Archive 23
UkTabloid
The People's News Portal
Friday 27th November 2009
Immigration is continuing to rise despite the economic downturn with more than half a million people moving to Britain last year, a report revealed today.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that 590,000 migrants arrived last year - slightly up on the 574,000 arrivals the previous year.
The influx - slightly below the 2006 record of 596,000 - was made up of 505,000 overseas citizens and 85,000 Britons returning home after living abroad. At the same time, however, the number of migrants leaving Britain also rose, with 427,000 departures last year, 86,000 more than in 2007.
That means that net migration was down over the year, although overall there were 163,000 more people entering the country than leaving.
Today's figures show that although more overseas citizens have departed since the recession started, predictions from ministers that such outflows would curb the rise in unemployment are only being partly fulfilled.
Among East Europeans, the effect of the downturn on migration has been mixed. The number of Poles and others from the "A8" countries, which joined the EU in 2004, who departed last year rose to 69,000, more than double the 25,000 for 2007. The numbers arriving fell from 112,000 to 89,000, but that still means there was a net increase in East Europeans of 20,000.
Among all immigrants, 145,000 of the arrivals last year came to take a definite job and 35,000 came to study.
London was the most popular destination, attracting 28 per cent of the incomers last year. The capital also had the largest number of departures, but overall gained 50,000 extra residents through immigration.
Further statistics out today on the "resident" population - which excludes short-term migrants and other visitors - show that London has five million British citizens living here and slightly more than 2.5 million foreign nationals.
Shadow immigration minister Damian Green said the Government was failing to protect British workers. "Ministers should apologise for the years in which they have given us a chaotic immigration system with numbers coming in at levels which put unacceptable pressure on public services," he said.
Immigration minister Phil Woolas said that migration was benefiting the country and tougher policies had contributed to the fall in net migration.
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The number of rapes recorded by police in London is at its highest level for several years, figures revealed today.
There were 277 rapes recorded in the capital in October, almost 70 per cent up on the 164 recorded in the same month last year.
Scotland Yard chief Sir Paul Stephenson said he was concerned that the number of sex attacks had risen by almost a quarter in a year. He added it was not clear if a surge in offences or an increase in the confidence of victims to go to police was behind the figures.
Speaking at City Hall today, Met Commissioner Sir Paul said the high public profile of the “heinous” crime may have encouraged victims to report attacks. Analysis of the police figures show dramatic rises in certain boroughs. For instance, in the last seven months the number of rapes in Waltham Forest rose from 24 last year to 60 this year. There were also big increases in several other outlying boroughs such as Harrow, up from 38 to 65; Enfield, a jump of 54 to 87; and Bromley, from 18 to 44.
Sir Paul added: “Recorded rape is at its highest level for many years. For the year to September we have seen a significant rise, 24 per cent.
“The rise, we think, is partly due to the increased number of victims coming forward. There has been significant media attention on the issue, high-profile trials. I guess they are all contributing towards raising public awareness.”
“These are heinous offences and we have to understand whether it is down to increased reporting, and maybe, an increased problem.” Recently senior Scotland Yard officers said they were alarmed about a rising number of gang rapes. Figures revealed there were 93 in London in 2008/2009, compared to 71 in 2003/2004.
A report published yesterday said some police treated rape claims with scepticism when victims had been drinking or were from “poor areas”.
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The Extent of Illegal Immigration
This is the moment when British-bound migrants hiding in lorries bound for Dover were flushed out in a police swoop.
The two would-be illegal immigrants were among 30 arrested in yesterday's dawn raids on 12 trucks just before they set off for a ferry from Calais.
The mainly Eritrean and Somali men and women sneaked aboard the vehicles in the early hours while their drivers were sleeping.
The latest swoop comes after police operations to clear migrants from the streets of Calais and it shows the scale of the problem which still exists, despite French claims that a crackdown on illegal immigration is working.
Last month the French vowed to begin deporting Afghan migrants on joint charter flights with Britain.
But their effort was condemned as 'pitiful' after they placed just three illegal immigrants on the forced repatriation plane to Kabul. Twenty-four were packed on to the same plane by Britain.
In September, the French bulldozed a squatter camp in Calais called the Jungle. Of the 278 migrants arrested, early all were released on humanitarian grounds.
Of the estimated 1,000 migrants in Calais, up to 50 a week
are thought to be crossing the Channel illegally, with more arriving to replace them every day.
More are also arriving on a daily basis in other ports on the northern French coast that have ferry links to Britain, including Dunkirk, Ouistreham and Cherbourg.
Meanwhile, 60 illegal immigrants hoping to reach England were found living in squalid conditions in Belgium.
The immigrants, from India, were discovered after police raided flats in Brussels and Antwerp as part of an operation to dismantle a network of human traffickers.
Each of the migrants was apparently living on a bowl of rice per day.
Eleven ringleaders, who can receive up to £20,000 per person, were arrested.
Six of them had already been charged for similar alleged crimes last year but had been released.
'We have dismantled an important network worth millions of euros,' said a Belgian official.
The traffickers were 'prepared to do anything to get people to England'.
Belgium is a regular transit point for immigrants, many from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, looking for a better life in Britain.
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The BBC reported that immigration officers had warned of a massive increase in arrivals, and that a “significant number of those arriving on student visas had previously been denied entry to the UK, and they suspected that many had come here to work and not study.”
19,950 Indian “students” have poured into Britain in just two months since Labour’s much-vaunted “points-based immigration crackdown” — triple the number last year and boosting Britain’s total student population by five percent in eight weeks.
The shocking figures emerged after the producers of the BBC Radio 5 live Donal MacIntyre programme submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Home Office after the UK Border Agency had denied that there had been any increase.
“Student” visas have previously been identified as one of the biggest legal immigration scams.
Third World immigrants have “enrolled” with bogus colleges up and down the country. Once in Britain, these colleges provide the cover for illegal permanent immigration.
Several suspected Islamist terrorists arrested recently were “students” at some of these bogus colleges.
The Government announced a “crackdown” as part of its “points-based immigration system” which it promised would control the influx.
The new figures have shown the points system to be yet another lie. According to the BBC show, between June and August 2008, that is before the new system for students came into force, the British High Commissions in Mumbai, New Delhi and Dhaka issued 6,771 student visas.
During the same period this year, under the new points-based immigration system, the three offices issued 19,950 visas.
Given that there are about 413,430 students in total in Britain, this represents an increase of five percent over those few weeks. This statistic by itself makes it impossible for all these “students” to be genuine.
When the points-based immigration system was introduced, the then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith promised that the new system would “raise the bar” and lead to “fewer migrants coming to the UK from outside the EU.”
One Heathrow-based whistleblower told the BBC that “many so-called students could not speak English, and knew nothing about the courses they claimed to be studying.”
The BBC has also released a video taken in secret by an immigration official of the long queues of “students” who line up each day at Heathrow airport, waiting to clear passport control to enter Britain.
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Britain invaded Iraq just 10 days after ministers were told that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), an inquiry heard yesterday.
Foreign Office staff warned that the Iraqi dictator’s nuclear programme had been dismantled and there was no evidence he had chemical or biological weapons.
But despite the briefings, the then Prime Minister Tony Blair ordered the troops to join the American-led offensive six years ago.
Sir William Ehrman, Foreign Office director of international security at the time, said ministers were repeatedly warned intelligence on Iraq’s weapons was “patchy”.
He gave Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry into the conflict a list of briefings.
In April 2000, the picture was described as “limited to chemical weapons”, in May 2001 the knowledge of WMDs and missiles was “patchy” and in March 2002 the intelligence was “sporadic and patchy”. In August 2002 a briefing noted that “we know very little” about Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons since late 1998, and in September 2002 the intelligence “remained limited”.
Sir William said: “We did, I think on March 10, get a report that chemical weapons might have remained disassembled and Saddam hadn’t yet ordered their assembly.
“There was also a suggestion that Iraq might lack warheads capable of effective dispersal of agents.”
However, Sir William said it had not made any difference to the case for war over Saddam’s refusal to give up his weapons and co-operate with United Nations inspectors.
“I don’t think it invalidated the point about the programmes he had,” Sir William said. “It just proved he had been lying and had prohibited items.”
Tim Dowse, then Foreign Office head of counter-proliferation, told the inquiry that when he took up his post, Iraq was not the main concern. “It wasn’t top of the list,” he said. “I would say we put Libya and Iran ahead.”
He said Iraq’s nuclear programme was believed to have been dismantled in the 1990s while the chemical and biological weapons it was thought to have were not regarded as battlefield weapons. And, despite US concerns, there was no evidence Saddam was about to supply weapons to terrorists.
But Mr Dowse said he was confident that weapons of mass destruction would be discovered.
“I found it hard to believe there would have been so much reporting before the war without some fire behind the smoke,” he added.
Asked about Mr Blair’s claim that evidence of “a huge system of clandestine laboratories” had been found, Mr Dowse replied: “I didn’t advise him to use those words.”
The inquiry, which opened on Tuesday, is expected to last up to a year.
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Gordon Brown was accused of engineering a new Iraq cover-up yesterday by handing Whitehall departments the right to block the release of secret documents about the war.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg ambushed the Prime Minister in the Commons, angrily accusing him of trying to 'suffocate' the Chilcot Inquiry.
Relatives of the 179 servicemen who died in Iraq are desperate for the inquiry to finally uncover the truth and apportion blame.
But Mr Clegg said the Government's 'shameful culture of secrecy' would make that impossible.
'Protocols' on the release of information have given civil servants and witnesses nine separate grounds on which to block the publication of damaging details.
The revelation came on the day that senior civil servants gave damning evidence to the inquiry which showed that Tony Blair had lied, lied and lied again about the Iraq War.
They said that ten days before the invasion the then Prime Minister knew that Saddam Hussein had no way of using weapons of mass destruction.
And after the war, when Mr Blair declared that 'massive evidence' had been found, officials had to warn him not to 'declare success too rapidly'.
It also emerged that the notorious dossier which warned that Saddam could strike British targets in 45 minutes was also misleading.
The Whitehall ban on publication means that some documents which will be examined by the Chilcot committee will never be put into the public domain on grounds of national security.
Secret intelligence documents, which are crucial to uncovering the truth about the way the Government 'sexed up' the case for war, will be covered by the ban.
Other papers can be blocked if they contain commercially sensitive information, which might make it possible for Mr Brown to block the release of papers relating to the procurement of equipment for the Armed Forces before the war.
That process is widely believed to have cost the lives of British troops who were left without vital kit such as body armour because the contracts were concluded too late because ministers did not want it to appear that they were preparing for war.
Mr Clegg confronted the Prime Minister at Commons question time, accusing the Government of ' outrageously' giving Whitehall the power to veto the release of documents on grounds 'which have nothing to do with national security'.
Details of the protocols were published this month on the Cabinet Office website but the Government did not draw attention to them.
Civil servants will also be able to block publication if disclosure could endanger lives, break lawyer-client privilege or involve legal advice to ministers where they might prejudice on-going proceedings.
Mr Clegg said: 'It is vital that the Iraq Inquiry, which started its work this week, is able to reveal the full truth about the decisions leading up to the invasion of Iraq.'
He asked Mr Brown: 'How on earth are we, and the whole country, going to hear about the whole truth about decisions leading up to the invasion of Iraq if the inquiry is being suffocated on day one by your Government's shameful culture of secrecy?'
The rules on the release of information were agreed between the Government and Sir John Chilcot, the former mandarin heading the inquiry.
A spokesman for Sir John said the rules were designed to make it easier, not harder, to force the publication of documents because ministers and officials would now have to have specific grounds for opposing publication rather than issuing a blanket refusal.
But the furore will spark growing concern that the inquiry will deliver yet another 'whitewash' after the Hutton and Butler reports were accused of giving the Government an easy ride over its failures.
The protocol says that the inquiry team will have to 'notify the department, agency or service which is the originator of the information or that was the recipient of the information what information it wishes to include in its final report, or otherwise release into the public domain'.
Mandarins then have ten days to respond by saying which of the 'harms or breaches' they believe should prevent publication.
They could then demand redactions from the documents so that sensitive information is blacked out if the papers are published.
Mr Brown said Sir John had been 'given the freedom to conduct an inquiry in the way he wants'.
He added: 'The issues affecting the inquiry that would cause people to be careful are national security and international relations.'
Later, Mr Brown's spokesman said: 'The protocols address what categories of evidence, information and documents are sensitive and so have to be heard in private and cannot be released into the public domain.'
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British policing has 'lost its way' under an avalanche of Goverment targets, the chief inspector of police has said.
Denis O'Connor, Her Majesty's chief Inspector of Constabulary hit out at the 'noise and clutter' of new laws, benchmarks and initiatives under Labour which have destroyed the ethos of frontline policing.
He said too many new laws had left police officers confused about their duties and uncertain about when to use force.
In an astonishing broadside at the Government, he told The Daily Telegraph: 'The principles of policing get drowned out in the noise.
'You need to look at the number of units and departments at the Home Office, all the officials and the different committees and ask this question: 'Do they think about the principles and values of the British model of policing?'
'You have got a whole series of interests. If you add it all together and put on a piece of paper the links to show who is providing information, who is asking for information, who is suggesting new initiatives … it makes the London Underground map look like a walk in the park.'
Mr O'Connor spoke out as he unveiled a critical report by his Inspectorate into protest policing following the controversial G20 demonstations in April.
During clashes with riot police, 46-year-old newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson died after being pushed to the ground and struck with a baton.
A member of the Met's Territorial Support Group is also facing trial for assault after allegedly beating a woman in the legs.
The inspector told the newspaper the police should be approachable, impartial and accountable, as in the early days of policing under Sir Robert Peel in 1829.
'That was an ideal but there’s been some drift away from that. We have lost our way', he said. 'I think the whole thing needs rationalising significantly. That will hopefully give a better connection between the police and the people.'
There have been 61 amendments to In public order law legislation in the past six years, the report disclosed, concluding: 'Police are uncertain of their duties and the powers they may exercise'.
The Home Office has recently introduced a target for police for improving public confidence, putting increased pressure on forces which are already bogged down in paperwork to centrally imposed targets.
Mr O'Connor accused the Government - which has created crimes at a rate of nearly one per day since 1997 - of 'too many knee jerk reactions' in law and order.
He said centrally-imposed targets were a 'well intentioned' measure to tackle problems such as anti-social behaviour but had become a problem when 'the machinery came to dominate what police officers did' and took away their discretion.
The report claimed police training and tactics for protests were treated like a 'Cinderella subject' by force chiefs, and they risked losing public support with aggressive tactics.
Mr O'Connor said many officers failed to understand their obligations under the Human Rights Act and the law surrounding the use of force during protests and inappropriate use of stop and search powers.
Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, requested a review into the £7.5million operation after police were heavily criticised for their conduct at the demonstrations by 35,000 people during the visit of world leaders to London.
The report published yesterday examined protests in London, including the City and Blackheath, Kingsnorth, Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham.
Yesterday Mr O'Connor called for officers to tackle even the most inflammatory events using the minimum of force.
The chief inspector said that he is working with officials at the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) who want to reform practices.
He said: 'At some fairly highly charged events, the tactics and way police go about it seems to have been overtaken in some way by the world we are in.
'This harms not just the reputation of the officers concerned but the police service as a whole. It's time to modernise.'
Chief Constable Meredydd Hughes, of South Yorkshire Police, said work to write a new manual on public order operations and training is under way.
Mr Hughes, who is the ACPO lead for uniformed operations, said: 'This report will shape the future of national public order policing. It represents the first time that British policing has examined modern protest in such a public way.'
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A Major investigation into girls being groomed for sex by older men has uncovered disturbing ‘paedophile parties’ in Lancashire.
The victims, aged as young as 12, are often forced to have sex with a number of men at the gatherings. And many have been brainwashed into believing they are doing the sickening acts as favours, police said.
The shock findings were uncovered by the Operation Engage team, which was launched four years ago as the Lancashire Telegraph’s Keep Them Safe campaign first highlighted the problem of gangs grooming girls for sex. The Lancashire Telegraph investigation revealed fears that a network of predatory men were plying girls with alcohol and drugs and bribing them with gifts in return for sex.
Officers said they had now received ‘sporadic’ reports of girls being taken to parties and abused by a number of men. Detective Sergeant Mark Whelan, who leads the team, said this represented ‘trafficking’. He said: “We see children being taken to Blackpool, Burnley, Preston and Manchester.
“The girl is at a house party, thinking she’s with her boyfriend. "But while she’s there, he might ask her to have sex with a friend. “She’s performing sex acts for favours, but thinks she’s protecting the man she loves. “It is not really about a group of old men waiting for a child to be delivered to them.
“The much greater majority is children picked up, taken to a party or a ‘pad’ and while there, they may be abused. “Children are being groomed into having sex with a paedophile. That’s the bottom line.” The Engage team was launched as the Lancashire Telegraph’s Keep Them Safe campaign highlighted the problem of girls being groomed for sex by older men.
The team, which is a partnership of police, social services, health groups and children’s charities, specialises in tracking down offenders who groom teenagers for sex, and offers support and protection to the victims and their families. Operation Engage is now a respected nationwide authority on child sexual exploitation and in the wake of a disturbing report from charity Barnado’s, Det Sgt Whelan lifted the lid on the local picture.
The ‘Whose Child Now?’ report released last week was critical of local authorities failing to provide specialist services for victims of child trafficking. But members of the Engage multi-agency team claim they are already aware of the emerging underground trends highlighted by concerned experts.
Det Sgt Mark Whelan said so-called ‘paedophile parties’ and ‘child trafficking’ are happening in the area, but in ways the public might not immediately recognise. He said the Barnardo’s report brought up ‘legitimate concerns’ about paedophile trends, but insisted through Operation Engage, Blackburn with Darwen is leading the fight.
Det Sgt Whelan said: “Prosecution statistics don’t fully reflect the level of work which goes into tackling the trafficking of local kids. “Are we displacing offenders? No, we are arresting them. “If we know that children are taken or trafficked out of town for sex, we will find the offenders.
“They blame themselves, not realising they’ve been groomed and thinking they are the architect of their own downfall. “We want to try and catch the lot.”
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The Constituency Office of Nick Griffin MEP has made a Freedom of Information request to Lancashire Police concerning its Operation Engage which has been running for the past four years.
Operation Engage is an investigation into very young girls being groomed for sex by older men in Lancashire.
Since being elected to the European Parliament in June, Nick Griffin has been contacted by numerous parents whose daughters have been victims of grooming.
“There is a definite trend coming from the cases that I have been made known of,” says the MEP for the North West Region.
“The perpetrators have very similar backgrounds and so do their victims. I know that the multi-agency team behind Operation Engage have also identified a trend and this needs to be made public so that parents can be made aware of who their children may be at risk from.”
“It is worrying that Detective Sergeant Mark Whelan, who leads the team, was reported in the Lancashire Evening Telegraph as acknowledging that prosecution statistics don’t reflect the level of work which goes into tackling this grooming.
“I think we need to know more about what is going on and that is why I have asked my office to make the following Freedom of Information request:
- 1) What is the racial breakdown of the offenders arrested under this operation
- 2) How many have been prosecuted
- 3) How many have been convicted
- 4) What is the racial breakdown of the victims
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Regular visitors to this site will be only too aware of our frequent reports on paedophile activity within the Labour Party – with news items relating to their councillors and officials being arrested, charged and convicted in connection with paedophile offences – most commonly downloading child porn – being posted with monotonous regularity.
The Labour Party, of course, is infamous in that many of its MPs thieve from the taxpayer on a daily basis in “iffy” allowances and expenses claims – not to mention deliberately inflated constituency office rents!
Visitors can find a selection of “interesting” news reports relating to Labour (and Tory, Lib-Dems and UKIP) people, from just the last six months, or so, here .
Bearing in mind Labour’s apparent pro-paedo disposition, media reports – such as the one we are about to refer you to – should come as no surprise in a country having representatives of this odious party as its government.
The Labour regime, it would appear, believes that paedo’s have rights that we, the public, should respect! The BNP has other ideas on the subject, not least that our kids should have the right to enjoy their childhood – free from the threat of such evil.
We quote:
A Mum has been told to stay away from a mall so the child sex pervert who abused her daughter is free to do his weekend shopping there.
James Bryson – who had charges of raping the five-year-old dropped when he pleaded guilty to other horrifying sex attacks on her – was freed on Thursday.
The girl’s mum was horrified to find he was moving near her family and social workers had agreed he could have “shopping access” to her local centre at weekends.
Last night, the furious mum said she had been told Bryson, who served 40 months of an five-year sentence, had to have his human rights protected.
The woman, who cannot be named to protect the identity of her daughter, now 10, said: “It’s bad enough he’s out.
“But then I found out he was living just five minutes away from us.
“And I was told his conditions allowed him to use the local shops at weekends so I was advised not to go there or I risked meeting him.
“It’s a horrific situation for us and makes me feel sick.
“The social worker who came to my house said it was to do with his human rights. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”
Former pub bouncer Bryson, 31, originally from Possil, Glasgow, was released from high-security Peterhead Prison this week. Unquote.
The full article from the Daily Herald may be read here .
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The government is preparing to give a peerage to the head of the Muslim Council of Britain, even though government links with the organisation are officially suspended.
Ministers are keen to find a prominent Muslim to enter the House of Lords as a way of balancing the peerage given to Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks earlier this year.
It is understood that the name of Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, was proposed at a meeting in Downing Street earlier this week to discuss relations with the Muslim community.
The MCB has been frozen out since its deputy secretary general, Daud Abdullah, was found to have signed the Istanbul declaration calling for attacks on Jewish communities and the British navy following Israel’s military action in Gaza.
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I thought that global warming was probably a genuine and serious problem because that is what the overwhelming majority of relevant scientists seem to believe, and I generally didn’t doubt their objectivity.
At the very least, the Climategate revelations should weaken our confidence in the above conclusion. At least some of the prominent scholars in the field seem driven at least in part by ideology, and willing to use intimidation to keep contrarian views from being published, even if the articles in question meet normal peer review standards. Absent such tactics, it’s possible that more contrarian research would be published in professional journals and the consensus in the field would be less firm.
The New Atlantis agrees:
The evidence of scientific dishonesty supplied by these communications is so copious it’s hard to know where to begin an attempt to describe them. Many of the e-mails brazenly discuss the manipulation of scientific data either to provide the appearance of greater support for global warming science or to undermine the claims of skeptics.
Deutsche Welle:
German climatologist Hans von Storch of the Institute for Coastal Research in Geesthacht, Germany, remarked that the “unfortunate writing” done by Jones and others has “likely damaged the credibility of climate science.” ...But the fallout may not be entirely negative, he writes; in fact he sees a silver lining for climate science: “I would assume that … a useful debate about the degree of politicization of climate science will emerge.”
Debate In The Age: ABC Melbourne radio Report
Indeed, even warming crusader George Monbiot complains about the new deniers:
I have seldom felt so alone. Confronted with crisis, most of the environmentalists I know have gone into denial. The emails hacked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, they say, are a storm in a tea cup, no big deal, exaggerated out of all recognition. It is true that climate change deniers have made wild claims which the material can’t possibly support (the end of global warming, the death of climate science). But it is also true that the emails are very damaging.
The response of the greens and most of the scientists I know is profoundly ironic, as we spend so much of our time confronting other people’s denial. Pretending that this isn’t a real crisis isn’t going to make it go away.
Fred Singer, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science at the University of Virginia, sums up:
I cannot endorse the actions of this group and hope that an impartial investigation will bring closure to this difficult matter. Inevitably, the public’s view of science will be affected and this will hurt all of science.
Meanwhile, more evidence of how the debate was rigged. Many computer codes leaked from the Climatic Research Unit show how tree-ring data was tortured into confessing there has lately been a huge rise in temperature. Examples:
Uses “corrected” MXD – but shouldn’t usually
; plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to
; the real temperatures.
And:
‘NOTE: recent decline in tree-ring density has been ARTIFICIALLY’
printf,1,’REMOVED to facilitate calibration. THEREFORE, post-1960 values’
printf,1,’will be much closer to observed temperatures then they should be,’
printf,1,’which will incorrectly imply the reconstruction is more skilful’
printf,1,’than it actually is.
UPDATE
William Kininmonth, former head of the National Climate Centre at the Bureau of Meteorology, tells me he reported in Energy and the Environment on another astonishing attempt to stifle sceptics:
As an invited speaker to an international seminar invited by the Russian Academy of Sciences to discuss the scientific basis of the Kyoto Protocol it was perplexing that the event did not commence on schedule. The delay was particularly odd, as it appeared that the listed speakers were assembled. The program did commence after nearly two hours wait and the reason for the delay became apparent. Sir David King, chief scientific adviser to the United Kingdom government, had been lobbying vigorously to have a number of the listed international speakers omitted from the program. He even submitted his own program of speakers! Having failed in his objective, King absented himself from the proceedings for the remainder of the day…
The pre-seminar lobbying by Sir David King further underscored the politicisation of the climate change issue. It became apparent that the objective of the UK delegation was to defend the findings of the IPCC and convince the members of the Russian Academy of Sciences that the science of climate change is settled… The input of independent scientists (at the meeting), who could demonstrate shortcomings in the IPCC findings, clearly would hamper the UK delegation in meeting its objectives and were to be silenced.
Why the UK government would want to take on the role of sheriff in defence of the IPCC is not clear until one remembers that the Blair Government has made the promotion of Kyoto and hence its ‘war against global warming’ a top foreign policy objective for reasons that can only be speculated about.
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Not just in the UK
Wow! The scandal just gets juicier and juicier. Now it seems that the Kiwis may have been at it too – tinkering with raw data to make “Global Warming” look scarier than it really is. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That; Ian Wishart)
The alleged villains this time are the climate scientists at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NiWA) – New Zealand’s answer to Britain’s Climate Research Unit. And to judge by this news alert by the Climate Science Coalition of NZ, both institutions share a similarly laissez-faire attitude to scientific accuracy.
This is the graph from NiWA’s website, showing mean annual temperature over New Zealand from 1853. Note the dotted straight line showing the upward trend. Worrying, isn’t it? Almost enough to make you fall in love your flickery, yellowy new eco-light bulbs, recycle your kids and commit yourself to a binding agreement at Copenhagen.
But lets allow the experts at Climate Science Coalition of NZ to explain:
Straight away you can see there’s no slope—either up or down. The temperatures are remarkably constant way back to the 1850s. Of course, the temperature still varies from year to year, but the trend stays level—statistically insignificant at 0.06°C per century since 1850.
Putting these two graphs side by side, you can see huge differences. What is going on?
Why does NIWA’s graph show strong warming, but graphing their own raw data looks completely different? Their graph shows warming, but the actual temperature readings show none whatsoever!
Have the readings in the official NIWA graph been adjusted?
It is relatively easy to find out. We compared raw data for each station (from NIWA’s web site) with the adjusted official data, which we obtained from one of Dr Salinger’s colleagues.
Requests for this information from Dr Salinger himself over the years, by different scientists, have long gone unanswered, but now we might discover the truth.
Proof of man-made warming
What did we find? First, the station histories are unremarkable. There are no reasons for any large corrections. But we were astonished to find that strong adjustments have indeed been made.
About half the adjustments actually created a warming trend where none existed; the other half greatly exaggerated existing warming. All the adjustments increased or even created a warming trend, with only one (Dunedin) going the other way and slightly reducing the original trend.
The shocking truth is that the oldest readings have been cranked way down and later readings artificially lifted to give a false impression of warming, as documented below. There is nothing in the station histories to warrant these adjustments and to date Dr Salinger and NIWA have not revealed why they did this.
One station, Hokitika, had its early temperatures reduced by a huge 1.3°C, creating strong warming from a mild cooling, yet there’s no apparent reason for it.
We have discovered that the warming in New Zealand over the past 156 years was indeed man-made, but it had nothing to do with emissions of CO2—it was created by man-made adjustments of the temperature. It’s a disgrace.
NIWA claim their official graph reveals a rising trend of 0.92ºC per century, which means (they claim) we warmed more than the rest of the globe, for according to the IPCC, global warming over the 20th century was only about 0.6°C.
NIWA has since issued a press release, denying it has manipulated any data. And claiming:
Warming over New Zealand through the past is unequivocal.
However, at his excellent site the Briefing Room Ian Wishart – author of Air Con: The Seriously Inconvenient Truth About Global Warming – points out the striking similarities with the CRU scandal.
Manipulation of raw data is at the heart of recent claims of corrupt scientific practice in climate science, with CRU’s Phil Jones recently claiming old temperature records collected by his organization were “destroyed” or “lost”, meaning researchers can now only access manipulated data.
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Poirot actor David Suchet has claimed that Christianity is being marginalised because people are more concerned about not offending other faiths.
He said Britain was now in danger of losing the importance of the religion.
Suchet, who is to return as Poirot in a TV adaption of Murder on the Orient Express, was confirmed into Christianity about two years ago.
In an interview, the 63-year-old star said: 'I do feel that Christianity is being marginalised by other religions in Britain.
'I won't tell you the name of it, but a charity I work for got turned down for Government funding recently, because it was a Christian charity, even though it had been funded by the Government for several years.
'Don't misunderstand me. We should embrace all religions and marginalise none. But we seem more concerned with marginalising Christianity, and not offending other faiths.
'We are in danger of losing the importance of the Christian faith in our own country.'
The actor, the brother of newsreader John Suchet, told of his fears during an interview with Woman's Weekly magazine.
Suchet has just voiced an audio book called The Jesus Storybook Bible and has spoken candidly before about finding religion.
In an interview earlier this year, the married father of two talked about a turning point in his life in New York 20 years ago.
He said: 'I was lying in a bath in my hotel, thinking about my grandfather. And I remember thinking "Isn't it interesting that I feel my grandfather is with me and yet I don't believe in an afterlife?"
'So I went straight out and bought a Bible and read St Paul's letter to the Romans. He describes how to be as a Christian, and it slotted right into what I had been searching for: something beyond, something quite mystical, but also a way of being that I could relate to.'
And Suchet, who married in 1976, said of Christmas: 'Time with the family, my wife Sheila and children, Katherine and Robert, and their loved ones, too.'
He added: 'I always attend Midnight Mass and, ever since they were little, have told them the story of the night before Christmas. We've carried on with it well into their adult years.'
Suchet, who has played Agatha Christie's Belgian detective on ITV for 21 years, confirmed last week that he was returning for another Poirot.
Filming has already begun with an all-star cast including Dame Eileen Atkins, Samuel West, Hugh Bonneville and Barbara Hershey.
Other TV and radio performers-have spoken out about how religious faith has been marginalised in recent times.
Earlier this year Radio 2 star Jeremy Vine told the religious magazine Reform: 'You can't express views that were common currency 30 or 40 years ago. Arguably the parameters of what you might call "right thinking" are probably closing.
'Sadly, along with that has come the fact that it's almost socially unacceptable to say you believe in God.'
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How easy is it to hide £62 billion?
That is the question that has been flummoxing the City today. For it transpires that last autumn, to the almost complete ignorance of most of the City (and, I admit, most of the journalists who, like myself, keep a pretty close eye on the UK economy), the Bank of England lent a staggering amount of cash to Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS.
I was dumbfounded when I found out. Not because there was any surprise about RBS or HBOS needing the cash – we know now from the fact that they had to be semi-nationalised. In the event, as Paul Tucker admitted at the Treasury Select Committee, the £61.6bn (it was actually a moving sum, and peaked at this level around 17 October) was only good to buy them time, in HBOS’s case for a snap merger, in RBS’s for nationalisation. We knew that they and most of the other British banks were in dire straits.
No, the reason I was surprised is that it ought not to be so easy to hide such an enormous loan from the general public. This was not merely my conclusion: the Northern Rock episode (with the details of its emergency loan being leaked to the BBC) had convinced some in authority, and some in the Bank, that it was nigh on impossible to get away with a properly covert lender of last resort operation in the modern world, with 24 hour news, markets that are extremely sophisticated and a democracy that demands instant disclosure. How wrong we all were.
This is an important issue for all of us. For a period of time in late ‘08 and early ‘09, British taxpayers’ cash was at a significant risk (although the money lent out by the Bank was not backed up by its own debt so this was rather more like quantitative easing than Government debt). But hardly anyone in Government, Parliament, the City or the general public had a clue. For the conspiracy theorists out there this information will prove extremely worrying (or exciting, depending on whether these things make you tick).
But none of this answers the question of how the Bank managed to keep the details a secret. Although those I have spoken to about it today are painfully tight-lipped about the whole thing (as one would expect), I have a few hunches about where they squirrelled away these numbers.
The first thing to remember that in the wake of the Northern Rock fiasco the Government enacted a number of laws which allowed the Bank to withhold certain information about the constitutent parts of its balance sheet if it judged that this would help it improve financial stability. This meant that it could legally be rather more discrete about where in the balance sheet these sums would show up. However, as it pointed out in its Annual Report last year, it is still obliged to disclose the overall picture of its balance sheet, and this would not be complete without including the £61.6bn of cash it lent to these two banks. The money could not simply disappear into a black hole of its own making.The first thing to remember that in the wake of the Northern Rock fiasco the Government enacted a number of laws
The likelihood instead is that it was helped in its effort to disguise the cash by the fact that there was an awful lot else going on with its balance sheet at that particular time. Whereas Northern Rock occurred before the crisis had reached a fever pitch, these loans happened when central banks around the world were doing everything they could to stem the pain in financial markets. Among those measures were special currency swap operations in which the Bank swapped cash with the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank. These operations helped swell the Bank’s balance sheet.
In order to hide the emergency loan, all it had to do was, when printing the details of its balance sheet, to plop the loans in the same category as these currency swaps. Voila, no-one could be sure that all that fizzing in the Bank’s accounts wasn’t just due to those volatile currency swaps.
You can see the results in these graphs, which show the make-up of the balance sheet in recent years.
I’ve used my elementary Photoshop skills to add those blue lines that mark where the emergency loans for the banks began and ended. Look at the right hand graph – the assets side of the balance sheet – and in particular the purple bit that denotes “other assets”. That includes the currency swaps and, according to Simon Ward of Henderson (the City’s big expert on these complex central bank balance sheets), most likely the emergency loans as well. And, indeed, note how there is a pretty big bulge between October 08 and late January 09 – the precise period when the loans were being issued.
So the answer is that hiding this much money is actually pretty damn easy when there’s all manner of financial chaos going on. It is a finding that will definitely cheer the Bank of England, which rather likes the idea that it can step in and save a bank without anyone finding out and causing another Northern Rock. Not that RBS or HBOS ended up in a much better state in the end, but that’s another story.
Incidentally, as a footnote I should add that this deduction is the author’s own and not from the Bank of England themselves: they have been as evasive as possible when it comes to this, which given the circumstances is pretty understandable.
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The mystery over the Bank of England's £62billion secret loans deepened yesterday as ministers refused to say whether other banks had sought similar lifelines.
Chancellor Alistair Darling dodged the issue when delivering an emergency statement in the Commons, saying he would not provide a 'running commentary' on the topic.
He said any questions on who had received loans were 'plain daft' and 'really ridiculous'.
Several major lenders adopted a similar line yesterday, refusing to reveal whether they had received secret emergency funding.
The confusion came after Bank of England Governor Mervyn King stunned MPs on Tuesday by revealing that
Royal Bank of Scotland and Halifax Bank of Scotland had benefited from vast, previously undisclosed loans.
The secret aid neared £62billion last October, helping shore up their brittle finances and preventing a total collapse of the UK banking system.
The Treasury launched a high-profile rescue of the two firms the same month, injecting £37billion of public money, leading to their part-nationalisation.
They immediately prompted questions about whether other banks had sought under-the-counter assistance from the authorities. Sources claimed other, smaller lenders may have been forced to run to the Bank of England for covert aid which has yet to be revealed.
But the banks themselves were tight-lipped on the subject yesterday.
Spokesmen for lenders including Santander - which owns Abbey as well as Alliance & Leicester - and Barclays, Nationwide and HSBC refused to comment last night.
Only a spokesman for London-based Standard Chartered would say publicly that it had not sought any secret loans from the Bank of England, adding that it was 'one of the few banks in the world that hasn't taken anything' in government aid.
In a Commons debate yesterday Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable asked Mr Darling for a 'categorical assurance' that no other companies had secretly run cap-in-hand to the Bank.
Mr Darling brushed the question aside, calling it 'really ridiculous'. He added: 'No Chancellor or Governor of the Bank of England is going to provide a running commentary on what they may or may not be doing for perfectly obvious reasons.
'I just think such a question is plain daft really.'
He claimed the financial system is now far more stable than it was last October, when banks were reeling from the aftershocks of the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers.
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I’ve given the matter a great deal of thought all week, and I’m afraid I’ve decided that it’s no good putting Peter Mandelson in a prison. I’m afraid he will have to be tied to the front of a van and driven round the country until he isn’t alive any more.
He announced last week that middle-class children will simply not be allowed into the country’s top universities even if they have 4,000 A-levels, because all the places will be taken by Albanians and guillemots and whatever other stupid bandwagon the conniving idiot has leapt onto in the meantime.
I hate Peter Mandelson. I hate his fondness for extremely pale blue jeans and I hate that preposterous moustache he used to sport in the days when he didn’t bother trying to cover up his left-wing fanaticism. I hate the way he quite literally lords it over us even though he’s resigned in disgrace twice, and now holds an important decision-making job for which he was not elected. Mostly, though, I hate him because his one-man war on the bright and the witty and the successful means that half my friends now seem to be taking leave of their senses.
There’s talk of emigration in the air. It’s everywhere I go. Parties. Work. In the supermarket. My daughter is working herself half to death to get good grades at GSCE and can’t see the point because she won’t be going to university, because she doesn’t have a beak or flippers or a qualification in washing windscreens at the lights. She wonders, often, why we don’t live in America.
Then you have the chaps and chapesses who can’t stand the constant raids on their wallets and their privacy. They can’t understand why they are taxed at 50% on their income and then taxed again for driving into the nation’s capital.
They can’t understand what happened to the hunt for the weapons of mass destruction. They can’t understand anything. They see the Highway Wombles in those brand new 4x4s that they paid for, and they see the M4 bus lane and they see the speed cameras and the community support officers and they see the Albanians stealing their wheelbarrows and nothing can be done because it’s racist.
And they see Alistair Darling handing over £4,350 of their money to not sort out the banking crisis that he doesn’t understand because he’s a small-town solicitor, and they see the stupid war on drugs and the war on drink and the war on smoking and the war on hunting and the war on fun and the war on scientists and the obsession with the climate and the price of train fares soaring past £1,000 and the Guardian power-brokers getting uppity about one shot baboon and not uppity at all about all the dead soldiers in Afghanistan, and how they got rid of Blair only to find the lying twerp is now going to come back even more powerful than ever, and they think, “I’ve had enough of this. I’m off.”
It’s a lovely idea, to get out of this stupid, Fairtrade, Brown-stained, Mandelson- skewed, equal-opportunities, multicultural, carbon-neutral, trendily left, regionally assembled, big-government, trilingual, mosque-drenched, all-the-pigs-are-equal, property-is-theft hellhole and set up shop somewhere else. But where?
You can’t go to France because you need to complete 17 forms in triplicate every time you want to build a greenhouse, and you can’t go to Switzerland because you will be reported to your neighbours by the police and subsequently shot in the head if you don’t sweep your lawn properly, and you can’t go to Italy because you’ll soon tire of waking up in the morning to find a horse’s head in your bed because you forgot to give a man called Don a bundle of used notes for “organising” a plumber.
You can’t go to Australia because it’s full of things that will eat you, you can’t go to New Zealand because they don’t accept anyone who is more than 40 and you can’t go to Monte Carlo because they don’t accept anyone who has less than 40 mill. And you can’t go to Spain because you’re not called Del and you weren’t involved in the Walthamstow blag. And you can’t go to Germany ... because you just can’t.
The Caribbean sounds tempting, but there is no work, which means that one day, whether you like it or not, you’ll end up like all the other expats, with a nose like a burst beetroot, wondering if it’s okay to have a small sharpener at 10 in the morning. And, as I keep explaining to my daughter, we can’t go to America because if you catch a cold over there, the health system is designed in such a way that you end up without a house. Or dead.
Canada’s full of people pretending to be French, South Africa’s too risky, Russia’s worse and everywhere else is too full of snow, too full of flies or too full of people who want to cut your head off on the internet. So you can dream all you like about upping sticks and moving to a country that doesn’t help itself to half of everything you earn and then spend the money it gets on bus lanes and advertisements about the dangers of salt. But wherever you go you’ll wind up an alcoholic or dead or bored or in a cellar, in an orange jumpsuit, gently wetting yourself on the web. All of these things are worse than being persecuted for eating a sandwich at the wheel.
I see no reason to be miserable. Yes, Britain now is worse than it’s been for decades, but the lunatics who’ve made it so ghastly are on their way out. Soon, they will be back in Hackney with their South African nuclear-free peace polenta. And instead the show will be run by a bloke whose dad has a wallpaper shop and possibly, terrifyingly, a twerp in Belgium whose fruitless game of hunt-the-WMD has netted him £15m on the lecture circuit.
So actually I do see a reason to be miserable. Which is why I think it’s a good idea to tie Peter Mandelson to a van. Such an act would be cruel and barbaric and inhuman. But it would at least cheer everyone up a bit.
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Nu Labour the party of Taxes.. Charges.. Taxes.. Charges and more Taxes and Charges!
Nearly two million households will have to pay a controversial new £6 tax on telephone lines up to three times, according to leaked government documents.
Ministers plan to tax the 1.7million households with more than one phone line for each line they rent before then adding VAT to the charge. The Revenue & Customs plans are intended to fund the introduction of superfast broadband.
Families with one telephone connection, and separate lines for broadband internet and a fax would end up paying £21.15 a year, instead of the originally announced £6, reports The Times. When the Finance Bill was first announced in June it was assumed each household would be charged an annual £6.
The bill, which is due to be published in early 2010, has been leaked to the Conservatives. It contains the plans for a 50p a month tax, which ministers hope will raise up to £175million a year to pay for superfast broadband in rural areas.
The leaked document also shows that the Treasury is set to rake in an extra £30million by choosing to charge VAT on top of the new tax. A spokesman for Carphone Warehouse, the second-largest internet service provider, said that the plans 'add insult to injury for consumers'.
A spokesman told The Times: 'The original 50p a month tax is regressive and unfair. On top of all this now the Treasury will steal yet more off homes in VAT.'
The plans have also angered telecoms companies, who are urged not to separate the tax on itemised bills. The industry claims this will trick customers into thinking that the new charge is from their phone line supplier, rather than a Government tax.
The document states: 'There will be no requirement on owners or retailers to show the duty separately on their billing to end users. 'This is to prevent costly systems changes for line owners that might arise from having to account for the tax on individual invoices.'
The Tories have promised to ditch the plans if they win next year's General Election. Jeremy Hunt, the shadow culture secretary, said: 'This Government is simply unable to level with the public. This tax hasn’t even been implemented, yet they are already looking to triple it. 'How can they possibly square a commitment to universal broadband access if they are massively hiking the prices consumers will have to pay for it?'
A government spokesman said: 'We want everyone to experience the opportunities that next-generation broadband offers, which is why we plan to introduce a 50p levy on all fixed lines to help the market to access homes and businesses in hard-to-reach areas.'
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Immigrants living in Swindon are most likely to suffer from tuberculosis, a Primary Care Trust report has warned.
The news comes as Swindon PCT announced plans for a new community-based TB service to be introduced in the town in light of figures that show Swindon have double the cases of TB than the South West average. The most recent figures, gathered in 2006, show that for every 100,000 people in Swindon there are 11.3 cases of tuberculosis compared to the regional average which is 5.6 cases per 100,000.
Tricia Neville of the Local Patient Involvement Network (LINk) said it was immoral landlords who were partly to blame for the poor health of immigrants in the town. Mrs Neville said: “The landlords are actually exploiting the people who are living there by not making repairs. One person we’ve been to visit didn’t even have central heating during the winter.
“There is a lot of negligence of the housing side of it because the landlords are taking advantage of those who are foreign because they don’t know about British housing legislation. there are a lot of underlying issues here that need to be addressed.”
In a report presented to Swindon Council’s Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee, acting head of health and equalities Frances Mayes said the condition mainly affects those moving into Swindon from countries where tuberculosis is still a serious issue. “Most of the cases – 70 per cent – were of black African or Indian sub-continent origin, 70 per cent of whom were not born in the UK,” she said. Continued
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Pupils at a school who tested negative for tuberculosis will be screened again after seven cases have been identified as positive.
The Health Protection Agency East Midlands launched an investigation in September after three people at The Kingswood School, Corby, contracted tuberculosis. More than 200 staff and pupils were screened because of the outbreak.
But in documents Dr Stephen Horsley, director of public health at NHS Northamptonshire, says a total of seven cases have been identified as positive to date. Pupils in Year 12 at the school will now be screened – including those who tested negative when initial testing was carried out.
In a report due to be presented to NHS Northamptonshire's public board meeting tomorrow, Dr Horsley said: "Three students in Year 12 were diagnosed with pulmonary TB at The Kingswood School in Corby.
"As a result of these cases and following a risk assessment made around each case and the school environment, a decision was made to screen the whole of this year group, plus Year 13 of 2008-09 (who have now left school) and all teachers with links to the school for Years 12 and 13.
"To date, seven cases have been identified as positive and as a result students in Year 12 will now be screened and those who tested negative previously will have to be rescreened. "The Health Protection Agency is meeting regularly with key people to monitor the outbreak."
It was revealed in October that blood tests showed a total of 57 people had been exposed to tuberculosis after three full-blown cases at school. The 57 positive blood tests meant those concerned had been exposed to TB but did not have the disease.
Thursday 26th November 2009
Labour has allowed nearly three million immigrants to settle legally in Britain since coming to power in 1997, official statistics are expected to reveal today.
By the time of the 2010 general election, the number of immigrants will have exceeded this milestone figure despite a 37 per cent drop this year due to the recession.
And the figures ignore hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants known to have slipped into the country over the past decade.
Last night Home Office ministers were braced for fresh anger over the annual immigration figures for 2008, published by the Office for National Statistics.
Population think-tank MigrationWatch UK yesterday forecast the figures would show a total net influx of around 150,000 last year, a significant drop compared with 237,000 in 2007.
But experts at the think-tank say 75 per cent of that fall is due to migrant workers from Eastern Europe returning home because of the economic downturn.
Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of MigrationWatch UK, said: “The fall in immigration since last year is welcome but three- quarters of it is nothing to with Government policy.
“That policy has given us three million immigrants since Labour came to power despite being elected on a manifesto which said ‘every country needs strong immigration controls and Britain is no exception’.
“The reality is that it seems we have been an exception to that rule.”
MigrationWatch UK’s predicted net immigration figure of 150,000 for 2008 is based on trends from previous official figures.
They showed that 2.67 million immigrants arrived in the UK between 1997 and 2008.
The Home Office has estimated that there are currently around 450,000 illegal immigrants in the UK.
But a separate estimate from the London School of Economics, commissioned by London Mayor Boris Johnson, put the figure closer to 725,000.
The annual official immigration figures are also expected to suggest Britain remains on course to grow from its current level of 61 million to 70 million by the year 2029.
MigrationWatch UK cast doubt on Government claims that the new “points-based system” for assessing immigration applications from skilled foreign workers is significantly curbing the influx.
A report from the think-tank said: “To stop the UK’s population hitting 70 million, net migration would need to be reduced by 66 per cent from the probable 2008 level of 150,000 a year to 50,000 a year.
“But even this would be the equivalent of adding the present population of Sweden to that of England.
“To hold our population at 65 million, we need to bring net migration down close to zero.”
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Two in three voters think immigration is bad for Britain, a poll revealed last night. In a wide-ranging survey on border control policies, 67 per cent felt that immigration was having a “negative effect on the UK”.
And a majority were concerned that illegal migrants were taking jobs from British workers and wanted them deported.
The poll, by research firm Angus Reid Public Opinion, is a clear signal that mass immigration will be a key issue among voters at next year’s general election. It also exposed widespread scepticism about all three major Westminster parties’ immigration policies.
Only 12 per cent believed that Labour was the political party best at controlling Britain’s borders, compared with 30 per cent favouring the Tory approach while just 8 per cent backed the Lib Dems on the issue.
The survey comes a fortnight after Gordon Brown gave his first major speech on immigration policy, in which he claimed that immigration was “not an issue for fringe parties nor a taboo subject”.
A spokesman for Angus Reid Public Opinion said: “The survey shows that immigration is important to voters and the level of concern over both legal and illegal immigration is particularly high in Britain at this point.”
Of the 2,006 people quizzed, 56 per cent believed illegal immigrants took jobs away from British workers while 57 per cent thought illegal newcomers should be deported.
Just 23 per cent thought illegal immigrants should be allowed to work in the UK on a temporary basis and only 13 per cent wanted them to have the eventual opportunity of becoming UK citizens.
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Migrant gangs in Calais are targeting British holidaymakers in terrifying 'highway robberies'.
Would-be illegal immigrants are forming human roadblocks to force motorists passing through the French port town to stop.
Travellers are then robbed at knifepoint by the migrants, who are desperate for funds to help them sneak into the UK.
Last night a police spokesman in Calais told the Daily Mail that the nine million Britons a year who pass through Calais - the equivalent of 25,000 every day - should take extra care.
He urged motorists to keep their windows closed and doors locked until they are safely inside the ferry terminal.
The officer said he had received several reports from holidaymakers of having to 'run a gauntlet' of migrants between the town and the ferry port.
One British couple reported being forced to stop by bedraggled refugees on the port approach road last week.
The Calais police spokesman told The Mail: 'Frontier police received a report from a British couple who said the gang formed a human chain across the road to stop them.
'Around six of them then surrounded the car and waved a knife in the male driver's face and demanded cash. He threw his wallet out of the window and sped off. The refugees fled into the woods on foot.'
Several days later another British family ploughed through a refugee roadblock, knocking down and injuring one of the migrants.
Robert Moncrieff, 80, following in a car close behind, said: 'There was a refugee lying in the road who looked injured. He was surrounded by several of his accomplices.
'We drove straight past and when we reached the port, the driver told us the refugees had tried to flag him down but he had driven through them and knocked one over.'
The police spokesman added: 'We advise drivers to drive slowly at anyone blocking the road, giving the clear intention you do not want to be stopped.
'If the road remains blocked, keep the windows closed and doors locked, and call the police. Drivers should take any opportunity to drive away once the road is clear.'
He added: 'We are stepping up security and police patrols in the area around the port, especially over the busy summer months.'
Since the closure of the Red Cross refugee centre at Sangatte in 2002, would-be migrants have been sleeping rough in and around Calais while they attempt to sneak on board cross-Channel trains and ferries.
There are currently around 2,000, many living in a squalid camp known as the Jungle, which the French government has said will not be cleared away until next year.
In April immigration minister Eric Besson vowed to bulldoze the litter-strewn shanty town - where a London journalist was raped by a migrant last year - after admitting it had become a hotbed for people smugglers and criminal gangs.
But he has now said the camp must remain in place until it can be dismantled 'in a dignified manner'.
French politicians have blamed Britain for the return of migrant camps to Calais.
The mayor of Calais, Natacha Bouchart, said the lure of the UK's 'enormous' state handouts to asylum-seekers was the reason why thousands of foreigners are using the French port as a staging point to get across the Channel.
Mrs Bouchart said the UK Government's policies were 'imposing' thousand of migrants on the town, costing the local economy millions of pounds.
Earlier this month, Gordon Brown agreed to give France £15million for new technology to search vehicles heading for Britain.
In return, France undertook to step up the repatriation of illegal immigrants.
Last night a UK Border Agency spokesman said: 'We are confident the French authorities will take any action necessary to protect those travelling back to Britain.'
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Primary school pupils are to be taught gender equality as part of the national curriculum, ministers announced yesterday.
The lessons will be part of a previously-revealed drive to make children more aware of the evils of domestic violence.
Classes for children as young as five will begin with gentle warnings against name-calling and bullying based on the victim's sex.
Towards the end of secondary school, children will be taught about domestic violence and the links between alcohol, drugs and such abuse.
Teachers will be assessed on how well they cover the subjects.
The action plan - called Violence Against Women and Girls - has been drawn up by Home Secretary Alan Johnson, Schools Secretary Ed Balls and Commons leader Harriet Harman. It is intended to be in place by 2011.
Before they can qualify, trainee teachers will have to learn about gender awareness and domestic violence.
Officials will also produce rules for teachers on tackling 'sexist, sexual and transphobic bullying'.
Schools minister Vernon Coaker said the lessons would be tailored to the age of a class.
'The appropriateness of what you do with someone who is five years old is totally different in terms of content and how you will be taught to someone who is 15 or 16,' he said.
'You can teach [younger children] about not bullying people and how names can hurt people.'
But campaigners said using school time for the lessons would hinder children's progress in academic subjects.
Margaret Morrissey, of the Parents Outloud campaign group, said: 'The Government should stop interfering with parents bringing up their children and focus on teaching children to read, write and all those things they need to get a career.
'This is turning our children into confused mini-adults from the age of five to nine. This has nothing at all to do with academic learning.'
Nick Seaton, of the Campaign for Real Education, said: ' Youngsters should naturally know not to do these sort of things and must be called to account if they do.
'But teachers have enough to do in teaching English, maths and science to a reasonable level without addressing issues that parents should be dealing with.'
In August, the Mail reported that ministers wanted domestic violence to be added to the national curriculum. Now they have added gender equality to the list.
The strategy includes a campaign to tackle violence among teenagers.
Two telephone hotlines - one for victims of stalking and harassment and a 24-hour sexual violence helpline - will be set up.
Ministers are also looking at laws that would ban adverts for prostitutes amid fears that many massage parlours and escort services are fronts for brothels.
The Ministry of Defence has been asked to produce its own domestic violence strategy.
It follows concerns many ex-servicemen are ending up in jail on charges of physical abuse.
Campaigners against domestic violence accused ministers of underfunding the initiatives.
Sandra Horley of Refuge said: 'While we welcome the Government's new strategy, which addresses all forms of violence against women and girls, Refuge is disappointed that it is not underpinned by sufficient funding to make a real difference to abused women and girls.
'Many refuges and other women's services are at risk of closure. . . and a third of local authorities provide no domestic violence services whatsoever.'
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This is what Mandleson Protects.. The Greedy Music Industry!
It looked like a generous gesture from a sometimes greedy music industry.
The album by The Soldiers, a group made up of three serving members of the Armed Forces, was advertised as donating part of its proceeds to military charities.
But last night the record company behind the trio was facing a backlash after it emerged that as little as 3 per cent of the price of each CD goes to charity.
Proceeds from the record have been intended to support the Army Benevolent Fund, Help For Heroes and The Royal British Legion.
The album, Coming Home, is sung by Lance Corporal Ryan Idzi, Sergeant Richie Maddocks and Sergeant Major Gary Chilton.
Proceeds from the record have been intended to support the Army Benevolent Fund, Help For Heroes and The Royal British Legion.
The album, Coming Home, is sung by Lance Corporal Ryan Idzi, Sergeant Richie Maddocks and Sergeant Major Gary Chilton.
It has been selling for £8.99 at HMV and with online store Amazon at £8.68.
It was released on October 26 on Rhino Records, a subsidiary of major international label Warner Music Group, and has already gone platinum with sales of 300,000.
But a spokesman for the group has admitted that only 25p from each copy - which is made up of cover versions - is going to the good causes.
This is pointed out clearly on the back of the CD. The figure means each charity is receiving only 8p per CD sold.
'We're giving donations from the sales of every album and sale of every download of the Coming Home track,' said the spokesman.
'25p from the sale of every album goes to charity. We're hoping to raise £100,000 before the end of the year.'
She later added that, when it comes to music downloads, there has not even been a decision yet on what percentage will be donated.
That will be decided only after the album has been on sale for three months.
Following its release last month, it entered the album charts at number four. It is currently at number ten, above stars such as Cheryl Cole and Rod Stewart.
Speaking about the album recently, Lance Corporal Idzi said: 'We hope to raise as much money as possible from this album to support our colleagues past and present.'
It has so far raised at least £75,000 and record industry insiders believe it could be one of the biggest-selling albums of the Christmas period.
A spokesman for Rhino accepted that only 25p of each album sold goes to charity.
But she said they are donating the royalties - from the artist and the management team CPW - from both singles to the Army Benevolent fund.
The single Coming Home has already been released. The Soldiers' Christmas single - called A Soldier's Christmas Letter - will be released next month.
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The number of elderly Britons dying from the cold jumped 49 per cent last winter following punishing increases in gas and electricity bill.
According to the Office for National Statistics, there were 36,700 more deaths last winter than in a comparable number of warmer months.
That meant the total of what are known as Excess Winter Deaths for England and Wales was up 12,000 on the previous year and at the highest level in a decade.
The grim statistics will add to fears that the high fatality rate will be repeated this winter following a refusal by energy suppliers to cut tariffs before temperatures drop.
They also leave the 'big six' companies - British Gas, Scottish and Southern Energy, RWE nPower, Eon, EDF and Scottish Power - open to criticism.
All six are enjoying huge profits after failing to pass on a sharp fall in the wholesale cost of gas and electricity to customers.
Their bills went up by an average of 42 per cent or £381 last year, putting a strain on the budgets of pensioners and others.
Since then, wholesale prices have fallen by more than 50 per cent, however bills have been reduced by only 4 per cent, around £50 a year.
Today, official customer watchdog Consumer Focus is calling on the Government to order a Competition Commission inquiry into the failure to pass on lower wholesale costs.
It says there is scope to cut energy bills by at least £62 a year immediately, with further reductions possible.
Last winter's sharp rise in deaths followed warnings that high bills would leave five million people to choose between heating and eating.
Charities argue high bills contributed to the fatality rate.
Jenny Saunders, of National Energy Action, said: 'Pensioners are often anxious to avoid debt and turn their heating down or even off, often unaware that they are putting their health in danger.
'We have one of the highest excess winter death rates in Europe, higher than many of our colder Scandinavian neighbours.'
The Excess Winter Deaths total is a record of how many more deaths there are during winter months compared with the non-winter months.
These extra deaths, the majority among pensioners, are due mostly to the effects of the cold which aggravates underlying health problems and increases the likelihood of falls.
Robert Hammond of Consumer Focus said: 'Millions of people are paying over the odds to heat their homes this winter, despite huge falls in the wholesale price of gas.
'A truly competitive market would ensure that when energy companies pay less to supply energy, customers pay less.'
The problems for customers contrast with the profits of suppliers.
British Gas is set for a 50 per cent rise in annual profits to more than £500million and Scottish and Southern Energy's profits increased 36 per cent for the past six months.
Christine McGourty of Energy UK, which represents the suppliers, said: 'Britain's energy suppliers spent £157million between 2008/09 to help people struggling with their bills.'
She rejected accusations of profiteering, saying Britain's energy market was one of the world's most competitive.
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British officials considered a plan to topple Saddam Hussein two years before the Iraq War but ruled it would be illegal just months before Tony Blair signed up for the American invasion.
Senior diplomat Sir William Patey told the first day of the Chilcot Inquiry into the 2003 invasion that Britain looked at a proposal for regime change in Iraq in late 2001. It was a response to growing 'drum beats' for war in Iraq coming from the U.S., the inquiry heard. But the Foreign Office 'options paper' concluded there was 'no legal basis' for ousting the dictator. It warned that Britain should 'keep a long way from the regime-change end of the spectrum'.
Details of the paper prove that British officials were considering the possibility of removing the Iraqi dictator much earlier than has previously been admitted. Tony Blair denied that regime change was British policy until the final days before the invasion. But the revelation that Whitehall officials regarded targeting Saddam as unlawful will strengthen the criticism that Mr Blair caved in to the American desire for war and rode roughshod over international law.
The details emerged on the first day of the hearings of the Chilcot Inquiry, set up to look into the war, its build-up and aftermath. Sir William, who was then head of the Middle East Section at the Foreign Office, revealed that in early 2001 the Foreign Office drew up a policy paper called 'A Contract with the Iraqi People' which set out what a 'post-Saddam' Iraq might look like.
In secret meetings in Washington even before the 9/11 attacks, Bush administration officials told their British counterparts they wanted to oust the Iraqi dictator. Sir William, now ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said: 'In February 2001 we were aware of these drum beats from Washington and internally we discussed it. Our policy was to stay away from that.'
Later that year, after the 9/11 attacks, Sir William secretly drew up a second options paper because the Americans had made clear a conflict was possible. He said: 'We had at the end the regime change option - which was dismissed at the time as having no basis in law. It was very much an internal paper. We didn't go into how to achieve regime change.' On three separate occasions, Sir William said that the view in Whitehall was that 'there was no legal basis for' regime change.
That view was echoed by Sir Peter Ricketts, former chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and now chief mandarin at the Foreign Office. He said: 'Regime change in 2001 was something that we thought there could be no legal basis for.' Just a few months later - in March 2002 - Mr Blair apparently pledged to George W. Bush that he would support a U.S. invasion during a summit at his Texas ranch.
Sir William further undermined Mr Blair's justification for war, saying that Saddam was not seen as 'an immediate threat' and it would have taken 'a few years' before he became a serious danger to the West. By early 2003 Downing Street's 'dodgy dossier' was claiming that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction could be deployed against British targets in Cyprus within 45 minutes. The invasion took place on March 20 that year. Yesterday's testimony reinforces the widely held view that Mr Blair arranged the intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to suit his political decision to back Mr Bush.
International lawyers have long argued that the war was illegal and controversy has raged over the fact that the Government's legal advice appeared to change in the run up to war. The Attorney General Lord Goldsmith eventually claimed the war was legal because Saddam Hussein was in breach of UN resolutions - despite Mr Blair's failure to secure a resolution explicitly endorsing war. While the atmosphere was genteel inside the inquiry room, outside emotions were a little more evident. Protesters in Tony Blair and George Bush masks, holding handfuls of cash smeared with fake blood, gathered in the street outside the QEII centre opposite Westminster Abbey.
Some of the families of the 179 British servicemen and women killed in the conflict spoke of their grief while others watched grimly as the mandarins gave evidence.
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Viscount Monckton on Climategate:
‘They Are Criminals’
The man who challenged Al Gore to a debate is furious about the content of the leaked CRU emails — and says why you should be, too.
This is what they did — these climate “scientists” on whose unsupported word the world’s classe politique proposes to set up an unelected global government this December in Copenhagen, with vast and unprecedented powers to control all formerly free markets.
To tax wealthy nations and all of their financial transactions, to regulate the economic and environmental affairs of all nations, and to confiscate and extinguish all patent and intellectual property rights.
The tiny, close-knit clique of climate scientists who invented and now drive the “global warming” fraud — for fraud is what we now know it to be — tampered with temperature data so assiduously that, on the recent admission of one of them, land temperatures since 1980 have risen twice as fast as ocean temperatures.
One of the thousands of emails recently circulated by a whistleblower at the University of East Anglia, where one of the world’s four global-temperature datasets is compiled, reveals that data were altered so as to prevent a recent decline in temperature from showing in the record.
In fact, there has been no statistically significant “global warming” for 15 years — and there has been rapid and significant cooling for nine years.
Worse, these arrogant fraudsters — for fraudsters are what we now know them to be — have refused, for years and years and years, to reveal their data and their computer program listings.
Now we know why: As a revealing 15,000-line document from the computer division at the Climate Research Unit shows, the programs and data are a hopeless, tangled mess.
In effect, the global temperature trends
have simply been made up.
Unfortunately, the British researchers have been acting closely in league with their U.S. counterparts who compile the other terrestrial temperature dataset — the GISS/NCDC dataset.
That dataset too contains numerous biases intended artificially to inflate the natural warming of the 20th century.
Finally, these huckstering snake-oil salesmen and “global warming” profiteers — for that is what they are — have written to each other encouraging the destruction of data that had been lawfully requested under the Freedom of Information Act in the UK by scientists who wanted to check whether their global temperature record had been properly compiled.
And that procurement of data destruction, as they are about to find out to their cost, is a criminal offense. They are not merely bad scientists — they are crooks. And crooks who have perpetrated their crimes at the expense of British and U.S. taxpayers.
I am angry, and so should you be.
What have the mainstream news media said about the Climategate affair? Remarkably little. The few who have brought themselves to comment, through gritted teeth, have said that all of this is a storm in a teacup, and that their friends in the University of East Anglia and elsewhere in the climatological community are good people, really.
No, they’re not. They’re criminals. With Professor Fred Singer, who founded the U.S. Satellite Weather Service, I have reported them to the UK’s Information Commissioner, with a request that he investigate their offenses and, if thought fit, prosecute.
But I won’t be holding my breath: In the police state that Britain has now sadly become, with supine news media largely owned and controlled by the government, the establishment tends to look after its own.
At our expense, and at the expense of the truth.
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Late on the night of of November 19, news broke on PJM and elsewhere that a large amount of data had been stolen from one of the major climate research institutions by an unknown hacker and made available on the Internet.
The institution is the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit, home institution for Dr Phil Jones and one of the world’s centers of research into anthropogenic global warming (AGW), or “climate change.”
The hackers released about 172 megabytes of data, and we can be sure examining it closely will take some time. But after a few days, certain things are beginning to become clear.
- The data appears to be largely, perhaps entirely, authentic.
- The emails are incendiary.
- The implications shake the scientific basis for AGW, and the scientific reputations of some of AGW’s major proponents, to their roots
Let’s look at the files and emails first. (For a running list of the interesting emails, see Bishop Hill’s list.) As I wrote earlier, you have to be really careful with this sort of thing, because it would only require salting a few really inflammatory fakes through a collection of otherwise real emails to make a convincing hoax (think Rathergate.)
But since the data first came out, a number of the emails have been corroborated by recipients, and none of them have been refuted. So, at least tentatively, I think we need to accept them as authentic.
If we do accept them as authentic, though, they truly are incendiary. They appear to reveal not one, not two, but three real scandals, of increasing importance.
* The emails suggest the authors co-operated covertly to ensure that only papers favorable to CO2-forced AGW were published, and that editors and journals publishing contrary papers were punished. They also attempted to “discipline” scientists and journalists who published skeptical information.
See for example emails 1047388489, 1256765544, 1255352257, 1051190249, 1210367056, 1249503274, 1054756929, 1106322460, and 1132094873. Also see email 1139521913, in which the author discusses how the comments at RealClimate.org are moderated to prevent skeptical or critical comments from being published. RealClimate advertises itself as a scientific blog that attempts to present the “real case” for AGW.
* The emails suggest that the authors manipulated and “massaged” the data to strengthen the case in favor of unprecedented CO2-forced AGW, and to suppress their own data if it called AGW into question.
See for example emails 0938018124, 0843161829, 0939154709 (and the graphic here), and 0942777075 (and the discussion here).
* The emails suggest that the authors co-operated (perhaps the word is “conspired”) to prevent data from being made available to other researchers through either data archiving requests or through the Freedom of Information Acts of both the U.S. and the UK.
Email 1107454306 is particularly interesting. In it, Dr Jones writes:
The two MMs [McKittrick and McIntyre] have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.
What makes this interesting is that the CRU, in later years, announced that they had “inadvertently deleted” their raw data when they responded to an FOIA request from … McIntyre.
Now, I’ve purposefully not included much of the text from these emails, both for reasons of space and because I want people to read them for themselves. But, at least on this first look, it appears that the three scandals are:
- First, a real attempt by a small group of scientists to subvert the peer-review process and suppress dissenting voices. (For another look at this, by a respected climate scientist who was one of the targets, see these posts on Roger Pielke Sr.’s blog.) This is at best massively unethical.
- Second, a willingness to manipulate the data to make a political case. This is certainly misconduct and possibly scientific fraud. This, if it proves true, should make these scientists subject to strong disciplinary action, even termination of their tenured positions.
- Third, what gives every appearance of an actual conspiracy to prevent data from being released as required by the Freedom of Information Acts in the US and UK. If this is proven true, that is a federal crime.
These emails and the data associated, taken together, raise really important questions about the whole scientific structure of AGW. Is the data really valid? Has the data been effectively peer reviewed and have attempts to falsify been fairly treated? Is CO2-forced AGW really the best hypothesis?
Until these questions are answered, the various attempts to “deal with the climate change crisis” have no acceptable scientific basis.
Comment from a Political Observer:
It is going to take some time and a lot more coverage on this issue for people to begin to understand that the so called environmental movement is nothing more than a front for the leftist, socialist agenda.
This has never been about science. If it had, there would have been serious questions such as how so many of these global warmist were also the next ice age advocates of only a few decades ago. And of course the oncoming ice age was the product of man made pollution.
The global climate warming (change) has always been about politics. It has always been about destroying Western economies all in the name of saving us from ourselves. It has always been about redistribution of wealth as Copenhagen so clearly demonstrates.
And it has always been about asserting more govenmental controls over every part of our lives as people are now understanding in Europe and soon the US.
It will be a terrible awakening to discover that all of these punitative measures were being imposed on us by a fraudulent movement with the full cooperation of our elected hacks.
Unfortunately we may ultimately end up punishing only those who got caught – the crimial participants of the global warming “science”.
But we need to recognize that this fraud would not have proceeded if not for the willingness of the leftist in our government to fund these studies that allowed them to continually oppress their citizens not for the good of all but for the continuation of their power and control over the people.
That is the lesson that we must learn from this. Our governments have turned against us.
We must be willing (as the brave citizens of Eastern Europe and the old Soviet Union were willing to do) not only throw these political oppressors out but repeal all of the legislations and bureaucracies that they created to control our lives and suppress our liberties.
We cannot expect someone to save us from this. We must be willing to fight our own fight to regain our liberty.
These conspirators should be investigated thoroughly and immediately, bank accounts should be seized and checked for anomalies, all correspondence should be checked too, to whether they had contact with or had any ties associated to companies that may profit or at least gain advantage from Climate Change and checked to see how high the deceit goes ie. Governments.
The whole climate change issue must now come under scrutiny and all details must be made available to the public, furthermore FOI requests should be available free on the Global Warming subject! If this does not happen then it proves the corruption is a mass conspiracy at the highest levels and the public should vote these criminals out of Governments and office.
Climate change information effects your lives, your finances and your freedoms!
The difference between fact and fiction could mean the difference financially to your family whether you have a home or whether it could be repossessed due to lack of affordability and debt because of burdens of numerous Green and environmental stealth taxes. It affects every aspect of your lives and this is just one example! (Ed)
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Go to take a jump and take your Global Warming Religion with You!
Health Secretary Andy Burnham is urging the nation to stop eating meat in a bid to save the planet.
Speaking at the launch of a new report on how rising temperatures will affect the public, Mr Burnham said eating a more vegetarian diet would cut the impact of livestock on the climate - as well as improve health by lowering the amount of saturated fat consumed.
The Health Secretary is supporting calls for a 30 per cent reduction in the number of farm animals bred for meat.
He made his announcement as it emerged temperatures over the next ten years are set to soar in Britain with at least half hotter than the warmest year on record.
An analysis carried out by the Met Office's climate change specialists at the Hadley Centre found that previous estimates about the rate of temperature rise had been too low.
It added that there is a 50 per cent chance that the world average temperature next year will be warmer than in 1998, which is the warmest on record in the Met Office's 160 years of data.
The Health Secretary called on health ministers around the world to recognise the risks posed by global warming at the launch of a new report, which was published in the Lancet.
The study, released ahead of UN talks on tackling climate change in Copenhagen next month, said putting health at the centre of action on climate change could deliver twin benefits of preventing illness and cutting emissions.
Changes in transport to cut carbon from vehicles could reduce urban air pollution, which can cause heart and breathing problems, and physical inactivity which contributes to obesity, the report from the Lancet said.
Insulating houses not only makes them more energy efficient but could reduce the number of deaths from extremes of cold and hot weather.
And reducing the amount of meat people eat will cut the impact of livestock on the climate while also improving diet by lowering the amount of saturated fat people eat.
Mr Burnham said: 'Climate change can seem a distant, impersonal threat - in fact the associated costs to health are a very real and present danger.
'Health ministers across the globe must act now to highlight the risk global warming poses to our communities. We need well-designed climate change policies that drive health benefits.'
Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband added: 'To protect the world's health we must stop dangerous climate change happening and limit temperature increases to no more than 20C.
'An ambitious and fair deal in Copenhagen will not only have major benefits in terms of reducing the climate change-related spread of infectious diseases and risks to food supply, but will also result in immediate green benefits in terms of a healthier environment and lifestyle for a low carbon Britain - and a low carbon world.
'This is why we are going to Copenhagen to secure an ambitious, effective and fair deal for everyone,' he said.
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(From Red Squirrel Website)
I never cease to marvel at the environmental alarmists who create one "crisis" after another using wretchedly bad "science" to support their scams. Yesterday, November 24, the Global Footprint Network "released new data on the Ecological Footprint of 100 nations and humanity as a whole, and the current ledgers are sobering."
Well, of course, they're sobering. Everything the Greens announce is sobering because, as you well know, the oceans are rising, the glaciers and polar caps are melting, we're running out of oil, every animal on Earth is endangered, incandescent light bulbs and global warming will destroy all life on Earth, yada, yada, yada.
"The figures provide a data-driven look at some of the most pressing issues facing humanity, from climate change to equitable distribution of resources."
Is the "equitable distribution of resources" the same as Barack Obama's "redistribution of wealth"? Is this shorthand of every liberal's wet dream, communism? Oh, yeah. Been there, seen it, don't want any part of it. After giving communism a try for over seventy years, the Soviet Union imploded because it doesn't work, never has, and never will.
After Chairman Mao Zedong introduced communism to China, his various programs managed to kill off several millions through starvation until his death allowed a revision toward capitalism that initiated the transformation that holds out vastly improved lives for its 1.3 billion citizens.
However, according to the Global Footprint Network, "Humanity now requires the resources it would take almost one and a half planets to sustainably produce, according to figures to be released."
The Greens have an established pattern. They use bogus computer modelling to conjure up scads of "data" that take years to debunk and dispute. In the meantime, billions are wasted on their schemes.
This new hogwash conveniently debuts just before the United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Copenhagen in December. The many delegates will wine and dine their way through tons of champagne, caviar, and other delicacies while trying to convince everyone the Earth is doomed unless virtually all industrial activity is ended
They will warn that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are responsible for "global warming", but there is NO global warming beyond what the Sun provides and CO2 plays no role whatever in climate change.
The phony "carbon footprint" ignores the fact that carbon compounds form the basis for all known life on Earth!
Their bogus "carbon footprints" ignore the fact that CO2 is vital to life because it is to all vegetation what oxygen is to all animals. It is food! More CO2 is better than less because it would provide for more abundant crop yields, healthier forests, and would reduce the spread of deserts.
The "carbon footprint" and the mountains of phony data built around it provides the Global Footprint Network the ability to announce that "The new numbers also reveal a growing disparity between those countries with the largest Ecological Footprints per capita and those with the smallest." This is their way of saying that nations that produce more food and more commodities have an unfair advantage over those that do not.
It ignores the fact that "poor" nations are famous for despotism, oppression, and corruption, none of which have anything to do with whether they have abundant resources such as oil, natural gas, and coal. It has everything to do with encouraging class or tribal warfare, religious strife, and all the ills common to humanity.
The key to spotting the Big Green Lie is the word "sustainability."
Sustainability is a subterfuge for the destruction of property rights, a concept so essential to success in America that it is protected by the Constitution.
Wherever you see the word "sustainability", you know that the Greens are emphasizing "renewable energy" (solar and wind) which cannot begin to compare with oil, natural gas, and coal. Renewable energy is responsible for a mere one percent of all electricity generated in the United States and reliance upon it will leave people in nations such as Great Britain freezing to death in the dark.
The Greens want to replace hydrocarbon fuels with "biofuels" such as ethanol which diverts real food like corn into a useless form of energy that reduces mileage and actually emits more CO2! The Greens want to pack humanity into crowded cities, forbidding people from living in suburbs filled with trees and lawns. They want to reduce vehicle size and encourage the use of electric vehicles.
There is little evidence that the Earth is running out of oil or other sources of energy. Oil not only provides for transportation, but is the basis for fertilizers and other beneficial chemicals that ensure more crop yield to feed humans and livestock. It has a thousand other uses as well. Coal is so abundant that its use is calculated in centuries.
In short, the Greens want to impose the most stupid and evil standards and restrictions on human life. They would drag humanity back to an age when horses and oxen were the modes of transportation and means of agriculture.
This is the goal of the United Nations Climate Change Conference and its treaty to impose a One World Order with its incumbent oppressive government structure to deprive its victims of privacy, dignity, and initiative. And, as history has repeatedly demonstrated, of life itself.
The "carbon footprint", along with "global warming", should be consigned to the dustbin of failed and false economic and schemes known as socialism and communism. They are a synonym for suffering and death.
Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.
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Vast sums promised by rich nations including the UK to help developing countries tackle climate change cannot be accounted for, according to a study.
A total of 20 nations pledged up to 410 million dollars (£247 million) a year in 2001, resulting in a pot that should be worth well over 1.6 billion dollars (£963 million).
But only 260 million dollars (£157 million) has been paid into two United Nations funds earmarked for the purpose according to the latest figures, the BBC World Service investigation said.
The EU said the money was collected in "bilateral and multilateral deals", but was unable to provide data to back up the claim.
The sums were pledged in the 2001 Bonn Declaration, which was signed by the 15 countries that then made up the European Union, plus Canada, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland.
As of the end of September this year, the two UN funds - called the Least Developed Countries and Climate Change Funds - contained 155.4 million dollars (£93.4 million) and 104.1 million dollars (£62.5 million) respectively, the BBC said.
Boni Biagini, who runs the funds, told the broadcaster: "These numbers don't match the 410 million per year. Otherwise, we'd be handling billions of dollars by now."
Artur Runge-Metzger, the senior climate change negotiator for the European Union, said the EU had done what it promised to do.
"We can say we met the promise - climate finance has really been stepped up," he told the BBC. But he admitted the EU was unable to provide data to show it did pay the money. "It's sometimes very hard to say what is the climate bit of this financing," Mr Runge-Metzger added.
Finance for developing countries to tackle global warming will be one of the issues discussed at next month's Copenhagen climate change summit.
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CRU spinners and tree huggers shrugged their shoulders and claimed that some of the documents, which date back as far as 1996 and as recently as a couple of weeks ago, could have been tampered with, trying to suggest that the emails and other files had been carefully selected and perhaps even edited.
The fact that the vast majority of the emails, many of which were sent by leading climatologist Phil Jones, are dull almost beyond comprehension suggests otherwise. Surely if the hack attack or leak was a concerted effort by climate change nay-sayers to discredit the whole concept of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW - the theory that the Earth is rapidly warming and it's all our fault) then they would have spent more time cherry picking the several emails that have really set tongues to wagging.
As it is, sorting through the 176MB of data to find damning items of evidence has been left to newspaper journalists, or more likely an army of minimum wage junior research monkeys. However, all of that hard work has unearthed a number of worrying gaffes by several of the climate research boffins involved.
One document refers to a paper presented to science magazine Nature which plotted temperature changes using data collected from tree rings. The author states, "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline." An innocent bit of book cooking to make the numbers look neater, or a leftist conspiracy designed to make the government confiscate our cars? It could be either, depending upon whom one believes.
Defenders of the AGW faith at Real Climate have maintained that it was all above-board and just a case of unfortunate terminology. "Scientists often use the term 'trick' to refer to a good way to deal with a problem, rather than something that is secret," one poster has insisted without an apparent hint of irony.
Other emails that are causing concern suggest that some of the world's leading climate scientists were harbouring personal doubts about whether the planet is really heating up. "The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't," one correspondence reads. It continues, "Data shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate."
Another suggests that the organisation has suppressed evidence by asking a number of individuals to delete inconvenient emails, and yet another offers a novel approach to convincing respected scientists with opposing views to come around to the CRU's way of thinking. It says, "Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted."
And it's not just the threat of physical attacks that becomes apparent when scouring the mass of emails. Verbal insults are also commonplace: "After the meeting in Norway, where I presented the Esper stuff as described in the extended abstract I sent you, and hearing [redacted]'s follow-up talk on how everybody but him has f****d up in reconstructing past NH temperatures over the past 1000 years (this is a bit of an overstatement on my part I must admit, but his air of papal infallibility is really quite nauseating at times), I have come up with an idea that I want you to be involved in."
Perhaps most concerning are the organisation's apparent attempts to pervert the peer review process by excluding anyone with an opposing opinion, regardless of their credibility or authority. One such is an email that says, "I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal."
Of course it is possible that the hacker - or disgruntled insider as some have suggested - was smart enough to bury a couple of smoking guns within the massive pile of innocent witterings.
It doesn't take a criminal genius to fake a few convincing looking email headers, if armed, as they apparently were, with hundreds of genuine ones. Nobody at the UEA has come forward to confirm or deny the authenticity of the data, which is totally unsurprising.
If the emails do turn out to be genuine, the very least the red-faced writers can expect is to be subjected to a series of increasingly embarrassing inquisitions at the hands of the world's press, the government institutions that fund their research activities and the British taxpayers who ultimately pick up the tab.
At worst, they should be sacked or even prosecuted for misleading the world about what most concerned people see as the single most important international issue facing the planet today. Having said that, we really wouldn't want to be the person responsible for Internet security at the UEA.
In most industries a bit of light jiggery-pokery of the figures is commonplace. A favourable audit here, a wayward stock market valuation there, some creative accounting just about everywhere. But we're not talking about crooked MPs fiddling their expenses to pay for their castles to be renovated here. When the folks at the CRU speak, the world listens. It's true that more than 50 per cent of the world then sticks its fingers in its ears and goes "la la laaa laaa", but many trillions of dollars worth of finance, commerce and industry teeters on the issue of the whole global warming and climate change science construction.
These people are rewarded well from the public purse to supply the population and the politicians who serve us with accurate data and well-founded scientific explanations.
Their conclusions will necessarily inform momentous decisions that will have immense consequences for billions of people throughout the entire world for decades to come, and will impact the quality of life - or even matters of life or death - of millions.
Therefore, there should be no hidden agendas, no manipulation of numbers and no pandering to political lobbyists, global warming scam artists or fat cat industrialists keen to maintain the status quo.
The CRU has been accused of cherry-picking and withholding its raw data before, but accusations from individuals or organisations with opposing opinions without solid evidence have been quickly dismissed.
The bottom line is that these are all smart people. It's true that, when we write emails at work most of us behave as though we were operating in an impenetrable bubble.
We have firewalls and security experts and virus-killing software and systems administrators to protect us and our badly spelled ramblings from the public gaze.
We insult colleagues with apparent impunity, commit our casual banter and deepest secrets to the digital domain, and bandy about commercially sensitive information safe in the knowledge that our emails are private and will never fall into the hands of anyone other than the intended recipient.
But the real world isn't like that. If you work in an industry where what you say and do potentially affects the lives of every living being on the planet, you should be very, very careful about what you say and do.
Be assured that this story will run and run. If the emails do turn out to be genuine, which is so far nigh on impossible to definitively prove either way, the CRU has some very searching questions to answer.
With the Copenhagen Treaty looming on the horizon, and the credibility of one of the world's leading climate think tanks in tatters, this lapse in mail server security, or whistleblower's leak, could turn out to be this generation's Watergate.
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Baroness Ashton, the new European Union foreign minister, is facing questions over her role in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament amid claims that it may have had financial links to the Soviet Union.
Lady Ashton, who was last week appointed EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, was treasurer of CND in the early 1980s. She has said she had no contacts with the Soviet Union and had never accepted money from Moscow.
The UK Independence Party has written to Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission President, asking him to investigate whether Lady Ashton was party to payments allegedly made to CND from the Soviet regime in Moscow.
The letter, based on allegations made by Vladimir Bukovsky, a former Soviet dissident, claimed that it is “very likely” that CND received “unidentified income” from Moscow in the 1980s.
“CND was notoriously secretive about its sources of funding and did not submit its accounts to independent audit; however, after public pressure they were audited for the first time in 1982-1983,” Gerard Batten, a Ukip MEP, wrote.
“It was found that 38 per cent of their annual income (£176,197) could not be traced back to the original donors. The person responsible for this part of CND fund-raising, from anonymous donors. . . was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.” Lady Ashton is likely to face questions about the issue next week when she appears before European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee next week, her first appearance as EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs.
Nigel Farage, Ukip’s leader, was officially reprimanded for asking in the European Parliament whether Mr Barroso would to investigate whether Lady Ashton had received money “from enemies of the West”. He said: “I do not think she is a fit and proper person to do this job.” Jerzy Buzek, the parliament’s president, has summoned Mr Farage for a meeting where he will be told to “restrain his language and refrain from making improper comments in the chamber” or face disciplinary action.
Lady Ashton’s office declined to discuss CND’s funding in detail. It said that she “left CND in 1983 and had no involvement after that”. Her spokesman said: “Like many young people in the late 1970s, Catherine Ashton was involved in the big campaigns of the time.
"She never visited the Soviet Union, she had no contacts with the Soviet Union and she never accepted any money from Soviet sources. The first time she ever visited Russia was as trade commissioner. She has never been a member of the Communist Party.” A CND spokesman described the Ukip claims as "decades-old unsubstantiated allegations".
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Parliamentary Standards Committee member and Labour MP Andrew Dismore may soon be following the example set by Tory MP David Curry and quit that committee in the wake of new disclosures about his “expenses.”
Mr Dismore has been placed under a cloud after it was revealed that he claimed £34,000 for a west London flat as his second home — even though his actual house is only eleven miles from Westminster. Shortly afterwards, he flipped the second home designation to his north London house and then claimed an extra £31,000 for that residence on his parliamentary expenses. To make matters worse, one of the properties actually houses a homoeopathy clinic run by his girlfriend, Linda Julian.
All in all, Mr Dinsmore’s “nice little earner” brought him an extra £65,000 on top of his parliamentary salary, courtesy of the taxpayer. Mr Dismore, who not surprisingly is also the chairman of parliament’s joint committee on human rights, also appears to be a seriously frenetic driver who spends an inordinate amount of time in his car. In fact, his expense claims for travel are so high it is incredible to think how he even finds time to attend parliament at all.
During the 2007/08 financial year, Mr Dismore claimed enough in travel allowances to be able to drive back and forth between his north London house and parliament three times every day. MPs can claim 40 pence per mile for travelling to and from Westminster and around their constituencies. Mr Dismore claimed £2,144 in mileage allowances which means that he drove 5,360 miles that year between Westminster and his home. This is interesting because the Commons only sat that year on 145 days. Since 2001, Mr Dismore has claimed more than £30,000 in travel allowances over and above his ordinary salary.
* Meanwhile, health minister Ann Keen has been exposed as claiming £12,000 over a four-year period to set up a workplace at home — despite already having no less than three other offices from which she supposedly worked.
Mrs Keen and her husband, fellow Labour MP Alan Keen, claimed over £140,000 for a flat on the banks of the Thames despite their main home being less than ten miles away.
Wednesday 25th November 2009
A Council in West Yorkshire has warned community and race relations in the region show an "extremely worrying downward trend", two years after residents raised concerns over "no-go" areas.
Opinion polls in Kirklees have revealed a rise in the numbers of people who believe divisions have built up between different groups within the community.
Fewer than half of those questioned in Dewsbury, Mirfield and Heckmondwike thought people within different ethnic groups were getting on.
In 2006, 58 per cent said relations were good but this had fallen 12 per cent by 2008.
The most pessimistic outlook was in Heckmondwike (42 per cent), followed by Mirfield on 43 per cent.
Kirklees Council leader, Labour councillor Mehboob Khan, said community cohesion is "showing an extremely worrying downward trend" in places such as Mirfield.
"The findings are a concern, but we have identified this issue at an early stage," he said. "The survey data we collect has allowed us to tailor our follow-up work to the needs of each area. We are being proactive in understanding and tackling perceptions in Mirfield and other areas before it becomes a bigger problem.
"It is important to stress that Mirfield is far from being alone, in Kirklees, regionally or nationally, in showing these perceptions. This isn't an unusual trend
"The survey figures, although worrying, do not indicate any particular tensions, but we are working with our partners and with the community to find out more and help improve things."
Coun Khan spoke to the Yorkshire Post following a political row about the council paying consultants £14,000 to carry out further research on community relations across Kirklees – including Mirfield – including giving £25 shopping vouchers to those attending meetings.
Bribes
Mirfield Tory councillor Vivien Lees described the £25 payments as a waste of money and a bribe.
"I was appalled to hear that the council are actually paying people to attend such meetings. This is nothing more than a bribe.
"There are eight such meetings, six of which are in North Kirklees (Dewsbury area), and payment to those attending will amount to £2,000.
"A total budget of £14,000 has been allocated for these forums and a private firm has been employed to oversee this project.
"Even allowing for room hire for these forums there will be a handsome profit for the company involved. It is money for old rope and a scandal to be using council taxpayers' money in this way when there is a recession on and council employees are in fear of losing their jobs."
Denial
Coun Khan hit back, saying: "The Tories began the incentives payments when they were in control; we have continued them as they are common practice in consultations where groups are asked to help shape future strategy."
He added: "It's a matter of a few hundred pounds in shopping vouchers and this work helps us to find out the reasons for poor community cohesion.
"The only effective way of doing this is to invite a cross-section of the community. They then receive a thank you for giving up several hours of their time, but this is standard best practice in the public and private sector."
The concerns about community relations in Kirklees were raised in a 2007 report in which white and ethnic minority residents claimed there were "no go" areas for different races.
The report said that schools were "highly segregated" and that "white flight" was a factor in the segregation of schools along ethnic lines.
It warned that confusion and doubt were hampering progress and leaders were not doing enough to challenge misconceptions.
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A Lottery grant will help Huddersfield’s Asian community trace some of their roots.
The £23,400 grant will enable Huddersfield’s Pakistani Youth Forum to research the lives of many of the town’s early Asian immigrants.
Young volunteer members of Huddersfield’s Pakistani Youth Forum will help to lead the project that has been backed by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).
Helping them on their journey of discovery will be the Huddersfield Pakistani Community Alliance which has been awarded the grant from the HLF’s Young Roots programme.
The year-long project, called Desi to Pardesi, is beginning this month and will help the young volunteers learn how the first generation of immigrants arriving in Yorkshire during the 1950s and 1960s had to adapt to new and very unfamiliar surroundings.
They will discover how they learned to cope with the language, the food, the environment, modes of dress, and even the British weather – things that today’s generation of young people sometimes take for granted.
It is hoped that the project will also help older people to understand the challenges young people face.
About 20 young volunteers aged between 13 and 25 will interview older members of the Pakistani community, and carry out research with support from Huddersfield’s Tolson Museum.
Fiona Spiers, of the Heritage Lottery Fund, said: “This project will enable a group of young people to shine a light on the past, to gain a valuable insight into their community’s history and development.”
Mumtaz Ali, of the Huddersfield Pakistani Community Alliance, said: “It will be crucial in recording the history of the first south Asian arrivals to Huddersfield.
“Unfortunately due to most of this group being very elderly this story will soon be lost as will the lesson which young people can learn from.”
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Andrew Brons has again warned MEPs, in a contribution to the European Parliament, that some Member States of the European Union are far from democratic in the way they deal with their political opponents.
Yesterday, during the evening session in Strasbourg, he was able draw attention to the heavy-handed behaviour of some Governments, in a similar speech to the one he made to the a Joint Parliamentary Meeting of the European Parliament and the Parliaments of Member States just last week.
Andrew’s ability to catch the eye of the Parliament’s speaker and committee chairmen to make his pronoucements on a wide range of topics, has attracted the attention of the media, and Andrew’s latest contribution might well feature on BBC 1’s Politics Show for Yorkshire & the Humber, this weekend.
This is what the British National Party MEP had to say:
“The European Union would like to see itself as a union of democratic member states. However, we must look at the reality.
“In Belgium, only a few years ago, the state took steps to ban one of the larger political parties. In Germany, at about the same time, there were unsuccessful attempts to ban a party on the basis of incriminating statements made by people who were shown to be paid state operatives.
“In Hungary, opposition parties are physically attacked by officers of the state, their members arrested and tortured.
“In the United Kingdom, a violent militia sponsored by the Governing Party and by the Leader of the Opposition, carries out violent and sometimes armed attacks on the Government’s enemies.
“There are restrictions on non-violent freedom of speech in nearly all EU countries. Indeed the European Union is in the forefront of trying to legislate against states of mind – various phobia – which can only be described only as thought crime”.
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(Recap October 2009)
The Ethiopian government has asked the international community for emergency food aid for 6.2 million people.
The request came at a meeting of donors to discuss the impact of a prolonged drought affecting parts of East Africa.
The UN's World Food Programme says $285m (£173m) will be needed in the next six months. Some aid officials say the numbers of hungry could rise.
Ethiopia has been hit by the food crisis affecting a large part of East Africa and the Horn.
Last month Oxfam launched a $15m (£9.5m) emergency appeal for the whole East African region, where it is suggested that 23 million people in seven countries are under threat.
The WFP, which is also calling for aid to the region, says cuts in its funding have made it more difficult to feed people.
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Two Huddersfield men are out to save the lives of Ethiopians – from gorging, drinking and smoking themselves to death.
In a total U-turn from the haunting images of the 1984 famine which sparked Live Aid, parts of Ethiopia are now becoming affluent and some of its people are falling victim to Western-style excesses – including obesity.
Film-maker John Edmonds and public health expert Dr Dawit Mengistu – who was born in Ethiopia – have realised there is a growing health problem in the African country due to growing wealth and fast food restaurants opening.
Now the Examiner can exclusively reveal their move to tackle a problem no-one could have dreamed would ever exist in Ethiopia.
Old images of starving Ethiopian children – which prompted the 1985 Live Aid appeal spearheaded by pop star Bob Geldof – still haunt many people’s perception of that country.
But 24 years later Ethiopia has a growing affluent population which is gorging on western-style fast food, smoking and drinking.
‘White-collar’ sit down jobs are on the increase in urban areas – as is car ownership.
Mr Edmonds said: "Urban areas in Ethiopia teeter on the edge of yet another new crisis – diseases of affluence. Sadly, the western diet and lifestyle are becoming more and more popular with everyone who can afford them.
"Cars are in demand, western-style high-fat fast food outlets are multiplying, the use of tobacco and alcohol is increasing and, with all these changes, so is the incidence of diseases."
"The average Ethiopian knows little of the dangers of fast food, lack of exercise, high-fat food and the like and the amount of public information on these issues in the Ethiopian language is rare.
"As the result, low-income countries such as Ethiopia are seeing shocking increase in obesity, heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Continued
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“Recent flood damage in Southern Scotland and my Constituency of NW England has been estimated at GBP50-100m by the Association of British Insurers.
Devastation has been wrought to the Cumbrian town of Cockermouth, where 900 homes and businesses have been affected, the ramifications of which will be detrimental for years. Roads, bridges and infrastructure have been decimated.
“In 2008, the UK contributed GBP 14.6bn, gross, to the European Union budget, ie GBP 27,778 per minute (source: reply of UK government minister Lord McKenzie of Luton, 8.2.06, denoting UK contribution to EU budget for 2008, Hansard).
“What emergency financial assistance, from the funds contributed to the EU by the British people, will the EU provide to the communities affected, or does the Commission believe that it is more important to develop new infrastructure in the member countries of the Mediterranean and Central Europe, at the expense of the UK taxpayer?”
This was the question submitted by Nick Griffin MEP in Strasbourg.
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"BOMB, bomb the UK . . . UK you will pay, 7/7 on its way . . . Annihilate those who insult Islam. . ."
Four Muslim extremists who called at a London rally for Brits to be slaughtered have been jailed.
Police and prosecutors were quick to congratulate themselves for bringing these scumbags to justice.
But the truth is they almost got away with their appalling crimes.
Police failed to intervene and arrest the terrorist cheerleaders during the actual protest.
They allowed them to wave placards, scream slogans and whip a 300-strong crowd into a bloodthirsty frenzy.
It was only a public outcry that spurred Scotland Yard into action.
Sadly, it appears they still haven't learned the lesson.
About 40 fanatics protested outside the court yesterday with banners saying: "British police go to hell."
What a disgrace that they weren't rounded up.
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Leading “Conservative Home” and anti-BNP “Nothing British” contributor Alister Cooling has been jailed for six months for the possession of child pornography involving five-year-old girls.
Mr Cooling, who first sprang to prominence on the BBC reality TV show Castaway, campaigned for London Mayor Boris Johnson and was until last week a regular contributor to the Conservative Home site, which also runs the hysterical anti-BNP “Nothing British” blog.
Mr Cooling, a Tory prospective parliamentary candidate, was convicted in Croydon crown court last week. Passing judgement, Judge Stephen Waller said: “The contents of these images are horrifying. Any right thinking person could not but be repulsed. By downloading this material you give encouragement to people who are filming the abuse and suffering of children.
“The description of the strongest of these images is horrifying and any right thinking person, however liberal they might be in relation to adult pornography, couldn’t but be repulsed in seeing images like these,” the judge said.
Among the 43 films found on Mr Cooling’s laptop computers were some of children involved in sadism, while two files featured men and women engaged in sexual activity with horses.
Mr Cooling was ordered to register as a sex offender for seven years and disqualified from working with children.
He was charged with eight counts of making indecent images, two of possessing extreme pornography and one count of possessing 35 indecent photos of a child. He will serve half his sentence in jail then be freed on licence.
Mr Cooling, who was pictured on a Gay Pride march with Tory London mayor Mr Johnson last year, was a committee member of the Lesbian Gay and Bi Tory group.
The Conservative Home web site shares a physical address with the Nothing British blog and is in fact run by the same people. It will be an intense source of embarrassment to have one of their main anti-BNP activists jailed for this criminal behaviour.
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Minarets could be banned this weekend as Swiss voters go to the polls for a controversial referendum.
The Right-wing Swiss People's Party argues that the distinctive mosque features are a symbol of Islamic intolerance.
The party has led an emotive campaign to outlaw them. Posters depicting a woman in a burkha in front of minarets shaped like missiles, against the background of a Swiss flag, have been put up around the country.
Ulrich Schüler, an SVP parliamentarian and leading member of the anti-minaret movement, says the towers are political rather than religious.
'They are symbols of a desire for power, of an Islam which wants to establish a legal and social order fundamentally contrary to the liberties guaranteed in our constitution,' he said.
In 2007 elections his party won its largest ever share of the vote after mounting an anti-foreigner campaign denounced by the United Nations as racist.
One of its campaign posters showed a flock of white sheep kicking a black sheep out of Switzerland.
The debate is particularly sensitive in a country with a large immigrant population and where 20 per cent are considered foreign.
About 400,000 - 5 per cent - of Swiss residents are Muslims.
If the majority of the electorate and states vote Yes on Sunday, the words 'The construction of minarets is forbidden' will be added to the country's constitution.
Existing minarets will not be torn down.
The vote was triggered when almost 115,000 signed a people's initiative handed to parliament last year in favour of the ban - 100,000 is enough to force a referendum.
And according to the latest opinion poll, support for the proposal is gaining momentum.
It is popular among residents of rural areas and towns in the German-speaking part of the country, a survey of 1,200 citizens showed earlier this month.
German is the most common language in Switzerland.
The latest figures show that 37 per cent would vote in favour of the ban, while 53 per cent said they would reject it. A further 10 per cent were undecided.
Both the cabinet and parliament are recommending voters turn down the initiative, with Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey describing it as 'dangerous for foreign policy and Switzerland's relations to other countries'.
Controversies have erupted in Switzerland over Muslims' place in society in recent years. In 2004 two supermarket chains banned employees who deal with the public from wearing headscarves.
There are an estimated 160 mosques and cultural centres in Switzerland, but only four with a minaret.
They are normally used by religious leaders to call Muslims to prayer.
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Thugs who broke a man's jaw on a night out were freed after just one day of their nine-month jail sentences after a judge decided he had been too harsh, it emerged today.
Victim Josh Boyle had been determined to see his attackers brought to justice and pursued the case through the courts for more than a year.
The 21-year-old, who needed £2,000 of dental treatment after the assault, was relieved when they pleaded guilty to affray at the last minute and were jailed.
But just a day after the sentencing, he found out they had been freed when he spotted them bragging about it on social networking website Facebook.
Mr Boyle, an electrician, said they boasted that it had been the 'shortest jail term ever'.
The judge had recalled the pair, Jason Barrett and Sean Wilson, after 24 hours and given them a suspended sentence instead - meaning they were able to walk free.
Mr Boyle says the experience has made him lose all faith in the justice system.
'I was over the moon when they were jailed. But then the next day I got a phone call from a friend who said they were out,' he said.
'They had put a comment on Facebook bragging, about "the shortest jail term ever". I wish I hadn't bothered now. The whole legal system is just an absolute joke.'
Mr Boyle, from North Shields, was on a night out in Tynemouth in August 2008 with his then girlfriend when he was attacked.
He became embroiled in an argument with Wilson, 21, from Shiremoor, and Barrett, 21, from West Monkseaton, at the end of the night and woke up in hospital.
From that moment, he was determined that they be punished and immediately told police he was prepared to make a statement and give evidence in court.
'I was determined to go to court and see them behind bars,' he explained. 'They only broke my jaw but I was lucky. They could easily kill someone if they did it again.'
The case took more than a year to reach a conclusion but the pair were eventually sentenced at Newcastle Crown Court on October 8.
Mr Boyle, who went to the sentencing hearing, finally felt he could move on but found out a day later that they had been freed, leaving him in fear of reprisals.
Recorder Andrew Haslam had decided the nine-month sentence was too much and instead re-sentenced them to 36 weeks in jail, suspended for 18 months.
'I was scared more than anything. And I felt like a laughing stock,' Mr Boyle said. 'I haven't been back to Tynemouth since that night and I'm constantly looking over my shoulder now that they are out.
'If anything like that ever happened again, I wouldn't go to court again.'
A spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service said: 'The judge recalled the case the following day and re-sentenced the defendants.
'Although an unusual course of action, it is something he is entitled to do. We have since been in correspondence to explain the situation.'
A spokeswoman for the Judicial Communications Office added: 'Judges have the power to vary or rescind sentences within 56 days from the day the order was imposed, and have the discretion to take into account submissions made both by legal representatives and defendants directly.'
Barrett and Wilson were also sentenced to 40 hours unpaid work and ordered to pay Mr Boyle £500 in compensation.
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Shoplifters, vandals and burglars are being told by police to say sorry with a bunch of flowers to avoid prosecution.
Police are dealing with thousands of crimes by telling offenders to write letters of apology to the victim or face court.
Offences including common assault, theft, burglary, criminal damage and vandalism which would ordinarily mean a jail sentence, fine or caution are instead being resolved by a gift to the victim such as bunch of flowers or a box of chocolates to make amends.
Police say the 'common-sense community resolution' to anti-social behaviour and low-level crime saves police time and could save forces and the criminal courts millions of pounds.
But critics have accused police of undermining the criminal justice system, saying crimes should be dealt with by magistrates rather than ad-hoc penalties devised by individual officers.
They are also concerns that an offender can escape having a criminal record if they agree to apologise and repair any damage or refund what was stolen.
The scheme being trialled by a dozen forces around the UK has been compared to a 21st century version of Dixon of Dock Green policing, with beat bobbies exercising their own judgment like the much-loved character from the TV series, Constable George Dixon.
The officer leading the experiment, Chris Sims, Chief Constable of West Midlands Police, said yesterday his officers were administering 'a moral clip round the ear' to offenders.
He claimed that swift 'bespoke justice' had been welcomed by victims who are given the option of whether they want to see the perpetrator prosecuted or accept an apology from them.
'The criminal justice system belongs in a domain of serious crime. We do it no favours if we clutter it up with things that are better dealt with by other means,' Mr Sims said.
'The offender is getting a moral clip round the ear and there is an outcome which has real impact on him.'
'We’ve turned ourselves into an organisation which is very good at meeting targets but is not necessarily very good at meeting aspirations.
'If you are going to boost public confidence you have got to do extraordinary things.'
The police chief cited the case of a boy, 13, who stole a £600 necklace from a girl that he knew.
He was made to return it, apologise and hand out crime prevention leaflets in a local supermarket.
In another instance, an eight-year-old boy who threw stones at an elderly woman's bungalow breaking roof tiles, was resolved by police when the family of the eight-year-old bought flowers for the victim, paid for the tiles and gave her a note of apology from the child.
Mr Sims added: 'Let’s be realistic about what would have happened in the courts, it would have taken a long time and with no previous convictions would have ended up with a caution or a warning.
'This outcome is more bespoke, thoughtful, targeted and relevant to the offender and the victim.'
Since the experiment began in April, the West Midlands force has used community justice to deal with more than 8,000 offences. The force claims each case resolved locally saves 15 hours of police time and has boosted victim satisfaction levels to 93 per cent.
But critics fear it could trivialise offences.
Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner has recently called for more criminal cases to go before the courts.
HM Inspectorate of Constabulary has also raised concerns that police forces are downgrading serious offences.
Denis O’Connor, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, found that some forces had made serious errors in categorising violent offences as minor or no crime at all.
He said: 'While the actual numbers of wrongly recorded crimes are small, this is not about statistics but victims- victims that need police help the most.'
Yesterday Chair of the Magistrates' Association John Thornhill said: 'These sorts of offences- burglary, common assault and theft should be dealt with by a court.
'If we are having different disposals across the country where individual officers are using their discretion to decide the seriousness of the offence, we believe that's inappropriate and such matters should always be brought before a court.'
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Police are arresting innocent people in order to get their hands on as many DNA samples as possible, senior Government advisers revealed last night.
The Human Genetics Commission said the Big Brother tactic was creating a 'spiral of suspicion' among the public.The panel - which contains some of Britain's leading scientists and academics - said officers should no longer routinely take samples at the point of arresting a suspect.
They also called for all police - including support staff - to place their own DNA on the national database in a show of solidarity with a public being routinely placed under suspicion. By law, officers are only allowed to make an arrest if they have ' reasonable suspicion' that a person has committed a crime.
But the HGC, which has carried out a lengthy review of the merits of the database, said evidence had emerged of police arresting people purely so they could take their DNA. Its chairman, Professor Jonathan Montgomery, said: 'People are arrested in order to retain DNA information that might not have been arrested in other circumstances.'
The claim, which was backed by evidence from a senior police officer, delivers a significant blow to the Government's defence of the database - which contains more than 5.6million samples. Campaigners have long feared officers were carrying out mass sweeps of the population to load their samples on the database, and make future crime fighting easier.
The result is one million entirely innocent people having their genetic details logged by the state.
The Commission said one of the consequences of current DNA laws was that young black men are 'very highly over-represented', with more than three quarters of those aged 18-35 on the database.
Professor Montgomery warned this was creating a 'spiral of suspicion' among sections of society.
A retired senior police officer, a superintendent, told the commission: 'It is now the norm to arrest offenders for everything if there is a power to do so.
'It is apparently understood by serving police officers that one of the reasons, if not the reason, for the change in practice is so that the DNA of the offender can be obtained.'
Officers in England and Wales are entitled to take samples from everyone they arrest for a recordable offence.
Proposals within the Crime and Security Bill - published last week - will for the first time put a time limit, in most cases six years, on how long profiles are stored when the alleged offender is either not charged or later cleared.
But there are no plans to reduce police powers to take samples on arrest.
One possibility is to only take DNA when a suspect is charged - making it harder for police to target innocents for their DNA.
In a 110-page report, the commission said more detailed research is required to evaluate how useful the database is in helping to solve crimes, describing current evidence as 'flimsy'.
It accused politicians of using single case studies where the database has secured a conviction instead of carrying out a rigorous evaluation of its scale and function.
Latest Government figures show the costs of running the system - the largest in the world - have risen dramatically, to £4.3million from £2.1million in just a year.
Over the past two years, more than 1.17million new profiles have been added to the database but the number of DNA-related detections fell from a peak of 41,148 in 2006-07 to 31,915 in 2008-09.
LibDem spokesman Chris Huhne said: 'The Government's cavalier attitude to DNA retention has put us in the ridiculous situation where people are being arrested just to have their DNA harvested.
'Ministers make no distinction between innocence and guilt and as a result everyone is treated like a suspect.'
Liberty warned police were being given a 'perverse incentive' to arrest individuals just to get their details on the database.
Tory home affairs spokesman James Brokenshire said: 'For too long the Government has had a policy of growing the DNA database for the sake of it, regardless of guilt or innocence.'
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Another Cover-Up by Labour
how many more Cover-Up's are we yet to learn about?
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and HBOS were kept afloat with £61.6 billion of 'secret' loans at the height of the financial crisis, the Bank of England said today.
The Bank revealed for the first time the details of its Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) to both banks in a submission to the Treasury Select Committee.
Details of the loan were kept secret at the time to avoid panicking the markets any further.
RBS and HBOS put up collateral worth more than £100 billion in return for the loans as the financial system was rocked by the failure of Lehman Brothers.
The scale of the bail-out was revealed as Lloyds today set out details of its £13.5 billion UK record cash call to the bank's army of 2.8 million private shareholders.
RBS is now 84 per cent owned by the state following last year's bail-out and the bank's participation in a taxpayer-backed insurance scheme for toxic loans.
HBOS was rescued from nationalisation by Lloyds TSB, but the Government took a 43 per cent stake in the combined group as it pumped in cash amid soaring bad debts.
While support for RBS peaked at £36.6 billion on October 17, HBOS borrowed £25.4 billion on November 13 when then-chairman Dennis Stevenson was appealing to the bank's shareholders to back the Lloyds deal.
Deputy Governor Paul Tucker told MPs that the Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) for RBS and HBOS was necessary to buy time.
'This was a dire emergency,' he said.
'This was tough stuff, this was absolutely a classic lender of last resort operation where there is only any point in doing it if it bridges to something.'
While Mr King said that around 5 per cent to 10 per cent of the UK's entire economic output - around £100 billion - has been lost 'for an indefinite period'.
Lloyds is offering shareholders stock at a discount of 59.5 per cent on yesterday's closing price under plans to avoid taking part in the Government's toxic asset insurance scheme.
The average Lloyds private shareholder will be asked to stump up £336.67 to take part in the fundraising and maintain their stake.
And the taxpayer will also have to fork out another £5.7 billion for the Government to maintain its 43 per cent stake in the bank.
Today's pricing details reveal that shareholders are being given the chance to buy 1.34 new shares for each existing share at 37p.
This is a hefty discount of more than half of the closing price of Lloyds shares last night and a 38.6 per cent discount on the so-called theoretical 'ex-rights' price.
Lloyds is going cap in hand to its shareholder base - including the taxpayer, which is now its biggest single investor - to side-step the Government's asset protection scheme (APS) by raising capital instead.
Under the original terms, the bank would have had to pay £15.6 billion to insure £260 billion in loans under the APS - raising the taxpayer stake to 62 per cent and handing the Government majority ownership.
Royal Bank of Scotland, which is taking part in the APS, will end up being 83 per cent owned by the Government after it puts risky loans up for insurance.
But Lloyds is having to raise £22.5 billion to avoid the scheme and will also fork out a £2.5 billion fee to the Government in return for the protection already provided by the taxpayer since the announcement of the APS earlier this year.
Yesterday it completed the other part of its fundraising, securing more than £8.8 billion from a debt conversion offer.
The bond exchange was substantially oversubscribed, which is thought to bode well for investor appetite for the £13.5 billion rights issue outlined today.
Lloyds will be asking its shareholders to vote on Thursday on the planned move at a general meeting.
However, Lloyds has the biggest private shareholder base in the country and will also be asking individual investors for their backing.
A typical Lloyds private shareholder has around 740 shares and will be given the right to buy 991 shares at 37p a share.
They have the choice not to take part, but will see their shareholding diluted as a result.
Lloyds said the 36.5 billion new shares being offered will represent 57.3 per cent of the bank's enlarged share capital following the rights issue.
Yesterday it was revealed that more than 700 jobs are to be axed at Lloyds Bank offices in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, according to the trade union Accord.
The part-nationalised bank has been struggling amid retail bad debts, many of which it took on board following its rescue takeover of Halifax Bank of Scotland last autumn.
It said bad debts reached £3.3 billion for the first nine months of the year, while its wholesale banking arm has racked up £12.9 billion in impairment charges so far.
While Lloyds still expects to make a loss this year, it calmed nerves earlier this month by revealing that levels of bad debt were down significantly in the second half with hopes for trading to improve next year and in 2011.
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We don't usually advertise commercial goods on UKT
but once in a while something unique grabs our attention
A wonderful unique Christmas Gift and at stocking filler price too
We are very proud to announce the release of our first CD, a compilation of music by members and friends of the Odinic Rite.
The compilation is a showcase containing a variety of genres from Odinists around the world.
Folk Spirit was born of an idea, or more correctly, a desire. A desire to build a collection of song and verse to be sung at gatherings, around the camp fire, at ceremonies and rituals.
As is often the case with Odinists, what started as a desire grew into action and we determined to find the talent which we were sure was hiding amongst our comrades and friends.
This CD is the first result of that search.
We hope that this will be the first of many showcases of Odinist talent and that what is offered here will inspire others to put into verse and to music their thoughts, feelings, aspirations and ideas, their celebrations of life, love, family, nature, Earth and our holy High Gods and Goddesses.
Folk Spirit track listing.
1. Green Woods of England – Cynewulf
2. My Land – Lee James
3. Jotunheim – Oswulf
4. Odin – Ansund
5. Voice Of Thunder – Boyke Ten Broeke
6. Valkyrjas Spoken Words – Hildr Valkyrie
7. The Windswept Tree – White Horse
8. Lost between the lines – Lee James
9. Lighting the Pyre – Casey Williams
10. The Night Visits – Dutch Ramblers
11. Longobardia – Death Army
12. Aftermath – Oswulf
13. Deep Waters – Cynewulf
14. The Wheel – Ansund
15. Wolf Age – Lee James
If Interested visit Here for Prices and ordering details
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Here it Comes...
Climate excuse for Migrant Workers now!
A new report has shown that Britain does not have the necessary skills to move to a low-carbon economy by 2020 or the training capabilities to fill the gap in green skills.
The Aldersgate Group study, 'Mind the Gap - Skills for the transition to a low carbon economy', states that the Government’s skills strategy is inadequate to meet the needs of a rapid transition to a low-carbon, resource efficient economy.
If the skills gap is not able to be addressed internally and swiftly, skilled migrants on a UK Visa could be needed fill the green skills gap and achieve the environmental targets set by the Government.
A potential measure of attracting needed skills could be the addition of extra points for green skilled migrants under the UK immigration new points-based system.
If Britain cannot bridge the skills gap, expected to be made worse in the next two years as approximately 30 per cent of Britian’s engery workforce retires, the country could lose the expected jobs in carbon capture and storage to China and the UK.
The report said that it is imperative that the "ambition and delivery" of the Government strategy are accelerated with a major recommendation to increase subsidies for offshore wind and the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme accompanied with supporting infrastructure and a corresponding skills strategy to drive investment.
The report proposes that the most significant driver for low carbon, or green, skills is a robust industrial policy to encourage investment in low carbon technology and resource efficiency. Germany was cited as a prime example of this approach.
John Edmonds, Aldersgate Group project chair for the report, said investment in low-carbon skills was vital to build a more resilient and sustainable UK economy.
He said: "The skills gap in the UK economy is well documented, with one in three firms already hampered by a shortage of skilled staff, from those needed to install new technology to scientists and engineers.
The UK needs to fix these skill shortage problems in order to prosper in the modern world," he said.
The Aldersgate Group is lead by a coalition of environmental lobbyists made up of businesses and environmental groups which lobbies on environmental issues.
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The scientist at the heart of the climate change scandal was under growing pressure to quit last night.
George Monbiot, a leading environmentalist, said Phil Jones should resign from the Climatic Research Unit over leaked emails that appear to show researchers suppressed scientific data. More emails came to light yesterday, including one in which an American climatologist admitted it was a travesty that scientists could not explain a lack of global warming in recent years.
In another note, UK researchers dismissed the work of scientists challenging global warming as 'crap'. Another appeared to call for pressure on the BBC after a reporter suggested that evidence for rising temperatures since 2001 was thin.
In one of the most damning messages, Professor Jones appeared to respond to the death of a climate sceptic with the words 'in an odd way this is cheering news!'.
The leak has been a huge embarrassment to the climate unit at the University of East Anglia, which is a global leader in its field. Although there is no hint of evidence that climate change is not real, the emails appear to show researchers manipulating raw data and discussing how to dodge Freedom of Information requests.
Yesterday, Mr Monbiot, who writes on green issues, said the emails could scarcely be more damaging. 'I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I'm dismayed and deeply shaken,' he said. 'There are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad.
'There appears to be evidence of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released, and even to destroy material that was subject to a Freedom of Information request. 'Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics, or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
'The head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed.' Bob Ward, a climate expert at the London School of Economics and Political Science, demanded an independent inquiry.
'From what I've seen of the emails, there's not been any new questions raised about the way papers have been put together, but there should be an re-examination of the emails,' he said. The emails - which appeared last week on a Russian website - appear to have been stolen from a university computer server.
Yesterday, Professor Jones refused to quit and denied that researchers had altered evidence to bolster the case for man-made climate change. He added: 'We absolutely stand by the science we produce here at the University of East Anglia and it has been peer reviewed and published.
'Some of the emails probably had poorly chosen words and were sent in the heat of the moment, when I was frustrated. I do regret sending some of them. We've not deleted any emails or data here at CRU. 'I would never manipulate the data one bit - I would categorically deny that.' The university is to conduct an independent review of data security and on its response to 60 freedom of information requests over a short period.
At least half the 36 UK officials and ministers travelling to the climate change talks in Copenhagen are going by air rather than by rail. The Liberal Democrats said the arrangements showed up Labour's hypocrisy on green issues.
The Government said officials had meetings that limited their travel options next month.
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Media apologists for Warmists sides with manipulated data Statisticians
The great global warming slanging match – which is increasingly taking over from rational debate – is both illuminated, and will be intensified by, the publication of the hacked emails from the Climate Research Unit.
It is clear that people on both sides at times abuse their opponents, seek to suppress their views – and may even massage the data.
Professor Jones's apparent attempts to frustrate Freedom of Information requests, censor scientific papers and urge dismissal of "a troublesome editor" are deeply reprehensible and unworthy of science.
But it also has to be said that American scientists who accepted global warming suffered worse persecution from a Bush administration that deliberately distorted scientific evidence, and that climate sceptics often exhibited gross intolerance of opposing viewpoints.
The unit disputes that data was manipulated – and it is not clear from the extracts that this took place –but the subject at issue, the decline in temperatures since the anomalously hot year of 1998, is an interesting one.
Statisticians given the measurements without being told that they related to climate, so as to avoid any bias, reported that the decline appeared only if 1998 was "cherry-picked" as the starting date by "people coming at the data with preconceived notions". On any longer, and therefore more reliable, basis of measurements, temperatures were going up.
Yet the sceptics do not seem to have engaged with the statistical verdict. Instead they have endlessly insisted that the post-1998 decline proved that global warming had reversed. It is also curious that people such as Lord Lawson – who under other circumstances might have been expected to condemn the hacking of an institution's computers – have leapt so readily upon the results.
Nothing that has been disclosed justifies the sceptics' excited claims that the correspondence reveals that the scientific basis of man-made global warming to be a fraud. That would require the disclosure of a global conspiracy by scientists with the complicity of governments, which is a far-fetched scenario to say the least.
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Roger Helmer says Anglican hierarchy has dropped the gospel in favour of ‘the new religion of climate alarmism’
A Tory MEP has accused the Church of England of having “abandoned religious faith entirely and taken up the new religion of climate alarmism instead”.
Roger Helmer, who resigned from the Tory frontbench in Europe when the Westminster leadership dumped its promised referendum on the Lisbon treaty, used a magazine article to urge the Church to “get back to the gospel”.
Referring approvingly to the work of another writer who said bishops were spending more time “preaching climate change than the gospel of salvation”, Helmer wrote: “The recent multi-faith conference at Windsor suggests that other world religions are taking the same line on climate change. This is particularly ironic at a time when the world is cooling and when more and more scientists around the world are breaking cover to challenge the theory of man-made global warming. Perhaps world religions should have more faith in God, and less in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”
The Bishop of Leicester, Tim Stevens, said Helmer had not aired these views when he debated climate change in Leicester cathedral and asked whether “this was merely courtesy, or was it because the opportunity for a platform meant more to him than exposing his views to scrutiny or challenge from a live audience”.
Helmer is one of a growing band of European politicians threatening to cause trouble for the Tory frontbench in the first few months of any government it may form. He and his eurosceptic colleagues insist they will not drop their campaign for a referendum on Lisbon.
Analysis by the leftwing website Next Left has shown that the top 10 Tory bloggers are climate change sceptics. This week Helmer convened a conference of climate change deniers at the European parliament. Speakers included Ross McKitrick, a Canadian professor who has said data indicating global warming has been fiddled; Tom Segalstad, a Norwegian geologist who says human-released CO2 would not have a large effect on the climate; Fred Goldberg, co-author of the polemic The Global Warming Scam; Hans Labohm, a Dutch professor who challenges the existence of global warming; and Professor Fred Singer, who wrote the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle.
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(Lifted from the excellent Green Arrow site)
In an article that I read the other day and regretfully did not bookmark, the writer stated that the first political party that picks up and runs with the Myth of Global Warming ball and takes it to the people, will be onto a sure fire vote winner.
Well the British National Party as been banging on about it for as long as I can remember and did so again the other day when they reported this story. But they do not go on about it for votes, although those are always welcome, they go on about it because it is the truth and the truth is the currency of the BNP.
Note by UKT: Misinformation
Is this what Linda McAvan is referring to by meaning of Polls?
More than half the population does not believe climate change has been caused by humans. In a poll published just weeks before the global climate change summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, it has been revealed only 41% of British people accept as a scientific fact that the situation is largely man-made.
And the truth of the matter is this. The Global Warming Myth is the new Religion. To even question it is akin to being accused of not believing in the Holocaust, with more tools of the establishment writing articles with screaming statements such as "he is a global warming denier".
Denier. They literally scream it in the same way that ill informed cretins in the middle ages screamed "Witch". As usual their purpose is to silence and drown out the voices of those who speak the truth. If you watch the above video you will understand why.
Now in the video the speaker mentions the now infamous "hockey" graph and I do recommend you read this article here that is written by Christopher Booker that explains it.
In another article here, you can read how our cash strap farmers are being bribed (and who could blame them for accepting) to build wind farms on their land for the benefit of not the British People whose environement will be blighted but for the benefits of the companies that build and maintain them with government grants.
And we the people are then forced to pay higher heating bills whilst using less fuel, increased tax on cars, increased tax on travel, increased taxes on everything we buy, under the excuse of saving the environment and preventing global warming.
And so you can see, what the new religion of Global Warming really is, just another lie to be used to squeeze more blood from taxpayers to profit the individuals who control the multinational companies that are the real destroyers of the planet.
The authoritative Land & People have raised some interesting points with regards to the top video that you can read by following this link.
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There were horrified gasps and shouts of “outrageous” from the Far Left and Communist MEPs as Nick Griffin addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg this morning on climate change.
However, the British National Party’s MEP for the North West of England earned the plaudits of some Conservative Party and UK Independence Party MEPs for what was a hard-hitting speech on the liberal elite’s ’scared cow’.
This is what the BNP leader told Parliament.
“Everyone agrees that climate change is the biggest challenge facing humanity.”
That`s the constant claim of the political elite – and it’s a lie!
Everyone does
NOT agree.
Thousands of scientists dispute the very existence of man made global warming, citing natural cyclical changes that saw vineyards in Roman northern England and a Swedish army march over the frozen Baltic at the height of the Little Ice Age in 1658 to Copenhagen.
As an army of global warming zealots marches to Copenhagen, the truth is that their Orwellian ‘consensus’ is based, not on scientific agreement but on bullying, censorship and fraudulent statistics.
In the words of leading climatologist Professor Richard Lindzen:
“Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early twenty-first century`s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally average temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections contemplated a roll back of the industrial age.”
In fact, there will be no ‘bemused amazement’, for the reason for this hysteria is clear: It is designed to provide the excuse for the political project of the globalists to replace national democracy with New World Order global governance.
It has nothing to do with science and everything to do with a globalist common purpose to tax and control us, while making Billions for corporations in the Green-Industrial complex.
The anti-Western intellectual cranks of the Left suffered a collective breakdown when Communism collapsed. Climate change is their new theology, a secular religious hysteria complete with Pope Al Gore, Carbon Credit indulgences and the persecution of heretics.
But the heretics will have a voice in Copenhagen, and the truth will out: Climate change is being used to impose an anti-human Utopia as deadly as anything conceived by Stalin or Mao.
Explanatory Note – for information
There has been an absence of informed debate on the issue of ´global warming´. This may be demonstrated briefly by reference to the following points:
- 1 There has occurred global warming (shown by the disappearance of surface ice) on Mars and at least one of Jupiter´s moons. There are neither factories nor SUVs on either.
- 2 Satellites have detected nett ice formation over the North Pole since 2006.
- 3 The Earth has been subjected to cyclical warming and cooling for billions of years. Over the past two millennia, vines have been grown by the Romans in the North of England; the climate was warmer during the Middle Ages but there then occurred a period of cooling, which saw the River Thames freeze during the 17th and 19th centuries, for example.
- 4 Contrary to the message communicated by the advocates of global warming and the Al Gore film, Co2 emissions follow global warming; they do not precede it. This is a perfectly natural cyclical phenomenon but it disproves the link between man-made Co2 emissions and ´global warming´.
- 5 There has been global cooling since 1998 – a fact that is not credibly debated.
- 6 Sea levels rise and decline as part of the cyclical pattern, per point 3, above. In former times, the South of England was joined to the Continent but at a time when much of Britain was subjected to glaciation – an undesirable consequence of global cooling.
´Global warming´ sceptics are treated as politically-incorrect ´deniers´. There has been limited debate, with only one side of the argument vented but in strident and alarmist tones. Well qualified scientists who dispute global warming are condemned aggressively – an occurrence that discourages open debate.
There is no debate because to allow fair and objective discussion would blow many of the alarmists arguments away, therefore is the reason for the censorship and denial for two sides of the argument. (Ed)
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Next you will be told you are responsible and will be paying Green taxes for changes on Mars!
Mars is being hit by rapid climate change and it is happening so fast that the red planet could lose its southern ice cap, writes Jonathan Leake.
Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period.
Since there is no known life on Mars it suggests rapid changes in planetary climates could be natural phenomena.
The mechanism at work on Mars appears, however, to be different from that on Earth. One of the researchers, Lori Fenton, believes variations in radiation and temperature across the surface of the Red Planet are generating strong winds.
In a paper published in the journal Nature, she suggests that such winds can stir up giant dust storms, trapping heat and raising the planet’s temperature.
Fenton’s team unearthed heat maps of the Martian surface from Nasa’s Viking mission in the 1970s and compared them with maps gathered more than two decades later by Mars Global Surveyor. They found there had been widespread changes, with some areas becoming darker.
When a surface darkens it absorbs more heat, eventually radiating that heat back to warm the thin Martian atmosphere: lighter surfaces have the opposite effect. The temperature differences between the two are thought to be stirring up more winds, and dust, creating a cycle that is warming the planet.
Link acquired from commentator on Green Arrow
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Link acquired from a comment on the Green Arrow site
Editor's Introductory Note: Our planet has been slowly warming since last emerging from the "Little Ice Age" of the 17th century, often associated with the Maunder Minimum.
Before that came the "Medieval Warm Period", in which temperatures were about the same as they are today. Both of these climate phenomena are known to have occurred in the Northern Hemisphere, but several hundred years prior to the present, the majority of the Southern Hemisphere was primarily populated by indigenous peoples, where science and scientific observation was limited to non-existent. Thus we can not say that these periods were necessarily "global".
However, "Global Warming" in recent historical times has been an undisputable fact, and no one can reasonably deny that.
But we're hearing far too often that the "science" is "settled", and that it is mankind's contribution to the natural CO2 in the atmosphere has been the principal cause of an increasing "Greenhouse Effect", which is the root "cause" of global warming. We're also hearing that "all the world's scientists now agree on this settled science", and it is now time to quickly and most radically alter our culture, and prevent a looming global catastrophe. And last, but not least, we're seeing a sort of mass hysteria sweeping our culture which is really quite disturbing. Historians ponder how the entire nation of Germany could possibly have goose-stepped into place in such a short time, and we have similar unrest. Have we become a nation of overnight loonies?
Sorry folks, but we're not exactly buying into the Global Hysteria just yet.
We know a great deal about atmospheric physics, (bio) and from the onset, many of the claims were just plain fishy. The extreme haste with which seemingly the entire world immediately accepted the idea of Anthropogenic ( man-made ) Global Warming made us more than a little bit suspicious that no one had really taken a close look at the science.
We also knew that the catch-all activity today known as "Climate Science" was in its infancy, and that atmospheric modeling did not and still does not exist which can predict changes in the weather or climate more than about a day or two in advance.
So the endless stream of dire predictions of what was going to happen years or decades from now if we did not drastically reduce our CO2 production by virtually shutting down the economies of the world appeared to be more the product of radical political and environmental activism rather than science.
Thus, we embarked on a personal quest for more information, armed with a strong academic background in postgraduate physics and a good understanding of the advanced mathematics necessary in such a pursuit.
This fundamental knowledge of the core principles of matter and its many exceptionally complex interactions allowed us to research and understand the foundations of many other sciences. In short, we read complex scientific articles in many other scientific disciplines with relative ease and good understanding - like most folks read comic books.
As our own knowledge of "climate science" grew, so grew our doubts over the "settled science". What we found was the science was far from "settled".. in fact it was barely underway.
It was for a while a somewhat lonely quest, what with "all the world's scientists" apparently having no doubt. Finally, in December 2007 we submitted an article to one of our local newspapers, the Addison Independent, thinking they would be delighted in having at minimum an alternative view of the issue. Alas, they chose not to publish it, but two weeks after our submission (by the strangest coincidence), published yet another "pro-global-warming" feature written by an individual whom, to the best we could determine, had no advanced training in any science at all, beyond self-taught it would appear.
Still, the individual had published a number of popular books on popular environmental issues, was well-loved by those of similar political bent, and was held in high esteem among his peers. We had learned a valuable lesson: Popular Journalists trump coupled sets of 2nd-order partial differential equations every time. Serious science doesn't matter if you have the press in your pocket.
In fairness to the Addison Independent and its editors, our article was somewhat lengthy and technical, and presumably the average reader most likely could not follow or even be interested in an alternative viewpoint, since everyone knew by now that the global warming issue was "settled science". And we confess that we like the paper, subscribe to it, and know a number of folks who work there personally.
They're all good folks, and they have every right to choose what does or doesn't go in their publication. They also have a right to spin the news any direction they choose, because that's what freedom of the press is all about. Seems everyone, both left and right, does it - and it's almost certain we will be accused of doing the same here. And we just may be, as hard as we may try to avoid it. We humans aren't all shaped by the same cookie cutter, and that's a blessing that has taken us as a species to the top of the food chain.
But by then we had been sharing our own independent research of the literature with others via email, and receiving a surprising amount of agreement back in return. (We're in contact with a large number of fellow scientists around the country, dating back to our college days in the 17th century when beer was a quarter a bottle). One local friend, in particular, kept pressing us to publish, and even offered to set up a "debate" with the Popular Journalist who had usurped our original article. This we politely declined, arguing that "debate" cannot prove or disprove science...science must stand on its own.
But then something unusual happened. On Dec. 13, 2007, 100 scientists jointly signed an Open Letter to Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, requesting they cease the man-made global warming hysteria and settle down to helping mankind better prepare for natural disasters. The final signature was from the President of the World Federation of Scientists.
At last, we were not alone...
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Most tourists think of packing their swimwear and sun cream for a holiday Down Under.
But they could be in for more of a frosty reception after reports of groups of icebergs floating towards New Zealand and Australia.
Ships in the south Pacific Ocean are being warned to watch out for the icebergs that have split off the Antarctic ice shelves and are drifting north towards New Zealand, officials said today.
Rodney Russ, expedition leader on the tourist ship Spirit of Enderby, spotted one iceberg on Monday 57 miles northeast of Macquarie Island - around 500 miles south of New Zealand.
The iceberg was up to 500ft long and 90 ft high, he said, and the ship's radar located another large iceberg and chunks of ice floating nearby, he added.
Four other icebergs were spotted last week off Auckland Islands, 250 miles south of New Zealand and heading slowly toward the country.
Australian scientists reported another mass of 20 drifting north past Macquarie Island two weeks ago.
Glaciologist Neal Young said satellite images showed the group of icebergs, spread over a sea area of 600 by 440 miles, moving on ocean currents away from Antarctica.
Large numbers of icebergs last floated close to New Zealand in 2006, when some were visible from the coastline in the first such sighting since 1931.
It is rare for whole icebergs to drift so far north before melting, but a cold snap around southern New Zealand and favorable ocean currents have again combined to push the towering visitors to the region intact.
Scientists believe they will break up and melt rapidly as they continue northwards.
In 2000, several massive icebergs broke off from Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf and the Ronne Ice Shelf. One was around 190 miles long and 23 miles wide.
Icebergs are formed as the ice shelf develops. Snow falls on the ice sheet and forms more ice, which flows to the edges of the floating ice shelves. Eventually, pieces around the edge break off.
The unusual sight is likely to furnish evidence for both sides of the argument on global warming.
While some may say it is indicative of the world cooling others will say it shows the opposite and that the iceberg was created precisely because the planet is heating up.
Recent polls have shown that belief in global warming is waning.
Last month, Cardiff University found an increasing number of Britons are becoming more sceptical about climate change.
It found that 29 per cent believe the threat has been exaggerated - compared to just 15 per cent five years ago. One in five are hardened sceptics who believe manmade global warming is a myth.
In the U.S. polls have shown that nearly half of Americans no longer believe in global warming. Continued
and
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I was reading the superb article by the writer Richard Cook on his blog here ;
when his ideas suddenly gelled with some ideas I have been working on for a while.
I call this LOCALISED CAPITALISM.
This is the construction of an entire national based banking system based on economic autarky to operate alongside the existing international capitalist banking and trading system.
This would be a 'sealed' internal British banking system based on local banks and local currencies designed soely for internal national strategic infrastructure development, to generate supply and demand for essential industrial and other sectors of the national economy, to develop local energy, agricultural and services production systems and to create local jobs and raise individual and community incomes.
This system would operate as an internal banking system sealed off from all international trading or interference.
The National Bank would supervise the functions and powers of local banks who issue local currencies.
So we have a National banking system which delivers benefits at the community level.
The entire system is double locked and protected from any external crisis in international capitalism - for the National Bank and local banks operate ONLY in the NATIONAL and the COMMUNITY interest.
This in a very basic form is my embryonic new economic model to save Britain and the British economy.
As it is a work in progress, feel free to participate and critique.
My writings are those in the middle of the excerpt from the above article of Richard Cook ;
Except…. and that’s what each person caught up in these travesties must decide. What are you going to do about it?
In mulling over this question, it would be wise to recognize that the dominance of the financial elite has largely been exercised through their control of the international monetary system based on bank lending and government debt. Therefore it’s through the monetary system that change can and must be made.
The progressives are wrong to think the government should go deeper in debt to create more jobs. This will just create an even deeper hole of debt future generations will have to crawl out of.
Rather the key is monetary reform, whether at the local or national levels. People have lost control of their ability to earn a living. But change could be accomplished through sovereign control by people and nations of the monetary means of exchange.
This control has been stolen. It is time to take it back. One way would be for the federal government to make a relief payment to each adult of $1,000 a month until the crisis lifted. This money could be earmarked for goods and services produced within the U.S. and used to capitalize a new series of community development banks. I have called this the “Cook Plan.”
The plan could be funded through direct payment from a Treasury relief account without new taxes or government borrowing. The payments would be balanced on the credit side by GDP growth or be used by individuals to pay off debt. It would be direct government spending as was done with Greenbacks before and after the Civil War without significant inflation.
( This can also be applied via the creation of a National Bank Of Britain that funds the network of local banks which run and regulate registered local currencies.
The local currencies can only be spent in locally designated areas, each note issued is monitored to ensure only stays and is spent in the local area, tax benefits accrue from saved the local currency money in local banks, each local note has designated expiry date which has to be spent in certain time period or it is erased from circulation and any trade made illegal - so each note can be monitored from its creation to destruction in order to prevent criminals abusing the system or from colonists exporting that capital out of the country.
The Bank of Britain supplies and guarantees capital deposits of local banks and payments of the National Income Payment to individuals. The money paid to registered British citizens entitled to the money would go into the accounts of the local banks who will issue the local currency to the registered individual beneficiary.
These local banks which will run this system can be all those all recently nationalised banks which were bought by the government - they can be assimilated into the new system and run their existing systems alongside the new banking system.
This money for the project comes from a Treasury Relief Account set up by the government to fund the new economic system, and with private investment bonds bought by the public with fixed rate income and with guaranteed deposits.
At same time strategic national infra-structure projects can be set up and delivered via the new integrated national banking system.
These would be national projects but run on local development agendas, such as hiring local companies and local workers and incentivisation for industrial companies to re-develop a national industrial complex to re-equip coal mines, build new power projects, supply wave power plant, etc etc.
Set up and invest in local renewable energy projects, canals, coal mines, wave farms, water mills, wind farms, community farms, community home building projects etc - these projects must employ local labour first and only British workers.
The wages paid would be pounds and also local currency money - so that local workers can buy in local shops, and so competition exists to keep prices low as an individual would have a choice to buy a local commodity with local currency income or spend their usual money and welfare cash on buying that project in the pound system eg fruit and vegetables from a local farm shop or from Tesco's or a TV from a local outlet of a British company such as Argos or from a high street shop.
Local currencies could also be spent on national businesses that are owned by and trade in Britain and that have local branches that employ local people - thereby generating both new demand and supply for British products.
The money paid to people in local currencies that could only be spent in listed shops in a specific area - eg local carpenters, plumbers, buy food in local farm shops that produce locally made goods, buy British goods and products eg TV's, fridges and other goods.
Could be paid via Community Banks to those on welfare.
We can raise welfare payments but supply this money in the form of local currencies to be used in local communities.
This is Democratic Localism in action, which in turn becomes Community Building and Industrial Re-development - using the state to knit together a new social network and nexus based on community self sufficiency.
Local businesses could apply for loans and credit , local people to set up local businesses - fund local growth and development.
Only legal and registered British citizens can apply for and recieve these local currency payments.
Money cannot be exported abroad, cannot be given to people other than local people and locally registered shops and businesses in exchange for local goods and services.
Money cannot be swopped or exchanged for pounds or other currencies - criminal offense to be a money changer or use or charge usury in the exchange of the currency for goods and services.
Fixed rate loans for long term energy projects, building local markets and consumer bases for local energy production and energy supply networks - national projects have to be based on localisation of labour and British national based sourcing of infrastructure and industry.
We will leave the money changers in charge of their temples and the international banking and global financial system of privately owned capital, stocks and shares to the bankers and private investors - what we will do alongside the existing system of corporate banking we will create a new form of Localised Capitalism, in other words we will decouple the internal national community economic and money supply system from the international system and create a national banking system that will protect us a nation, as a community and as families and individuals from the ravages and failures of the international banking system.
- 1) We set up a new Bank of Britain under a new Emergency Banking Act.
- 2) The Bank of Britain then organises the network of EXISTING nationalised banks already owned by the government to run the new network of local banks alongside their existing services.
- 3) The local banks would be authorised to issue local currencies to local people.
- 4) Issue local currencies to local people
= NATIONAL LIBERATION.
All applications for the new income have to vetted - new NI numbers issued with entitlement card to access the money.
At same restrict access to services only to registered British citizens - local money going to fund local hospitals - a revolution in health care.
Local banks will invest government funding money in local schemes to build local projects and hire local workers and companies for local projects to satisfy local needs with those funds.
150 billion a year from EU.
Plus all other savings.
Inject money into schemes for renewable / nuclear money projects. )
Another method increasingly being used within the U.S. today is local and regional credit clearing exchanges and the use of local currencies or “scrip.” Use of such currencies could be enhanced by legislation at the state and federal levels allowing these currencies to be used for payment of taxes and government fees as well as payment of mortgages and other forms of bank debt. The credit clearing exchanges could be organized as private non-profit regional currency co-operatives similar to credit unions.
These would be immediate emergency measures. In the longer run, sovereign control of money and credit must be returned to the public commons and treated as public utilities. This does not mean exclusive government control to replace bank control. As stated previously, it would be done in partnership between government and private trade exchanges. Nor does it mean government takeover of business, industry, or the banking system, though all should be regulated for the common good and fairly taxed.
This program would lead to a new monetary paradigm where money and credit would be available by, as, when, and where needed, to facilitate trade between and among legitimate producers of goods and services. In this way trade and commerce will come to serve human freedom, not diminish it as is done with today’s dysfunctional partnership between big government trillions of dollars in debt and big finance with the entire world in hock.
Such a change would be a true populist revolution.
Tuesday 24th November 2009
Enriched Countryside Diversity
To Louise Bowling, it was the fulfilment of a life-long dream. Having bought some land, surrounded by beautiful countryside, she now had space to rear her beloved horses.
But. just a few months after purchasing the 1.1 acre plot, Mrs Bowling's dream is in tatters.
Earlier this month, the land surrounding her stables was sold to travellers who arrived under cover of darkness, poured 200 tons of concrete over the hillside and brought in their caravans and trucks.
They have since laid siege to Mrs Bowling's plot, threatening to rape her, burn down her home and kill the animals unless she sells them her land at a knockdown price.
Last night, Mrs Bowling, 31, a part-time receptionist, said: 'It's been terrible. When the caravans and trucks rolled on with the concrete, it was the end of our world.
'We saved up to buy the land - my husband went to war to pay for it - and it was going to be our nest egg for the future. It was an idyllic place for me to come and see the horses and enjoy the countryside.
'The travellers want us to sell them our share, but when we said it was not for sale they started threatening us. They said they would burn our house and the stables down and kill the horses.
'One of the men even threatened to rape me, it was disgusting. I've been so upset, I've not been eating or sleeping since they arrived.'
To Louise Bowling, it was the fulfilment of a life-long dream.
Having bought some land, surrounded by beautiful countryside, she now had space to rear her beloved horses.
But. just a few months after purchasing the 1.1 acre plot, Mrs Bowling's dream is in tatters.
Earlier this month, the land surrounding her stables was sold to travellers who arrived under cover of darkness, poured 200 tons of concrete over the hillside and brought in their caravans and trucks.
They have since laid siege to Mrs Bowling's plot, threatening to rape her, burn down her home and kill the animals unless she sells them her land at a knockdown price.
Last night, Mrs Bowling, 31, a part-time receptionist, said: 'It's been terrible. When the caravans and trucks rolled on with the concrete, it was the end of our world.
'We saved up to buy the land - my husband went to war to pay for it - and it was going to be our nest egg for the future. It was an idyllic place for me to come and see the horses and enjoy the countryside.
'The travellers want us to sell them our share, but when we said it was not for sale they started threatening us. They said they would burn our house and the stables down and kill the horses.
'One of the men even threatened to rape me, it was disgusting. I've been so upset, I've not been eating or sleeping since they arrived.'
Mrs Bowling bought the land in Hardhorn, near Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire, from owner Vincent Peake for £17,500, 14 months ago.
It was the middle plot of six lots, totalling eight acres, all designated as being for keeping horses on.
Mrs Bowling and her husband, Martin, 35, a former supplier with the RAF who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, spent a further £8,500 building stables and fertilising and fencing off the plot.
The couple, who have no children, moved their two horses into the stables and for more than a year enjoyed tending the plot and their animals. But, on November 3, Mrs Bowling was told the remaining five plots had been sold to a group of Irish travellers for £85,000.
On the evening of Friday, November 6, around 20 caravans and trucks rolled on to the site and, over 72 hours, tipped 200 tons of hardcore on to the land.
Officers from the local council arrived the day after and tried to issue a 'stop notice' to force the travellers to stop working on the site, but, they ignored it. The local authority are now seeking legal action against the travellers.
Police were also called but said they were powerless to help because no crime had been committed. Fearful her two horses would be harmed, Mrs Bowling, of Blackpool, moved them to other stables nearby.
She said they later offered to sell the travellers the land but were only offered £18,000, including the stables.
One of the travellers, Pat Collins, denied breaking the law and said they had applied for planning permission for their caravans. 'We have put in for planning permission retrospectively and are waiting for it to come back,' he said.
'We have to have homes for our kids. We've saved our life savings for this land, we own it and have a right to be here.'
Mr Peake, a retired electrical engineer, claimed he did not mean to sell the land to travellers. An individual in Yorkshire acted on the travellers' behalf and sold the land to them behind his back, he added.
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UK a Country of Mugs..
Fifteen children were found at three homes today by police investigating an alleged child trafficking ring.
Police raided the addresses in Manchester following intelligence that youngsters were being moved out of a Romanian village into the UK.
Four women and two men, aged between 23 and 32, were being questioned by detectives after officers executed warrants in Gorton and Longsight.
The children, who were said to have been forced into committing low-level crimes, were now in the care of Manchester City Council's children services, police said.
There is a large Roma community in the Gorton and Longsight areas of the city, estimated to be around 1,000 people.
A Greater Manchester Police spokesman said: 'Working with Manchester City Council, the aim of the operation was to identify and safeguard any children who may have been trafficked into Greater Manchester by Roma organised crime groups for exploitation and financial gain.
'Operation Epee was also targeted at disrupting any organised crime groups at the heart of this exploitation.
'Intelligence gathered from a number of sources, including the Metropolitan Police, the UK Borders Agency and the Romanian National Police, suggested that children were being trafficked out of the small Romanian village of Tandarei into the Greater Manchester area.
'The intelligence indicated the trafficked children are at risk of being subject to cruelty by neglect and being forced to commit low-level crimes such as cashpoint distraction burglaries, pick- pocketing and begging.
'Every effort will be made to identify who children are and where they are from. Welfare and support will be offered to all the children involved in today's operation.'
Superintendent Paul Savill, who led the operation, said: 'Today's operation was about identifying any children who may have been trafficked into Greater Manchester and, with Manchester City Council, giving them the welfare they need.
'We had to take action today because our intelligence suggested some of these children were being exploited and forced to commit anti-social behaviour and low-level crimes, and we have a duty of care to protect and safeguard those children.
'This operation was necessary to uncover the extent of the problem and see if there is any evidence of organised crime groups operating here. The welfare of the children is paramount and we cannot allow anyone to exploit these vulnerable people and force crime rates up.
'I want to stress that this operation was not intended to stigmatise the Roma who are settled in our community. They have an absolute right to live here and we welcome them into our diverse community.
'The majority of families are integrating themselves in our community positively, and again I would stress this is not about taking people's children off them. It is about determining which, if any, children have been trafficked and ensuring they are given the appropriate support.
'Both Greater Manchester Police and Manchester City Council have been working very hard to give support to the Roma community and help them adjust to living with the settled community in Gorton and the results have been positive.'
Manchester City Council deputy deader Val Stevens said: 'Manchester City Council has been working closely with the community along with GMP and partner agencies. We have supported the police throughout this operation and will continue to work with them and the families involved.'
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Police chose not to investigate more than 1.5million reported crimes last year, it emerged.
Offences dismissed by officers included sex attacks, robberies, drug use, fraud as well as large numbers of burglaries and thefts.
Around a third of all cases were deemed unsolvable hours after an allegation was made in a process known as 'screening out'.
Among 18 English, Welsh and Scottish forces which operate official screening out policies, 697,000 offences went uninvestigated during the 2008/9 financial year, out of 2.2million reported crimes - a rate of 32 per cent.
A further 15 forces said they did not formally ' screen out' crimes, although some admitted that offences could be earmarked for no further action at an early stage.
The findings suggest that across the country last year, out of 5.2million crimes reported to police, around 1.7million went uninvestigated.
Forces revealed the figures days after Home Secretary Alan Johnson, expressed dissatisfaction with the failure of police not to visit all victims of minor crimes.
But senior policemen said 'screening out' allows them to target the most serious and solvable crimes. They insist that all offences are 'investigated' to some degree, even if this amounts only to a phone call.
Murder, wounding and rape are always investigated, as are cases where there is a named suspect or forensic evidence. Among the 18 forces which provided figures under the Freedom of Information Act, the worst offenders after the Met were Dorset, where the screening out rate was 46 per cent, Cambridgeshire, on 43 per cent, and Cleveland on 42 per cent.
Essex Police screened out only 3 per cent of reported crimes, while the figure in Leicestershire was 9 per cent.
In parts of the country, an average of 75 per cent of theft and handling offences were screened out. That figure was as high as 70 per cent for criminal damage and 55 per cent for burglary.
Douglas Paxton, spokesman on crime recording for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: 'No crime goes uninvestigated. Screening out simply refers to the point at which an investigation is concluded.'
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A Knife man who chased and threatened two 17 year old boys with a samurai dagger has walked free from court.
Burnley Crown Court heard how Wajid Hussain, 29, then living at an upstairs flat in Clayton-le-Moors, was said to have had a confrontation with the two teenagers, who lived in the flat below.
He then brandished the knife and threatened to cut them with it, as a horrified neighbour cleaning his car watched the early afternoon rumpus in terror.
Hussain, who has almost 30 previous convictions and has been to jail for robbery and attempted robbery, admitted affray and possessing an offensive weapon. The defendant, now of Bicknell Street, Blackburn, received 26 weeks in jail, suspended for two years, with 12 months supervision and the Controlling Anger and Learning to Manage it programme. He must pay £100 costs.
Sentencing, Judge Jonathan Gibson told the defendant: "This was a knife with an eight inch blade. Its inevitable I pass a custodial sentence."
Sarah Statham, prosecuting, told the court on the morning of the incident Hussain had thrown a bed frame down the stairs to prevent the two teenagers going upstairs and there had been some kind of altercation.
Hussain picked up the dagger and chased both the young men out into the street. He was seen by a man cleaning his car at 1.15pm and he reported the defendant had the knife raised in an aggressive manner, shouting after the pair: "I'm going to cut you." They managed to run away. Hussain then tried to slash the tyres of two pedal cycles. The witness was scared and alerted the police.
Miss Statham said the defendant then simply went into the premises and when officers arrived, he was standing at one of the downstairs windows. Police arrested him and recovered a knife from the floor of his lounge.
He was questioned and told officers the two young men had gone into his flat when he was asleep. He claimed they had dropped the knife and he was responsible for chasing them into the street. He had 27 previous convictions and in June last year had been convicted of violent disorder after arming himself with a weapon. His licence ended in February.
Martin Hackett, defending, said it was accepted Hussain had a poor record for offences of public disorder, but he had not been looking for problems that day.
He had found the two young men in his flat. He accepted he chased them out and he had the knife and was brandishing it.
Reader Submitted Link. Thank You Welshie
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Ex-Tesco and Marks and Spencer employees are working as 'civilian investigators' on rape and murder cases - sparking fury among police detectives.
There are fears trials could collapse and criminals walk free because of mistakes made by the investigators. The new workers have already been sent to interview rape victims and investigate murders after just six months training. It is the latest in a process of so-called 'workforce modernisation' schemes set up by cash-strapped police forces across Britain to save money and free up detectives from 'routine duties'.
But senior officers are worried that the civilian investigators are not up to the job. Inspector Steve Williams, of the Police Federation's National Detectives' Forum, said employing 'shop workers' instead of trained detectives could end up with 'horrifying consequences'. He said: 'This means some civilian investigators are dealing with low category murder cases and interviewing rape victims.
'You have people coming from college or Tesco, given minimum training and told to get on with it. 'That is clearly happening across the country. That can't be right.' Detective Constable Ian Spain, of Humberside Police, said that his force employed 50 civilian investigators. He said: 'There are people who have come from working at M&S taking their first statement from someone who is a rape victim and then going off sick.
'Would you give that (type of case) to someone from M&S with six months in the police?' He added: 'We will start losing cases in the courts and we will get beaten up by the politicians and the media.'
One Met detective, who did not want to be named, said that although the new investigators were 'bristling with degrees' they still did not have the on-the-job experience needed. He said: 'We are constantly told that these guys have a wealth of knowledge, but nothing can beat on-the-job experience.
'What worries us most is that these guys won't be able to cut it when interviewing victims and with just six months in the job that is a very real worry.' Simon Reed, the vice chairman of the Police Federation, said the CID was deep in the process of being 'civilianised'. He told Police Magazine: 'The CID is the life-blood of the investigation role of the police.
'It is without doubt that the thief in the night is the civilianisation of the service and the enhanced investigation role is included in that process.' Met Police Detective Sergeant Ray Lewis said civilian officers did not have the power of warranted officers and could not be 'kept on duty' or 'called on duty' at a moment's notice like normal police officers.
He described the civilian detectives as being the product of 'workforce modernisation', adding: 'It is really about saving money. Senior officers looking for ways to balance the books.' Chief Superintendent Steve Burrows, of the Superintendents' Association, said: 'We are in a mess and need to do something about it.' He added that the plan had 'back-fired'.
'It was a seriously philosophical model. The idea was to take all the elements of an investigation apart and decide which bits need to be done by police officers with warranted powers and those that could be done by a civilian. 'The idea behind it was to speed up investigations.' He admitted that the project was 'overwhelmed' and said that in some forces the plan was being applied in an 'ad hoc and haphazard' way.
Police staff today make up around a third of all personnel, with many working not just working at front desks and answering phones, but also as fingerprint experts and forensic investigators.
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Please remember everyone that Muslims, immigrants generally, or whatever; they are, are not the true enemy! The three main political parties are our enemy, regardless of which one wins the next general election.
They are all dancing to the same tune, the same string pullers control all three; their success and funding would not come their way were it any otherwise.
Some talk about some sort of war with immigrants, but do you think you would be free even should such a war be fought and won? Of course not, because the problems this country face run much deeper than mere immigration, even if that seems the most obvious face of it.
Even if such a war was won, you would still be slaves, so long as the New World Order-controlled politicians are in power.
What is needed is a complete change in the role that people - us, who vote politicians in - plays in the political process. There must be a turnabout whereby firstly people only go into politics if they have a genuine desire to help this country and its people prosper on every level, and secondly, that politicians must once more become our servants rather than the masters.
They must sign a contract with the people on being elected, and if they fail to adhere to that contract then the people must have the power to remove them from power.
Once the people have a real democratic say in how our country is run, then we can make our wishes known in regards to immigration, or indeed any other subject. Until then we have no say in anything (and when fully paid up members of the EU, even less), and we remain in virtual enslavement; taxed, spied on, fined, locked up and persecuted for merely questioning the system.
Of course we must do what we can to get BNP politicians into Westminster, but meanwhile we must remember that New Labour - and the others - have committed acts of treason against this country and its people, but when the collective political establishment fails in its duty to defend the best interests of the people, and instead use the system to line their own pockets, then we must unite against their every attempt to govern us.
In this there is another way that doesn't involve waiting possibly years to see a BNP government, or taking to the streets in some sort of civil war. There may become a time for this, but that time has not yet been reached.
I urge every Nationalist to support the call by the British Constitution Group for a Lawful Rebellion - as is our right under article 61a Magna Carta 1215, which provides for our defiance of leaders who themselves refuse to abide by our written Constitution and the rule of law. Join them and get in touch with your local point of contact. Find them at: www.thebcgroup.org.uk
Freedom or Fascism: Time to Choose
Across Britain more and more people are waking up to the fact that they are now living in a dictatorship, or at least something very close to it.
We are controlled, regulated and bullied by the police, and watched, filmed, listened to, taxed, fined, imprisoned or locked up as ‘mentally ill’, for just daring to challenge the system.
We are fed a daily diet of government propaganda that with a little scrutiny are easily proven to be false:
- Poisonous fluoride is good for us
- Vaccination is essential to protect us from diseases
- Genetically modified crops are essential
- ID cards will protect us from crime, identity fraud and terrorism
- Sex education for ever-younger children is good
- The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and possibly Iran, are essential for our security
- Britain joining the EU is good for the country
- CCTV cameras everywhere prevents crime
- Massive amounts of taxpayers’ money must be spent on bailing out the banks
- Mass immigration is beneficial to us all
- We are at constant risk from terrorists, and must submit to ever-greater powers of control over us - for our own good
The list goes on and on...
Politicians of successive governments of the LibLabCon have betrayed their country, and have shown that they will happily lie, steal and betray us using taxpayers’ money - our money. These same politicians, who used to be our servants, have now become our super-rich, political masters, having rubber-stamped the 111,000 police state laws and regulations dumped on us by the European Union.
New Labour is, in effect, deliberately creating a totalitarian state, and naturally with this comes the total surveillance of the people involving millions of CCTV cameras that record each of our movements an average of 300 times each day. Our precious civil liberties have been destroyed, with once legal protest now almost a criminal activity, and the right to silence, right to trial by jury, and the presumption of innocence all curtailed by New Labour legislation.
Spy cameras are the proposed solution to over-filled wheelie bins. Draconian measures - introduced to curb potential terrorist activities - are used by council officials to spy on us for any and every trivial misdemeanour. All the while, New Labour’s intention of keeping tabs on your every phone call, text, email and web page visited slowly comes to fruition.
And in regards to the current economic crisis - the ‘credit crunch’ - with crippling debt, devalued house prices and fear of job losses, make no mistake about it - this has all been purposely manufactured to ensure people are controlled through preoccupation with the daily struggle for survival.
Why?
There exists a global elite that has as its objective the total control over the thinking, movements and actions of each and every one of us; in short the enslavement of us all by what is commonly known as the New World Order (NWO). Though they are often still to establish a clear picture of exactly what is going on, many people are slowly coming to see that ‘something’ is amiss; that things just don’t seem to add up anymore.
The NWO’s war against the people of the these islands is being fought on several fronts:
- The war against us physically: the massive attack on our immune systems through mass vaccination, pharmaceutical drugs, and irradiated and pesticide and additive-laden foods. Mobile phones are promoted as safe - even to young children - whilst New Labour are eager to promote genetically modified foods and a 24 hour drinking culture. Very soon vitamins will be available ONLY with a doctor’s prescription, whilst the government - well aware of its tranquilizing effect - is very keen on adding the toxic fluoride to our water supplies.
- The war against us mentally: keeping our minds occupied with 'reality TV', and the 'celebrity culture', whilst keeping us distracted by a constant diet of 'breaking news', gossip, trivia, red tape, and 'health and safety' regulations that have created a bureaucratic nightmare. Education has been reduced to little more than state-sponsored Marxist propaganda; political correctness has been engineered to discourage freedom of thought and create disempowerment through fear of speaking ones’ mind.
- The war against us emotionally: the constant ‘dumbing down’ of everything to its lowest levels, such as the creation of soul-destroying architecture and 'art'. Neighbours are encouraged to spy on each other, thus creating suspicion and mistrust, whilst a deliberately created disillusionment of the political process fosters the feeling of helplessness. Criminals go unpunished, creating further feelings of disempowerment.
- The war against us spiritually: whilst centuries-old churches are converted into mosques, the symbols of the native religion of this land for the past two thousand years are increasingly being banished. Whether this entails school nativity plays and children's Easter parades being banned, crucifixes hidden on British soap operas, nurses being banned from praying for patients, or even the curtailment of St George’s day parades and our traditional Morris Men dancers, the alleged reason always remains the same: so as not to offend minorities.
Fear is the key to this control! The fear of crime, debt, disease and terrorism ensures an all-too willing acceptance by most people of the most draconian of measures on the part of the state.
Global warming, or disease, such as flesh-eating bugs, mad cow disease, AIDS, measles, Asian bird flu, or the latest scam - swine flu - are more of the fear-mongering tactics that have been used to control people through fear.
And once people are in fear they demand 'solutions' - solutions our NWO-controlled government is only too keen to provide.
The deliberately-instilled fear of terrorism is constantly played upon by those in government, allowing for the complete and total surveillance of every one of us and the creation of databases on your every thought, word and movement. There is also the looming threat of microchip implants - something already a reality and which allows the tracking of an individual's movements anywhere he goes.
Finally, though we have been promised a referendum on the EU by both New Labour and more recently the Conservatives, we are now faced with our inevitable membership of the European Union - whether we want it or not. With some 80% of our laws already originating in Brussels, it is vital that as free, self-governing people we reject any idea of Britain being a member state of the EU.
To keep people from waking up as to what is happening and creating dissent, control of the media has been essential, with the BBC in particular - riddled with agents of the sinister 'charity' Common Purpose - broadcasting a non-stop diet of Marxist, EU-biased propaganda.
Brainwashing is started at an early age in our schools through the deliberate erosion of any sense of self-respect, the ‘dumbing down’ of education generally, the promotion of materialism, early sex, and the 'benefits' of multiculturalism, with any sense of national pride, and the cultural achievements, history, customs and traditions of this nation forgotten about, discouraged or denied. Home schooling is discouraged should any young minds slip through the net.
Though New Labour has been instrumental in instigating this agenda, it is important to understand that regardless of which of the three main parties are ever elected into government nothing will change on account of the fact that the string-pullers of all three are the same. That all three of these parties are nowadays more-or-less indistinguishable from each other is not a coincidence.
Join the Lawful Rebellion!
When the collective political establishment fails in its duty to defend the best interests of the people, and instead use the system to line their own pockets, then we must unite against their every attempt to govern us.
We support the call by the British Constitution Group for a Lawful Rebellion - as is our right under article 61a Magna Carta 1215, which provides for our defiance of leaders who themselves refuse to abide by our written Constitution and the rule of law.
Parliament, and the institutions of government and sovereignty, belong to the people, not the Monarch, the politicians or their cronies. It is our duty to defend them whenever necessary, using every means at our disposal. We owe it to our children to ensure that they inherit the same freedoms and liberties that were bequeathed to us.
Enough is enough!
Do not accept your own virtual enslavement and submit to the yoke of a newly-created foreign political and legal order, to which our politicians pay homage but of which we have no control.
It is our belief:
- That treason has been committed by successive governments since the 1970s.
- That our Constitution, our institutions and the very fabric of our nation have been deliberately dismantled.
- That the collective political establishment is no longer working in the best interests of the British people.
- That these acts have been unconstitutional, unlawful, and represent crimes of treason and sedition.
- That greed and corruption have been the driving force behind this betrayal.
In the run up to the General Election in 2010 it is important that this information is widely circulated if we are to stem the spread of the Communist, New World Order ideology that is destroying Britain.
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The Islamic preacher who gave email advice to Major Nidal Hasan, the gunman in the Fort Hood massacre, also inspired the July 7 bombers and a number of other British terrorists.
An Islamic preacher who gave email advice to Major Nidal Hasan, the gunman in the Fort Hood massacre that left 13 dead, also inspired the July 7 London bombers and a number of other British terrorists, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
Lectures by Anwar al-Awlaki were found in the Iqra bookshop in Leeds, where the July 7 bombers held meetings. His lectures were also found among the material seized from a jihadist recruiter, Aabid Hussain Khan, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, who groomed Britain's youngest terrorist, schoolboy Hammaad Munshi, then 15.
Al-Awlaki , 38, a US citizen, fled from the country to live in Britain after it was disclosed that three of the September 11 hijackers had worshipped at two different mosques where he preached.
He moved to Yemen in 2004, where he was arrested and then went underground, but he has been invited to give video lectures, most recently at East London Mosque in January, and his videos are still on sale in Britain.
Major Hasan, an army psychiatrist, worshipped at a mosque in Virginia where al-Awlak was imam at the same time as two Sept 11 hijackers.
Hasan, 39, has been charged with 13 murders. He shouted "allahu akbar" ("God is great") and shot dead unarmed soldiers awaiting vaccinations before or after deployment. He is lying in a military hospital bed, paralysed from the waist down, after civilian police officers shot him to end the rampage.
It has since emerged that US intelligence monitored email correspondence during the past two years between the officer and the imam.
Hasan asked advice on jihad and whether it was permissible to kill innocent people in a suicide attack.
Al-Awlaki's most influential lecture, Constants on the Path to Jihad, is based on a 2005 book by Yousef al-Ayyiri, the founder of al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia.
According to Evan Kohlmann, a US terrorism consultant, the sermon was "a 'virtual bible' for lone-wolf Muslim extremists".
Earlier this year, al-Awlaki also published 44 Ways to Support Jihad, a practical point-by-point guide to pursuing or supporting holy war.
"Constants spells out al-Qaeda's home-grown terror strategy," said Mr Kohlmann.
"Al-Awlaki didn't just translate it, he applied its teachings for a Western audience. So when Ayyiri stated 'jihad is everywhere', al-Awlaki explained that meant jihad was in Europe too. This is a very clever individual who understands the power of the Internet to radicalise people. Had al-Awlaki not translated Constants, then most of the Western Muslims who were inspired by it would never have even heard of it."
Al-Awlaki 's lectures were also found on a CD belonging to Mohammed Atif Siddique, 22, from Glasgow, an aspiring suicide bomber, who was found guilty of possessing bomb-making instructions.
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The death knell for British democracy has sounded. The Governance has been taken over by an unelected regime in Brussels bent on destroying the last remnants of our nationhood.
Events of recent days have exposed the full depths of the European Union’s anti-democratic megalomania. Last week the EU’s elitists embarked on filling the two key posts established by the Lisbon Treaty: those of President and Foreign Minister, or “high Representative” to use the pompous language beloved in Brussels.
In a shameless stitch-up of which the Soviet politburo might have been proud, Europe’s leaders chose a pair of absurd nonentities: herman Van Rompuy, a federalist fanatic from the dysfunctional country of Belgium, was appointed the EU’s first
President, while Baroness Ashton, an unknown Labour quango queen, became the EU’s foreign affairs boss.
It is outrageous that these two mediocrities, whose sole talent is for political self- advancement, should have been given so much control over our lives. Neither of them was voted into office, nor does the public have any ability to remove them. In its contempt for democracy the eU has developed into a bureaucratic dictatorship, where a narrow, self-selected elite clings ever more tightly to power.
In their own ways Van Rompuy and Ashton are the perfect embodiment of the eU’s autocratic, unprinci- pled culture. Like most Belgian politicians, Van Rompuy is suspicious of patriotism and devoted to back-room deals. Partly this reflects the nature of Belgium itself, an artificial construct, built by the european powers in 1830 from parts of other countries. Unlike Britain it has little sense of a strong national identity, one reason why Belgium’s leaders have always been so keen on the eU. his background means he prefers manipulation to democracy.
On a notorious occasion last year, as speaker of the Belgian parliament, he had the locks changed on one room to stop a group of MPs meeting there.
It is no wonder that the eU thinks he is the ideal man to guide its destinies. The credentials of Baroness Ashton are just as unedifying. A Left-wing apparatchik all her career, she has never been elected to any of the positions she has held.
A former chairman of a local health authority, she was made a peer by Tony Blair in 1999, then greased her way up the hierarchy of government, becoming leader of the Lords in 2007. In this role she demonstrated her scorn for the British people by ramming the Lisbon Treaty through Parliament without the referendum that Gordon Brown had promised.
Even more disturbing is her background as a leading figure in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the sinister Left-wing organisation that lobbied for Britain to remove its own military defences in the face of the Soviet threat. In the late Seventies and early eighties Ashton served as both a full- time official and national treasurer of CND, just when the Cold
War was at its peak. As was later revealed when the Russian and east German archives were opened up after the fall of the Berlin Wall, CND was riddled with Soviet sympathisers. Ashton and Van Rompuy’s lack of patriotism is equalled by their lack of charisma. David Miliband, Britain’s Foreign Sec- retary, said recently that the EU should be led by people who could “stop the traffic” in the world’s capitals. Ashton and Van Rompuy could barely even hail a cab. One Whitehall civil servant described the appointment of the pair as “a complete disgrace. They are no more than garden gnomes.”
Yet it would be a mistake to underestimate them given the enormous influence they will now wield, untrammelled by the need to submit their decisions to the public’s verdict.
Both of them are ferociously ambitious and have a strong sense of their own importance. Ashton’s supporters like to portray her as a down-to-earth “Lancashire lass” but critics have attacked her grand styleas leader of the Lords, typified by her exacting demands over adherence to protocol.
I was once at a ceremony in London at which she won a political award and I have rarely heard a speech which oozed such cloying self- satisfaction. As the £270,000 per annum foreign affairs chief, she will be in charge of a £3.4billion budget and a staff of 500 in Brussels and the eU’s 130 embassies, all of which will further boost her burgeoning self-esteem.
NOR is Van Rompuy, who will enjoy a £320,000 salary, as modest as he seems. Asked as a 12-year-old what he wanted to be when he grew up he replied “President”.
In their new posts Ashton the socialist and Van Rompuy the federalist will dedicate themselves to the task of creating the european super- state. Their commitment to this goal is all the more dangerous precisely because they have such low profiles – democrats might be lulled into thinking that they do not represent a genuine threat.
But in a political culture hidden from the public it is committee-room manipulators who represent the greatest menace.
Already Van Rompuy is pushing for an eU-wide tax while Ashton will force through a unified foreign policy and eU army.
If CND had triumphed when Ashton was in the group, Britain would have been ruled by a socialist superpower. As her promotion shows, a quarter of a century later we have exchanged the prospect of foreign totalitarian rule for the reality.
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The taxpayer is having to fund millions of pounds a year to "bribe" foreign murderers, rapists and other prisoners to go home after a 60 per cent jump in cases.
One in four of the foreign criminals who were deported last year only went home after being offered a voluntary return package worth up to £5,000.
It means ministers spent £3.4 million of public money encouraging offenders who have no right to be in Britain to leave.
It emerged earlier this week that one of those was a Malaysian migrant who killed a 17-month-old baby.
Some foreign prisoners can already have up to nine months slashed from their sentence if they are willing to go home.
The Facilitated Returns Scheme was launched in October 2006 and encourages overseas offenders to return to their home country once they have passed the point they would be released if British.
It is aimed at preventing lengthy and expensive legal battles against deportation and can see inmates given resettlement packages worth up to £5,000, including up to £500 in cash and the rest "in kind" support.
In 2008, some 1,350 foreign criminals took advantage of the programme, with an average value per package of £2,500, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
That means the taxpayer faced a bill of £3.4 million last year to send home inmates who had no right to remain in the country in any event.
It represented a quarter of the 5,400 foreign criminals that the Home Office boasted it had removed from the UK during the year.
It was also a 60 per cent increase on the 850 criminals who took up the offer in 2007.
It leaves a hollow ring to Gordon Brown's message to foreign criminals last year when the Prime Minister said: "If you commit a crime you will be deported. You play by the rules or you face the consequences."
Under a separate early removal scheme, foreign prisoners can be freed up to 270 days in advance of their release date so long as they are willing to return home.
Susie Squire, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “It’s ludicrous that taxpayers are paying millions to bribe foreign criminals to return back to their home countries. If they have been ruled to be wrongfully in our country, they should be deported immediately, with no additional financial incentives.
"These cash handouts reflect skewed priorities on the part of the Government when it comes to dealing with our immigration problem.”
Damian Green, the shadow immigration minister, said: "These figures make clear that the Government has completely abandoned any attempt at removing foreign criminals at the end of their sentence.
"Instead they are paying them to leave Britain. What happened to Gordon Brown’s pledge that he would introduce automatic deportation of serious foreign criminals?”
There are just under 12,000 foreign prisoners in jails in England and Wales, making up one in seven of the population behind bars.
One of those to have taken up the returns package is Malaysian Agnes Wong, 29, who was jailed for five years in 2008 for the manslaughter of toddler Hugo Wang she was supposed to be child-minding.
She was released in July this year, having served the minimum jail term of two-and-half years, including her time spent on remand, and put on a plane home with returns package worth £4,500.
Phil Woolas, the Border and Immigration Minister, said: "We strongly believe foreign lawbreakers should be sent home at the earliest opportunity. Last year we removed a record 5,400 foreign national prisoners.
"Our Facilitated Returns Scheme saves the taxpayer money because foreign criminals are removed direct from jail or immigration detention, often before their sentence ends. This means foreign lawbreakers cannot drag out the removal process for months with frivolous appeals which clog up the legal system.
“Every day that we can get these individuals out of the country early saves taxpayers over £100 a night in detention costs.”
The Daily Telegraph told last week how murderers, rapists and other prisoners are being allowed up to 100 days ''holiday'' away from their cells to ease pressure on overcrowded jails.
Some inmates can even spend up to a month at a time doing community service outside their prisons.
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They often face criticism for failing to pay the respect owed to fallen soldiers, but one group of teenagers tried to do the right thing by forsaking their football match to join the country in paying tribute to British servicemen on Remembrance Sunday.
Now the schoolboys - many of them Army Cadets - have been slapped with a fine for missing the local match, which had been rearranged at short notice to clash with a remembrance parade.
Their furious manager hit out today at the ‘disgusting’ punishment, which was doled out after league bosses decided the parade was an insufficient good enough excuse for failing to play the fixture.
Members of Spondon Rovers under-14s football team had no match scheduled for November 8 so they decided to join hundreds of well-wishers at the annual service and parade in Derby’s Market Place.
But eight days before Remembrance Sunday, the league rearranged a fixture for the day.
The young footballers insisted they wanted take part in the service so the team appealed against the decision and requested another date for the fixture.
But Derby City Football League’s management committee rejected their appeal and told the team it would have to play.
One league representative is said to have told the team’s secretary that the parade was ‘not a good enough excuse’.
After they failed to appear for the match, the team received a £25 fine and a letter saying that three points would be awarded to Gresley United, the team they should have played.
Manager Paul Eames said: ‘I find the decision absolutely disgusting. We were remembering the people that gave their lives to make this country what it is today, not to mention our troops in Afghanistan. At the end of the day, it was only a football match.’
Mr Eames’ son Keiran, 14, was among the Cadets who missed the match to take part in the parade.
Mr Eames added: ‘After the league arranged a game for November 8, my secretary rang them and said we couldn't fulfil it because some of our players would be taking part in the Remembrance Day parade.
‘We asked if we could cancel, but the league said it wasn't a good enough excuse and that we would have to go ahead and play the match.
‘We said we could play the game on any other day, but the league weren't interested. They couldn't even bend the rules a tiny bit.
‘I'm very proud of the players who are in the Cadets and took part in the parade. As for the league, they are just a bunch of jobsworths.
‘We have never missed a fixture before. We have always fulfilled our commitments to this league - and this is how they have repaid us.
'We're a law-abiding club and try to do everything by the book, but I'm afraid the league have just shown a complete lack of respect.’
League secretary Chris Yeomans, who imposed the punishment, said he could not comment while an appeal was in progress.
In a letter to the club he wrote: 'The management committee have considered the circumstances regarding this cancellation.
'They have resolved Spondon be fined 25 pounds for failing to keeps its engagement and that the three points be awarded to Gresley.'
The “climate change” theory has taken a hammering with new revelations that a Government-funded research body deliberately falsified data and tried to suppress the news that the earth’s temperature has actually been stable for the past ten years.
The latest revelations — released after an illegal email and data hack into computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (known as Hadley CRU) — indicates that scientists involved in propagating the “climate change” theory have resorted to lies, distortions, cover-ups and smears of opponents, to “prove” their theory.
The “climate change” theory has been used as a political tool against industrialised nations to increase taxes and subsidies to the Third World as “compensation.”
For example, as recently as last week, one Suneeta Mukherjee, country representative of the United Nations Food Population Fund (UNFPA), claimed that “climate change” was responsible for women in the Philippines turning to prostitution.
“The effects of climate change have driven women in communities in coastal areas in poor countries like the Philippines into dangerous work, and sometimes even the flesh trade,” Ms Mukherjee said.
The leaked emails, from some of the most prominent scientists pushing the “climate change” theory, indicate how they have used “tricks” to cover up holes in their data.
One of the leaked emails reads (verbatim, including typos):
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.
Another email reveals that the scientists are aware of the fact that the earth has not been heating up as their projections have always claimed. The emails lament this fact, calling it a “travesty”:
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.
Another email details how evidence has been suppressed:
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.
We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
Another email discusses how they should hide the fact that there have been periods of warming before, specifically in a period known as the “Medieval Warm Period” (MWP). This warming, which occurred during a non-industrialised era, mirrors current alleged global warming and is therefore an obvious problem for today’s theorists:
…Phil and I have recently submitted a paper using about a dozen NH records that fit this category, and many of which are available nearly 2K back–I think that trying to adopt a timeframe of 2K, rather than the usual 1K, addresses a good earlier point that Peck made w/ regard to the memo, that it would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “MWP”, even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back…
Yet other emails discuss how to smear those scientists who are sceptical of the “climate change” theory by ensuring that their papers are not “peer reviewed” so that they can be dismissed as cranks in the media:
This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?
Only last week, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported that “global warming appears to have stalled.”
In an in-depth article on the topic, Der Spiegel said that “climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years.
“The earth’s average temperatures have stopped climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year,” the magazine said, quoting a large number of scientists and specialists in the field.
“At present, however, the warming is taking a break,” meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences told Der Speigel. “There can be no argument about that,” he says. “We have to face that fact.”
“It cannot be denied that this is one of the hottest issues in the scientific community,” Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg added. “We don’t really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point.”
Allegations over “climate change” have been used in recent years to make all manner of outrageous demands for compensation from the West’s taxpayers. It has even been used as an excuse why Europe should be obliged to accept “climate change refugees” from the Third World.
The latest revelations will add fuel to the fire of those who consider the entire theory to be bogus and politically motivated.
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This is just one example of the hundreds of documents and thousands of emails that have been recovered from Britain’s Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, we noted earlier.
This is a pamphlet (a pdf file) from a company called Futerra, which claims to be “the sustainability communications agency”:
The Rules Of The Game
Evidence base for the Climate Change Communications Strategy
The game is communicating climate change; the rules will help us win it.
Futerra – Recommendations to the Climate Change Communications Working Group:
The principles of climate change communication
Why were the principles created?
The game is communicating climate change; the rules will help us win it.
These principles were created as part of the UK Climate Change Communications Strategy, an evidence-based strategy aiming to change public attitudes towards climate change in the UK. This is a ‘short version’ of a far longer document of evidence that can be found at www.defra.gov.uk.
There is plenty of evidence relating to attitudes towards and behaviour on climate change, general environmental behaviour change and the whole issue of sustainable development communication. As we reviewed the research for these principles, one ‘überprinciple’ emerged:
"Changing attitudes towards climate change is not like selling a particular brand of soap – it’s like convincing someone to use soap in the first place."
At first glance, some of the principles may seem counter-intuitive to those who have been working on sustainable development or climate change communications for many years. Some confront dearly cherished beliefs about what works; a few even seem to attack the values or principles of sustainable development itself.
However, these principles are a first step to using sophisticated behaviour change modelling and comprehensive evidence from around the world to change attitudes towards climate change. We need to think radically, and the Rules of the Game are a sign that future campaigns will not be ‘business as usual’. This is a truly exciting moment.
For the full evidence for these rules, and the climate change communications strategy itself, please visit: www.defra.gov.uk
For the new UK sustainable development strategy please visit: www.sustainable-development.gov.uk
1. blowing away myths
Many of the oft-repeated communications methods and messages of sustainable development have been dismissed by mainstream communicators, behaviour change experts and psychologists. Before we go into what works, our principles make a ‘clean sweep’ of what doesn’t:
1. Challenging habits of climate change communication
Don’t rely on concern about children’s future or human survival instincts
Recent surveys show that people without children may care more about climate change than those with children. "Fight or flight" human survival instincts have a time limit measured in minutes – they are of little use for a change in climate measured in years.
Don’t create fear without agency
Fear can create apathy if individuals have no ‘agency’ to act upon the threat. Use fear with great caution.
Don’t attack or criticise home or family
It is unproductive to attack that which people hold dear.
2. forget the climate change detractors
Those who deny climate change science are irritating, but unimportant. The argument is not about if we should deal with climate change, but how we should deal with climate change.
3. There is no ‘rational man’
The evidence discredits the ‘rational man’ theory – we rarely weigh objectively the value of different decisions and then take the clear self-interested choice.
4. Information can’t work alone
Providing information is not wrong; relying on information alone to change attitudes is wrong. Remember also that messages about saving money are important, but not that important.
2. a new way of thinking
Once we’ve eliminated the myths, there is room for some new ideas. These principles relate to some of the key ideas emerging from behaviour change modelling for sustainable development:
5. Climate change must be ‘front of mind’ before persuasion works
Currently, telling the public to take notice of climate change is as successful as selling tampons to men. People don’t realise (or remember) that climate change relates to them.
6. Use both peripheral and central processing
Attracting direct attention to an issue can change attitudes, but peripheral messages can be just as effective: a tabloid snapshot of Gwyneth Paltrow at a bus stop can help change attitudes to public transport.
7. Link climate change mitigation to positive desires/aspirations
Traditional marketing associates products with the aspirations of their target audience. Linking climate change mitigation to home improvement, self-improvement, green spaces or national pride are all worth investigating.
8. Use transmitters and social learning
People learn through social interaction, and some people are better teachers and trendsetters than others. Targeting these people will ensure that messages seem more trustworthy and are transmitted more effectively.
9. Beware the impacts of cognitive dissonance
Confronting someone with the difference between their attitude and their actions on climate change will make them more likely to change their attitude than their actions.
3 linking policy and style communications principles
These principles clearly deserve a separate section. All the evidence is clear – sometimes aggressively so – that ‘communications in the absence of policy’ will precipitate the failure of any climate change communications campaign right from the start:
10. Everyone must use a clear and consistent explanation of climate change
The public knows that climate change is important, but is less clear on exactly what it is and how it works.
11. Government policy and communications on climate change must be consistent
Don’t ‘build in’ inconsistency and failure from the start.
4 audience principles
In contrast to the myths, this section suggests some principles that do work. These principles are likely to lead directly to a set of general messages, although each poses a significant implementation challenge:
12. Create ‘agency’ for combating climate change
Agency is created when people know what to do, decide for themselves to do it, have access to the infrastructure in which to act, and understand that their contribution is important.
13. Make climate change a ‘home’ not ‘away’ issue
Climate change is a global issue, but we will feel its impact at home – and we can act on it at home.
14. Raise the status of climate change mitigation behaviours
Research shows that energy efficiency behaviours can make you seem poor and unattractive. We must work to overcome these emotional assumptions.
15. Target specific groups
A classic marketing rule, and one not always followed by climate change communications from government and other sources.
5 style principles
These principles lend some guidance on the evidence of stylistic themes that have a high chance of success:
16. Create a trusted, credible, recognised voice on climate change
We need trusted organisations and individuals that the media can call upon to explain the implications of climate change to the UK public.
17. Use emotions and visuals
Another classic marketing rule: changing behaviour by disseminating information doesn’t always work, but emotions and visuals usually do.
6 effective management
These principles are drawn primarily from the experience of others, both in their successes and in the problems they faced:
18. The context affects everything
The prioritisation of these principles must be subject to ongoing assessments of the UK climate change situation.
19. The communications must be sustained over time
All the most successful public awareness campaigns have been sustained consistently over many years.
20. Partnered delivery of messages will be more successful
Experience shows that partnered delivery is often a key component for projects that are large, complex and have many stakeholders.
"First they ignore you; then they laugh at you; then they fight you; then you win." Mahatma Gandhi
If you are inspired or sceptical, have questions or want to know more, then please contact: sustainability communications
020 7733 6363
Please read this carefully. It is deeply chilling.
And, with just a few minor changes, it could have been written by any bureaucrat in the propaganda ministry of the Third Reich. Certainly the techniques are much the same.
Some enterprising people at ‘An Elegant Chaos’ have put together a search engine for the Climate Research Unit (CRU) files. You can also just browse the emails at that site.
You can also download a .zip compacted file of the entire CRU stash of emails and documents from S&L’s server by clicking here.
However, be aware that it is quite a large 63.29 MB file, so it may take some time to download.
Related Articles:
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The BBC loves to talk about wind farms, but not about the glaring matter of their costly inefficiency.
When the BBC runs one of its propaganda campaigns in favour of windfarms, as Farming Today was again doing recently, the only point of interest is how many of the basic facts they leave out. One thing they invariably try to conceal is how derisory is the amount of electricity these windmills produce.
Although Farming Today interviewed one of the sternest technical critics of wind turbines, Dr John Etherington, a retired environmental academic who has just published an excellent book on the nuts and bolts of wind power, they asked him with seemingly wide-eyed disbelief how he could justify his claim that turbines generate less than 30 per cent of their capacity.
Yet, as any half-way competent journalist should know, this information is freely available on the climate change department's website. The very last thing the BBC ever wants to admit – though the information is available from the same source – is that the total amount of power produced by all the 2,300 turbines so far built in Britain amounts on average to a mere 900 megawatts, barely the output of a single medium-size conventional power station.
The other point the BBC is always careful to conceal is how much money the developers make from these windmills, thanks to the near 100 per cent hidden subsidy we all pay them through our electricity bills. Farming Today was quite happy to encourage farmers to lease their land by telling them that they could hope to make up to £20,000 a year from each 2 megawatt turbine. What they did not explain was that the same turbine will yield its developer around £400,000 a year –a cool £10 million over its 25-year life. Something else Farming Today neglected to mention was the title of Dr Etherington's book, The Wind Farm Scam.
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Data that has been hacked from the Hadley Centre’s Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University – one of the principal academic centres behind anthropogenic global warming theory – appears to reveal an international conspiracy of scientific experts to distort, falsify or suppress evidence in order to exaggerate man-made global warming, and also to vilify AGW sceptics in order to rubbish and bury their own evidence.
If true, a revealed systematic fraud of this magnitude will surely not only bury AGW once and for all but, as Philip Stott anxiously observes, this ultimately inevitable outcome may well bring all of science into disrepute as a result.
The web is alight with excitement over the hacked data. A word of caution, however – although the CRU’s director Philip Jones has confirmed that the material is genuine, with so much of the hacked material now floating around it is possible that some or all of it may take on a different complexion in its true context.
On the face of it, however, it looks extremely damning. Read about it below:
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Carbon taxes will provide the EU with its own revenue stream
This has been the Global Warming Scam from the offset !
Therefore it seems logical now why the hackers have dug in the servers of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and published the files, including some personal messages, on the internet.
No doubt as we contemplate the figure who has rocketed from obscurity to became "the President of Europe", we have all made silly little jokes about "Mr Rumpy".
After the eight tortuous years it has taken to get the "Constitution for Europe" into place, with all the talk of how vital it was for the EU to have a figurehead to represent Europe on the world stage as the equivalent of the President of the United States, some may now think of the poet Horace's famous line, parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus ("the mountains are in labour, and will give birth to a ridiculous mouse").
But it would be wrong to underestimate Herman Van Rompuy, the first permament president of the European Council. This Belgian economist is a clever and ruthless political operator. Once, to win a political battle, he changed the locks to prevent his opponents entering a crucial meeting. (For details of his character, see the Brussels Journal blog by one of his former colleagues, Paul Belien.)
And the reason why he was very much the preferred candidate of the European Commission is that the one thing for which President Van Rompuy can be relied on is a determination to use all his crafty skills to further the power of our new government in Brussels.
At the heart of the "European project", there has always been one core goal in all it does – to absorb ever more of the powers of national governments into the centre. And almost the only thing we know about Mr Van Rompuy's ambitions in his new office is that he wants "more Europe".
Much of his wish list may have been drearily familiar ever since the Addenino report of 1985: more flying of the "ring of stars" flag, more singing of the "European anthem", EU number plates on cars, EU identity cards.
But the one thing the EU has needed to make its powers complete, and which not even its Constitution could give, was the power to levy its own direct taxes. It is no accident that this is now at the top of Mr Van Rompouy's list – nor that the way in which he plans to raise those taxes is by levying new charges on every kind of activity that emits CO2.
Way back in1991, Brussels first proclaimed its intention to give a "moral lead" to the world in "combating climate change". The following year it published plans for an EU-wide "carbon tax".
Ever since, saving the planet has risen steadily higher on the EU's agenda, as the perfect idealistic cause to justify more new laws – from the landfill directive that has reduced our rubbish collection to chaos, to the legislation that forces us to encumber our countryside with useless wind turbines, and to use nasty, inefficient, mercury-filled light bulbs.
Still the one thing lacking, despite that 1992 proposal for a carbon tax, has been some way to harness this noble cause to provide an almost limitless source of money for the EU itself.
How appropriate then that the coming into force of the EU's constitution should bring to power a man who wishes to see the EU funded entirely from taxes designed to save the world from global warming.
Unfortunately for the President, this has come to pass at just the moment when the scare over global warming is beginning to run out of steam.
The science behind it looks increasingly shaky as the world heads for a Copenhagen conference which, as even its organisers admit, is unlikely to produce anything resembling the much tougher successor to Kyoto that they have striven for so long.
In other words, just when little Mr Rumpy imagines that he has found the Holy Grail of Brussels – an income source that will give the EU more money than it could ever have dreamed of – the cause he is relying on to provide the unlimited bonanza is itself beginning to disintegrate.
As many might think, how neat it would be if both of these great edifices founded on wishful thinking should collapse together, leaving our new Mr President gazing forlornly from the bridge of his slowly sinking ship.
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Mar 10 - Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus, currently also holding the European Union presidency, denounces "global warming alarmism" in a speech at Columbia
Klaus blames "alarmists" for misusing climate change information to try to expand the role of government.
He has written a book expressing doubts that climate change is man-made, and was in New York to attend a conference of climate change sceptics.
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Warmists Propaganda Continues but the reality of flooding is due to bad planning and over development a result of overpopulation in a tiny crowded Nation! Don't blame the People.. It's Government legislation!
Britain should brace itself for more tropical-style deluges of the kind that wreaked havoc on Cockermouth, according to climate experts.
They warn that, although no single event can be attributed to climate change, the warming of the atmosphere caused by greenhouse gases means such disasters will become more frequent.
“We need to follow the example of tropical cities like Kuala Lumpur and Singapore where flooding is a regular event,” said Roger Falconer, professor of water management at Cardiff University.
“They have huge flood drains and roads, all designed to channel water away from danger areas. Britain must learn to think the same way.”
Such warnings are in line with recent studies into how Britain’s climate may change. They suggest summers will become drier and warmer, but winters will be marked by storms, strong winds and more deluges.
Some fear that is already happening. From the 1960s until the 1990s, floods were a rarity in Britain. It meant that when floods struck across the Midlands in 1998, the country was unprepared.
A subsequent government inquiry led by Peter Bye criticised the Environment Agency, then just two years old, and called on it to set up an early warning system.
That system was tested to the limit when floods struck again in 2000, hitting communities stretching from Sussex to Wales.
A further inquiry found that many of the flooded areas were linked to uncontrolled development on flood plains. That led to new planning controls.
There were more hard lessons in January 2005 when Carlisle was devastated by floods that killed three people and forced thousands from their homes.
That was followed by the 2007 floods that hit Tewkesbury, Hull and Doncaster, this time threatening power stations, water supplies and telecommunications.
What the 2005 and 2007 floods also showed was the human cost, with many Carlisle and Hull residents forced to leave their homes for months. Around Britain, some 5m people live in flood-prone areas.
What lies behind the spate of floods? Edmund Penning-Rowsell, professor of geography and director of Middlesex University’s flood hazard research centre, said it was clear that floods were getting more frequent.
He said: “The country has been through wet periods like this before so we still cannot be sure it is climate change, but it fits with the projections and we should expect it to continue.”
Dave Britton, a spokesman for the Met Office, said: “In the UK the projections do suggest this will happen more often. When the atmosphere is warmer it can evaporate more water from the sea and it can hold more moisture. The result is storms and heavy rainfall.”
Part of the answer could lie in huge civil engineering projects. The Royal Academy of Engineering held a conference on “extreme flooding” earlier this month at which it discussed ideas such as building huge storm drains under roads.
Others believe the scale of such events is so huge that Britain must rethink its entire attitude. That means accepting that some flooding is inevitable and putting more effort into educating people living in risk areas.
Cockermouth illustrates the point, with the Environment Agency spending £600,000 on new defences in 1999 and another £100,000 after floods in 2005. These defences were swamped last week.
Phil Rothwell, head of flood strategy at the Environment Agency, said the average cost of refurbishing a house after a flood was £28,000.
He said: “If climate predictions are right, we are going to have more of these heavy rainfall events inundating more areas. As a nation we have to get used to that and manage things differently.
“The future is not about hard engineering. We can’t stop these kinds of floods and, in any case, the nation doesn’t want us to turn its rivers into canals hidden behind huge embankments.”
The Cockermouth floods coincide with some major developments in flood planning. Next month sees the implementation of the EU floods directive which obliges all member countries to prepare for the growing flood risk associated with climate change.
In Britain, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is trying to push the Flood and Water Management Bill through parliament before the next election.
The bill is based on Sir Michael Pitt’s review of the 2007 floods and obliges local authorities to deal with local flood risks, while putting the Environment Agency in charge of national strategy.
The Cumbrian floods could give that bill added impetus. Nick Herbert, the Conservative shadow environment secretary, this weekend said he would support government efforts to pass it into law before next May.
For the people of Cockermouth such measures will, however, seem largely irrelevant as they try to rebuild their lives and homes after the recent destruction.
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Scientists at a British climate- change research centre discussed ways of dodging Freedom of Information Act requests to release temperature data, it is claimed.
Leaked emails and documents appear to show that the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit conspired to keep opponents in
The private messages have been seized upon by climate-change sceptics, who claim one email includes an admittance that robust data to prove the world is warming up simply doesn't exist, and that data which did not support global warming was deliberately suppressed.
The embarrassing emails came to light after hackers targeted the CRU and published the files. Many are from the unit's director, Professor Phil Jones, including one in which he appears to suggest using a 'trick' to massage years of temperature data to 'hide the decline'.
In another, he says: 'I'm getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperat
It seems to show how scientists were able to persuade the FOI officer that requests from a climate- change sceptic, Stephen McIntyre, who runs a website called Climate Audit, should not be treated seriously.
'When the FOI requests began here, the FOI person said we had to abide by the requests,' the email says. 'It took a couple of half-hour sessions to convince them otherwise.
'Once they became aware of the types of people we were dealing with, everyone at UEA became very supportive. I've got to know the FOI person quite well and the chief librarian - who deals with appeals.'
Another email seems to show that the CRU discussed ways of evading the Freedom of Information Act entirely. The act allows organisations to decline requests for information if the requests are 'repeated or vexatious'.
A spokesman for the University of East Anglia said: 'The selective publication of some stolen emails and other papers taken out of context is mischievous and cannot be considered a genuine attempt to engage with this issue in a responsible way.'
Professor Jones confirmed that the email in which he talked of a 'trick' was genuine. He said: 'The word 'trick' was used here colloquially as in a clever thing to do. It is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward.'
Don't any of you three tell anyone that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act!'
A further email from Mr Jones raises questions over how the Freedom of Information process was being adhered to at the university.
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Climate change scientists have been manipulating and fixing data according to bloggers that are spreading information contained in hundreds of hacked emails.
Bloggers say the 62 mb worth of emails were hacked from the Climate Research Unit (CRU), part of Britain’s University of East Anglia and released onto the Internet.
The file containing the emails were packaged and posted on blogs by an anonymous hacker. A list of the emails is on a site called ‘an elegant chaos.’
“We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps,” said the hacker on the global warming skeptic site Air Vent on Friday. “We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and document.”
The file contained data, code, and emails from Phil Jones, director of the CRU, to and from many people, including scientists involved global warming and climate change studies. Jones confirmed to Investigate magazine's TGIF Edition Friday night that his organization had been hacked.
"It was a hacker,” Jones told TGIF. “We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails."
Global warming skeptic and editor of the Climate Research journal, Chris de Freitas, said the emails are quite revealing.
“I think it’s serious because there have been many different people claiming the so-called ‘objective experts’ have been not totally 100 percent with their claims, and certainly the data they have used to back up their claims,” he said.
De Freitas is an Associate Professor at the School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is also the subject of many of the hacked emails that discuss ways to exclude and discredit him and his theories that are contrary to the global warming theory.
American climatologist, Michael E. Mann wrote in one of the hundreds of hacked emails, “It seems to me that this ’Kinne’ character's words are disingenuous, and he probably supports what De Freitas is trying to do. It seems clear we have to go above him. I think that the community should, as Mike H has previously suggested in this eventuality, terminate its involvement with this journal at all levels—reviewing, editing, and submitting, and leave it to wither way into oblivion and disrepute.”
De Freitas said he was aware of the animosity. “I don’t indulge in that sort of thing,” he said. “But now that the evidence is out… I was an editor of the Climate Research journal for 10 years, as you can see if you read the emails, they tried to get me out of that position because they thought I was being biased.”
In one email, scientists appear to admit they can't find the data to back up their global warming theory.
“Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low.
“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.”
Another email thread talks about manipulating data. It is from CRU’s Phil Jones.
“Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow. I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”
De Freitas said he does not hold much hope for the Copenhagen climate summit next month where sixty five world leaders are expected to convene. The representatives of 191 nations will seek agreement on a new global treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol in limiting emissions of greenhouse gases.
“Copenhagen will be a bit of a dog’s breakfast,” de Freitas said. “There’s no way you’re going to cut back emissions. Just look at New Zealand, they’re just climbing. No one does anything. If it is such a big problem, and of such concern, something would have been done about it.”
There are many important environmental and planetary problems, such as air pollution, sanitation, and health care, that aren’t controversial and quite serious, he said. “But we have this very narrow view of what should be done.”
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In 1973 the UK joined the Common Market and in the 1975 referendum the people of Britain were conned into voting in favour of staying in the Common Market.
Prime Minister Heath, whose government entered into the accession treaty, and Prime Minister Wilson, who arranged the referendum, both knew that the Common Market was simply a stage in the development of the European Union.
At some point, those behind the take-over of Britain by the EU realised that they needed people whom they could trust to manage the new bureaucracy.
Enter Common Purpose, which was established to recruit and train the commissars and apparatchiks needed to run this bureaucracy.
New Labour's Hidden Agenda
Since 1997, the New Labour government has been working to two agendas. Firstly, the open agenda as laid out in their manifestos and secondly, their hidden agenda.
The objective of the hidden agenda of New Labour is the creation of a Communitarian society controlled by the EU collective.
In order to achieve this objective, the New Labour government has been running a parallel administration made up of QUANGOs and fake charities. A fake charity is legally a charity but effectively operates as a government department, receiving a substantial amount of funding directly or indirectly from government and operating as a government department.
Common Purpose is a fraudulent 'educational charity' acting as a change agent and recruiter and is part of the management mechanism being used to carry out this hidden agenda of New Labour.
Whilst carrying out the hidden agenda of New Labour, Common Purpose has corruptly abused millions of pounds of taxpayers' money.
Common Purpose is guilty of defrauding YOU of YOUR money.
Some people think that Common Purpose is simply a criminal organisation set up to siphon off public money but there is a lot more than that to the Common Purpose agenda.
What is Common Purpose?
On the surface, Common Purpose is an educational charity, registered in the UK under number 1023384, that does leadership and networking development training.
However, Common Purpose is not what it appears to be on the surface.
In reality, Common Purpose is a corrupt, subversive, secretive and deeply sinister organisation with a hidden agenda (Communitarian social control, corporate and EU state control) and hidden backers (Tavistock Institute, Fabian Society, Brussels).
Common Purpose is a change agent being used to recruit and train the commissars and apparatchiks needed to implement New Labour's hidden Communitarian agenda.
Common Purpose Objectives
The main objective of Common Purpose is social control in a collectivist and corporatist Communitarian society.
The other objectives of Common Purpose are the destruction of the national identity of Britain, the destruction of democracy in Britain, the undermining of traditional beliefs and values and the slow, secretive merging of the public and private sectors into a state-controlled partnership.
Common Purpose Motives and the Fabians
The New Labour government is strongly influenced by the Fabians. The ultimate objective of the Fabians is to create a One World Communitarian government. This ties in with the New World Order project.
Common Purpose is a Bilderberg-type group for upper and middle management implementing the Agenda 21, sustainable development and Communitarian policies of the New World Order and is being used to form a New World Order control grid in the UK.
Common Purpose Philosophy and the Communitarians
Communitarianism is a 'Big Brother knows best' type of philosophy that has been inflicted on the British people since before New Labour came into power in 1997.
Communitarianism tramples on the rights of individuals in favour of the rights of the community or 'civil society'.
Communitarianism is also known as the 'Third Way'. Communitarians want to create a post-modern, post-democratic feudal society run by a small number of rich and powerful people with everyone else working as peasants. In order to achieve their objectives they must destroy the middle class and the nation state.
Common Purpose Methods
The methods used by Common Purpose are what you would expect from fraudsters in this Jigsaw of Deception.
The use of political correctness for social control and mental manipulation, deceit, fraudulent agenda, corrupt abuse of public funds, obsessive control freakery, secrecy and bland, banal and meaningless statements.
Common Purpose 'Graduates'
The main way that Common Purpose is subverting Britain is by infiltrating their 'graduates' (members) into managerial positions of power in national and local government, the media, the NHS, the military, the police and the judiciary.
Common Purpose needs these 'graduates' to run the social control bureaucracy of the British regions of the European Union Police State in what they call the 'post-democratic' society.
Find out more about Common Purpose 'graduates' and how to do Freedom of Information (FOI) requests about them here.
Common Purpose Criminals and Fake Charity
Common Purpose operates fraudulently as a charity. It is one of many 'Third Sector' fake charities in the UK (others include Age Concern and the NSPCC), that are government departments in all but name.
1. Common Purpose has redefined the meaning of 'charity'. Although Common Purpose calls itself an 'educational charity', it is not the poor and disadvantaged who benefit. Instead, the main beneficiaries are the rich and powerful.
2. According to the Charity Commission, "An organisation will not be charitable if its purposes are political."
Here are more details of this fraud.
Abuse and Waste of Your Tax Money by Common Purpose
Most people have never heard of Common Purpose which is strange because Common Purpose has corruptly abused millions of pounds of taxpayers' money.
Common Purpose is guilty of defrauding YOU of YOUR money.
Ever wonder why YOUR taxes are so high? You can find out more about how Common Purpose abuses YOUR taxes and what YOU can do about it here.
Common Purpose and EU Spies
Common Purpose is a recruitment organisation being used to recruit the bureaucrats needed to run Britain when the country is taken over by the European Union collective.
The European collectivist superstate is designed to be centrally controlled and managed at lower levels by bland and brain dead 'leaders' who are all programmed to think the same. This is where Common Purpose comes in.
Common Purpose and Police Corruption
Common Purpose has corrupted the police in Britain.
One of the main targets of Common Purpose is the police because Common Purpose is obsessed with social control. Fabian 'New' Labour has already turned Britain into a police state.
Common Purpose and Media Corruption
Common Purpose has corrupted the British media.
One of the main targets of Common Purpose is the media because Fabian New Labour and Brussels need to control propaganda to the masses.
Many BBC, ITV and other media personnel are graduates of the Common Purpose Revolution by Stealth operation. In fact, the BBC and other media outlets have become the propaganda arms of Fabian New Labour's mealy-mouthed, pro-Europe and politically correct Ministry of Half-Truth.
Common Purpose 'Graduates' Breach the Seven Principles of Public Life
Those Common Purpose 'graduates' who are public servants breach ALL the Seven Principles of Public Life as set out by the Committee on Standards in Public Life.
Here are more details of this appalling breach of public trust.
Julia Middleton
Julia Middleton is nominally the Commissar-in-Chief of Common Purpose. Julia Middleton is a verminous, corrupt and evil crook who has conspired with others to corruptly abuse millions of pounds of public money and corruptly suborn some members of the British police, judiciary and armed forces.
Stop Common Purpose!
Do you want you and your children and grandchildren controlled from the cradle to the grave?
Monday 23rd November 2009
The number of students entering the UK from India and Bangladesh has risen sharply since a new visa system began, the BBC has learned.
The UK Border Agency had said it believed the total number of students was "roughly the same" as last year.
But a Freedom of Information request revealed the numbers entering from those countries, thought to be hotspots for bogus students, has tripled.
The Home Office insists that the figures do not reflect a global trend.
'Raise the bar'
The new points-based immigration system was introduced last year. It was designed to be tougher and more selective than the old one.
The then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith promised that the new system would "raise the bar" and lead to "fewer migrants coming to the UK from outside the EU".
But earlier this month, immigration officers told BBC Radio 5 live they feared more bogus students are arriving in the UK under the new system, partly because of the large volume of arrivals which must be processed.
Officers said a significant number of those arriving on student visas had previously been denied entry to the UK, and they suspected that many had come here to work and not study.
One Heathrow-based whistleblower told the Donal MacIntyre programme that many so-called students could not speak English, and knew nothing about the courses they claimed to be studying.
He said many of these students came from the Indian subcontinent.
Sharp increase
Responding to the immigration officers' concerns, Jeremy Oppenheim, who runs the points-based system at the UK Border Agency, said that the number of students coming into the UK this year was "roughly the same as last year".
But figures subsequently obtained by the BBC under the Freedom of Information Act show there has been a sharp increase in the number of student visas granted in India and Bangladesh - two of the biggest centres for non-EU student visa applications.
Between June and August 2008 (before the new system for students came into force), the British High Commissions in Mumbai, New Delhi and Dhaka issued 6,771 student visas.
During the same period this year (under the new points-based immigration system), the three offices issued 19,950 visas.
The number of student visa applications rejected also rose from 3,997 to 6,261.
'Flexible'
The government says it has cracked down on bogus colleges, and that the number of institutions able to bring students into the UK from outside the European Union has been halved since the introduction of the new points-based immigration system.
In a statement, Mr Oppenheim told the Donal MacIntyre programme: "The UK Border Agency has 74 visa-issuing posts worldwide, so three cities should not be taken as representative of a global trend.
"The points-based system is designed to be flexible," he added.
"It enables us to regularly check and monitor all student applications and colleges to ensure that they meet the required standards, and take action where necessary."
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Immigrants who don’t understand English have been able to buy language certificates that give them the right to settle in Britain.
An investigation by The Sunday Times has found that staff at English language colleges in London and Birmingham have been offering migrants who speak little or no English Home Office-regulated English and Citizenship certificates for £250 each. Tests are rigged to allow almost anyone to pass.
Staff hand out crib sheets with questions and answers in English. Others let candidates write the sound of English words on the sheets in their own tongue, so the answers appear right, but they don’t know what they are saying.
At the UK Learning Academy in Birmingham, a staff assessor told an undercover reporter that candidates did not have to take any courses or speak any English to pass the tests. The assessor simply asked if the candidate knew their own name, date of birth and address. When told that they did, the assessor replied: “That’s all right then. That’s a guaranteed pass.”
Yesterday the Academy said it had sacked the assessor for “gross misconduct”. Directors at a second college under investigation said they had suspended its English course, while a third college removed the website advertising its course.
Chris Grayling, shadow home secretary, said: “These revelations are particularly alarming and reveal another major abuse of our system for immigration.” He called for the certificates to be suspended.
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IN the windows of the UK Citizenship Centre in Birmingham, posters say it provides “Home Office Approved Certificates”. They boast a “very high success rate” and the process is “quick and easy”.
This is where immigrants, some of whom speak no English, come to buy English language certificates that will enable them to apply for permanent settlement in Britain.
Under a system introduced by David Blunkett, the former home secretary, certificates should be awarded only to migrants who have undergone lengthy language and citizenship classes and proved they can speak English “to a workable level”.
However, a month-long Sunday Times investigation has uncovered a network of “colleges” where staff cheat the system and admit they are “defeating the whole object of these exams”.
In a recorded telephone conversation last week Sadia Hussain, an assessor at the centre, said no coursework was needed before a candidate took the test. For a fee of £250, she said, candidates could arrive at the centre next Monday and take a two or three-hour exam. The certificate would be sent to them six weeks later.
Again there would be no problem even if a candidate did not speak any English. Hussain said she would write down the answers to questions in Urdu and that it would be “all right” if the candidate read her oral test questions from a crib sheet in Punjabi or Urdu.
An undercover reporter also sat an exam at the centre. The exams are tape-recorded to give independent accreditors the chance to check they are properly conducted. But the audio tapes cannot reveal how some candidates are reading from carefully prepared crib sheets.
After paying a £50 deposit, the reporter witnessed candidates being handed crib sheets, with both questions and answers written on them. He was then allowed to sit a 10-minute “exam” in which he was allowed openly to read out the crib sheet answers. At the end he was told he had passed.
Adil Khan, a manager for the company, initially denied it carried out any tests. He was unable to explain how an undercover reporter, along with 80 other candidates, spent three hours in its offices two weeks ago preparing and then taking the test. Shortly after the challenge, its website was removed from the internet.
The certificates are designed by the government to ensure that migrants will be able to integrate fully into British society. Those granted permanent residence have the right to claim benefits, to work and to use public services such as schools and hospitals.
Migrants with basic English can apply for a certificate known as English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL).
National standards originally issued by the Department for Education and Skills and monitored by Ofqual, the exams quango, state that at entry 1 level, candidates must show they can listen and respond to simple narratives and engage in discussion about familiar topics.
Home Office guidelines also say that candidates should receive between 200 and 450 hours of tuition before taking a 45-minute test. But the reporter, posing as an immigrant whose wife spoke only Punjabi, was told by staff at one college in Birmingham that candidates did not have to take any course or speak any English to pass the test.
An assessor at the UK Learning Academy said the candidate would be given the answers to the exam questions beforehand and could note the answers in her mother tongue.The Punjabi notes could then be read out to sound like English in the live oral exam.
“That’s all right. You write it in Punjabi and it can come out in English,” the assessor said, describing the phonetic trick.
When told again that the “wife” did not understand “anything in English”, Hassan replied: “She understands Punjabi; that’s good enough. She doesn’t need anything else.”
Hassan asked: “Does she know her name, date of birth and address?”
When told that she did, the assessor replied: “Well, that’s all right then. That’s a guaranteed pass.”
Hassan said the test lasted only 10 minutes. A candidate simply had to pay a £100 deposit and could register to take the test immediately.
She was later confronted by the reporter who identified himself as a Sunday Times investigator. He asked: “Surely if it’s all written down phonetically in Punjabi and somebody’s reading it in Punjabi without actually understanding what they’re saying in English, that defeats the whole object of these exams, doesn’t it?” She replied: “Yes it does.”
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