be incredibly hurtful to the relatives of the victims.”
Coun Yaqoob added: “We do not need conspiracy theories to understand the 7/7 bombings.
“Two of the bombers left video messages explaining exactly why they carried out this terrible atrocity.
“The Government may be in denial about the fact that its war in Iraq encouraged terrorism at home but we have to face facts.
“Four young men, angry at our Government’s foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, lost any sense of humanity and inflicted terrible suffering on innocent people.
“We have to confront and challenge those who justify and encourage these crimes, and we have to put an end to the injustice caused by our foreign policy that creates such a well of bitterness and hatred.” Continued
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More than 1.6 million people applied for tickets for Michael Jackson's memorial service tomorrow - the latest example of the outpouring of grief that has followed the pop star's death.
Yet during this bizarre emotional frenzy - egged on by constant internet updates and relentless television news bulletins - it is all too easy to forget the deaths of more ordinary people who deserve every bit as much attention, but who will, sadly, never receive it.
One such man is the 65-year-old British neurosurgeon Tony Hockley, who died just days before Jackson - and every bit as suddenly.
If ever there was an unsung hero who merited the compliments lavished on the so-called King of Pop, it was Hockley, who transformed the lives of thousands of children born with facial deformities.
Hugely admired by his colleagues at the Birmingham Children's Hospital and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in the city, he devoted his life to the NHS, but never received a single official honour in recognition of his help to children and their parents.
Nor did his passing warrant a single line in any national newspaper. There was no knighthood for the tall, warm-hearted and modest surgeon - no reward of a seat on the red benches of the House of Lords from a Government that repeatedly reminds us of its commitment to the NHS.
Sir Alan Sugar might be ushered into ermine, along with disgraced Commons Speaker Michael Martin and Euro groupie Glenys Kinnock, while self-publicist retail tycoons Philip Green and Stuart Rose have been given knighthoods, but Tony Hockley's work went totally unrecognised.
This is nothing short of a disgrace and a clear sign of our perverse priorities and values. But to measure the true worth of his work, you have only to talk to those people whose lives were improved by his skill and care.
Take, for example, one man whose daughter was a patient of Hockley's and who is astounded by this lack of public recognition. He said: 'On the day Michael Jackson died, I found out that Hockley died. He first operated on my daughter in 1985 when she had a brain cyst and needed a "shunt" to drain excess fluid from her brain, to stop her having violent fits.
'Unfortunately, two years later the shunt became infected and she was in the Birmingham Children's Hospital for 13 weeks. During that time, she underwent seven more operations to try to correct the problem.
Mr Hockley was a lovely man - who for a number of weeks was an extremely important person in our lives.' This grateful father goes on to put into poignant perspective what made Hockley so special. 'He did things that made a difference. People such as him are always under-recognised because they are not celebrities.
'My daughter is now grown up, the shunt is redundant and she lives a normal life. I hope Mr Hockley's wife and family realise how much we appreciated his intellect and care, and the impact he had on ordinary people's lives.' It is a most telling tribute to an extraordinary man. For Hockley didn't look after the rich and famous. Nor did he appear on endless television programmes - like the ubiquitous fertility expert Lord Winston. He simply did the job he loved.
As Dr Charles Ralston, chief medical officer of the Birmingham
Children's Hospital, puts it: 'He was a giant as a pioneer in the fields of paediatric neurosurgery and craniofacial surgery, and he will be remembered for his tremendous warmth and kindness to all around him.'
Hockley's professional skill and determination were never more clearly displayed than in 2001 when he led the surgical team that separated Siamese twin girls born in Birmingham. It was a groundbreaking 15-hour operation that had never been tried before in this country - and only twice elsewhere in the world.
Twins Sanchia and Eman Mowatt were born to 27-year- old Emma Mowatt four months earlier. Their bodies were joined at the back and weighed just 10lb together. It was Hockley who decided to embark on the operation to separate them, even though he did not know for sure whether they would survive, and certainly not whether they would ever be able to lead independent lives.
The operation to separate the girls began at 9.45am on December 10, 2001, when Hockley, who had enormous experience of working on the spinal columns of babies suffering from spina bifida, started the enormously difficult process of separating their spinal canals. It wasn't until 7.30pm that evening when the surgical team felt a 'shudder' on the operating table beneath them and realised that the twins had separated.
An enormous cheer echoed round the operating theatre. It took another five hours before the operation was complete. But Hockley never once doubted he could succeed. 'There was not a real risk that they would not survive,' he said afterwards.
'They were not joined at vital life-threatening structures and there is time for them to grow.' His confidence was proved right. Not only did the girls grow, they also learned to walk.
'We never knew whether they would be able to walk properly after the operation,' their father David said two years later. 'So the day Sanchia took her first steps was magical. A few weeks later Eman realised she could do the same and she too started walking.'
The twins continue to prosper to this day - and are just one of Hockley's gifts to the world. Yet for all his success, Hockley remained an intensely private man, who disliked telling the world either what he had done or who he was.
Unusual in this era of instant celebrity, he strove to get on with his work out of the spotlight. As a friend observed: 'He never talked about himself or his achievements.' There is not even an entry in Who's Who for him. It was left to his colleagues in the Birminghambased-Lunar Society (a group of eminent men and women who once included Erasmus Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood) to pay tribute.
A recent article in recognition of his huge contribution to paediatric neurosurgery described him as a ' sensitive, gentle, considerate person who approaches his professional duties and challenges with the same warmth as he relates to his fellow human being . . . he asserts himself in a retiring fashion.
This is the stuff true civil leadership is made of, providing trust and protection to patients and obtaining respect and devotion from his colleagues.'
Much too modest a man to enjoy publicity, Hockley himself would surely have blushed at such posthumous praise. But the story of Anthony David Hockley, who was born in 1943 and brought up in Hampton Court, Surrey, certainly deserves telling.
After school, he trained at the London Hospital in Whitechapel, and qualified at the comparatively young age of 22. Not long afterwards he became a junior hospital doctor, and then moved to Cambridge as a registrar.
It was there that he met Adrian Williams, now professor of neurology at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, who says: 'We had been great friends after first meeting as registrars in 1975.
'He was the reason I came to Birmingham in 1981 about three years after him.'
Professor Williams pays particular tribute to his friend's treatment of children with craniofacial deformities: 'He was a leading world authority in that field.'
Hockley remained in Birmingham, working as a surgeon until three years ago, when he decided he would no longer carry our operations himself - although he continued to act as a mentor and adviser to colleagues.
But that didn't mean that Hockley retired completely: quite the reverse. He took another degree in medical law and ethics.
Married to Heather, with whom he had three sons, Hockley's passions included cricket, rugby and tennis. Indeed, it was after a game of tennis that Hockley collapsed and died of a heart attack.
A congregation of 500 attended his funeral.
So the world might choose to weep and wail over the death of Michael Jackson. But in a world consumed by the transitory phenomenon of celebrity, it is this brilliant, unsung surgeon - who transformed the lives of thousands of children and their parents - who truly deserves society's prayers and thanks. News Source
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Campaigners yesterday condemned a city council’s “Big Brother” crackdown on household rubbish collections.
Binmen are to get small handheld computers to build up a “rubbish profile” of people on their rounds.
The devices, part of a £179,000 new computer system using GPS satellite tracking technology, will sit in rubbish truck cabs and log people who consistently leave out their bins on the wrong day, fail to recycle, or put out too much rubbish.
Those considered repeat offenders will be warned by Southampton City Council officials, dubbed “bin police” by detractors, and if they persist, could face £100 fines.
Protesters yesterday attacked the proposals as a waste of time and money and accused the council of creating a “Big Brother” city.
Doretta Cocks, founder of the Campaign for Weekly Waste Collection, said: “I can think of no other reason to bring this in unless they intend to charge residents.
“If it’s not exactly Big Brother already, then it has the potential to be.”
Council leaders hit back saying the new system would save taxpayers’ money and enable the waste collection service to run more smoothly. The system would also show whether residents were disabled and unable to move their wheelie bins.
Andrew Trayer, head of waste collection, said most rule-abiding residents would not be affected by the scheme. He said: “This is not Big Brother. The vast majority of the population will be invisible to this system.”
This new controversy over rubbish collections follows the Government’s hugely contentious pay-as-you-throw plans rejected by councils earlier this year.
The scheme would have seen households producing the least waste being given council tax rebates, while those who failed to recycle would have been fined up to £50.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs could not find one council willing to trial the idea.
Last year waste inspectors from Lancashire’s Blackburn and Darwen council became a laughing stock when they were caught climbing ladders to peer over walls to check homes had no more than the one wheelie bin allowed. News Source
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In the past three weeks, Gordon Brown has been thrown on to the defensive in Prime Minister's Questions on the issue of Government spending.
The headline on the story in the Financial Times on Wednesday was: 'Game, set and match to the Conservative leader' - a fair summary in a newspaper that has supported Labour in the past three Elections.
This issue could decide the next General Election, despite its apparent complexity. Only a small minority of voters will follow the immediate subject of debate between Brown and David Cameron, which has involved the difference between cash accounting and inflation accounting.
At the beginning of their debate, the two men were talking about different forms of measurement. It was as though Cameron was measuring the economic growth in yards, while Brown was telling it in metres.
However, they have now at least agreed to talk in the same terms; both are using figures, adjusted for inflation, that cover the same forecasting period from April 2011 to April 2014.
They show there will be a fall in real Government expenditure, on Labour's own statistics.
Brown started this debate by talking of 'Labour investment and Tory cuts'. The Budget Red Book shows the choice will be between Labour cuts and Tory cuts.
Any Labour spokesman who talks of increasing public spending in the next Parliament is trying to deceive the voters.
This is not the really scary part of the argument. There was another headline worth noting in Tuesday's Financial Times, which will have been read by all the bankers who either will, or will not, lend the United Kingdom the huge sums of money the Government will have to borrow, whichever party is in power.
The headline was above an analysis by the economist John King and said: 'Britain has sunk itself deep into a fiscal black hole.' I would not quarrel with that, except to observe that it might well have read: 'The Government has sunk Britain into a fiscal black hole.' These disasters seldom happen without there being 'pilot error'. We are only the passengers on the aircraft.
Professor King points to the fact that 'this year Britain is likely to incur a fiscal deficit of more than 12 per cent of national income. This figure is completely outside the normal experience of developed countries in peacetime'.
This, rather than attempts to forecast future Budgets, is what really matters. Somehow or another, any Government will have to deal with a disastrous situation which cannot now be avoided.
The figure of '12 per cent of national income' is the figure for the Budget deficit. As Prof King points out: 'One per cent of gross domestic product equates to three per cent of public expenditure.'
If, notionally, a Government were to try to balance the deficit by cutting expenditure, about one third of public spending would need to be cut; a Government that tried to balance the books by raising taxation would need to increase all taxes by one third. Of course, these are impossible figures, but they indicate the scale of cuts in spending and rises in taxation that will be needed.
The politicians still hope some forms of public expenditure can be protected, or that some forms of taxation can be cut. They are afraid they will be accused of being too severe. There is only one form of taxation that can safely be cut; that is taxation which is already so high that a cut would increase the yield, as the Irish found when they cut capital gains tax in 1998.
In general, the Government should accept that Britain is already spending more than the revenue will support, that there will be no tax cuts and that there is enormous pressure for reducing expenditure.
If the deficit cannot be balanced either by lower spending or higher taxes, the money has to be borrowed, or, in the last resort, printed. If a nation has to borrow too much, then the lenders become nervous. They will be reluctant to lend more money, and will charge higher rates on their loans, which will make the deficit still worse.
If a nation simply prints the extra money, then the currency falls in value. Inflation has the effect of wiping out debt, but hyperinflation, as in Germany in 1923, or present-day Zimbabwe, rapidly ruins a nation.
People have historically turned to gold to protect them against inflation. Gold has remained stubbornly close to its all-time high of $1,000 an ounce recently. This is a sign of anxiety about future inflation. It also suggests gold will be a reasonable insurance policy for those who have long-term fixed incomes.
If one looks at the political impact of this alarming level of debt, one can reasonably ask who is responsible. It is Gordon Brown. He has either been Chancellor of the Exchequer, or Prime Minister, since 1997. He maintained good control of the Budget in the 1997 Parliament, but has lost control in recent years. He has been a big spender and he has repeatedly advocated further increases in long-term expenditure.
Insofar as Britain is in grave financial difficulty, he is the man responsible. He sold the gold and he has incurred the debt. Along the way he virtually ruined a first-class system of pensions. He is accusing his opponents of wanting to reduce expenditure, as though there were any choice.
David Cameron has at every stage been more cautious, more reluctant to increase expenditure, more reluctant to take on debt. No Government elected next year will be able to avoid cutting expenditure and raising taxes.
This black hole will be like all black holes; it will destroy what seemed to be solid assets. There will have to be huge borrowing. Yet borrowing depends on maintaining the confidence of the lender. In so extreme a situation, lenders will trust the party that opposed the excess of debt rather than the party that spent the money. They will also trust the Bank of England more than any Prime Minister. News Source
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The UK is in the midst of the most dangerous economic experiment for generations. Yet it's the subject of no debate.
Since March, the authorities have been using "quantitative easing", or QE. This involves the Bank of England expanding its balance sheet from nothing in order to purchase debt instruments from the market.
The idea is that the proceeds of such sales boost the money supply and kick-start lending. By decreasing the supply of gilts in the market, QE is also meant to push up gilt prices, driving down the yields that determine borrowing costs right across the economy – not least for commercial loans and mortgages.
At this point, people in my position are supposed to explain that QE isn't "printing money". I'm not going to do that. For the only difference between the UK's current policy and Zimbabwe-style economics is that QE involves the creation of electronic balances rather than actual notes.
That last paragraph will have caused a sharp intake of breath among my friends in the higher-echelons of the UK's economics profession. Unable to dismiss me as a "non-economist", they'll say I'm being alarmist – perhaps due to some kind of personality trait.
I would suggest they sit down, turn off their mobile phones, take a cold look at the evidence and then ask themselves if they've got the guts to help expose the madness of the current policy consensus – the debt-funded fiscal boosts, the non-conditional bank bail-outs and, above all, QE.
Over the past three months, the Bank has spent £106bn of QE funny money. By the end of July, it will have purchased the £125bn of assets it has so far been authorised to buy. At this week's meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, interest rates will be held at 0.5pc. But, with the original QE "pot" almost gone, the Treasury and Bank could well signal there's more to come.
I accept the start of QE caused share prices to rally and business sentiment to improve. But that sugar rush has gone. The harsh reality is that despite the huge inflationary dangers posed by QE, the credit crunch is getting worse.
The Bank of England has more than doubled the monetary base since March, yet mortgage approvals remained at 43,000 in May – consistent with house prices falling at double-digit annual rates. Lending to non-financial companies contracted 3pc last month.
Banks are keeping the QE cash on reserve or lending it to their own off-balance sheet vehicles (the ones stuffed with sub-prime toxic waste). So rather than helping solvent firms and households access credit, QE is re-capitalizing, by the back door, banks that are otherwise insolvent and should be going bust. Gilt yields haven't come down either. The 10-year yield remains where it was before QE began, having been much higher in the interim.
Around a third of the Bank's QE purchases are, anyway, from overseas investors – doing nothing to ease credit in the UK. Such sales by foreigners reflect mounting concerns about the UK's wildly expansionary policy stance and sterling's related medium-term fragility.
As someone who spends a lot of time talking to overseas asset-managers, I can't tell you how often I'm asked: "Liam, why this money-printing? Have your politicians gone mad?" I can only reply that I ask myself the same thing.
There is, in extremis, an argument for QE, but only to buy commercial paper, not sovereign debt. When used to re-purchase gilts, QE allows governments to carry on borrowing like crazy, rather than facing up to the reality the country must balance its books.
When QE was announced, the emphasis was on the commercial debt purchases the authorities would make. In the event, gilts have accounted for a staggering 99pc of the total. That's why QE will inevitably lead to high inflation – whatever nonsense is spouted about "withdrawing the monetary stimulus".
History shows you can't get the inflationary toothpaste back in the tube. That's why price pressures are rising – and gilts yields refuse to fall.
At the outset of QE, the Tories called it "a leap in the dark" – failing to reveal if they backed it or not. Since then, HM Opposition has been silent on a policy that's destroying the last vestiges of this country's policy-making credibility.
Such credibility is what keeps inflation benign and borrowing costs low. By providing a solid macro-economic platform, such credibility is vital if this country is to create the jobs and wealth that will be so important to our citizens in the years to come.
Such credibility, tough to win, is easy to lose. Because of QE, the UK is now losing it – at breakneck speed. Yet those who will form our next government are silent – not yet in power, but complicit in this grotesque policy vandalism. News Source
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U.S. Vice President Joe Biden has said Israel has a 'sovereign right' to decide what is in its best interest in dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions.
He said in an interview yesterday that Israel should determine for themselves what to do - whether the United States agrees or not.
However there seems to be agreement between Israel and America, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signalled he agrees with President Obama's end-of-the-year deadline for progress to engage Iran diplomatically in the nuclear dispute.
In an interview on ABC's 'This Week' program, Biden said Israel can determine for itself how best to deal with the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.
'We cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do when they make a determination, if they make a determination, that they're existentially threatened,' Biden said.
Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, said neither the United States or Israel could allow Iran to gain a nuclear weapon.
'The U.S., like Israel ... has determined unequivocally that Iran must not have nuclear military capability,' Ayalon told Israel's Army Radio.
'A military operation in Iran is something difficult and complex and perhaps would have severe consequences and there could be serious damage, but this is much less dangerous and complicated than to allow a nuclear Iran,' he said.
Netanyahu, who took office in March, has said Israel cannot allow Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons and has not ruled out a possible military strike against Iran.
Israel has said a nuclear-armed Iran would be a threat to its existence, noting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's calls for Israel to be wiped off the map.
Iran denies it is enriching uranium for military purposes, saying its nuclear development is aimed at generating electricity.
Israel bombed a site in Syria in 2007 that U.S. intelligence officials said was a nearly completed nuclear reactor being built with North Korean help. In 1981, Israel bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor.
'If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursued now, that is their sovereign right to do that. That is not our choice,' Biden said.
'But there is no pressure from any nation that's going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed.'
Similarly, Israel said it had never asked for Washington's permission for operations or strategic policy.
'Of course, as allies we coordinate things and we make joint assessments but there should be no confusion, we do what is right and good for us according to our own estimates,' Ayalon said.
The U.N. Security Council has imposed three sets of sanctions on Tehran for defying its demand to suspend uranium enrichment, which could also be used to produce nuclear weapons.
The United States has joined Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain in inviting Iran to talks to resolve the nuclear dispute.
Israel's Mossad intelligence chief Meir Dagan said last month a world embargo had altered the course of Tehran's nuclear program since 2003, but that Iran could have an atomic weapon by 2014 unless these steps were intensified. News Source
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Seven hundred and ninety. That’s the number of unelected, unaccountable quangos set up by government to run every aspect of our lives.
Britain has sleepwalked into government by these ‘independent’ bodies, intentionally set up to be at arms-length from government.
These quangos range from the seemingly harmless – like the British Museum – to those which have a huge impact on our lives – like the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, which directs school exams.
But while we, the taxpayer, cover the cost of these bodies, a hefty £35 billion a year, we have almost no say over what they do.
They are the worst form of government, existing in a ‘twilight zone’ where they wield huge influence but are untouchable by voters or market pressures. Even MPs are reduced to glorified lobbyists as they try to persuade the penpushers to follow the Government’s direction.
We got very angry over MPs’ expenses, and rightly so – but at least we can kick them out come election time. What action can we take if, say, a Regional Development Agency wastes a fortune on a ‘pet project’ that ruins our town centre?
The 200 most powerful quangos cost £174 million each and employ a total of 93,000 bureaucrats. Many do perform tasks which, it is true, someone has to do. But they do so inefficiently and expensively – and in every case, at the expense of democratic accountability.
In many cases they are just the wrong place to make these decisions. These centralised bodies surely can’t be better than allowing people to make the local decisions that affect them.
This weekend the Government announced a ‘crackdown’ to streamline the quango state.
That is not enough!
Today David Cameron makes a speech to the independent think tank Reform which sets out his plans for reforming quangos.
He must say that the current situation cannot go on. Important government decisions must be taken by people that the electorate can hold to account.
Reform’s research has shown that there is a choice of three possible futures for quangos. Those, like museums, which serve a function that does not involve the Government, should become independent charities or businesses.
Many are effectively regulators, controlling aspects of health or education. These should be turned into truly independent bodies that can keep a proper check on government activity.
The last group of quangos do things that should be done – accountably – by government itself. They should be brought back into the relevant Whitehall department, directly accountable to Ministers. Or, better, they could be accountable to local politicians or new directly elected officials.
The current state of affairs is just not on. We elect our government to do the tasks it says it is going to do. But in reality Ministers palm off difficult tasks to unelected penpushers – over whom they have little control.
It is time for politicians to take direct responsibility for getting things done. And wherever possible, power should be taken away from quangos and put back where it belongs – in the hands of the people. News Source
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The country is facing far worse road congestion despite a £7billion Government motorway widening programme, experts warned yesterday.
To get Britain moving, ministers need to concentrate on local roads rather than motorways and trunk routes.
And they claim there are much cheaper ways to cut jams than road building.
The report, by the Campaign for Better Transport, says Government studies predict average traffic speeds in 2025 will be slower than in 2003 “despite billions being spent on adding more capacity on which we can drive”.
The Government spent £1billion last year widening motorways and trunk roads with another £6billion earmarked for coming years.
The report, by Phil Goodwin, professor of transport policy at West of England University, Bristol, said: “As almost 90 per cent of congestion is in towns and cities, making the motorways and A-roads wider just moves traffic into already congested urban areas just that little bit faster.”
The report is being released amid warnings that the Department for Transport faces a £30billion shortfall for improvements to the road and rail system over the next decade as public spending is cut.
The report adds further weight to the Daily Express “Let’s Get Britain Moving” crusade to stop Labour ruining our nation’s roads.
Professor Goodwin says relatively cheap options could ease congestion, including support for public transport, walking and cycling. His other suggestions include:
lRolling out live information and control systems to keep traffic moving;
Improving planning so that essential services are closer to where people live and work; Making it easier for people to work and shop from home by increasing support for telecommunications systems.
A DfT spokesman last night said: “We are committed to tackling congestion in towns and cities as well as on motorways and are implementing innovative and far-reaching measures to improve the transport options available.
“Investment in buses has more than doubled, we are committing £15billion to our railways and investing £145million on cycling.” News Source
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MPs could lose all of their generous second home allowances and have their London accommodation provided by the state.
The plan is being given serious consideration by the independent review of that is writing new Commons rules in the wake of the expenses scandal.
The Committee on Standards in Public Life is understood to be studying a move to strip MPs of all control of public money relating to their second homes.
Instead, the House of Commons authorities would rent properties from commercial landlords, and make them available to MPs during their time in office.
Rent would be paid from the Commons to the landlord, cutting MPs out of the financial transaction entirely.
Sir Christopher Kelly, the committee chairman, has described such an arrangement as "barrack provision".
However he has rejected more eye-catching suggestions including housing MPs in a central "hall of residence" or even in London's Olympic village.
The most questionable expenses claims disclosed by The Daily Telegraph relate to MPs' second homes. Members have used public money meant to maintain a second home to buy luxury goods and renovate properties before selling them on a profit.
Those claims have sparked significant public anger, and the standards committee has received numerous submissions from members of the public suggesting that in future MPs should be housed in some sort of central "barracks" or hall of residence in London.
Building or buying a single accommodation block for 646 MPs and their families would be likely to be expensive and difficult, but the Standards committee has not rejected the general principle of centralised provision of accommodation.
Instead, the committee is studying the way the Ministry of Defence accommodates senior military officers when they are posted to London for two- and three-year postings in Whitehall.
The MoD has standing arrangements with commercial letting agencies who provide large numbers of homes in central London for officers. The tenancy agreements on such homes is between the MoD and the agency, meaning the officer has no financial involvement in the arrangement.
Sir Christopher has indicated in the committee's hearings on expenses that such a system could be applied to MPs' housing.
In one hearing, Sir Christopher said: "The Armed Forces, for example, have an arrangement under which if you are posted to London a commercial renting agency finds you a choice of three flats and you take one. The rent is paid directly by the Ministry of Defence. Is there any reason why the same process should not be applied to Members of Parliament?"
In another session, he said: "What I am trying to probe is whether once you have removed the responsibility altogether from MPs of finding their accommodation, usually in London, whether barrack provision could be done as it is done, for example, for serving officers moving to the Ministry of Defence in London."
Several senior MPs giving evidence to Sir Christopher's committee have said they support principle of the "direct provision" model.
However, several have called for a transitional period where MPs who currently pay mortgages using expenses would be able to sell their homes and move to the new system.
The new housing system would not have to be mandatory. But if it were in place, MPs who rejected centrally-provided homes would be unlikely to get public money to fund alternative arrangements.
The Standards Committee is expected to produce its blueprint for expenses rules in October. The Prime Minister has said that as long as the new rules would not add significantly to the cost to taxpayers of MPs' housing, he will accept whatever the committee proposes. News Source
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The government has blamed exiled Muslim separatists for the area's worst case of ethnic unrest in years.
Hundreds of rioters have been arrested, the official Xinhua news agency reported, after rock-throwing Uighurs took to the streets of the regional capital on Sunday, some burning and smashing vehicles and confronting ranks of anti-riot police.
Urumqi residents were unable to access the internet on Monday, several said. "The city is basically under martial law," according to Yang Jin, a dried fruit merchant.
The unrest underscores the volatile ethnic tensions that have accompanied China's growing economic and political stake in its western frontiers.
A senior official swiftly delivered the government claim that the unrest was the work of extremist forces abroad, signalling a security crackdown in the strategic region near Pakistan and central Asia.
Li Zhi, the Communist Party boss of Urumqi told a news conference that the death toll from the rioting had risen to 140, the semi-official China News Agency said. Xinhua said 816 people were injured and hospitalised.
"Police have tightened security in downtown Urumqi streets and at key institutions such as power and natural gas companies and TV stations to prevent large-scale riots," Xinhua quoted Xinjiang police chief Liu Yaohua as saying.
Police rounded up "several hundred" who participated in the violence, including more than 10 key players who fanned unrest, Xinhua said, and are searching for 90 others.
The riot in Urumqi, a city of 2.3 million residents 3,270 km (2,050 miles) west of Beijing, followed a protest against government handling of a June clash between Han Chinese and Uighur factory workers in southern China, where two Uighurs died in Shaoguan.
The China Daily put the number of protesters at 300 to 500 while the exiled Uighur American Association had it as high as 3,000.
"After the (Shaoguan) incident, the three forces abroad strived to beat this up and seized it as an opportunity to attack us, inciting street protests," Xinjiang governor Nuer Baikeli, a Uighur, said in a speech shown on Xinjiang television.
The "three forces" refer to groups the government says engage in separatism, militant action and religious extremism.
An unnamed Chinese official said the "unrest was masterminded by the World Uighur Congress led by Rebiya Kadeer", according to Xinhua. "This was a crime of violence that was pre-meditated and organised," said the report.
Rebiya Kadeer is a Uighur businesswoman now in exile in the United States after years in jail, and accused of separatist activities. She did not answer calls for comment.
Exiled Uighur groups adamantly rejected the Chinese government claim of a plot. They said the riot was an outpouring of pent-up anger over government policies and Han Chinese dominance of economic opportunities.
"They're blaming us as a way to distract the Uighurs' attention from the discrimination and oppression that sparked this protest," said Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the World Uighur Congress in exile in Sweden.
The government's claims of conspiracy by pro-independence exiles echo the handling of rioting across Tibetan areas in March last year, which Beijing also called a plot hatched abroad.
Xinjiang is the doorway to China's trade and energy ties with central Asia, and is itself rich in gas, minerals and farm produce. But many Uighurs say they see little of that wealth.
Chinese state television showed rioters throwing rocks at police and overturning a police car, and smoke billowing from burning vehicles.
"I personally saw several Han people being stabbed. Many people on buses were scared witless," Zhang Wanxin, a Urumqi resident, said by telephone.
Alim Seytoff, of the Uyghur American Association in Washington D.C., emailed pictures showing hundreds of locals confronting police in Urumqi, armoured riot-control vehicles patrolling streets, wounded and bloodied civilians lying on streets, and ranks of anti-riot police with shields and clubs.
Almost half of Xinjiang's 20 million people are Uighurs. The population of Urumqi is mostly Han Chinese, and the city is under tight police security even in normal times. News Source
Monday 6th July 2009
In a shabby converted sweetshop in Leyton, East London, a group of burka-clad Muslim women sit in a waiting room. They have an appointment with Dr Suhaib Hasan at his twice-weekly surgery.
The women look worried. There is no talking in the airless reception area - the only sound is a fan purring quietly in the corner as temperatures outside exceed 80F.
Inside, the atmosphere is just as stifling. There are no magazines, television or other diversions. The beige walls are bare except for a flow-chart depicting the process of securing a Muslim divorce, and a picture of Mecca.
This is no GP's surgery or Citizens Advice Bureau. Within these non-descript walls lies the nerve centre of sharia law in Britain, the headquarters of the Islamic Sharia Council, which oversees the growing number of Muslim courts operating in Britain.
For the first time, the Islamic Sharia Council has granted access to a newspaper to observe the entire sharia legal process in Britain. Over several weeks, I was allowed to witness the filing of complaints, individual testimony hearings and the monthly meeting of imams, or judges, where rulings are handed down.
Sharia has been operating here, in parallel to the British legal system, since 1982. Work includes issuing fatwas - religious rulings on matters ranging from why Islam considers homosexuality a sin to why two women are equivalent to one male witness in an Islamic court.
The Islamic Sharia Council also rules on individual cases, primarily in matters of Muslim personal or civil law: divorce, marriage, inheritance and settlement of dowry payments are the most common.
However, in the course of my investigation, I discovered how sharia is being used informally within the Muslim community to tackle crime such as gang fights or stabbings, bypassing police and the British court system.
A few hardline leaders would like it to be taken even further. One told me that Britain should adopt sharia punishments such as stoning and the chopping off of hands to reduce violent crime.
There are 12 councils or courts operating in Britain under Dr Hasan's group, based in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Rotherham and Bradford. Scores more imams dispense justice through their own mosques.
A study last week by the thinktank Civitas claimed that there could be as many as 85 sharia courts in Britain, although Dr Hasan says most of these are not formal courts. But it is certainly a growing network.
In his courts, support staff interview plaintiffs and compile a case study. Judgments are delivered by senior imams at closed monthly meetings and are sent in writing to the concerned parties. Up to 7,000 cases have been handled so far.
The Islamic Sharia Council is listed as a charity but people seeking a divorce, or talaq, must fill in a form and pay a fee. For a man it is £100; for women, it is £250 because the imams say it takes more work to process a woman's application as her word has to be corroborated.
The literal meaning of sharia is 'source of water in the desert', meaning the source of all spiritual life for Muslims. This is not just a code of law, but a way of life.
In sharia-based societies, such as Saudi Arabia or the old Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, crimes against society are punished by beheadings, stoning to death and amputations.
Women are kept in purdah and limited to child-rearing and caring for the home.
All Western influences, from alcohol, music, television and movies, are banned. It is a rigid prescription for Islamic life that seeks its guidance from the days of the Prophet in the 7th Century.
In Britain, sharia courts are permitted to rule only in civil cases, such as divorce and financial disputes. Until last year, these rulings depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims. But now, due to a clause in the Arbitration Act 1996, they are enforceable by county and high courts.
Sharia courts are classified in the same way as arbitration tribunals - with rulings binding in law provided both parties in the dispute agree to give them the power to rule on their case.
However, a Muslim couple must still be divorced in the British courts for it to recognised under British law. The same provision in the Arbitration Act applies to Jewish Beth Din courts, which resolve similar civil cases.
Dr Hasan is the man who introduced sharia courts to Britain almost 30 years ago.
The softly spoken, grey-bearded scholar was born in Pakistan, studied in Saudi Arabia and worked in East Africa before moving to Britain in the Sixties. He is the Secretary of the Islamic Sharia Council of Britain and a member of the senior panel of imams who sit once a month at Regent's Park Mosque in London.
In Leyton, the imam calls the women into his office to begin a private session to gather evidence. The setting is modest yet its proceedings have all the gravity of a British courtroom - and most cases are conducting in English.
Under Muslim law, a man can divorce his wife simply by uttering the word 'talaq', yet a woman cannot be granted a divorce without the consent of her husband or winning a dissolution of the marriage from the imam. Even if the couple are divorced under British law, they remain married under Islam until divorced under the religious law, too. Continued
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Gazing across the Channel in the direction of the white cliffs of Dover, Amir Gul stood on Calais beach and imagined himself on the other side - and living the dream that has brought him 3,500 miles from Afghanistan.
"A hundred times in the past month I have tried to get into lorries," the 15-year-old said in fluent English. "The police or drivers always throw me off and sometimes they beat me. But I will not stop until I reach London, unless I am killed trying, even if it takes me a year."
In the sand dunes and scraps of waste ground around Calais, a ragged army of migrants desperate to breach British border controls is slowly growing in number, and they are as determined as ever.
Nobody is sure how many live in the squatter camps or sleep rough in parks, but the United Nations estimates that there are now around 1,500 in the Calais area alone – a figure steadily approaching the 2,500 who were to be found at Sangatte refugee camp before it was closed in 2002.
Security has been tightened at the port and far fewer illegal migrants get through to Britain now, according to the UK's Border Control Agency. It told The Sunday Telegraph that effective control of Calais port and the routes across the Channel was a success story.
But the fact that it is harder to reach Britain merely means that the migrants - almost all of them men and boys - hang around in Calais for even longer, months instead of weeks, as they attempt to stow away on lorries or in cars.
Meanwhile they live in conditions which are so appalling that last week the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees opened an office in the town, only the second in Europe for an agency which is more typically found in troublespots like Congo or Pakistan.
UN officials feel they must do something for the inhabitants of the stinking "jungles" where desperate men and boys fight each other with knives and suffer diseases like scabies and TB, as the filth, frustration and violence take their toll.
The UNHCR works with hard-pressed charities that try to help the migrants and encourages them to apply for asylum in France. But only 120 enquiries have been made in the past month.
"France is no good. I want to get into London because I will get a house and money, and I can work there," said an Afghan man who was killing time in a park until nightfall, when he was going to look for a lorry to hide in.
On the beach, French families in swimming trunks and bikinis were enjoying themselves in the sunshine apparently oblivious to the young Afghans and Iraqis washing their grimy clothes in the surf.
Mr Gul knows it could be months before he successfully stows away in a lorry - or even in the boot of an unwary motorist - and sneak across the Channel to his promised land, now so tantalisingly close.
Until then he will have to sleep rough in a filthy camp, hidden in a thicket of thorn bushes behind the beach. He sleeps under a plastic tarpaulin donated by a charity, trying to ignore the stench from the surrounding bushes which are used as a lavatory.
Every day at noon he walks through the suburbs of Calais to a soup kitchen in a car park, where gangs of Africans, Iraqis and Afghans jostle and argue in the queue. Tribal and ethnic differences rankle, and knives are pulled when tempers fray.
Caroline Nazanin, a nurse who has worked in the camps, said: "The frustration drives some of them crazy - they become violent and fight each other when arguments get out of control."
Yet despite all this, Mr Gul had no interest in seeking asylum in France. He was determined to stay in Calais for as long as it takes for him to stow away succesfully and get to Britain.
Marie-Ange Lascure, UNHCR's spokeswoman, said migrants were arriving in bigger numbers than a few years ago. "They want to go to England because the people smugglers tell them it is a beautiful place, where they can easily earn money to send home to their families," she said. Persuading them to instead claim asylum in France was a struggle, she admitted.
Under an EU rule whereby an asylum claim must be made in the first safe port of entry, if the migrants have already been fingerprinted on arrival in Greece or Italy the French authorities can deport them back there.
So some migrants scar their fingertips by heating up a plate until it is hot, then pressing their fingers to it. For several weeks the fingers are too blistered for prints to be taken, providing temporary relief from the risk of deportation if they are arrested or checked.
Residents of Calais have become increasingly worried by the growing desperation of migrants, and last year elected a conservative-minded mayor, Natacha Bouchart, who blames the temptation of Britain's generous welfare state for attracting migrants to their town. "Calais is a hostage to the British," she complained earlier this year.
Jean-Lou Hereng, 46, who owns a café near the biggest camp, known as the "jungle", said: "The problem is as bad as it has ever been. They are aggressive and dirty, and there are fights between them."
Other Frenchmen are more sympathetic. "It is difficult for us, and it is difficult for them," said Jonathan Corbeau, 22, a welder who lived almost opposite an encampment of Afghans. Nevertheless, he had put up a strong fence and bought a dog after his wife was molested by migrants a few weeks ago.
French police frequently raid the camps, and sometimes destroy them. Sixteen vanloads of CRS riot police arrived on Thursday as bulldozers levelled a derelict warehouse which 30 Sudanese from the war-torn province of Darfur had been using as a temporary home.
"My money and clothes are now buried under there," one of them said, gesturing at a pile of tons of debris. He had simply moved with his friends a few yards to a take over a small park.
Many of the Afghans, who are now the majority of migrants at Calais, said they had fled the Taliban. Samim Siddique, 24, from Khost, rolled up his trouser leg to show a bayonet scar where he had been tortured by terrorists who wanted him to carry a bomb into the university where he was studying.
"The Taliban don't like education, and there was no place where I would be safe from them in Afghanistan," he said. "We all want to go to England, we speak the language and we can work there. I want to study IT, and then set up a print business.
"We hate being in this camp, it is the life of an animal here. We have to wait for months to get into a lorry, but every week a couple of boys don't come back in the morning - they have caught a lorry across the sea.
"I will keep trying. One day I will get to England." News Source
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Laws aimed at ensuring fair trials are hampering anti-terrorist operations and must be reviewed, former senior police and legal figures urged today.
Peter Clarke, previously the country's most senior counter-terrorism officer, said the Contempt of Court Act was preventing the public being properly informed about operations.
And his review call was joined by ex-Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, who said ministers should consider the idea of a "controlled was of releasing more information".
The Act bans the publication, from the moment a suspect is arrested, of material which poses a "substantial risk that the course of public justice will be seriously impeded or prejudiced".
It is designed to prevent potential jurors being swayed before a trial takes place.
But Mr Clarke said it was time to "trust" jurors more in the interests of ensuring communities were kept informed during the sometimes very long periods it took to prepare a case.
"I think there is a link between the application of the Contempt of Court Act and the potential effectiveness of counter-terrorist policing," he told BBC Radio 4's The World this Weekend.
"It is fundamental to any type of policing that communities must have confidence in what the police are doing. All too often though it has been two or even three years before we have been able to explain to communities why certain actions were carried out.
"If that happens it is going to be far more difficult for those communities to have confidence in the police, to have the confidence to come forward with intelligence and information which could be absolutely vital in terms of counter-terrorism."
Mr Clarke, who headed the Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorism Command until last year, said a 2003 raid on Finsbury Park Mosque had been a particularly acute example.
"This was a hugely sensitive operation and we wanted to be able to explain to communities why it was we were doing something like that," he said, complaining that was not possible for three years.
The police were then accused of exaggerating the terror threat in a bid to provide support for the Iraq invasion, he said, harming the force's effectiveness.
The "official silence" required by the Act "leaves an open court for others to roll out speculation, innuendo, sometimes deliberate lies".
"That unbalances the public debate and makes it very difficult for communities to know what to believe and therefore it makes it more difficult for the police to do their job."
He questioned how often in reality there was a "substantial risk of serious prejudice".
"In an era of global communication it is unrealistic to think that jurors will sit there in complete isolation not understanding the context of what they are trying."
"Juries are the bedrock of our judicial system - we need to cherish them and, most importantly, we need to trust them," he said.
Lord Goldsmith, who was the chief law officer at the time of the Finsbury Park raid, said he accepted the need for a review but warned any relaxation would require very careful consideration.
Research abroad suggested jurors were far more swayed by what they heard in court than outside and agreed that the contempt rules were out of date in the internet age.
"I think it probably is time for a review of the Contempt of Court Act in an independent and objective way. Let's look at the evidence of what actually affects juries and what doesn't. Let's look particularly if there could be some sort of controlled way of releasing more information."
He said he had often found himself under attack from prosecution and defence over the issue.
"When everybody seems to be unhappy with the law, it is time to look at it."
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: "The Contempt of Court Act 1981 prohibits the publication of information that creates a substantial risk of serious prejudice to the course of justice in legal proceedings. It is designed to ensure that a fair trial can be held." News Source
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The United Nations’ new refugee centre in Calais will do little to stop would-be migrants flocking to the port in the hope of getting to Kent.
That’s the view of Ashford MP and shadow immigration minister and Damian Green.
The United Nations’ refugee agency UNHCR will now be at the French port full time to help hundreds of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers living in the squalor of what has become known as ‘the Jungle’.
The French Government has already revealed plans to level the area and clamp down on illegal migrants, but the UN wanted to go one step further.
The UNHCR pulled out of the port in 2002 after the notorious Sangatte centre was finally closed down – but ironically there are still talks between the French and British governments over a new holding centre inside the UK zone at the docks.
They both say this would allow them to send illegal immigrants back to their home nations much more easily.
Now UN officials have moved back in with the sole purpose of providing information to the 1,500 migrants insisting on living around the area.
Some of that advice will include what the asylum policy in the UK.
They are informed clearly that if they arrived in the UK illegally and are caught, they could face a return to the Continent or to their country of origin, unless granted asylum.
The UNHCR describes relations between the foreigners and the people of Calais as "tense".
Mr Green said he does not believe the UN centre will encourage migrants to dash to Calais in even greater numbers – but he doubts it will do any good either.
He told Kent on Sunday: “I wish them well, but I don’t think it will solve the problem.
“It will only work if people from all over the world realised that Britain’s borders were secure.
“That is what will stop people gathering at Calais.
“I am sure the UNHCR will give them good advice and will try to persuade them to go back, but I think that before they start their journey the need to know they are not going to get into Britain.
“This is because once they come half way across the world to the French coast it’s unlikely they won’t give up from there.
“The message needs to go out that Britain’s borders are difficult to penetrate but unfortunately for the past 10 years, Britain’s borders have been extremely easy to penetrate which is why so many use the route into Kent to get here.
“I don’t think the UNHCR will encourage more to try. They are doing with all the best motives and I hope they do some good but I just don’t think it will make much difference one way or the other.”
The UK Borders Agency said: "Last year alone UK Border Agency staff at our French and Belgium controls, not only searched more than one million lorries but also stopped 28,000 attempts to cross the Channel illegally.
"The message is clear that the only way to live and work in France and the UK is by legal routes.
“Working alongside our French colleagues, we will continue to offer support and humanitarian assistance to those who genuinely need it, but if people are not in need of protection we expect them to return home." News Source
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Union chiefs will seek a meeting with the owners of a new power station to prevent a repeat of an ongoing row over foreign workers.
Since late last year Unite has been putting pressure on foreign subcontractors helping to build a new gas-fired plant on the Isle of Grain to employ more British tradesmen.
While the situation there has improved in recent months, the union is eager to avoid similar problems when work on the nearby Damhead Creek 2 station – which is still in the planning stages – gets underway.
Regional officer Neil Willoughby said: “The problem at the Isle of Grain was that once the building contract had started, it was very difficult for us to change things.
“That’s why we are seeking a meeting with (Damhead Creek owner) ScottishPower to get in early and try and secure a suitable clause in that contract. This sort of thing needs to be sorted at the planning stage.”
A planning application for the £500 million Damhead Creek 2 is due to be submitted by ScottishPower this summer.
Should approval be granted, the building of the gas-powered station will support up to 1,000 construction jobs over three years and inject an estimated £27m per year into the Medway economy throughout its 25-year lifespan.
National representatives of both Unite and ScottishPower met earlier this year, and the outcome of the meeting suggests Mr Willoughby has little to worry about when it comes to Damhead 2.
A spokesman for the energy giant said: “ScottishPower continues to support UK labour and recognises the skills, competence and strong health and safety record of both employees and our UK contracting workforce.
“We met with Unite in May, who confirmed that ScottishPower is a good, locally-focused employer whose key contractors were fulfilling their requirements under the National Agreement for the Engineering Construction Industry.”
Meanwhile, Unite is slowly securing more jobs for British workers at the Isle of Grain station following the revelation in April that after a series of protests two Polish subcontractors had finally agreed to take on unemployed locals.
Mr Willoughby told Kent on Sunday there was now further good news because a recently-appointed Italian firm was willing to take on British workers and that the UK-based EI.WHF had also landed a major contract.
The union says the inequality issue arose because the firm overseeing the building of the station – the French multinational Alstom – did not place a clause in the tendering contract that says subcontractors should seek to employ British workers.
The row intensified in March when a contract leaked to the GMB union proved that one of the Polish firms had been paying Polish tradesmen £4 less than the nationally-agreed rate. The issue has since been rectified.
Mr Willoughby said: “I think the relationship between us is improving now and we are making progress.
“However, British workers are still in the minority at Grain and we’re still not happy about how many jobs are available.
“The issues are ongoing and I think will be until the end of the project.” News Source
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Two BBC chiefs have racked up taxpayer-funded pensions worth more than £14million – the biggest in the public sector, according to new research.
Deputy director general Mark Byford and creative director Alan Yentob’s retirement funds even dwarf that of Bank of England governor Mervyn King.
Mr Byford, 51, is to receive a pension of at least £229,500 a year from a pot valued at almost £8m, it was claimed today.
This could rise to more than £10m if he works at the BBC until the age of 60.
And Mr Yentob, 62, who is also an arts presenter for the corporation, is thought to have accumulated a pension worth £6.3m, giving an annual retirement income of £216,667 for the rest of his life.
Until now it was thought that Bank chief Mr King had Britain’s largest public sector pension, with a pot valued at £5.7m that would pay a retirement income of £198,613 a year. Continued
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It's the sort of wage you'd normally associate with a Premiership footballer or a City trader - £800 for a minute's work.
But the amazing sum is paid with taxpayers' money to council meeting chairmen at Tower Hamlets in East London.
All councillors get an allowance of £9,698, but committee chairmen get an additional £8,069.
However, Tory councillor Phil Briscoe believed the Labour authority had created extra roles for a group of 'cronies'.
He asked for a breakdown of how long each committee leader had led meetings in the last municipal year.
Labour councillor Salim Ullah managed just ten minutes with the appeals committee, which works out at £807 a minute.
Labour's Mohammed Shahid Ali spent 91 minutes on the general purposes committee, making £5,320 an hour or £88 a minute.
Councillor Briscoe said: 'It is hard to imagine any politician in Westminster could clock up allowances at such a rate.'
Councillor Ullah refused to comment but Councillor Ali said: 'The time spent actually in committee is a very small part of the work of a committee chair.'
The council said: 'Allowances for nearly all chairs are significantly below recommended amounts.' News Source
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Searchlight Roots and Ideology
The Soviet Union under Stalin was as guilty as Nazi Germany for the Second World War, the world’s largest security organisation has declared.
The verdict in a resolution issued by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe has incensed Russia which lost 26million people in the war.
The organisation based its conclusion on the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939 which it said was the precursor to the conflagration.
The pact, named after the Soviet and Nazi foreign ministers of the time, carved up Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe between Moscow and Berlin.
This made the Soviets equally responsible for the ensuing catastrophe which claimed 50million lives, according to the OSCE.
It said both Stalinism and Nazism ‘brought about crimes against humanity and genocide’ and called for August 23 to be a day of remembrance for the victims.
It was on August 23, 1939, that the two diametrically-opposed regimes signed their infamous pact. After Hitler invaded Poland on September 1 the Soviets moved in from the east, seizing great tracts of territory agreed upon in a secret clause.
Poland was crushed between the vice of Moscow and Berlin. More than three million people perished in Nazi-occupied Poland and an estimated 500,000 in the Sovietoccupied part.
The OSCE has 56 member countries, including the UK. It was created in 1972 during the Cold War with the aim of preventing conflict in Europe, Asia and the Caucasus.
When the resolution on Soviet involvement in the Second World War was passed at its annual assembly held this year in Vilnius, Lithuania, Russia’s delegates walked out.
Russia has accused many Western countries of understating the sacrifices made by the Soviet Union in defeating Nazi Germany.
Hitler attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, tearing up existing treaties, in an attempt to conquer Communism.
He told his generals to conduct a ‘war without rules’ in which all cruelties were legitimate. News Source
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Families face a £1,200-a-year tax bombshell after the next election if Labour win to meet Gordon Brown’s pledge to maintain lavish public spending levels.
The crippling increase, equivalent to more than the average family’s entire annual council tax bill, will be needed if Labour wants to honour the Prime Minister’s promise not to cut public spending.
The figures, produced by the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies, show Labour has already pencilled in tax rises after the election which will cost the average family more than £300 a year. If Labour rejects public spending cuts it will have to find an extra £26billion to balance the books, resulting in tax rises costing the average family about £850 a year.
Former Tory Cabinet Minister John Redwood said tax increases at this level would cause massive damage to the economy and bring misery to millions of families.
Mr Redwood, who advises David Cameron on economic competitiveness, said: “It would be a tax wipe-out. Millions of families would struggle to pay their mortgages and bills, let alone spend money in the shops. The result would be less business and fewer jobs.The public know there have to be changes and that the country cannot go on wasting and borrowing in the way it has under Labour.”
Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said the figures showed it was time to slash public spending.
Mr Elliott said: “The Government must accept the urgent need for spending cuts.
“People are heavily overtaxed already, and there is no way that anyone could afford tax rises equivalent to a whole new council tax every year. It is absolutely clear that massive savings could be made by ditching misguided policies, trimming bloated quangos and bringing the efficiency of the public sector up to the standard of the private sector.
“The Government’s spending binge is totally unsustainable and must be killed off. The country cannot afford tax rises on this scale.”
The new figures will fuel the growing political row over how to shore up the public finances which have been crippled by massive Government borrowing. Market fears about the public finances make further borrowing virtually impossible, leaving a stark choice between higher taxes and spending cuts.
Although Treasury documents suggest the Government is planning deep cuts in public services after the next election to fill the black hole in the Budget, Mr Brown has repeatedly claimed this is not true. The Prime Minister insists that public spending will continue to increase under Labour. He says that only the Tories are planning cuts.
The Tories have said deep spending cuts are needed to balance the books. NHS spending will be protected, but other departments could face 10 per cent cuts.
David Cameron came close to accusing Mr Brown of lying last week, and branded Labour’s spending plans “dishonest”.
Chancellor Alistair Darling is pressing the Prime Minister to be more frank with the public about the dire state of the public finances.
But a senior Labour source said Mr Brown believed that hammering home a message about “Tory cuts” could yet win Labour the election.
The spending row will intensify tomorrow when Mr Cameron unveils plans for a crackdown on the Government quangos created by Labour, including cutting the “astonishing” pay of their senior managers. The Quangos cost £35billion a year. News Source
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It had all the hallmarks of a political sting: an attractive young writer with secret links to Labour interviews a Tory frontbencher and produces a ‘scandal’ gleefully fed to the media by ex-Downing Street Press chief Alastair Campbell.
But last night the Tories claimed that Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley is the first victim of an internet-based unit involving the son of former Deputy PM John Prescott, that Labour plans to use in the next Election.
The ‘operation’ - which the Conservatives claim amounts to dirty tricks - began when Mr Lansley gave an interview last week to the normally uncontroversial Health Service Journal (HSJ).
The reporter, Sally Gainsbury, quizzed him on his party’s plans for funding the NHS and her story quoted him as saying that ‘pay should be set in line with what is necessary to recruit and retain the workforce’.
This appeared on the HSJ website as ‘Andrew Lansley waves a blank NHS pay cheque’ – and the line was reported by Sky News as ‘Lansley puts his foot in it with freelance pronouncements on future Tory spending priorities’.
A furious Mr Lansley released a statement refuting Ms Gainsbury’s interpretation of his remarks – only for him to fall into a second trap.
‘The Health Service Journal has got this 180 degrees wrong,’ he said. ‘Future NHS allocations will not be able to accommodate inflationary staff costs.’
But Ms Gainsbury reported it as ‘Conservatives pledge real terms cuts to NHS wages’, and this fresh angle was picked up by several national newspapers, including the Labour-supporting Daily Mirror, where Mr Campbell once worked.
Tory suspicions were aroused when Ms Gainsbury’s articles then appeared on Mr Campbell’s internet blog under the headline ‘Andrew Lansley done up like a kipper’.
Mr Campbell, who claims to have retired from frontline spin work, said Ms Gainsbury’s ‘excellent’ piece had been written by ‘a journalist I have never met . . . who works for a magazine I don’t recall ever reading.’
But she might not be quite as objective a journalist as Mr Campbell implies: she is the girlfriend of Alex Hilton, who is standing as a Labour Party candidate at the next Election.
Mr Hilton recently established a Labour-supporting public relations consultancy called Game Changer with David Prescott, the son of Labour stalwart John.
The new consultancy, launched two weeks ago, has been tasked with improving the party’s online campaigning techniques as part of ‘Go Fourth’, a campaign to win a fourth term for the Government for which Mr Hilton and David Prescott were already working.
One of the first prominent figures to give public backing to Game Changer was Mr Campbell, who said: ‘Labour’s online campaigning had been playing catch-up with the Tories. David and Alex have really helped to close that gap.’
Mr Hilton and Ms Gainsbury follow each other – and David Prescott – on the Twitter social networking site, where both have left a trail of Left-wing political observations.
When Mr Hilton was admitted to hospital earlier this year, his Twitter site read simply: ‘No visitors allowed, yet. Text Sally to pass any messages on.’
Mr Campbell knows David Prescott well as a long-standing friend of his father. The dispute is particularly embarrassing for Mr Lansley, who is still recovering from his blunder last month when he implied in a BBC interview that the Tories would cut spending by ten per cent across all Government departments, apart from health, international development and schools.
The error earned him a dressing-down from David Cameron who warned him he would be fired for any further mistakes.
Labour chiefs are known to be targeting Mr Lansley, who is fast becoming seen as the Tories’ weak link. Last year, he was forced to apologise for saying ‘recession can be good for us’.
The row highlights the fierce battle between the parties over their plans for public spending and taxes.
The Conservatives accuse Labour of lying about plans to raise taxes while Labour says the Tories are planning secret spending cuts.
It also draws attention to the way the internet is likely to be a key weapon in the propaganda war between them at the next Election. Both sides have devoted considerable efforts into copying the way that Barack Obama used the internet to mobilise mass support.
But many experts believe the internet could also play a part in black propaganda and dirty tricks on the fringes of the Election battle. Both parties have semi-official internet outlets run by supporters which can be used for targeting their opponents.
Ms Gainsbury confirmed that Mr Hilton was her boyfriend. Asked if Mr Hilton had made Mr Campbell aware of her article, she said: ‘I asked Alex that, and he said that he hadn’t. He [Campbell] says that someone sent it to him on Facebook.’
She added that Tory fears of a Labour dirty tricks operation were unfounded. ‘The Health Service Journal Press released the article in the normal way,’ she said.
Last night Mr Campbell said that he was unaware of the connection between Ms Gainsbury and Mr Hilton, and denied any suggestion of ‘dirty tricks’. He said:
‘Someone sent it to me on Facebook. I thought it was an excellent article. Mr Lansley should concentrate on developing a credible policy.’
David Prescott is a former BBC journalist who last year failed to be selected for his father’s seat of Hull East after what he claimed was a ‘smear’ operation against him.
In 2006 he was at the centre of controversy after The Mail on Sunday revealed that his father had given him a Commons security pass, despite the fact that at the time he was working for a public relations company.
Mr Hilton was not available for comment. News Source
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The next European Parliament president is set to get an EXTRA £113,016 to rent a home PLUS £43,704 for entertaining on TOP of the current £36,778-a-year living allowance.
The planned £156,720 pay rise, detailed in secret EU documents leaked to the News of the World, is to give the parliament president "more dignity".
This would make his total yearly income around £214,000.
The rise equates to £9,418 a month for rent and £3,642 for entertaining. The president is currently German politician Hans-Gert Pöttering.
His 2½-year term ends later this month and his successor is due to get the new allowances.
The rent benefit alone is enough to hire a seven-bedroom mansion with four bathrooms, a swimming pool, tennis court and extensive grounds in Brussels.
In the running for the job is British Lib Dem Graham Watson, who would trouser a £64,000-a-year wage, the £37k living allowance and extra £113k.
Elite
The leaked document, uncovered by the UK Independence Party, says the changes will put the president in the same pay bracket as the head of the European Commission, who is in charge of the EU's day-to-day running.
UKIP MEP Marta Andreasen said: "The political elite think these obscene sums should be thrown at their feet without any thought of the people that pay for their feather-bedded lifestyle - the taxpayers." News Source
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Euro zone finance ministers are expected to voice fears on Monday that a recovery from the economic crisis could be slow as the region's ability to generate new wealth will shrink, diplomats said.
At a monthly meeting, the ministers are also likely to conclude that the current fall in consumer prices should not cause too much concern, and they will debate further when they should start cutting their budget deficits swollen by fiscal stimulus programmes.
"When discussing the economic situation, the ministers will focus on the impact of the crisis on potential growth," one diplomat said, referring to a term describing the highest economic expansion sustainable over the long term.
European Union and euro zone officials believe that potential growth in the 16-nation region, which was already low before the crisis at 2 percent, will shrink while high unemployment would persist for long.
"You can see that Europe will not have the growth potential it had before the crisis," EU Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joquin Almunia said this week.
But the ministers are likely to state that the worst is over for the euro zone, although a modest recovery would start only in 2010, with its scale also depending on whether the financial system could be healed.
"The fact that we are moving away from the bottom now can mean either that the economy is going upwards, or that maybe it is a bounce and after that we could go down again and stay down for a while," said a source involved in preparation of the Eurogroup meeting.
"What happens in the banking system will be crucial -- if credit channels are unblocked ..., then there could be gradual improvement. There, general mood is cautiously positive," the source added.
The source said that more and more euro zone and EU governments, with the notable exception of Britain and France, believed they should start to withdraw from their fiscal stimulus programmes sooner rather later.
French plans to ignore the 2012 deadline of bringing its deficit below the EU's cap of 3 percent of economic output, imposed by EU finance ministers, are not at this stage expected to be discussed.
The ministers are likely to side with the view of the European Central Bank that the current period of negative inflation would be brief and would not lead to harmful deflation, or prolonged falls in consumer prices.
RELAX CAPITAL RULES?
They will also debate an overhaul of decision-making at the International Monetary Fund, facing pressure from EU institutions to create a single seat at the Fund for the bloc and from emerging economies which want greater clout.
On Tuesday, when euro zone ministers are joined by their counterparts from the whole 27-nation EU, Germany may propose relaxing global rules on capital charges to ease writedown pressures on banks holding toxic assets.
"Germany would have to make the case and we will see how the discussion goes," said a senior diplomat from Sweden, whose country holds the rotating presidency over the EU.
The German proposal would be made during a debate on new regulations to discourage banks from pro-cyclical behaviour, or minimise financial fluctuation throughout the economic cycle.
The ministers are also expected to give Poland and Latvia until 2012 to cut their budget deficits below 3 percent of GDP. Hungary, Lithuania and Romania will be told to go below the ceiling in 2011. News Source
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The Tories are "investigating" whether aid vouchers could be used to let people in poor countries shop around for the best schools and services.
The Observer reported that plans for the vouchers and to spend £9.1bn overseas aid on funding for private schools were in a leaked document.
Frontbencher Andrew Mitchell said they were "ready to work with the public, private and not-for-profit sectors".
But minister Mike Foster said the idea was "unworkable and ideological".
The Observer reported the plans were contained in a Tory policy document leaked ahead of the government's white paper on development this week.
The proposals suggest vouchers "would be redeemable for development services of any kind with an aid agency or supplier of their choice".
Mr Mitchell, the Conservatives' international development spokesman, said: "Governments have a responsibility to guarantee access to health and education for everyone, particularly the poorest.
"We stand ready to work with public, private and not-for-profit sectors to help make that happen. I don't have any ideological hang-ups about whether it's private provision or public provision - I'm interested in what works."
But International Development minister Mr Foster said the voucher plan looked "unworkable and ideological".
He said: "Following the revelation on the ConservativeHome website that 96% of Tory candidates think the aid budget should be cut, this new plan looks like an attempt to placate Tories who are not committed to the UN aid target of 0.7%."
Conservative leader David Cameron has promised to match Labour's plans to increase development spending to 0.7% of GDP by 2013. News Source
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A civil servant has been sacked after she criticised Hazel Blears, the former Cabinet minister, over her behaviour in the MPs' expenses scandal.
Lisa Greenwood, an office administrator at the Department of Children, Schools and Families, posted an anonymous message on the internet at the height of the furore over abuse of the second home allowances.
It was traced to her work email account and the 38-year-old was initially suspended before being fired from her £16,000 post.
Miss Greenwood, from Widnes in Cheshire, had been angered by Miss Blears's ability to avoid paying capital gains tax on the sale of her designated second home.
Miss Blears wrote out a cheque for more than £13,000 to cover capital gains tax - claiming she had done nothing wrong - before resigning from her job as communities minister on the eve of the crucial local and European elections in June.
She subsequently apologised for her timing of her resignation, saying it was "stupid, thoughtless and cruel", then survived a vote of no confidence by her local party in Salford.
On May 13, Miss Greenwood wrote on the internet of Miss Blears: "How dare you wave a cheque about on national TV, saying that you are sorry.
"You are only sorry that you have been caught. You are a disgrace (including all the other honourable members). Why haven't you been sacked?"
The anonymous posting appeared on They Work For You, a political website, but was traced to Miss Greenwood's work email account.
The administrator, who had worked for the DCFS for seven months, was brought before a disciplinary panel and fired on May 22.
"A written warning I could understand, but I was shocked to be sacked," she said.
"It has been extremely upsetting that I have been sacked for having an opinion.
"When the expenses scandal broke we had all been discussing it at work, despite the civil service code.
"It was just the same in writing that everyone else had been saying at work and discussing openly in the office."
A DCFS spokesman said Miss Greenwood had been found guilty of gross misconduct and had brought the Government department into disrepute.
"The civil service has a clear code of conduct for its employees, which states that civil servants should be politically impartial and not act in a way that could damage the reputation of their department." News Source
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The society the Lab Lib Cons created
A Shocking 72 people are stabbed or robbed at knifepoint EVERY day, it was revealed today.
New figures show there were nearly 26,300 "serious" knife crimes last year.
Alarmingly, the number of offences has soared by nearly 1,500 since the year before - a six per cent hike.
Official police figures show last year's knife crimes include 250 attempted murders and 7,500 cases of wounding with intent.
Cops also recorded 1,800 grievous bodily harm offences and 13,600 robberies of personal property at knifepoint.
There were also 3,300 robberies of business property.
But the figures do not include more than 250 fatal stabbings - or thousands of more minor knife offences.
More than a third of all serious knife crimes - 10,497 - happened in London, according to the figures obtained under Freedom of Information.
There were big rises in knife crimes in Greater Manchester, where they shot up from 2,294 to 2,881 - a 25 PER CENT increase in 12 months.
There was a 19 per cent rise in the West Midlands, where offences shot up from 2,303 to 2,740.
Surprisingly, the biggest increase was the 72 per cent recorded in rural Avon and Somerset, where serious knife offences rocketed from 360 to 618.
The Conservatives said the figures exposed the terrifying scale of knife crime in towns and cities across Britain.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said the Government war on knife crime had failed.
"There has to be a presumption that anyone caught carrying a knife should expect a custodial sentence," he said.
"There must be real deterrents to carrying and using knives."
Police Superintendents' Association president Ian Johnston added: "These statistics show what everyone had feared: that knife crime is spreading."
The Home Office said violent crime has fallen over the last decade but gun and knife offences remained a challenge.
"We remain committed to tackling gang culture and gun and knife crime," said a spokesman. News Source
Sunday 5th July 2009
Proposals to clean up Parliament show how sinister Gordon Brown's Government has become.
Measures are before Parliament to try to clean up the behaviour of MPs. Well, that is how they are presented.
They are, in fact, a vindictive and manipulative exercise by the clowns who run the Labour Party, aimed mainly at making the lives of Tory MPs more difficult, and at creating an exclusive class of professional politicians.
There could be no finer evidence that the people who govern us have learned precisely nothing from the recent debacle.
Our public life needs more professional politicians like we need cholera.
Dave, regrettably, appears to endorse quite a lot of this, and to the anger of many of his backbenchers.
They argue that a man with private means such as he has should not be seeking to apply a restraint of trade on those less trust-funded than himself.
They are right.
But this is not just about lifestyle: it is also about the indubitable truth that MPs who have serious outside interests are going to discharge their constitutional functions as representatives of the people far more impressively than those who never leave the Commons.
And it is also about reversing the entirely unhealthy trend of the last 30 or so years of turning the job of an MP from being a representative of the people into that of a district councillor or a social worker.
Some of the strictures that have been proposed have absolutely nothing to do with clamping down on sleaze.
The idiotic idea that what MPs say in the Chamber of the Commons could be used in court would, had it not been thrown out by a humiliating (for Mr Brown) Labour rebellion this week, have meant the end of parliamentary privilege.
With that would have gone the ability of MPs to speak freely and represent us as we should be.
That it even got so far as being debated, against the advice of senior Commons officials and the counsel of senior parliamentarians, shows just how derelict, incompetent and sinister the Government, in its death throes, now is.
It also provides the clinching argument that the Prime Minister has lost his marbles utterly – though Jack Straw, the so-called "Justice Minister", at least had the courtesy to admit to the Commons when seeking to take through this repellent piece of legislation that the matter was not even on Gordon Brown's radar.
But here is another example of the idiocy. If you write a book – and I know, because I have written several – the process can take dozens of hours a week.
It doesn't matter that many authors sit up half the night to do it, and that the process invades their weekends and holidays: if the author is an MP, he is going to have to specify how much time he spends writing, and what he earns from it. The latter will usually be a pittance; the former could be thousands of hours a year.
One such writer, Denis MacShane, the Labour MP for Rotherham, pointed out this lunacy in an excellent speech in the House this week. He feels he can't write any more books because his constituents will persecute him.
He further points out that such minor politicians in living memory as Winston Churchill and Enoch Powell – not to mention Roy Jenkins, Tony Benn, Ted Heath, and so on – would under these rules either have had to stay out of public life, or abandoned literary careers.
All hasty legislation is, as a rule, unworkable, or has horrible unintended consequences.
I am not sure whether this kneejerk attempt to legislate isn't intended to wipe out the likes of Churchill, Powell and Benn. Mr MacShane argues that it will end the right of MPs to think and write as independent actors in public life.
He is absolutely right. And will it encourage better people to go into parliament? Of course it won't: quite the reverse. I think the public knows that there is no link between time spent working as an MP and the effectiveness with which one does the job.
When will the idiots who run the country? The House of Lords must know its duty: throw this Bill out. News Source
One thing is for certain - whatever happens between Britain and Iran over the next few weeks, the UK can depend on the bare minimum of support from its European “partners”.
If they do withdrawal their diplomats from Tehran in solidarity, as we’ve asked them to, I’ll not only eat my hat but will get through 27 different nationally-themed items of headgear, starting with a Bowler and moving on to a san culottes’ Phrygian cap, a pointy German World War One helmet and finishing with an Amsterdam leather daddy peaked cap.
Europe has an appalling history of appeasing the Islamic Republic; as Ronen Bergman describes in his book The Secret War With Iran, the Iranian government murdered over 300 dissidents in Europe during the 1980s, more than any regime in history, and the Europeans did absolutely nothing in retaliation.
This was partly out of fear - Mitterand even released one of the killers after 10 years because the Iranians said they’d bomb France - and partly out of greed.
Germany has enormous trading links with Iran, France always has its own agenda in world politics away from the best interest from Europe as a whole, and because those two countries are the axis of the European Union, their interests will always prevail.
So we’ll be left alone once again, stuck in an alleyway wondering why our friends have all run off when the bad guys turn up, until the next big event when the continentals wonder why we side with the United States so much and put it down to some strange Anglo-Saxon perversion, like transvestism or cricket.
All of which is a real shame, because the one great advantage of a United States of Europe, and the thing that makes it such an attractive idea in theory, is that it would have massive weight on the international stage.
A United Europe driven by its own interests, not those of France and Germany, would be able to isolate Iran and make life very uncomfortable for its regime, as well as push around all the eastern hemisphere’s other bullies.
So could it work? In theory, I’d say if the following things happened I, and many others, would be able to support the European Union:
- If it treated any economic, political or military attack on one member as an attack on all.
- If it recognised Europe’s common Christian, as well as Greek and Roman heritage, as the basis of the superstate’s principles.
- If it enforced a continent-wide ban on non-skilled external immigration and policed its outer boundary.
- If it actually devised a constitution, based on the American original, reserving as much power as possible to the states, and separating the power of the executive, legislative and judiciary.
- If it abolished the translatio