Archive 24
UkTabloid
The People's News Portal
Sunday 10th January 2010
There has seldom been a more outrageous lie told by a front rank politician than the pledge by Gordon Brown to fight for “British jobs for British workers”.
Brown raised the hopes of thousands of hardworking people that the Government would put their job prospects first. But he never had any intention of doing so, knowing that favouring homegrown workers would breach legal undertakings he had given to the European Union.
Now it has emerged that Whitehall is actually laying plans to facilitate the hiring of foreign workers for major construction projects such as the 2012 Olympics and the Crossrail scheme in the capital.
The Home Office says that a new influx of foreign labour may be needed to cope with a “sub-national or regional shortage of skilled labour”.
At a time when millions are on the dole that beggars belief. If there really are acute skill shortages in the midst of mass unemployment, what does it say about the policies on education and training pursued by this Government over many years?
The truth is that Labour, a party that began life dedicated to British working people, has cruelly abandoned them, preferring to pursue a multicultural agenda that puts the claims of foreigners first and to drag more and more Britons into welfare dependency.
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Since it long ago proved a manifest inability to govern, it is good that the Labour Party has at last shown that it has some point to it: to provide light entertainment to the masses during an otherwise bleak, cold and hard winter.
The attempt by Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt to launch a coup d’état against Gordon Brown was not in itself especially funny; but the aftermath has been rather hilarious.
We, the public, long ago realised that the squirts, fools and harpies who form the Labour leadership thought we were particularly stupid. One used to find this offensive; now it is simply amusing, for we know that none could be more stupid than some of them. How idiotic does one have to be, for example, to want to take over the leadership of this benighted party, and (more to the point) the government of these islands, when things are in the horrific mess that Labour has made?
The answer, it seems, is about as idiotic as Harriet Harman, or David Miliband. Miss Harman, who yesterday appeared in court for careless driving, should perhaps also be up for careless plotting: it is rumoured that she and “those close to her” constituted the “aristocracy” of the party who were seeking a move against Mr Brown.
Miliband did a truly hopeless job of concealing his titanic ambition, taking hours to put out a lukewarm statement of support for Britain’s greatest current prime minister, and then failing to embellish it sufficiently when trapped by camera crews and people with microphones. Ministers (including Mr Miliband’s globally warmed brother, Ed) trooped around studios, saying how their party was united in its attitude to Mr Brown.
It certainly seems to be, though not necessarily in the way he would like.
What, though, does any of this matter? Labour proved its bovinity two and a half years ago, by putting Mr Brown into Downing Street nem con. It was a widely held view that he would not be up to the job; but his colleagues let it happen.
The results have been predictable. What difference would it make to get rid of him now? The die is cast.
The electorate hates the Labour Party, hates what it stands for, hates the multifarious cult of personal ambition that infuses it and motivates those squirts, fools and harpies who populate it. Put anyone else in charge, and that would not change. It is too late.
All that remains to be seen is, when the election comes, whether feelings are sufficiently positive towards the Tories to enable them to secure a clear mandate to govern, and to spare us the horror of Nick Clegg’s pulling Dave’s strings for him.
I remain unconvinced that they are. Many Tories basked smugly in the further evidence of Labour’s implosion this week. However, I don’t think it has made a blind bit of difference. It simply isn’t possible for most people to loathe and despise Labour any more than they do already.
The 30-odd per cent who polls show still support Labour are the hard-core clientele. They will vote for it irrespective of plots, coups, divisions and embarrassments because their place on the state payroll – either as employees or claimants – is safe, they feel, only under a Labour government.
Brown has had no achievements I can think of for his country, but buying all these votes with our money has been his achievement for his party.
So, as I wrote just before the “coup” was launched, we must steel ourselves for four more months of this sewage. One has a right to wonder whether one has not already been punished enough, but apparently not. A study of the history of wars shows that the vilest acts of reprisal and vindictiveness come shortly before the end. We still have that to look forward to.
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My mother was a Land Girl, one of the 80,000-strong Women's Land Army that dug for victory during the Second World War. One of the family's most cherished photographs is of her young self wielding a spade as she helped grow vegetables on what had been an immaculate lawn.
The picture seems a world away from today's mechanised, computerised, industrialised, depersonalised agriculture. But if a growing number of experts are to be believed, my children's generation will increasingly go back to the land to dig not for victory, but for survival. For once again, our food security is at risk. Then, German U-boats menaced the imports on which Britain had become reliant after decades of neglecting agriculture. Today, domestic food production has again been declining, just as world supplies look like getting much tighter.
Prof Tim Lang, of City University, perhaps Britain's top food academic, says: "We are sleepwalking into a major food crisis." Prof Sir John Beddington, the Government's chief scientist, forecasts "a perfect storm" as population growth, diminishing resources and climate change create shortages in food, water and energy. Our generation may be the last, as well as the first, to be able to take food supplies for granted.
"We need to produce more food," Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, told the Oxford Farming Conference this week. A statement of the obvious? It actually signals a change in policy. For decades, ministers have seen agriculture as unimportant since, as Benn's own department put it less than two years ago, as a developed economy, "we are able to access the food we need on the global market": manufacturing and the City would earn us enough to buy in supplies.
Over the last 20 years, the proportion of food that we grow for ourselves has slumped: we produce just three fifths of what we need. The gap between imports and exports doubled between 1995 and 2005, and is now the largest in Europe.
The alarm bells went off three years ago, when wheat and maize prices more than doubled, and those of rice more than tripled, in just 12 months, creating the first steep and sustained rise in world hunger for decades. Most ominously, it happened at a time of record global harvests, and was largely caused by soaring demand from the mushrooming middle classes in China and India, and by the rush to produce biofuels. How much worse will things be if world production falters?
Beddington's perfect storm may ensure just that. Global warming is expected to hit harvests worldwide, even if some countries may initially benefit. Agriculture uses vast amounts of water – 20,000 litres goes to produce just one kilogram of beef, including growing feed, watering the cattle and processing the meat – which will get much scarcer as populations and demands grow. Supplies of fossil fuels will also become more limited and expensive, yet farming depends on them, too: in the US, 10 calories of fuel must be burned to provide just one calorie of food. And the financial crisis and declining earnings from manufacturing cast doubts on how easy it will be for Britain to buy food on tight world markets.
So we need to produce more. But food security will depend as much on how we grow it as on how much we harvest. The oil-soaked, water-gulping, soil-denuding, nature-destroying intensive agriculture that has marched across the country – spurred by the Common Agricultural Policy – may soon look as dated as my mother's photograph, as we realise we have no choice but to farm sustainably. As a Cabinet Office report concluded two years ago, "existing patterns of food production are not fit for a low-carbon, more resource-constrained future".
That will have to mean taking more care of the soil, the very foundation of farming; about half of our arable land is thought to be at risk of erosion, with intensive farming the main culprit. It will involve conserving water and fuel, and almost certainly increasing organic agriculture as artificial fertilisers and pesticides become scarcer and costlier.
And it will probably mean reversing the decline in the numbers working the land. When the Second World War broke out, 15 per cent of the workforce was employed in agriculture; now it's less than two per cent, and the average age of farmers has risen to an alarming 56.
This week, the Government produced a new food strategy, which tentatively points towards a more sustainable future. It is well overdue, although long on goals, short on specific action, and coy about spending money. But it may yet prove a turning point, as Britain finally starts to fight a peril surprisingly similar to the one that led my mother to pick up her spade.
Find just the right mobile for you
He loves his iPhone – and won’t give it up – but San Francisco’s mayor, Gavin Newsom, is taking on the mobile phone industry over what he calls the “next frontier” in public safety. He has proposed an ordinance that would cause the widely varying levels of radiation given off by different handsets to be displayed at least as prominently as the price, wherever they are sold.
At the same time, the legislature in Maine is considering whether to put cancer warnings on mobile phone packages, similar to those for cigarettes. A bill tabled by a state representative, Andrea Boland, comes up as emergency legislation this month.
Both measures – strongly resisted by the industry – would set a precedent. Newsom’s move must be approved by the city’s elected board of supervisors, and he believes that “if we prevail, and I believe we will, other cities will follow suit”.
The proposals come as evidence grows that using mobiles for more than 10 years increases the risk of brain cancer. In contrast, a study published this week suggests that their radiation might alleviate Alzheimer’s disease, although Swedish research has indicated that it may cause it.
Both of these plans aim to help purchasers. The San Francisco scheme – which takes up a recommendation made 10 years ago by Britain’s Stewart Report, but never implemented – would give consumers a choice. Those worried about cancer could choose a low-radiation phone; those convinced by the new Alzheimer’s study could pick a high-emitting one. Who could object to that?
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A new study shows that Earth's ability to absorb carbon dioxide from all sources, including man, has remained unchanged for 160 years. As it turns out, there may be no carbon to offset.
A major tenet of the global warming religion, straight from the Book of Gore, has been that the ability of the earth to handle increasing CO2 emissions is finite and that once the "tipping point" is reached, the earth will warm uncontrollably. Well, another climate domino has fallen — the myth that man-made CO2 is leading to climate catastrophe.
This "settled science" has been upended by an unsettling (for warm-mongers) new study out of the University of Bristol in England. Unlike the Climate-gate charlatans at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, Wolfgang Knorr of Bristol's Earth Sciences Department followed the data where it led instead of trying to manipulate it to "hide the decline" in global temperatures the earth has experienced in the last decade.
The new study, published in the online journal Geophysical Research Letters, does not deny that increasing amounts of CO2 have been generated as the world has industrialized, eradicated disease, produced agricultural abundance and improved man's standard of living. It does show that only 45% of man's emissions, not 100% as warmers claim, stays in the atmosphere, and that includes the carbon emissions of the private jets that flew to Copenhagen last month and the limos that drove the occupants around.
The rest is absorbed by nature, and that percentage hasn't changed since 1850. Knorr arrived at that figure by relying solely on measurements and statistical data, including historical records extracted from Antarctic ice. He did not rely, as the CRU did, on badly written computer models with built-in fudge factors to direct the data to a foregone conclusion.
Another result of this study, reports Anthony Watts at WattsUpWithThat.com, is that emissions from deforestation, caused in large part by the clearing of forest land to grow allegedly planet-saving biofuels, may have been grossly overestimated. This finding agrees with results published in November in the journal Nature Geoscience by a team led by Guido van der Werf from VU University in Amsterdam. It reanalyzed deforestation data and concluded that resulting emissions have been overestimated by a factor of two.
We have tried to help document this growing disparity between observable data and apocalyptic computer models that cannot even predict the past. This post-Climate-gate study provides another nail in the coffin of cap-and-trade and shows why the Environmental Protection Agency should not be allowed to destroy the U.S. economy by absurdly regulating carbon dioxide, the basis for all life on earth, as a pollutant.
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Labour's Diversity Police
Businessman is arrested in front of wife and son... for ‘anti-gipsy’ email that he didn’t even write
A wealthy businessman was arrested at home in front of his wife and young son over an email which council officials deemed ‘offensive’ to gipsies – but which he had not even written.
The email, concerning a planning appeal by a gipsy, included the phrase: ‘It’s the 'do as you likey' attitude that I am against.’
Council staff believed the email was offensive because ‘likey’ rhymes with the derogatory term ‘pikey’.
The 45-year-old IT boss was held in a police cell for four hours until it was established he had nothing to do with the email, which had been sent by one of his then workers, Paul Osmond.
But police had taken his DNA and later confirmed they would be holding it indefinitely.
The businessman, who has asked not to be named, was also fingerprinted in the police investigation estimated to have cost taxpayers up to £12,000.
He said two uniformed officers came to his house on a Sunday afternoon and said he would be handcuffed if he did not accompany them to the police station.
His computer and other internet equipment were also seized.
The email, from a computer at his company, was sent last August to a website at Rother District Council, in East Sussex, on which the public can comment on planning applications.
It referred to an appeal by gipsy Linda Smith, who wants to keep a mobile home in an area of outstanding beauty overlooking the Battle of Hastings site.
The email also read: ‘Get a job, get planning permission but more to the point get out of the neighbourhood.’
The businessman, a father of two, said last night: ‘I had a sense of total disbelief. My wife and I decided to tell my 11-year-old son I had to go with the police because I had witnessed a road accident.
‘Even though the officers were fairly pleasant to me, I was informed I would be handcuffed if I didn’t go voluntarily. They then confiscated my computer and my wife’s computer and took them to the police station.
‘I was extremely angry. I was relaxing in the comfort of my home on a Sunday afternoon and then I was in a police car under arrest – all for an innocent comment by a colleague.’
He was driven five miles to Hastings police station.
He said: ‘I have never had any criminal record and try my best to teach my children right from wrong. This was a ridiculously heavy-handed police reaction to what they perceived as a racist comment. I am not the least bit racist and neither is Paul Osmond. The gipsy family concerned did not complain.
‘I did nothing wrong yet ended up in a police cell for four hours with my DNA stored on a criminal database.’
The arrest happened on November 15 and followed a three-year battle by a gipsy family to win planning permission for the mobile home on land outside the town of Battle.
The family bought a field from a farmer, put down a concrete base, and installed the mobile home at the end of a short driveway. Rother Council issued an enforcement notice against the building.
The businessman said he also objected to the council over the location of the mobile home, which is near his property.
He said: ‘It seems I have to get planning permission for everything I do right down to dead-heading the daffodils.
‘It seems they can erect this home with impunity. But I made my objections entirely through the proper channels and I have absolutely nothing against anyone in the gipsy community.’
The case finally ended last week when Mr Osmond, who had been arrested and bailed, was told there would be no further police action. The planning case is continuing.
Mr Osmond, 39, of Icklesham, said: ‘I made it clear to them I am absolutely not racist. I said I was simply registering my objection to this application because it is 200ft from the most important and historical battlefield in the country. I now feel I am not even able to express an opinion for fear of being arrested by the police.
‘One of my closest friends is an Irish traveller and he uses the term 'pikey' all the time. This is the ultimate in political correctness going off the scale.’
Sussex Police said they had arrested the businessman over ‘suspicion of committing a racial or religious-aggravated offence’.
After consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service, it was decided to take no further action against Mr Osmond.
Chief Inspector Heather Keating said: ‘Sussex Police have a legal duty to promote community cohesion and tackle unlawful discrimination.
‘We are satisfied we acted appropriately in identifying the owner of the computer used and through this, the identity of the writer of the offending line.’
Police said they would hold the innocent men’s DNA indefinitely, which they said was in line with national policy.
A council spokesman said: ‘As far as we were concerned it was an offensive comment, so we got in touch with the police.’
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Millions of doses of swine flu vaccine are to be given away - at a possible cost of £1billion.
Some 132million doses of the jab were ordered at the height of the scare about a worldwide pandemic.
But this has proved to be a colossal miscalculation - and millions of doses are lying unwanted.
The original order was enough for two doses for everyone in Britain. It was placed last May as ministers and chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson predicted 20million people would contract swine flu and 65,000 might die.
Last night the Government admitted the excess may be given or sold off to the Third World.
Critics said the move ' beggared belief' and represented a 'bonanza' for drug firms.
Some 29million doses of the flu vaccine have arrived so far - but fewer than four million have been used and a further 100million are on the way.
Many have shunned the jab over safety fears and others have not bothered because
symptoms have been mild.
Now ministers are considering sending them to Third World nations without stockpiles of their own or breaking them up and recycling their ingredients for other vaccines.
Although the cost of the deal has been kept under wraps, other countries have paid up to £9 a dose, taking the money raised as high as £1.2billion.
But taxpayers stand to lose up to £1billion if the two firms involved hold the Government to its contracts.
Although one contract has a break-clause, there is no opt-out in that with British company GlaxoSmithKline, which has the lion's share of the order.
The Government first signed contracts after bird flu emerged in South East Asia four years ago. As swine flu spread from Mexico last Spring the Government instituted crisis measures.
It warned of deaths running into tens of thousands, set up a special advice line and website, suspended normal rules so anti-flu drugs could be given out without prescription and told health and local authorities to prepare for a major pandemic.
Planners were told to get morgues ready for the sheer scale of deaths and there were warnings that the Army could be called in to prevent riots as people fought to obtain drugs.
A special deal was drawn up with GPs to pay them for giving out the vaccine and an expensive advertising campaign launched to encourage its take-up.
Of Britain's 29million doses so far, 15million have been distributed to GPs - but a fraction of those have been used.
Latest figures show that just one in three of those eligible for the jab have had it - a figure that falls to one in five among pregnant women.
In addition, the relatively mild nature of the pandemic means that plans to vaccinate the population as a whole have been shelved.
Research showing that one dose of the drug enough protect against the disease means the pile of unused vaccines has grown even further.
Other countries are in a similar position and France, Germany and Holland have started to sell excess stock.
Last night, Professor David Salisbury, the Government's head of immunisation, said negotiations were under way over the Glaxo contract.
Mark Wallace, of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: 'It beggars belief that they failed to put in place a break clause on such a big contract. They were right to obtain the vaccine but it seems they have got taxpayers in a bit of a pickle.'
Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb said: 'This is bonanza time for the drug companies'.
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The British public are concerned at the rise of Islam in the UK and fear that the country is deeply divided along religious lines, according to a major survey.
More than half the population would be strongly opposed to a mosque being built in their neighbourhood, the study found.
A large proportion of the country believes that the multicultural experiment has failed, with 52 per cent considering that Britain is deeply divided along religious lines and 45 per cent saying that religious diversity has had a negative impact.
Only a quarter of Britons feel positive towards Muslims, while more than a third report feeling “cool” towards them.
The findings, to be published later this month in the respected British Social Attitudes Survey, show that far greater opposition to Islam than to any other faith and reveal that most people are willing to limit freedom of speech in an attempt to silence religious extremists.
David Voas, professor of population studies at Manchester University, who analysed the data, said that people were becoming intolerant towards all religions because of “the degree to which Islam is perceived as a threat to social cohesion”.
He said: “Muslims deserve to be the focus of policy on social cohesion, because no other group elicits so much disquiet.”
The “size and visibility” of Islamic communities has led to serious concerns about their impact on British society, Prof Voas concludes.
“This apparent threat to national identity (or even, some fear, to security) reduces the willingness to accommodate free expression.
“Opinion is divided, and many people remain tolerant of unpopular speech as well as distinctive dress and religious behaviour, but a large segment of the British population is unhappy about these subcultures.”
Researchers interviewed 4,486 people for the survey, which is published annually by the National Centre for Social Research. They found that respondents with no qualifications were twice as likely to have negative attitudes towards Muslims as with those who had degrees.
The report describes a high level of unease regarding the UK’s Muslim population, estimated at around two million, with many people considering that it poses a threat to the nation’s identity.
While 55 per cent say that they would be “bothered” by the construction of a large mosque in their community, only 15 per cent would be similarly concerned by a large church.
Nevertheless, the research found considerable suspicion towards those of any faith who hold deeply religious views, while there was a widespread reluctance to see matters of faith intruding into the public sphere.
Nearly half (45 per cent) of Britons believe that laws and policy decisions would be worse if more politicians were deeply religious - almost double the number who think that they would be better.
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Extremist Advisor for Extremist Labour Government
A Senior Tory has raised concerns about the appointment of a former Muslim student leader as a Government adviser on faith issues.
Former Shadow Communities Minister Paul Goodman said he was worried about Wakkas Khan’s links to hardline Islamist party Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Mr Khan was appointed to the Government’s new 13-strong panel of faith advisers by Communities Secretary John Denham last week—a list that snubbed the controversial Muslim Council of Britain.
He was president of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) at the time of the July 7 bombings in 2005 and later became a founding member of the Government-backed Radical Middle Way project to foster community cohesion.
His stint as Muslim student leader overlapped with the rise of Detroit bomber Umar Abdulmutallab at the University College London Islamic Society.
Yet at the time Mr Khan denied there was a major problem with the radicalisation by Islamists on British campuses.
Also in 2006, he supported the overturning of a ban on Hizb ut-Tahrir within the National Union of Students, writing at the time: “Many unsubstantiated accusations have been levied against Hizb ut-Tahrir in the past, but in reality the organisation works to advance the Muslim world by engaging in political work.”
Mr Khan is now the director of the Exploring Islam Foundation.
Tory MP Mr Goodman, who last week urged Gordon Brown to call a summit to discuss how to tackle extremism in Britain, said last night: “Hizb ut-Tahrir should be banned and it would be unacceptable for any Government adviser to have sympathy for it.”
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Police reinforcements were urgently sent to southern Italy after African migrant workers armed with rocks and metal poles fought pitch battles with locals in a protest over appalling living conditions and alleged racism.
Nearly 70 people, including 30 immigrants, 19 policemen and 17 Italians were injured in the clashes, which started on Thursday after two Africans – from Togo and Nigeria – were shot at with air rifles by locals.
The shooting set off two nights of rioting in the town of Rosarno in the southern Calabria region, with immigrants saying they were sick of being treated like "animals", living in squalid conditions and being paid rock bottom wages for picking fruit and vegetables.
On Thursday, hundreds of immigrants, most of them from sub-Saharan Africa, staged an angry demonstration against the shooting, setting fire to cars and rubbish bins, smashing shop windows and throwing rocks at police.
They carried placards which read "We are not animals" and "Italians are racist".
Locals retaliated on Friday, beating immigrants with iron bars and trying to run them over with cars and, in one case, a bulldozer.
Two immigrants were injured after being shot in the legs with shotguns. Gangs of Italian men carried out "manhunts", looking for Africans to beat up, the local media reported. One young African man was taken to hospital for emergency brain surgery after being struck on the head.
About 2,000 migrant workers held a sit-in in the centre of Rosarno while Italians blocked roads with barricades and called for the foreigners to be expelled.
The attacks continued on Saturday, with a group of men in a car shooting another African man with an air rifle near the town of Gioia Tauro, a few miles from Rosarno. Continued
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An Afghan asylum-seeker has been jailed for eight years for the horrific gang rape of a woman who was kidnapped off the street in Bristol, England.
Ahadullah Khughiani, 20, was one of five men who took turns raping the victim in a city park on November 26, 2008.
He laughed and sang in court while the traumatised 25-year-old woman relived her terrifying ordeal.
She was abducted as she walked to a takeaway food outlet near her home in Bristol one afternoon and forced into the back of a car.
It was dark by the time the mob had driven her nearly five kilometres to a deserted park where she was dragged by her legs across the muddy ground to a football pitch.
The woman told a jury how Khughiani - then aged 18 - "laughed and joked" with the others as they repeatedly raped her.
He was convicted of the attack after DNA found on the victim matched samples he gave when he arrived in Britain seeking asylum just months earlier in 2008.
Khughiani also stole the woman's mobile phone but a jury cleared him of kidnap during his trial in December.
Judge Neil Ford sentenced him to eight years in a young offenders institute with an additional month for the phone theft.
He also ordered his deportation from Britain as soon as he is released.
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Motorists who were forced to abandon their cars in a blizzard had to pay £150 to get their vehicles back after police ordered a breakdown company to tow them away.
Up to 100 drivers left their cars by the side of a dual carriageway, which had not been salted or gritted, after snow and ice made it too dangerous to continue.
When some returned, they discovered their vehicles had been taken to a compound 20 miles away and that they would have to pay a fine and ‘storage fee’ to get them back.
The blizzard descended on Wednesday evening as commuters headed home in Kent.
This weekend, Britain remained in the grip of the coldest spell of weather for 30 years and was braced for further snowfalls.
Forecasters warned of around 2in of snow across much of the country and up to 8in in parts of South Yorkshire and around London from Essex to Sussex and Kent.
They also said that the air would feel colder by several degrees because of bitter winds from Northern Europe.
The towed-away vehicles were abandoned on Wednesday as conditions deteriorated rapidly on the A229 Blue Bell Hill between Chatham and Maidstone.
Marion Simmonds, of Ditton, who had to leave her Toyota Starlet, said: ‘It was like the dodgems. My wheels were spinning and cars were in danger of crashing into each other.
‘There is no hard shoulder on that stretch, so I pulled in as close as I could to the fence on a slip road.’
Another stranded motorist, Karen Illman, of Chatham, said she had taken care to park her Nissan Micra on a grass verge so as not to cause any danger, but it was nevertheless towed away.
Ms Illman, 41, who works as an administrator for the Crown Prosecution Service, was charged £150 to get her car back.
Kent Police said they had removed 18 vehicles that had been blocking the highway but apologised for failing to tell the owners what had happened to their cars.
A spokesman said: ‘By clearing those vehicles that were blocking the highway, we were able to ensure gritting lorries could clear main routes and ensure the strategic and important road networks were kept open.’
A spokesman for Ontime Rescue & Recovery said: ‘We have a contract with Kent Police and the vehicles were removed under their instruction.’
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A company director has admitted a motoring offence he says he has not committed after becoming one of the first to be caught by controversial new rules on court costs.
Ian Harrison says he cannot afford to take his case to court because even if he won he would have to pay nearly all his legal bills of at least £2,000. The 53-year-old has instead opted to accept a £60 fine and three penalty points.
Since October, criminal defendants in England and Wales have only been allowed to claim back lawyers’ fees at the legal aid rate of £60 – often less than a quarter of the real charge – even if they are acquitted, leaving innocent people heavily out of pocket unless they plead guilty or represent themselves.
The Law Society is seeking a judicial review of the regulations, which affect all defendants who do not receive legal aid. Thirty MPs have signed a Commons motion criticising the new rules and nearly 22,000 people have put their names to a Number 10 petition calling for a rethink.
In 2008, 37 per cent of all cases in magistrates courts were motoring offences. Mr Harrison, a deputy manager of a firm of bailiffs in Bolton, was issued a penalty notice for using a mobile phone while driving earlier this month, but he says he was using a Bluetooth device which is legal.
He has been told by lawyers that he has a “better than evens” chance of being found not guilty at court but that he would be liable to pay nearly all of his costs, likely to reach more than £2,000. “I don’t have that sort of money so I’m just going to take the fine and the three points,” he said.
“If I had been able to get my costs back then because I had a good chance of winning I would have gone for it. But even if I’m vindicated I’ll still be the loser because I’ll have lost £2,000.”
Jeanette Miller, the founding president of the Association of Motor Offence Lawyers, said her law firm, Geoffrey Miller Solicitors, had seen a drop of 34 per cent in the number of motorists taking their speeding claims to court in November 2009 compared with November 2008, when costs were still met from central funds. Continued
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Labour's British Jobs for British Workers!
Jobless Britons are to lose out on thousands of new vacancies after it emerged that the Government is planning to draft in foreign workers to help on major building projects – all funded by the taxpayer.
Despite Gordon Brown’s pledge to fight for “British jobs for British workers”, Home Office chiefs have commissioned a “grotesque” report to find out how many extra migrant workers might be needed for such schemes as the £9billion London Olympics and the capital’s £16billion Crossrail development.
With 2.5million people continuing to sit on the dole, critics reacted furiously last night.
Shadow Immigration Minister Damian Green said: “This report is a clear sign of failure in the Government’s training policies and a slap in the face for British workers.
“It shows that all the tough talk from ministers about controlling immigration is just hot air.”
Tory MP and former Shadow Home Secretary Ann Widdecombe said that any jobs available should first be offered to UK workers.
She said: “I would have thought that given the high level of unemployment in Britain that UK workers would be the first port of call.
“Even if you have to move people around the country, unemployed people in Britain should be first in the queue. Given the tight timetable of the projects, we might need to import some skills, but we have a lot of people on the dole queue in this country who need jobs.”
Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said:
“People who are unemployed and desperate for work will be gutted to learn that their own Government isn’t protecting their interests.
“It is grotesque that while millions of people are stuck on the dole, ministers are looking at drafting in millions of foreign workers. The high level of unemployment is a huge drain on the public finances, and this will prolong the problem.”
The new report, entitled “Would the needs of large projects be sensibly met through immigration?”, flies in the face of the Prime Minister’s much-derided pledge in June 2007.
While still chancellor, he said in a speech to the GMB union: “It is time to train British workers for the British jobs that will be available over the coming few years and to make sure that people who are inactive and unemployed are able to get the new jobs on offer in our country.”
Research for the Home Office-backed report has been conducted through the Government’s Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), a panel of experts which advises the Government on migration issues.
It will examine the need to add to the 3.8million foreign-born workers already in the UK. Of that number around 518,000 are from eastern Europe.
A draft report states: “Numerous large-scale publicly-funded projects are in the planning stage and also in the stages of initial construction. These include Crossrail, High Speed Line 2, the decommission of existing electricity generating capacity and the London Olympics and other future major sporting events.”
These will all increase demand for skilled foreign labourers.
The final report must go to the MAC by March 26 to allow time to draft foreign workers into the UK.
Another related research project is designed to find out if shortages in skilled labour in the UK could be filled by workers from outside Europe. Due to be submitted the same day in March, it states: “The aim of this research is to assess whether a sub-national or regional shortage of skilled labour within the UK can be sensibly addressed by immigration from outside the European Economic Area.”
Currently one in nine people living in Britain, some 6.7million, were born abroad. The Home Office emphasised that the first report was only at a commissioning stage. All options would be examined, including training British workers.
A construction industry source said last night: “Cheap workers from abroad are always going to be more attractive to employers rather than more expensive British workers.”
Sunday Roundup
of the News this Week
Hundreds of migrants were able to cheat their way to British passports in a “cash for citizenship” scam run from a Government-recognised training centre, a court heard.
The body in charge of North Cumbria’s hospitals has been named as employing two people who were later found to be illegal immigrants.
Illegal immigrants have been working at some of the most sensitive Government offices in the country - including the headquarters of the UK Border Agency - a Mail on Sunday investigation has discovered.
The Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 sets out clear rules relating to the employment of immigrants. Employers in both public and private sectors, including individuals, must check and take copies of identity documents from foreign workers before giving them jobs.
An immigrant carried out a knifepoint mugging in the hope he would be sent back to his war-torn African homeland because he hated life in Britain, a court has heard. Kasiba Misigaro, 21, who was living off benefits, believed he would have a better life back in Burundi, one of the ten poorest countries in the world.
Immigration officials raked in more than £15million in taxpayer-funded bonuses while Britain’s border controls descended into chaos, Whitehall figures revealed yesterday.
Plans to stop MPs making themselves and their families rich at taxpayers’ expense were in tatters last night after key reforms looked set to be dropped.
The British National Party’s call-centre, which is usually canvassing for membership fees and donations, has taken on a new role during the bitingly cold spell of weather that has a grip on Britain this week.
Even before the attempt by the young Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, to blow up an airplane bound for Detroit on Christmas Day, travelling abroad had become a terrible trial.
A family has accused an NHS hospital of bungling and inadequate record keeping after a patient died from a medical blunder. An inquest on 77-year-old grandmother Muriel Elliott was halted after her relatives threatened to walk out unless the case was heard in front of a jury.
Lord Carey's brave call to limit immigration is a timely defence of Christian values. We have had to wait decades for this moment, but it has finally happened. A leading British clergyman has said something sensible about immigration.
A leading Catholic cardinal has said Europeans only have themselves to blame for allowing Islam to "conquer" the continent. Czech Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, the Archbishop of Prague, said Muslims were well placed to fill the spiritual void "created as Europeans systematically empty the Christian content of their lives".
A leading Catholic cardinal has said Europeans only have themselves to blame for allowing Islam to "conquer" the continent. Czech Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, the Archbishop of Prague, said Muslims were well placed to fill the spiritual void "created as Europeans systematically empty the Christian content of their lives".
Secret European Union-agreements with 10 European and North African Countries. The Euro Mediterranean Declaration was agreed upon by the EU, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and Israel and comprises
Asylum seekers were wrongly paid nearly £10 million in benefits last year, it was revealed today. A Home Office audit found officials mistakenly handed out £9.6 million in housing benefit and living allowances.
Two brothers have begun 2010 in hospital with serious facial injuries after being attacked by a gang of youths with hammers on New Year's Eve. Thomas and David Barry were both undergoing facial reconstruction surgery for a shattered jaw and eye socket this week after they were beaten by the gang who first attacked Thomas's son and his 16-year-old girlfriend.
Police are still hunting for teenagers who “ran off laughing” after viciously attacking a father walking down the street with his son in Mitcham. The victim, a 47-year-old man described by police as “vulnerable”, was first treated for a minor head injury sustained in the attack. However a few days later scans showed he had suffered internal bleeding around the brain, and he was called back for further treatment. He has now recovered.
The ex-wife of Boris Johnson has shocked her family by secretly marrying a 23-year-old Muslim, she announced on Thursday. Allegra Mostyn-Owen even implied she would be content to be one of several of his wives. Since she is 45, she said she would be happy for her new husband to have children with a younger woman.
With all the media hype and Government propaganda over the past six months over global warming, it is somewhat surprising to many people that Britain should be experiencing the worst winter freeze for 30 years.
The soaring number of deadly tuberculosis cases in Scotland has been linked to immigration. Official figures released yesterday showed levels of the lung disease at their highest in a decade with a 10 per cent increase from 408 in 2007 to 452 last year, including 38 deaths.
Police are hunting two young girls - one believed to be just 12 years old - who robbed a bank claiming they had a gun. The two girls, who were wearing matching blue sweatshirts, walked into the First National Bank in Symmes Township, Ohio, and demanded cash from the clerk.
A Stockport law firm has been closed by regulators and five solicitors have been suspended after allegations of dishonesty involving hundreds of thousands of pounds of clients’ money
Police officers should avoid talking about crime to members of the public because it 'upsets them', a Home Office report warned today. Highlighting crime and anti-social behaviour at community meetings can lead to 'feelings of fear' among the public, the study said.
Labour's £100million drive to reduce youth crime and yobbery has made things worse rather than better for the victims, a Government survey has found.
Some of Britain’s most dangerous criminals could be freed early because of changes to the parole system, it emerged yesterday.
Remember those professing Muslims who ranted and raved chanting Allahu-Akbar as the 2nd Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment marched through Luton last March? Those who were heard to shout at the soldiers ‘burn in hell’ and branded them ‘rapists’, ‘terrorists’, ‘murderers’ and ‘baby killers’?
Police called to a schoolyard scuffle have to fill in a staggering 50 forms, the Government's red-tape tsar admitted today. Jan Berry, the Home Office's senior adviser on police reform, said the public never asked for such high-levels of bureaucracy, and the incident should be dealt with using simple common sense.
Eastern European gang members have brazenly posted chilling photographs of themselves armed with lethal automatic weapons on the internet. The group, who call themselves the On The Run (OTR) gang, has uploaded the disturbing pictures on to the Bebo social networking site.
An increasingly large number of MPs from the three Westminster traitor parties have become hysterical over the rise of the British National Party and have urged their leaders to introduce a new immigration hoax to trick the voters.
The Westminster expenses scandal reignited today as it emerged stringent proposals to overhaul the system had been scrapped. In revised reforms published this morning, the new parliamentary watchdog reopened the issue of MPs continuing to employ relatives.
The inept policing of public space is preventing reporters and photographers from going about their lawful business
Women who wear Islamic veils in public will be liable to a fine of more than £700 under strict new laws being formulated in France. The amount could be doubled for Muslim men who force their wives or other female members of their family to cover their faces.
Panicking ministers yesterday sought to calm City jitters over the Treasury’s soaring debt crisis amid fears that Britain is facing bankruptcy.
There are two simple tools of Lawful Rebellion: 1, the affidavits which basically tells the Boss of the Realm ‘No more nonsense’ and; 2, NO CONTRACT RETURN TO SENDER (NCRTS) which basically means that I have no wish to contract with you (to play along with the con)
A hard-working dustman has been removed from the bin round he has worked for more than 30 years after council bosses accused him of picking up too much rubbish.
Dustmen have been banned from emptying wheelie bins if the lids are open by only a quarter of an inch – in case rubbish spills out and injures them. Citing ‘health and safety’, refuse collectors use tape measures to check whether lids which appear firmly shut are open by even a crack, householders said.
The BBC's governing body has launched a major review of its science coverage after complaints of bias notably in its treatment of climate change. The BBC Trust today announced it would carry out the probe into the 'accuracy and impartiality' of its output in this increasingly controversial area.
Good heavens! After nearly 13 years of government, the Labour Party, and Environment Secretary Hilary Benn in particular, have discovered something quite remarkable - that British farms, and the British countryside, actually produce food.
Thousands of illegal immigrants from almost every Third World country imaginable have been given jobs in the public sector while indigenous British unemployment continues to creep up towards the three million mark.
A former Archbishop of Canterbury today revealed he fears for his grandchildren, as he said new immigrants coming to Britain should have an understanding of the country's Christian heritage. Lord Carey is part of an alliance of leading public figures demanding immigration to be urgently curbed to stop the population hitting 70million and causing ‘serious harm’ to society.
Last year the true face of the people who run this country was revealed. A cross party body of MP's have signed a document that explicitly states that whilst they support the rights of indigenous peoples across the world to keep their own lands and culture from immigration and invasion, they do not believe that the indigenous British people even exist.
Hot food and warm clothing were flying off supermarket shelves yesterday as shivering shoppers braced themselves for the deepening big freeze. Where roads were not already impassable with snow, buyers seized the chance to stock up on vital supplies to see them and their families through in case they end up trapped at home.
A Star primed to explode in a blast that could wipe out the Earth was revealed by astronomers yesterday. It will self-destruct in an explosion called a supernova with the force of 20 billion billion billion megatons of TNT.
Britain has dropped to 25th place on a list of the best places in the world to live - behind countries like the Czech Republic and Lithuania.
As one of the worst winters in 100 years grips the country, climate experts are still trying to claim the world is growing warmer.
The voice was familiar but I couldn't quite place it. "It's Mr Sunshine, Lincoln," the caller explained and the penny dropped.
The Times has withdrawn an advert that aimed to boost its environmental credentials after complaints to the UK Advertising Standards Agency.
Thousands of elderly patients in care homes are being put at risk by having feeding tubes fitted unnecessarily, doctors warn.
If there is one thing that really frustrates me about UKIP, it is their lack of dedication to their own cause. Douglas Carswell MP Harwich (Conservative)is bringing a Private Members Bill to propose an IN/OUT referendum.
The Director of Public Prosecutions was accused of political bias yesterday. In an unprecedented attack, the Tories said Keir Starmer should 'spend less time going around attacking opposition policies'.
Gordon Brown’s refusal to get to grips with Britain’s soaring debt is as bad as the failure to combat Nazi Germany before the Second World War, a former minister has said.
Fears that Gordon Brown has left Britain on the brink of bankruptcy intensified last night as investors withdrew from backing the Treasury’s soaring debt.
Government reluctance to help Kent County Council pay for bills caused by asylum seekers could mean an extra hike in council tax bills.
More than £28million was spent on offering basic legal advice to asylum seekers last year. The extraordinary legal aid payouts were made to solicitors acting for more than 46,000 people who began the asylum claims process - at a cost of more than £600 per case.
Immigration must be urgently curbed to stop the population hitting 70million and causing ‘serious harm’ to society, an alliance of leading public figures demanded yesterday. The call to action comes in a report signed by a host of respected names, including former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, ex-Labour speaker Betty Boothroyd and former Tory Party chairman Michael Ancram.
Almost 30,000 non-EU technology workers came to the UK last year, sent to work for their companies' subsidiaries here under intra-company transfers.
A wealthy asylum seeker who lived rent-free in a flat paid for by Camden council while earning £75,000 a year as a carpenter and builder was behind bars today.
Three months ago we discovered that for at least eight years New Labour operated a secret 'open-door' immigration policy - part of a deliberate strategy to change the ethnic make-up of Britain and 'rub the Right's noses in diversity'.
Labour's claim that Britain is benefiting from Government support for “green” jobs was exposed as a myth by industry yesterday. The Engineering Employers Federation said over 90 per cent of the £2billion earmarked for the world’s biggest wind farm – the London Array, off Kent – is being spent overseas.
Taxpayers are being forced to contribute millions of pounds to job-creation schemes in Yemen in an attempt to counter a surge of Muslim terrorist activity. The Government is to hike overseas aid to the Arabian republic by almost 50 per cent to £37million next year amid fears it is becoming a haven for Al Qaeda militants.
Labour's efforts to tackle crime came under fire yesterday as it emerged that two-thirds of Britons are kept awake at night by the fear of being burgled. Householders lose sleep over the risk of break-ins, vandalism, flooding and their homes burning down, according to a report which shows millions are frightened of being a victim of crime.
An impoverished Labour Party will be unable to return fire against the Conservatives’ pre-election advertising blitz for months, amid fears that it could emerge from the campaign bankrupt.
The Tories' pledge to double the number of single sex hospital rooms to help end the scandal of mixed sex wards is being watered down. As part of a draft manifesto published yesterday, the Conservatives said they would increase the number of single sex rooms on the NHS 'as resources allow'.
Lord Carey of Clifton the former Archbishop of Canterbury has signed a statement by the cross-party group on balanced migration which declares that “70 million is too many”. In other words, he is calling for urgent measures to limit immigration so the British population does not reach that figure in 2029, which is what will happen unless we tighten our borders.
Voters can expect to hear the Conservatives’ new slogan – “we can’t go on like this” – repeatedly in the months leading up to the general election, but they could be forgiven for feeling they have heard it before.
Householders face being fined hundreds of pounds if they fail to use compulsory slop buckets in the kitchen. Environment Secretary Hilary Benn wants to ban food going to landfill sites and instead see leftovers collected by dustmen and used to generate green electricity.
A cross-party parliamentary group has called on all the major parties to make a commitment in their manifestos for this year's general election not to allow the UK's population to reach 70 million.
MPs could receive a big pay rise to compensate them for the loss of their generous expenses, it emerged last night. The head of the watchdog charged with ending the expenses scandal has suggested that some allowances could be scrapped in favour of a higher basic salary.
Gordon Brown was accused of playing politics with terrorism last night after a row over a Number 10 announcement on Yemen. The Tories blasted him for "exaggeration and spin" over a press release saying he had "agreed" with President Barack Obama to fund an elite anti-terror unit in the state.
Senior Labour figures have voiced concerns that Tony Blair’s appearance at the Iraq inquiry in the coming weeks will wreck any prospect of him helping the party at the general election.
More than 400 MPs have received demands to repay excessive expenses claims, it emerged yesterday. Commons sources revealed that the total number of letters being sent out in an attempt to recoup taxpayers’ cash is more than double the amount previously thought.
For those of you not up to date with the intrigues and plots rumbling in the belly of UKIP. I present for your delight and delectation the latest bit of news.
The murder of an elderly woman allegedly battered to death in her home by a burglar on New Year's Day has left her family "devastated", they said. The body of Rosina Waller was discovered at her home in Southend, Essex, along with a 64-year-old relative who was also hurt in the attack.
You may well have missed it, it certainly was not announced with any great fanfare, but on the 1st of January 2010 the Euro-Mediterranean partnership came into effect.
A teenager and his parents were today hailed heroes after rescuing five children from a burning house. Matthew Robinson, 18, went to the rescue after a neighbour's house caught fire in Abbotsbury, Dorset.
Outside his family and the small ulster town in which he lived the name of Bill Barbour is almost unknown. Yet he was a truly wonderful man, the kind of selfless figure on whom civilised society depends.
Every secondary school pupil should have the chance to learn languages like Mandarin and Arabic Children's Secretary Ed Balls said today as the major political parties stepped up their skirmishing ahead of the general election.
Illegal immigrants have been employed at Government offices – including the headquarters of the Home Office and the UK Border Agency, it has been disclosed.
Illegals at the home office: Doctors, teachers, social workers... For complete full list revealed by a Mail on Sunday investigation showing how public bodies ignore immigration law visit the Daily Mail Site here.
London has more mosques than any other city in the world except Istanbul and is home to at least one million ‘legal’ Muslim colonisers, or 13 percent of the population of Britain’s capital city, new figures have shown.
Britain needs to wake up to the scale and extent of rural poverty, the Government's Rural Advocate has told Sky News.
The Quilliam Foundation is a London based counter extremism think tank. Yes, another one, the government love these think tanks.
A senior GP arranged an illegal late-term abortion for her teenage daughter in Spain, a hearing was told yesterday. Saroj Adlakha paid 3,200 Euros, now worth £2,800, for a clinic to terminate the 18-year-old's 31-week pregnancy, it is claimed.
Revealed: the family doctor who sends her patients to the Spanish clinic exposed by The Sunday Telegraph for offering illegal late-term abortions.
A grieving widow claims that a controversial Midland doctor ignored her husband's desperate pleas for help - just days before he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
West Midlands Crown Prosecution Service has informed Birmingham Crown Court that there is no longer sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction and will terminate the proceedings in the case against Dr Saroj Adlakha and her daughter Shilpa Abrol who were both charged with conspiracy to commit child destruction abroad.
Women refused terminations on the NHS are joining the millions of Indians who have surgery to uphold a sons-only tradition. Dan McDougall reports from Delhi
Tens of thousands of immigrants are claiming the DOLE - just months after arriving in Britain supposedly to WORK. In the last six years a staggering 169,000 immigrant workers claimed unemployment benefit within six months of getting a National Insurance number.
Illegal immigrants have been working at some of the most sensitive Government offices in the country - including the headquarters of the UK Border Agency - a Mail on Sunday investigation has discovered.
Britain must produce more food to avoid going hungry in the future, the Government will warn this week. A soaring global population, climate change, diminishing energy sources and depleted fish stocks mean that society can no longer be complacent about its ability to feed itself, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will say.
British taxpayers are helping to fund basket-weaving and slapstick acting workshops for young people across Europe.
Millions of pounds earmarked to give Britain’s unsung army of carers vital short-term breaks is being plundered by the NHS to plug big holes in health budgets.
Official Government figures have shown that more than £150 million in foreign aid was paid out to Afghanistan, Africa and the Gaza Strip (the latter to pay civil servant salaries) while at home, 625,000 British-born people lost their jobs during the recession.
“Heat or eat? Ask for help or die! These are the ‘choices’ facing pensioners in the bitter winter. Brown is still bailing out the banksters, but claims that there’s no money to help pensioners survive the cold. Well, since he won’t help, we must. Every single BNP group in the country should organise practical help for vulnerable old folk in their area. Not next month, not next week, but now, while it’s needed; before even more die.”
Senior Conservatives have accused Labour of a "below the radar" campaign to raise the issue of immigration in marginal constituencies, especially where the BNP is eating into its core vote.
A family has received a record £279,000 of taxpayers’ money in housing benefit, it has been claimed. The claimants are being paid £2,875 a week for a seven-bedroom house in the north London borough of Brent, according to figures released under freedom of information laws.
A staggering £20billion will be paid in housing benefit this year as the effects of the recession push up the welfare bill. Official figures show the handouts are expected to rise by 15 per cent - despite a pledge by ministers to crack down on excessive claims.
The BBC has spent £3.9 million of licence fee payers' money on an 'arts celebration' of Broadcasting House, its flagship building in central London, it was reported today.
Its supercomputer makes 1,000 billion calculations a second - then tells us to expect a mild winter. But what would you expect from a 'scientific' organisation that for 20 years has been dominated by climate change zealots, and whose current chairman is the former boss of the World Wildlife Fund?
The UK's official weather forecasters are determined that winters should be mild, in the face of the frozen facts, says Christopher Booker
The BNP, warts and all, is the only chance the Brits have to reverse the rapid Islamization of their country. The UK is facing an unreal, fantastic situation, when even the conservatives are pandering and selling out to the invading Muslim hordes.
New Government rules could see schools condemned if they do not portray homosexuality in a positive light. Education watchdog Ofsted warns they will be placed in humiliating special measures unless their “Equality Plans” include “realistic images of lesbian, gay and bisexual people and the contributions they have made to different aspects of the curriculum”.
Muslim extremist Anjem Choudary has vowed to go ahead with a protest march through Wootton Bassett claiming those who honour the war dead are no different to those who support the 7/7 Tube bombers.
A town famous for honouring dead British soldiers returning from Afghanistan reacted defiantly today to news that a controversial Islamic group is to march through its streets. Islam4UK - which calls itself a 'platform' for extremist movement al-Muhajiroun - plans to parade through Wootton Bassett, in Wiltshire, in the coming weeks.
Schools could be put into 'special measures' if they do not do enough to promote race relations, sexual equality and human rights, it emerged today. Even institutions with top academic results could be deemed inadequate under rules that make equality as important as pupils' marks and safety.
Politicians with one eye on the news cycle can never properly defend us from the deadly, patient threat of Islamist terror
Once this nation was renowned for transmitting civilised values across the world. Increasingly the opposite is true. During the past two decades Britain has become the Western world’s primary incubator and exporter of Islamist extremism.
The Army bomb disposal expert who died after an explosion in Afghanistan on New Year's Eve has been named by the Ministry of Defence.
It wasn't just long-lost elderly relatives giving unwanted gift this Christmas. German-owned energy company Npower were at it too, cramming the already under-pressure postal service with 12 million low-energy light bulbs that households neither asked for nor required.
Regulations which make producers legally responsible for funding the collection, treatment and recycling of waste batteries for the first time came into effect today on January 1.
Water refill stations follow ban on bottles The battle against bottled water is gathering pace with water refill stations to appear at Hammersmith Bus Station and Tower Bridge Museum in London.
New Year's Eve celebrations turned violent in regions across France as youths burned more than 1,000 cars overnight and police arrested nearly 400 people.
Harriet Harman will become the public face of Labour's general election campaign as the party looks to shore up its core support. The deputy leader will host daily televised media briefings and tour television studios.
At the start of a new decade, it is pertinent to ask: how will historians view the past 10 years of Labour rule? Certainly, a Government which was elected on a wave of almost unprecedented optimism and goodwill will be judged - harshly we suspect - on its dreadful handling of the economy and the disastrous intervention in Iraq.
Government officials secretly voted against proposals for compulsory country-of-origin labelling on food. Documents obtained by the Conservatives show how UK negotiators opposed mandatory labelling in talks held with European Union member states.
Labour has gravely undermined the political structures on which Britain's vital food supply depends.
China makes no secret of the consequences of being caught carrying drugs. I live and work in Beijing and have never experienced any threat or crime in my 12 years here. My 11-year-old daughter plays in the local park with her friends, walks to school and goes on shopping trips to the local shops alone.
Family members of immigrants in Britain who are refused visas to visit their relatives are costing taxpayers £1 million a week by launching legal battles against the Home Office, according to new figures.
The Government’s claim that its new “points-based” system will sort out Britain’s immigration chaos is already being shown up as a sham.
Member of public vents his spleen about Hodge the labour MP for Barking. Margaret Hodge is a particularly nasty character with a very dodgy history.
The Chinese government has shown the world how to deal with drug pushers by ignoring liberal bleating and executing convicted drug-smuggler Akmal Shaikh — a punishment which should be mandatory everywhere for that crime.
Saturday 9th January 2010
Hundreds of migrants were able to cheat their way to British passports in a “cash for citizenship” scam run from a Government-recognised training centre, a court heard.
The alleged plot saw foreign nationals recorded as having passed a citizenship test even though they had never attended the City Wide Learning Centre in Sheffield, right.
Company directors Liban Mohammed Yusuf, Abdi Rashid Yusuf and Mustafa Yassin are accused of conspiring to defraud the UK Border Agency along with employee Mubarak Yusuf and two other men. All six deny the charge.
The court heard that 2,000 people had appeared to come from outside Sheffield to take the test at the centre. A pass in the test allowed migrants to apply for a British passport.
The trial at Sheffield Crown Court continues.
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The body in charge of North Cumbria’s hospitals has been named as employing two people who were later found to be illegal immigrants.
Freedom of Information requests have revealed that the trust in charge of the Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle and West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven was one of 54 NHS bodies to employ unlawful foreign workers.
Since 2006 the North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the two hospitals, says it has employed two people who were later found to have fake identity papers.
One was a 34-year-old Indian who managed to land a job as a dentist after presenting bosses with forged documents.
The trust described it as a “significant national fraud”.
The second employee was a 46-year-old Ghanaian who worked as a locum doctor at the Cumberland Infirmary.
The exact dates of employment were not disclosed, nor were any further details.
The illegal immigrants came to light as part of a wider investigation by a national newspaper. It revealed that 176 unlawful foreign workers have been running clinics at hospitals across Great Britain. It also uncovered illegal immigrants working for many local councils across Britain.
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Illegal immigrants have been working at some of the most sensitive Government offices in the country - including the headquarters of the UK Border Agency - a Mail on Sunday investigation has discovered.
Following our enquiries, the Home Office admitted employing a dozen illegal foreign staff over the past four years - 11 Nigerians and a Ghanaian.
Ten of them secured cleaning jobs at Becket House, the headquarters of the UK Border Agency, which vets immigrants. The building in Croydon, South London, also serves as an immigration detention centre, holding up to 270 people awaiting deportation.
Two other illegal immigrants worked at the Whitehall headquarters of the Home Office, which houses the office of Home Secretary Alan Johnson.
One was a chef in the canteen, while the other worked as a security guard on the front door for 19 months.
The Home Office headquarters is regarded as one of Britain's most high-profile terrorist targets and receives round-the-clock police protection.
Eight of the 12 have since been deported, three are detained pending appeals and one was later granted leave to remain in the country.
The embarrassing disclosures come despite repeated pledges by Labour to crack down on illegal immigration.
Using Freedom of Information legislation, The Mail on Sunday contacted each Government department, council and hospital in Britain for details of employees later discovered to be illegal immigrants since 2006.
Two Government departments, 34 local authorities and 54 NHS trusts admitted hiring a total of 349 unlawful foreign workers. The list featured 37 nationalities, including migrants from Kazakhstan, Zambia and Venezuela.
Disturbingly, several bogus entrants managed to secure jobs in sensitive positions. Councils admitted hiring six illegal immigrants as teachers in secondary schools and ten got jobs as social and care workers, working with some of the most vulnerable in society.
Health trusts revealed four became doctors and 13 secured nursing work in NHS hospitals.
Many councils and health trusts admitted that some fraudulent workers vanished when questioned about their immigration status.
The Government has made repeated pledges to crack down on illegal immigration.
In June 2008, then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced new powers to fine organisations caught hiring illegal immigrants and warned that she would name guilty company bosses on the Home Office website. She said: 'Good employers have everything to gain from us clamping down on the bad ones.'
However, The Mail on Sunday asked each of the 91 public bodies who admitted employing illegal foreign workers to provide details of any penalties they received.
Not one of them had received a fine, which can be as high as £10,000. Continued
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The Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 sets out clear rules relating to the employment of immigrants.
Employers in both public and private sectors, including individuals, must check and take copies of identity documents from foreign workers before giving them jobs.
Failure to keep copies is a civil offence, attracting a maximum £10,000 fine. Knowingly and deliberately employing an illegal immigrant is a more serious criminal offence, punishable by two years in jail and an unlimited fine.
According to the Act, an employer can avoid any penalty if they take 'specified steps to verify, retain, copy or record the content of an [identity] document produced'.
It was steered through Parliament by Attorney General Baroness Scotland when she was a Home Office Minister. But in September last year, it was revealed that she was employing a Tongan illegal immigrant as a housekeeper.
Gordon Brown ordered the peer to issue a humiliating apology. But the Prime Minister allowed her to cling to her job after the UK Border Agency backed her claim that she did not know Loloahi Tapui had illegally overstayed a student visa.
However, Baroness Scotland's version of events was questioned when the housekeeper told The Mail on Sunday she never showed the Minister her passport and that, even if she had, it was out of date.
Baroness Scotland admitted failing to take copies of Ms Tapui's papers and became the first individual in the country to fall foul of the new laws.
The Labour peer was fined £5,000 but sparked controversy by comparing the matter to not paying the £8 London Congestion Charge for motorists.
She said: 'It's like driving into the city and not paying the Congestion Charge. It is not a criminal offence.
'I made an administrative, technical error for which I am bitterly, bitterly sorry. I got it wrong. It was a technical breach and I have paid the penalty.'
Ms Tapui was charged with immigration and fraud offences and is due to appear in court later this month.
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An immigrant carried out a knifepoint mugging in the hope he would be sent back to his war-torn African homeland because he hated life in Britain, a court has heard.
Kasiba Misigaro, 21, who was living off benefits, believed he would have a better life back in Burundi, one of the ten poorest countries in the world.
He asked the immigration services to send him home but they did nothing, so he pulled a knife on another African hoping to be deported.
Misigaro targeted Isce Akanbi, 40, on December 21 last year, near West Ham tube station in east London on his way to meet friends who were playing a game of football.
James Lofthouse, prosecuting, told Inner London Crown Court: "He grabbed his jacket and put something to his side, saying: 'Give me your wallet. The victim looked down and saw a silver knife.
"Scared of what he would do, he gave him two mobile phones and his wallet."
But when a friend of Mr Akanbi arrived at the scene he stood up for himself and demanded his possessions back.
At first Misigaro waved the knife from side-to-side, ordering them: '"move back, or you'll get it."
Mr Lofthouse added: "Mr Akanbi and his friend pursued him back to the park, joined by another friend who had been playing football with them.
"The three managed to corner the defendant a short distance away."
Eventually Misigaro dropped the stolen items, along with his weapon, and police arrested him at the scene.
He told officers: "I only did it because I wanted to go home. I don't want to be here."
Misigaro admitted robbery, but insisted he did not intend to stab the victim, only frighten him.
The prosecutor added: "He was on benefits, hates being in the UK, has no interest in working or integrating, has no money, and would commit further offences if he remained here.
"He said he had already approached the immigration services about going to Burundi but they didn't seem particularly interested in assisting."
Judge Simon Gerald smiled and observed: "If we put him on a plane I imagine he'd like that too."
The court heard he has amassed convictions for 21 offences in the last five years and was completing an unpaid work order for his last crime, an attempted robbery, when he committed this offence.
Charles Langley, defending, said: "This is a rather unusual case, where the defendant wants to be sent back home.
"I would seek that your honour makes a recommendation for deportation."
Jailing Misigaro for three years, Judge Gerald said it was a "very serious offence", aggravated by the fact he was on a community order at the time.
Misigaro, from Plaistow, east London, will be automatically deported at the end of his three year sentence.
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Immigration officials raked in more than £15million in taxpayer-funded bonuses while Britain’s border controls descended into chaos, Whitehall figures revealed yesterday.
The payments were handed out to UK Border Agency staff over the past five years.
During the same period, more than two million official newcomers and countless illegal immigrants settled in the country.
Last night, critics accused Home Office ministers of rewarding bureaucrats for failure given the fiasco of Labour border control policy.
Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said: “With millions of pounds being handed out to senior civil servants year after year, it’s clear the extreme bonus culture is not just the preserve of the bankers.
“At a time when unemployment is rising and people across the country are forced to cope with pay freezes and cuts, it’s galling to see such enormous sums paid out to Government mandarins.”
Matthew Elliott, of campaign group the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “These bonuses are unjustified and excessive, particularly given the agency’s poor track record.
“It’s small wonder that our border controls are still failing if the Border Agency staff are getting bonuses no matter how badly things go wrong.”
Figures released to MPs last year showed that 29 senior managers at the UK Border Agency received annual bonuses averaging £10,000.
In 2008-09 alone, £3.4million was paid to staff at the agency.
That was up by 70 per cent compared with just over £2million in 2004-05.
Administrative assistants and officers received a total of £463,000 last year while more than £2.1million went to staff in middle management grades.
Senior mangers were paid a total of £786,110. The average bonus was around £900 a year.
Immigration Minister Phil Woolas said: “Frontline officers for the UK Border Agency work around the clock to protect our border both here and overseas.
“They carry out hundreds of raids to crack down on illegal working, stop hundreds of potential illegal migrants before they set foot on a plane, seize large quantities of smuggled drugs and weapons at our border, and remove thousands of foreign lawbreakers.
“Bonuses were paid to staff in the last financial year only if they performed to a very high standard.
“The total cost represented less than a quarter of a per cent of the agency’s overall expenditure.”
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Plans to stop MPs making themselves and their families rich at taxpayers’ expense were in tatters last night after key reforms looked set to be dropped.
Sir Ian Kennedy, head of the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, said he could scrap a ban on MPs employing their wives and children.
Members with seats within easy commuting distance of London are also set to carry on getting their second home allowances. And MPs will be allowed to designate which of their properties is their second home and “flip” them in order to claim more allowances.
Sir Ian had been expected to back last year’s tough recommendations by Sir Christopher Kelly. But the watered-down draft of measures make the clean-up a farce. Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “It is absurd and infuriating that this quango is trying to water down the very clear proposals in the Kelly report.
“The public want MPs’ expenses sorting out swiftly and firmly, but Sir Ian seems to be proposing a half-hearted fudge instead.
“Instead of watering down Kelly’s proposals, they should implement them in full immediately. Public faith in Parliament will never be restored unless the filthy stables in Westminster are washed fully clean.”
Labour MP John Mann, a leading critic of the way other members have plundered the expenses system, said: “This will open up all the old wounds again. It will drag the process on and could end up with it not being sorted out until the next Parliament.
“We should have taken the Kelly report on the chin and drawn a line under the whole business. This has the potential of unravelling all Kelly’s good work.” Among the most controversial of Sir Ian’s proposals is to allow MPs to carry on “flipping” their main homes once between general elections. He also suggests MPs should be allowed to claim for “approved security measures” – something that was not backed by Sir Christopher’s inquiry.
Sir Ian also suggested MPs should get a vote on whether they should be forced to hand back profits made on properties bought with taxpayers’ money.
Sir Ian yesterday defended his plans, which were laid out in a consultation document. He said: “I don’t recognise the notion that we were watering down on capital gain.
“The new rules must command public confidence. If they don’t it will be impossible to restore the public’s confidence in our MPs, and thus in our parliamentary democracy.”
More than 200 MPs employ relatives but the Kelly report said the practice should be phased out.
Sir Ian said he agreed, but then went on to add that the authority had heard “very strong views” expressed that family members might be the best qualified applicants.
Former Tory MP Derek Conway was expelled from the party after it emerged he had paid his son around £40,000 despite there being no record of him doing any work at Westminster
The Kelly report also said that MPs with seats within an hour’s journey of Westminster should no longer receive a second home allowance. But Sir Ian instead suggested that the ban on second home allowances would only affect MPs based no further out than Zone 6 of the Transport for London area. That would mean representatives of commuter towns such as Watford, Woking or Sevenoaks, around 15 miles or so from the Commons, would carry on getting allowances.
Some measures backed by Kelly stay. MPs will no longer be able to use second home allowances to make killings on the property market. Instead of mortgage allowances, they will only be reimbursed for rent. And some of Sir Ian’s proposals are tougher than those in Kelly.
For example, he suggested that there should be no golden goodbye for MPs leaving parliament. The Kelly report had suggested £10,000.
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The British National Party’s call-centre, which is usually canvassing for membership fees and donations, has taken on a new role during the bitingly cold spell of weather that has a grip on Britain this week.
Instead of asking for money, the team of professional telephonists are inquiring whether British National Party members and supporters, who are senior citizens, need any help!
“Many elderly folk just don’t want to risk going out with the pavements so treacherous. By calling them at home we can see if they need any help or vital supplies,” reports a call-centre spokesman.
“We then contact the local branch or other younger members living nearby and ask them to look in and see what they can do to help.
“It certainly makes a change from the usual sales patter we use, and the people that we have already called have been delighted that the British National Party is taking the trouble to check up on them and see that they are OK.”
Some pensioners have been so pleased at the consideration being showed by the Party as to their welfare, that they have insisted on making a donation to show their appreciation!
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Even before the attempt by the young Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, to blow up an airplane bound for Detroit on Christmas Day, travelling abroad had become a terrible trial.
For some reason the queues at British airports are much longer than in most other countries, and Heathrow is the worst of all.
We travellers wait sheep-like in our pens for what can seem like hours, and are each treated as potential terrorists by people who usually do not seem particularly intelligent and are sometimes rude.
It doesn't make any difference if you are an elderly white woman with white hair, or a harassed black lady with two young children in tow. All are treated alike as prospective bombers.
On a recent trip I remonstrated with an official after the contents of my wife's hand luggage had been sifted through in ludicrously ponderous detail.
Does she look like a terrorist, I protested?
A higher official was summoned to deal with my impertinent question. He told me smugly that Richard Reid, the so-called Shoe Bomber, was white, and everyone had to be dealt with on an equal basis.
(In fact, he has an English mother and a Jamaican father.) But how many white middle-aged women have been convicted of terrorist acts?
Following Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's botched attempt, we can expect even longer queues at airports.
Indeed, Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, unapologetically said on Tuesday that passengers should prepare for increased delays.
The authorities are ordering a large number of body scanners. Even if only a minority of passengers are selected at random for scanning, we will all of us have to endure longer waits.
Isn't there an easier - and a safer - way? Millions of blameless people are not only being subjected to unnecessary delays.
The bomber is also getting through - as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab showed. If ever there were an argument for sensible profiling (checks based on race, ethnic background, age and gender), this case surely makes it.
Here was a young man who should have set off alarm bells the moment he set foot on Dutch soil on the way from Nigeria to the United States. Even if we cast aside the fact that his father had unburdened his misgivings about him at the American embassy in his own country, as well as Abdulmutallab's name being on a British Government list, the sleepiest customs official should have been on his guard.
He had bought a one-way ticket with cash and had not checked in any luggage on a journey that took him halfway around the world.
He was young and male and Muslim, coming from a country half of whose population is Muslim, a few of them of the fundamentalist variety. He was travelling to the United States, which remains the number one target for Al Qaeda terrorists.
Of course, someone could possess all these attributes and be entirely innocent, and no doubt in 99 cases out of 100 would be.
But profiling would have alerted officials all the same. This is interesting, they would say, as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab hove into view. What have we here? There is little doubt that this sort of profiling works, as the Israeli experience proves. The country is surrounded by millions of people who wish it ill, and it has quite a few of them within its own borders.
Officials screen passengers according to nationality. This means that the majority of visitors to Israel are spared tiresome and sometimes invasive procedures. Given the threats that it faces - many times greater than those which beset us - its airports and its official airline El Al have an outstanding safety record.
So why don't we do it? Because profiling is bound to have an ethnic dimension, and is therefore said by its opponents to be inescapably racist. Such is the response of Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil liberties group Liberty, and other like-minded people. Ms Chakrabarti adds that terrorist organisations 'capitalise on discrimination or [get] recruits from a variety of backgrounds'. She has a point, of course, but it is not much of one. Ethnicity is only one element in profiling. There are many others, as the example of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab illustrates.
His blackness alone obviously should not remotely arouse suspicions. It is his background and religion, as well as his country of departure and his destination, and the unusual nature and circumstances of his journey, that should have marked him out from millions of ordinary black, brown and white travellers. And while it may be true that Al Qaeda does recruit from all backgrounds, it is nonetheless the case that the great majority of its operatives are non-white and male and Muslim.
The chances of a middle-aged Norwegian woman on the morning flight from Oslo being an Al Qaeda terrorist are infinitesimally small, and it is obtuse to treat her with the same degree of suspicion as one would a nervous young man of Middle-Eastern appearance who had just arrived from Yemen. One objection to profiling is that it might ensnare millions of innocent people. I don't believe this would happen because it would be based on a variety of factors of which ethnicity would be only one. Whereas the existing system is random, and we are all treated with as much respect as cattle lining up in an abattoir, profiling would be based upon intelligence and analysis.
A few innocent people would doubtless find themselves being questioned more closely than they might like, but this might be a sacrifice they were prepared to make if they believed that security were tighter than it is at present. Following Abdulmutallab's activities on Christmas Day, only the United States has so far joined Israel in officially adopting ethnic profiling. Passengers from 14 countries including Pakistan, Nigeria and Yemen will have to undergo extra searches at boarding gates before being allowed on to American-bound flights.
As we would appear to have as many, if not more, Islamic fundamentalists as some of the countries on the list (for example, Cuba), it is something of a surprise that Britain is not among them. As far as our own arrangements are concerned, some sort of profiling is likely to be introduced, though the authorities are too frightened to say whether this might include ethnic profiling. My guess is that it probably will to a limited extent, though the Government will never admit as much for fear of being pilloried by the likes of Shami Chakrabarti, as well as possibly falling foul of its own human rights legislation.
In a perfect world there would be no profiling of any sort. Unfortunately we don't live in that world, and we may be sure that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's attempt to bring down an airplane won't be the last. Unless new measures targeted at possible culprits are adopted, international air travel is going to ground to a standstill - and we still won't be safe.
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A family has accused an NHS hospital of bungling and inadequate record keeping after a patient died from a medical blunder.
An inquest on 77-year-old grandmother Muriel Elliott was halted after her relatives threatened to walk out unless the case was heard in front of a jury.
They fear other patients are at risk because the lessons of Mrs Elliott's death have not been learnt.
Mrs Elliott, a widow, died in
Derriford Hospital, Plymouth,
four years ago after a feeding tube was allegedly inserted into her lung rather than her stomach by a nurse.
The mistake should have been discovered within hours through a chest X-ray but a doctor failed to spot the alleged error.
A police investigation was unable to identify the male doctor because he had logged into the hospitals computer system using the password of a female senior house officer who was not even on duty at the time.
Mrs Elliott, who was in hospital after a stroke, died 13 days after the alleged errors.
An inquest in Plymouth was adjourned on
Tuesday after Mrs Elliott's family
argued that the case must be heard in front of a jury because it has implications for public safety.
Her son-in-law Brian Gerrish, whose wife Gill was the dead woman's daughter, said it was shocking that the doctor had not been identified.
Addressing the coroner, he said: "This case is not about one nurse making a mistake. The documents show a catalogue of mistakes and woefully inadequate record keeping.
"This led to the inability to ascertain which doctors or nurses were on duty. There was a breach of IT procedures in the access to medical records.
"Another fact which needs to come out is why there was such a vast time lapse between the discovery that something had gone wrong and the initiation of an inquiry.
"There were repeated failures across the hospital which the police were unable to unravel over several months because passwords had been entered incorrectly.
"Nobody can prove who was involved because two people can provide alibis for each other because hospital records cannot pin down who was concerned."
Mr Gerrish, aged 55, who is a retired Royal Navy Lieutenant Commander with 21 years service and who commanded the protection vessel HMS Orkney, claimed there was a culture at the hospital in which nobody was willing to take responsibility.
Representatives for the hospital trust opposed the adjournment and warned:There is a danger the inquiry will become a feeding ground for some sort of conspiracy theory.
Ian Arrow, the Plymouth coroner, adjourned the inquest so it could be heard in front of a jury. He said this is necessary because any recurrence of the events could lead to the risk of harm to the public.
He said: "It appears to me that if I was to sit with a jury, it would eliminate any difficulty that might be raised as to whether the inquest was conducted openly and in public."
After the hearing Mr Gerrish said: "We are not seeking money or compensation. All we want is to get the truth and to ensure the same thing does not happen again.
"It is an outrage that the hospital are talking about a conspiracy theory."
Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust said in a statement: “The coroner has decided to adjourn to allow a jury to hear this inquest. We respect that decision and will present all the evidence we have before the inquest in March. We will try and use this opportunity to answer as many questions as we can and allay any concerns.”
Reader Submitted Link. Thank You Annette
Note:
Brian Gerrish is the retired Royal Navy Lieutenant Commander who first exposed Common Purpose. He can be seen in the video (Top Right hand column) and for those who have not watched this yet, we recommend you do so as it's a 'Must See' expose. Since the exposure, Common Purpose have seemed to be getting very desperate in hiding their agenda and stifling the real information about themselves.
More recently, Common Purpose has had 'Video Hosting Sites' remove the expose video's under a copyright argument alleging that he has used their copyrighted materials in his presentations and of course the spineless video sites are removing the videos to avoid legal problems without even questioning this claim.
We have watched several of the videos and could not see anything that could even remotely be claimed as a breach of copyright. Common Purpose is a Charity (yes a charity believe it or not) that operates under the Chatham House Rules! A charity working under CHA? Now we wonder why. (Ed)
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(Damian Thompson - Telegraph)
Lord Carey's brave call to limit immigration is a timely defence of Christian values.
We have had to wait decades for this moment, but it has finally happened. A leading British clergyman has said something sensible about immigration.
Lord Carey of Clifton, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, this week signed a declaration by the Cross Party Group on Balanced Migration calling for an urgent tightening of borders to stop the British population reaching 70 million by 2029. He also gave an interview yesterday in which he called for a tougher Church.
"We Christians are very often so soft that we allow other people to walk over us, and we are not as tough in what we want, in expressing our beliefs, because we do not want to upset other people," he said.
Tougher church … people walking all over us … controls on immigration: it really is not all that difficult to join the dots. Later in the interview, Lord Carey almost joined them for us, suggesting that there might be a "points system" based on respect for Britain's Christian heritage.
Some of Lord Carey's critics will accuse him of blowing a dog whistle to racists. That is nonsense. Lord Carey is a veteran anti-racist: he enjoys the sort of following among African evangelicals that Bill Clinton did among black Americans. But if Lord Carey were accused of whistling to Christians worried by the prospect of millions of dogmatic Muslims in Britain, then he would find it difficult to rebut the charge. Politicised Islam is at the forefront of his mind:
he knows that Britain's evangelical Christians are fed up with being told to develop ever closer ties with their Muslim neighbours.
These evangelicals see Muslim communities that are increasingly hard to distinguish from ghettos; whose young men are sympathetic towards Islamist insurgents; and whose elders enforce a Sharia law that bullies young British Muslim women at home and persecutes Christians abroad. (Nothing, not even the issue of homosexuality, has done more to damage the authority of Dr Rowan Williams in the conservative provinces of the Anglican Communion than his idiotic equivocation on British Sharia.)
Britain's black and Asian Christian leaders will support Lord Carey in this controversy; many of them have seen Islamism at work in their home countries.
Only one Church of England bishop has resigned his see in protest at Church leaders' feebleness in the face of Islamism, and he is an immigrant: Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester. In contrast, the rest of the hierarchy, together with all the Roman Catholic bishops of England and Wales, still adhere to the old orthodoxy that immigration is by definition a glorious blessing because it "enriches" our culture.
In Europe, however, many Catholic bishops never really subscribed to that orthodoxy in the first place, and now they are talking openly about the coming "Islamification" of Europe. Yesterday, just as Lord Carey was issuing his own warning, Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, the Archbishop of Prague, marked his retirement with a melodramatic prophecy. "Unless the Christians wake up, life may be Islamised and Christianity will not have the strength to imprint its character on the life of people, not to say society," he said.
The Cardinal is right, but only up to a point. The Islamification of parts of Europe is indeed under way. As Christopher Caldwell says in his book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, Muslims "vie for dominance" in Rotterdam, Strasbourg, Marseilles, suburbs of Paris and Berlin, Bradford, Leicester, the periphery of Manchester and east London.
Where Cardinal Vlk displays naivety is in his proposed remedy: he is optimistic that the Church can persuade the West to reject the empty secularism that has created a Europe-wide vacuum filled by people of another faith.
The message that "secularism" is the real enemy of Christianity is parroted by liberal bishops everywhere. Although they may be horrified by Cardinal Vlk's talk of Islamification, they share his belief that the essential division in the world is between "people of faith" and rootless materialists. Pope John Paul II also subscribed to that world-view. But Pope Benedict XVI, significantly, does not. Benedict wants to convince secular-minded people that, in an odd way, they are already part of the Christian flock, because many of their ideals are rooted in the ethics of Christianity.
In other words, the Church's respect for the dignity of the human person is broadly shared by those secular intellectuals committed to a free society. The Pope recognises this, which is why he has spent so much time talking to them; so does Bishop Nazir-Ali, whose friends include atheist thinkers whose respect for the West's Christian heritage is far greater than that of Muslim community leaders or their multiculturalist allies.
In the long term, the future of Western civilisation can be secured only by an alliance between Christians and secularists against the totalitarian ideology of Islamism.
That is a strange prospect; and even more uncomfortable is the realisation that Christianity's survival as a mass movement may depend on something as prosaic as immigration control. But that is surely what Lord Carey is hinting at, and it is brave of him to do so.
Note:
The Government constantly tells us to be tolerant which amounts to 'Shut-Up and Put Up' otherwise you will be branded a Racist in their quest to Socially Engineer Britain to what they think it should be, and discarding the fact that they are the servants of the people and not vice versa as some tin pot dictators who can impose their will on us! They should remember their place and why they are there! (Ed)
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The Wake-Up too little too late?
A leading Catholic cardinal has said Europeans only have themselves to blame for allowing Islam to "conquer" the continent.
Czech Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, the Archbishop of Prague, said Muslims were well placed to fill the spiritual void "created as Europeans systematically empty the Christian content of their lives".
"Europe will pay dear for having left its spiritual foundations and that this is the last period that will not continue for decades when it may still have a chance to do something about it," he said.
"The Muslims definitely have many reasons to be heading here. They also have a religious one – to bring the spiritual values of faith in God to the pagan environment of Europe, to its atheistic style of life.
"Unless the Christians wake up, life may be Islamised and Christianity will not have the strength to imprint its character on the life of people, not to say society."
The 77-year-old cardinal made his remarks in an interview to mark his retirement after spending 19 years as the leader of the Czech Church.
He said he did not blame Muslims for the crisis as Europeans had brought it upon themselves by exchanging their Christian culture for an aggressive secularism that embraced atheism.
"Europe has denied its Christian roots from which it has risen and which could give it the strength to fend off the danger that it will be conquered by Muslims, which is actually happening gradually," he said.
"At the end of the Middle Ages and in the early modern age, Islam failed to conquer Europe with arms. The Christians beat them then.
"Today, when the fighting is done with spiritual weapons which Europe lacks while Muslims are perfectly armed, the fall of Europe is looming."
He called on Christians to respond to the threat of Islamisation by living their own religious faith more observantly.
Last year Cardinal Jose Policarpo, the Patriarch of Lisbon, warned Catholic women against marrying Muslims.
Italian Cardinal Giacomo Biffi also urged the Italian government to give priority to Catholic migrants over Muslims in order to protect his country's religious identity.
The Vatican has also opposed Turkey joining the European Union partly because the Muslim country does not share the continent's Christian heritage
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The Wake-Up too little too late?
A leading Catholic cardinal has said Europeans only have themselves to blame for allowing Islam to "conquer" the continent.
Czech Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, the Archbishop of Prague, said Muslims were well placed to fill the spiritual void "created as Europeans systematically empty the Christian content of their lives".
"Europe will pay dear for having left its spiritual foundations and that this is the last period that will not continue for decades when it may still have a chance to do something about it," he said.
"The Muslims definitely have many reasons to be heading here. They also have a religious one – to bring the spiritual values of faith in God to the pagan environment of Europe, to its atheistic style of life.
"Unless the Christians wake up, life may be Islamised and Christianity will not have the strength to imprint its character on the life of people, not to say society."
The 77-year-old cardinal made his remarks in an interview to mark his retirement after spending 19 years as the leader of the Czech Church.
He said he did not blame Muslims for the crisis as Europeans had brought it upon themselves by exchanging their Christian culture for an aggressive secularism that embraced atheism.
"Europe has denied its Christian roots from which it has risen and which could give it the strength to fend off the danger that it will be conquered by Muslims, which is actually happening gradually," he said.
"At the end of the Middle Ages and in the early modern age, Islam failed to conquer Europe with arms. The Christians beat them then.
"Today, when the fighting is done with spiritual weapons which Europe lacks while Muslims are perfectly armed, the fall of Europe is looming."
He called on Christians to respond to the threat of Islamisation by living their own religious faith more observantly.
Last year Cardinal Jose Policarpo, the Patriarch of Lisbon, warned Catholic women against marrying Muslims.
Italian Cardinal Giacomo Biffi also urged the Italian government to give priority to Catholic migrants over Muslims in order to protect his country's religious identity.
The Vatican has also opposed Turkey joining the European Union partly because the Muslim country does not share the continent's Christian heritage
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Translated into English by Anders Bruun Laursen from a flyer distributed by Dansk Kultur. Layout, formatting and added images by Balder.org. Revised edition 2009.
Secret European Union-agreements with 10 European and North African Countries. The Euro Mediterranean Declaration was agreed upon by the EU, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and Israel and comprises:
Comprehensive political partnership, among other things about:
- 1. Establishing a free trade area and economic integration to begin in the year of 2010
- 2. Considerably more money for the partners
- 3. Cultural partnership.
The EU Offers the Populations of 9 Muslim Countries Free Movement of Goods, Services, Capital and People into the EU
In return for concrete political and economic changes the EU offers partners´integration into the expanded internal market of the EU and the possibility to obtain free movement for goods, services, money and people.
Association agreements have been made with all partner countries except Syria – which will be offered association in 2009. (Abstract of the 6. Euromediterranean Foreign Minnister Conference in Naples 2-3 Dec. 2003).
Confirmed by the Danish Prime Minister on Aug. 28, 2006 in a correspondence where on Sept. 12, 2006 he refused to tell why he, the government and media have concealed the Euromediterranean Project for 11 (now 13) years. On Jan. 7, 2009 he refused once more.
The EU Offers the Populations of 9 Muslim Countries Free Movement of Goods, Services, Capital and People into the EU.
Negotiations about Turkish EU entrance began in 2005
The Union for the Mediterranean to extend the Mediterranean Project from 14 July 2008
"So far, only the ancient Romans achieved this: The Union for the Mediterranean is created." Nicolas Sarkozy: "We will make the Mediterranean basin an area of peace and will build it up as we have built up the European Union'' (ANSAMED 14 July 2008).
43 leaders from Europe and the Mediterranean countries met (in Paris) with UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso. In addition, representatives of the World Bank and the European Investment Bank, the Arab League, the Islamic Conference Organization and the Maghreb Union were present - a forum at the highest level. (Der Spiegel Online 14. July 2008).
2002, Louis Michel, then Belgian Foreign Minister and current member of the European Commission: "The EU will cover the whole Mediterranean region including North Africa and the Middle East." (Brussels Journal 27 March 2007).
Reader Submitted Link. Thank You Ray
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Asylum seekers were wrongly paid nearly £10 million in benefits last year, it was revealed today.
A Home Office audit found officials mistakenly handed out £9.6 million in housing benefit and living allowances.
Overpayments happened when payouts continued even after asylum cases were concluded.
The real total could be even higher because officials at the UK Border Agency have not calculated the cost of errors made in previous years.
Critics condemned the waste of taxpayers' money and called on ministers to "get a grip" on the problem.
Tory MP David TC Davies, who sits on the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, said:
"This is yet another disgraceful waste of taxpayers' money and another huge blunder by the UK Border Agency.
"Millions of pounds are being thrown away and very little is being done to prevent it - at a time when the country is economically bankrupt."
The payouts were revealed in the Home Office's official accounts for 2008/9. They showed two-thirds of the total - nearly £7 million - was in cases where payments had been stopped but not within the required time limit.
In the remainder, payouts continued after asylum claims were rejected or approved.
Officials have been forced to write off the money because of "legal obstacles" to recovering it, the report states. Trying to recover allowances could also leave failed asylum seekers in dire poverty.
Yes but of their own doing... If they are Failed Asylum Seekers then this makes them Economic Migrants and therefore should not receive anything from the public purse apart from the fare to return back home! Anyway if they were deported as the government promised time and time again then we would not be discussing this issue (Ed)
The document blamed "shortfalls" in the system of bureaucratic controls.
It accepts officials do not know how much was wrongly paid out in previous years.
The report states: "When a decision is made for asylum support to be ceased on the casework system, procedures should have ensured that the payment system stopped making payments.
"There were shortfalls in the controls over those procedures that meant those procedures were not consistently applied.
"It is possible that cessations made in earlier years were also subject to delays and losses could have occurred - this has not been quantified."
New controls have been introduced to stop similar errors in the future, the document states.
Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said: "This is yet another example of how the Government has created an asylum system that manages to combine staggering incompetence with cruelty.
"Millions of pounds of taxpayers' money could be saved if asylum seekers were allowed to work to support themselves, rather than relying on state hand outs.
"Responsibility for the asylum system should be taken away from the blunderings of ministers and given to a Canadian-style independent agency."
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Two brothers have begun 2010 in hospital with serious facial injuries after being attacked by a gang of youths with hammers on New Year's Eve.
Thomas and David Barry were both undergoing facial reconstruction surgery for a shattered jaw and eye socket this week after they were beaten by the gang who first attacked Thomas's son and his 16-year-old girlfriend.
The family had been celebrating the New Year in the Angel and Crown pub in Roman Road, Bethnal Green but the peace was shattered when Tomas's son ran into the pub saying he and his girlfriend had been attacked.
Dad Thomas and his brother David rushed outside to help the pair but were set upon by a gang of up to 30 youths armed with hammers.
Thomas's wife Bridget said: "They hit my husband in the head with a hammer four times. He went down on the fourth blow.
"I came out of the pub and saw him lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood. I thought he was dead."
Bridget, who lives in Grove Road, said her husband had suffered deep cuts and bruising to his head, a broken foot and had surgery to piece his eye socket back together on Monday.
But she said her brother-in-law was in an even worse state and needed facial reconstructive surgery to repair his jaw, which had been broken in six places, and a broken palate.
Bridget's 18-year-old son escaped with minor injuries but his 16-year-old girlfriend needed eight stitches to her head and ear after she was hit in the side of the head with a vodka bottle.
Police confirmed they were investigating an assault in which three people were seriously injured at the junction of Smart Street and Roman Road at 10.45pm on New Year's Eve.
A spokesman said the suspects are all aged 16-18 and are Asian. One suspect is described as fat with black spiky hair and was wearing a black jacket.
Tower Hamlets Police's violent crime unit are appealing for witnesses to the attack.
Anyone with information is asked to contact Det Sgt Iain Harkes on 020 7275 4546 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
Reader Submitted Link. Thank You Wesley
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Police are still hunting for teenagers who “ran off laughing” after viciously attacking a father walking down the street with his son in Mitcham.
The victim, a 47-year-old man described by police as “vulnerable”, was first treated for a minor head injury sustained in the attack. However a few days later scans showed he had suffered internal bleeding around the brain, and he was called back for further treatment. He has now recovered.
Police said the victim was walking along Armfield Crescent, near the junction with St Mark’s Road, with his 12-year-old son when he was assaulted on September 21 last year.
A police spokesman said: “Two youths came up to them, one of whom punched the father without any warning, knocking him to the ground. The youths then ran off, laughing.” The attackers were described as black teenagers, aged about 16.
Anyone with information should call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
Reader Submitted Link. Thank You Wesley
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The ex-wife of Boris Johnson has shocked her family by secretly marrying a 23-year-old Muslim, she announced on Thursday.
Allegra Mostyn-Owen even implied she would be content to be one of several of his wives. Since she is 45, she said she would be happy for her new husband to have children with a younger woman.
They would then live as an ‘extended family’ as sanctioned by the Prophet Mohammed ‘who said it was OK to marry up to four women’, she declared.
Miss Mostyn-Owen was the London Mayor’s first wife. They met when they were students at Oxford and married in 1987, aged 23, but divorced in 1993. She has no children.
She revealed how she stunned her family on Christmas Day by announcing her marriage to the Muslim man – whom she did not name because his Pakistani family ‘know nothing’ of what he has done.
Miss Mostyn-Owen is the only daughter of Italian writer Gaia Servadio and multimillionaire landowner and art historian William Mostyn-Owen.
Describing the scene at Christmas, she said: ‘My mum accused me of spoiling her Christmas and was sure I am heading for a nervous breakdown.
'My older brother also said he would be there for me when I had a breakdown. My father was very annoyed, saying he’d only tolerated “him” – the Muslim – because our relationship had kept me off the booze.
‘Nobody asked his name, whether we were happy, what our plans are and what his livelihood is.’
The society beauty and one-time Tatler cover girl revealed they had married in a mosque and then again in a register office. She said she had not converted to Islam.
She added that her young husband – who ‘has got all his own teeth, a fine head of sleek hair and an excellent degree’ – (Assuming he still wants her in 20 years time (Ed) would be in a position to look after her when she is old.
Writing in the London Evening Standard newspaper, she then made her comments about sharing him with another woman.
She wrote: ‘At my current ripe/mature/middle-aged stage in life, I realise that I am unlikely to conceive children so we have agreed that so long as he chooses a good partner, then I am happy to live together in an extended family.
‘It is not so far removed from the Prophet’s own life (peace be upon him)…The Prophet said it was OK to marry up to four women if you could guarantee them all quality of life.’
Her second marriage sounds a world away from her first. When she met Boris Johnson in 1984, he was about to become president of the Oxford Union and she was one of society’s most eligible debutantes.
Recalling their first encounter, she said his typical bungling led him to her room at Trinity College on the wrong night for a party.
‘I was reading this textbook, and suddenly there’s this stranger at the door, who goes, “Oh, oh, oh, oh.” We drank a bottle of wine and talked. He made me laugh,’ she said.
After they divorced in 1993, Mr Johnson went on to marry his current wife Marina, the barrister daughter of distinguished BBC correspondent Sir Charles Wheeler.
Miss Mostyn-Owen, deeply wounded by the break-up, withdrew from society circles and took up art.
Since 2005 she has been running workshops for five to 14-year-olds at the Minhaj-Ul-Quran Mosque in Forest Gate, East London. Mosque president Istiyaq Ahmed described her as an ‘excellent and hard-working’ teacher.
He has said: ‘She is not a Muslim, but is an important part of our attempts to de-radicalise young people. Allegra provides a positive message that something is being done for our community.’
Friends of Miss Mostyn-Owen said she and Mr Johnson ‘get on fine’ on the rare times they meet.
Last night the mayor’s office said he would be unlikely to be making any comment on her latest nuptials.
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With all the media hype and Government propaganda over the past six months over global warming, it is somewhat surprising to many people that Britain should be experiencing the worst winter freeze for 30 years.
The Met Office has issued more severe weather warnings for the whole country this morning with temperatures remaining well below freezing.
The AA has attended 20,000 breakdowns a day this week compared to less than 9,000 on a normal day, and it says it has been so busy because of the icy conditions on the roads.
So many people have fallen over on icy pavements and broke bones that some hospitals have run out of plaster with which to set them.
The accidents on our roads and pavements have been caused because local authorities have run out of their stocks of grit and salt with which they treat public areas during freezing weather.
It’s surprising that councils should have been caught short this winter because the same thing happened last winter and no lessons seem to have been learnt from the chaos that ensued then.
Once again depots have insufficient salt reserves and the Cheshire mine that produces most of Britain’s supply is now struggling to keep pace with emergency demands and only has a few days’ supply of “surface salt” left.
Salt is mined from deep underground and that is why orders to the company have to be placed well in advance.
It is very apparent that it wasn’t done this year so now the British people are paying the price.
The British National Party has made a number of Freedom of Information requests to local authorities regarding the ordering of grit and salt supplies in recent years.
It has also asked whether the Government issued any guidelines as to the quantities councils should order.
“In the light of the problems we experience 12 months ago, you would have thought that this time we would have been well prepared for the current cold snap,” a BNP spokesman told the website.
“Our concern is that the Government might have believed its own propaganda about man-made global warming raising temperatures and taken a gamble that this winter wouldn’t be so cold.
We need to know whether it advised councils not to stockpile grit and salt.
“Hopefully our FOI requests will shed some light on this.”
Friday 8th January 2010
The soaring number of deadly tuberculosis cases in Scotland has been linked to immigration.
Official figures released yesterday showed levels of the lung disease at their highest in a decade with a 10 per cent increase from 408 in 2007 to 452 last year, including 38 deaths.
Immigration was blamed for the rise, which is believed to have stemmed from people arriving from South Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe.
A report by Health Protection Scotland (HPS), the country’s health agency, said cases involving immigrants were on the increase, rising from 21 per cent in 2001 to 49 per cent last year.
Since 2005, only vulnerable groups including children whose parents are from countries where TB is still a problem are routinely immunised.
But experts warned screening for TB, which can lie dormant for decades in sufferers, was no longer proving effective in combating the disease.
Dr Oliver Blatchford, a Glasgow-based consultant epidemiologist working with HPS said: “This is obviously of great concern, because screening doesn’t seem to be working.
“TB can lie dormant in the lungs and other systems for years, and many cases are among people who have shown symptoms after three or five years after contact.
“What we now need is better contact tracing, treatment, and to raise awareness among high risk groups.”
TB is caused by mycobacteria which can affect the central nervous, lymphatic and circulatory systems, bones, joints and skin as well as the lungs.
In countries such as Australia, anyone migrating from a medium to high-risk country must have a chest x-ray at home as part of their visa application.
Charities warned the figures show TB’s reputation of being “a disease of the past” is a dangerous one.
Mike Mandelbaum, chief executive of TB Alert, said: “It never did go away and it’s still a burden. A combination of drugs was discovered in the mid-1950s which could treat it, and we’re still using them today. Perhaps that led to some complacency.”
The Scottish Government set up a working group to look at the rise in cases, but the project was delayed by the swine flu outbreak.
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Police are hunting two young girls - one believed to be just 12 years old - who robbed a bank claiming they had a gun.
The two girls, who were wearing matching blue sweatshirts, walked into the First National Bank in Symmes Township, Ohio, and demanded cash from the clerk.
Neither of them appeared to have any weapons, but they claimed they had a gun as they handed the clerk a note.
Detectives said the clerk then handed over an undisclosed amount of cash, including bait money which can be tracked.
The girls then fled through the bank car park, but despite using dogs to track the pair officers were unable to find them.
One employee was inside the bank at the time of the robbery on Tuesday, but there were no customers inside.
The first girl is described as around 12 years old, between 5ft and 5ft 2in, of thin build, and was wearing blue jeans, a dark blue hooded sweatshirt and a baseball cap.
The second girl was between 14 and 15 years old, 5ft 4in, of heavy build and was wearing blue jeans, a black knit cap and a dark blue hooded sweatshirt with the hood up.
If caught, the girls would face jail for aggravated robbery charges.
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A Stockport law firm has been closed by regulators and five solicitors have been suspended after allegations of dishonesty involving hundreds of thousands of pounds of clients’ money
Finney Lane solicitors Wolstenholmes, founded in 1818, is being investigated by the Law Society after it received almost 200 complaints.
Five solicitors have had their licences suspended and all accounts have been frozen.
Bob Walker, a spokesman for the Legal Complaints Service (LCS), said the frozen money runs into millions of pounds, adding: "You don’t see situations like this every day."
Over Christmas the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), part of the Law Society, suspended the practising certificates of solicitors Helen Murgatroyd, Bobby Shabbir, Bilal Khawaja and Nasser Ilyas plus managing partner Imran Hussain.
Mr Hussain told the Express said he is trying to resolve clients’ concerns.
He said: "I’m extremely sorry for any inconvenience that has been caused, particularly to those who have had money frozen. The Solicitors’ Compensation Fund pays out in these situations
"While I know that doesn’t help people needing an immediate transaction, I hope it will give them some comfort."
An SRA spokesman said the intervention was probably its biggest of 2009.
Manchester firm DWF has been appointed to handle the case.
In a statement, the SRA said: "The grounds for the intervention were suspected dishonesty and breaches of the Solicitors Accounts and Practice Rules.
"The intervention is not punitive, it is about protecting the public and safeguarding funds.
"For those who fear they have lost money, it will be dealt with by the solicitors’ indemnity insurance or the SRA Compensation Fund."
Wolstenholmes also has offices in London, Manchester and Birmingham.
One client, Londoner Tracie Rayfield, was due to complete her house sale on December 17.
She says she is owed £200,000 and was left in a caravan over Christmas with her three children, one of whom is disabled.
She added: "It’s absolutely devastating. I can’t even cry about it any more."
Stephanie Boyle, who lives in Milton Keynes, says she is £41,000 out of pocket with no house to move into.
"There have been sleepless nights," she said. "Despite people saying there is indemnity insurance, is there going to be enough money to pay all of us who lost out?"
Any clients with urgent concerns, particularly those with imminent house purchases, are advised to contact DWF on 0161 603 5000.
Reader Submitted Link. Thank You Welshie
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Or put another way.. ''Don't talk about crime'' It would reveal the full extent of Crime in Britain and wouldn't look good with the coming election! (Ed)
Police officers should avoid talking about crime to members of the public because it 'upsets them', a Home Office report warned today.
Highlighting crime and anti-social behaviour at community meetings can lead to 'feelings of fear' among the public, the study said.
One Thames Valley Police officer branded the report - entilted 'Improving Public Confidence In The Police Service' - a 'bad joke'.
The PC, who asked to remain anonymous, added: ‘What the hell do they expect us to talk about at a public meeting? The price of tea in China or how much a pint of milk costs?
‘This report sounds like a really, really bad joke, but unfortunately it’s the kind of nonsense we have to deal with time and time again from a Government which doesn’t understand policing.’
According the respected industry magazine Police Review, public confidence in the police - currently standing at 49 per cent - needs to be boosted to 60 per cent by 2012.
The report states that to achieve this target, police officers need to 'avoid four main pitfalls’ which can destroy officers' confidence. They include:
- Pitfall One - Highlighting crime and anti-social behaviour 'too much' - The report found that talking about crime at public meetings led to 'feelings of fear' among the public. 'Dialogue centred on the apparent pervasiveness of crime and insecurity may actually stimulate feelings of threat or fear among those listening to such messages, and in turn lower opinions of the police. There is also evidence that if people feel increasingly insecure they are likely to blame the police.'
- Pitfall Two - Bad mouthing their employers - The report says police officers were the most likely of all public servants to 'talk negatively' about their employers to the public. 'Evidence shows the police have a lower perception of their service than other public sector workers and are least likely to speak highly about the criminal justice system as a whole. It has been suggested that if the police were to talk negatively about their job in public then this may lower general public perceptions of the police.'
- Pitfall Three - Treating community policing as a 'waste of time' - The report says that many bobbies see community policing, such as taking part in litter patrols and meeting locals, as a 'waste of time'. ‘Some police officers still regard community policing or community engagement-based roles as not 'real' policing. If a community-engagement philosophy is not adopted throughout the police then community- focused work can still be regarded as an 'add-on' to core business. This can result in the work being afforded a low status’.
- Pitfall Four - Not ensuring diversity in community meetings - The Home Office report states that many police community meetings are packed with 'white, middle class’ people. ‘Evidence has suggested that formal mechanisms for consultation are mainly attended by unrepresentative members of the community, being biased towards older, White, middle-class citizens. Consideration should be given on how to encourage and consult with the whole community.'
Detective Constable Alex Challenor, of Lancashire Constabulary, said the report was 'ridiculous’.
He said: ‘This is just another way the Government is trying to control everything we think and say.
‘I can understand us being told to be careful about what we put on Facebook and things like that, but trying to control what we say to people in the pub is ridiculous.’
Editor of Police Review Chris Herbert said: ‘It is hard to know whether it is depressing or funny.
‘The guidance instructs officers not to be rude about their force’s strengths and weaknesses.
‘Unfortunately, the latest piece of research, hot from the bowels of the Home Office, fails to mention what topic officers should choose.
‘Perhaps they should be asking locals what they got for Christmas instead of talking about crime.’
The report, which draws together evidence from recent academic studies and individual force schemes, says the public think crime is on rise, despite claiming a fall in the past 10 years.
It states: ‘It is important that the public feel confident in the police and other crime-fighting agencies.
‘We know that crime has fallen considerably in the last 10 years, but the public are not feeling the impact of this and believe crime is rising.’
In conclusion, the report states that community policing is the way forward and that the above-mentioned 'pitfalls’ needed to be avoided to ensure public confidence in policing.
It continues: ‘To increase public confidence and decrease the fear of crime, the police need to re-engage as an active part of the community and represent and defend community values, norms and morals.
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Labour's £100million drive to reduce youth crime and yobbery has made things worse rather than better for the victims, a Government survey has found.
It said that for more than a quarter of people living in districts blighted by anti-social behaviour, crime and disruption believe it has actually deepened and spread.
Nearly half say that nothing has changed since the introduction of the ambitious Youth Crime Action Plan two years ago. Fewer than one in five, the report found, believe that thuggery, vandalism and thievery have gone down.
The findings are a major setback for ministers who have sunk £100million of taxpayers' money into the programme of good behaviour contracts, out-of-school activities, and 'intensive intervention projects' meant to turn round the yobbery of thousands of children and teenagers.
The scheme, which covers 69 districts and suburbs, also gave police powers to confiscate alcohol from young people on the streets.
But the survey carried out for ministers found that more people thought the Government should simply make it more difficult to buy drink than backed the idea of taking bottles and cans away from young people who have already acquired it.
Opposition politicians were scathing about the failures of the programme yesterday.
But Children's Secretary Ed Balls said there had been 'good progress'.
But he added: 'It is also clear that there is still a lot of hard work to do to make sure no local residents are troubled by anti-social behaviour'.
Ministers said that under the scheme 80,000 children and teenagers had been sent to 'support services and positive activities', and 28,000 yobs had faced 'tough measures'.
Among these, 2,165 signed contracts agreeing to better behaviour and 313 had been given ASBOs.
A further 517 had been involved in 'intensive intervention projects'.
These are fashionable with academics and social workers but their value is unproven and they cost £50,000 for every family that behaves better after long hours of official help.
The survey carried out among 2,750 people living in the 69 target areas said that 48 per cent said their neighbourhood was no different over the past year. More than a quarter, 27 per cent, said crime and anti-social behaviour had gone up.
Only 19 per cent said it had gone down, and six per cent did not know.
Fewer than a third of parents - 31 per cent - were aware of increased out-of-school activities available for their children.
Mr Balls said: 'We know that challenges remain. We are clear that there are firm boundaries and clear consequences for those who overstep them - but support for young people and their families who try to turn their lives around.'
However, Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said: 'Despite the spin and £100 million, more people think anti-social behaviour has got worse in their area than think it has got better.
'The Government has clearly failed to tackle anti-social behaviour and their flagship ASBOs have proven to be just an ineffective gimmick. The best way to reassure people in these difficult times is to put more police on the beat to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour.'
Tory home affairs spokesman James Brokenshire said: 'The Government has wrapped police up in so much red tape that they spend more time filling in forms than policing our streets. We can't go on this way.'
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Some of Britain’s most dangerous criminals could be freed early because of changes to the parole system, it emerged yesterday.
Sir David Latham, head of the Parole Board, said the public will be at risk if moves to make parole hearings more like trials are adopted.
The changes would ban “hearsay” evidence, such as reports from prisoners about another inmate making threats towards a victim.
Notorious killers due for parole hearings soon include Tracie Andrews, the road rage killer who inflicted more than 30 stab wounds as she killed her boyfriend in 1996, Sidney Cooke, the paedophile killer of schoolboy Jason Swift, 14, and M25 “trophy” rapist Antoni Imiela, given seven life sentences in 2004 for a string of sex attacks, including one on a 10-year-old girl.
Sir David warned that parole panels would have to make decisions on information which might wrongly suggest “large numbers” of inmates were safe to release.
He said: “Our job is to protect the public and we have got to use whatever material we can get hold of to make our assessments as to whether it is safe to release a prisoner or not.
“If we were constrained by rules of evidence we would be at risk of not being able to use material which is very important. It could mean that large numbers of prisoners are released.
“If there is a clear consensus among prisoners that someone has been making threats and might harm a victim if released, you would not be able to use that in a court of law because it would be hearsay.”
Shadow Justice Secretary Dominic Grieve said Sir David was right to be concerned.
He said: “Regrettably, the Human Rights Act has increased litigation in this area. It is vital that any reform of the parole system puts public protection as the number one priority.”
Just 15 per cent of those given life for offences such as murder are freed and eight per cent of pleas for early release from those given indeterminate public protection sentences are granted.
The proposals are from the Ministry of Justice. Its spokeswoman said public protection is utmost and added: “The Parole Board has a difficult and important responsibility of risk- assessing the most dangerous offenders.
“The consultation is a step forward in ensuring the Parole Board can continue to do their job effectively. The consultation is now closed and we will consider all responses.”
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(Cranmer)
Remember those professing Muslims who ranted and raved chanting Allahu-Akbar as the 2nd Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment marched through Luton last March? Those who were heard to shout at the soldiers ‘burn in hell’ and branded them ‘rapists’, ‘terrorists’, ‘murderers’ and ‘baby killers’?
Well, they have denied using ‘threatening abusive or insulting behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress'. And their defence lawyer Neil Mercer told the court that they ‘were making a peaceful protest which the police allowed to go ahead on the day’. The ‘hell’ reference was because ‘they believe what these soldiers have done will mean they will go to hell’; it is an ‘eschatological statement of fact as they see it’.
Eschatology is a little-used defence in the courts of England, but it is evidently one to which Christians ought increasingly to turn. After all, if these Muslims may harass, threaten and insult because ‘from their theological viewpoint it is an unequivocal statement of fact’, then why should Christians not be able to articulate the ‘unequivocal statements of fact’ which derive from their ‘theological viewpoint’?
And this might include inter alia the ultimate fate of Muslims (and all idolaters), the sexual practices of homosexuals, the sanctity of heterosexual marriage, and even the offer by the occasional teacher or nurse to pray for the sick and dying. After all, if Jesus is coming back in clouds of glory to destroy his enemies, it is the eschatological hope of believers that all might be saved, and such a salvation demands a confrontation of sin, sincere repentance and an acceptance of the Lordship of Christ.
And this might occasionally cause harassment, alarm or distress.
But, as interesting as all this is, Cranmer is profoundly disturbed (not to say angered and more than a little irritated) to read in the foreign press events in court which have received scant coverage in the UK, and which were omitted entirely from the BBC report of the trial.
It transpires that the defendants refused to stand when District Judge Carolyn Mellanby entered the courtroom. They insisted it was a ‘grave and cardinal sin’ to show anyone other than Allah respect by standing. And so a compromise was reached whereby they entered the court after the Judge, as they will continue to do so throughout the week.
And, further, the defendants were given an extra 20 minutes on top of their lunch break to go to pray at a mosque a few minutes' walk away.
And, still more, a separate ‘quiet room’ has been set aside for their regular prayer intervals for the rest of the week.
One wonders why they did not demand that the Judge stand for them when they enter the room.
There is absolutely nothing in the Qur’an about standing only for Allah: in many schools, Muslim pupils stand for their teachers, and doubtless Muslim members of the US press corps stand when the President enters to brief them and answer their questions: it is the custom of respect for authority.
The refusal of the defendants to stand for the Judge is a provocative contempt of court and should have been dealt with in the customary way, with threats of a fine or summary custodial sentence. There should have been no compromise, and Cranmer is utterly bemused by the ‘accommodation’ of the prayer requests, for, once again, there is absolutely no qur’anic injunction that prayer at any time of the day must be offered in a mosque; the prerequisites are for purity and cleanliness.
The extra 20 minutes they are permitted for lunch and the breaks in the trial to accommodate their prayer times make a mockery of the English system of justice.
But that, of course, is their intention. Continued
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Police called to a schoolyard scuffle have to fill in a staggering 50 forms, the Government's red-tape tsar admitted today.
Jan Berry, the Home Office's senior adviser on police reform, said the public never asked for such high-levels of bureaucracy, and the incident should be dealt with using simple common sense.
She also revealed police are having to waste an hour at the end of every shift filling in forms cataloging how many leaflets they have handed out.
Mrs Berry's remarks come at a time when the Government and the police are at loggerheads over why officers are able to spend so little time on the beat.
Last week, Jack Straw made the highly controversial claim that - rather than being kept off the beat by red-tape - officers 'enjoy staying in the station in the warm'.
The Justice Secretary added that he was 'sceptical' about claims that police were unable to help the public because they were overworked or faced mountains of bureaucracy.
Burt Mrs Berry's remarks point to the continuing existence of too much red-tape.
She said that officers waste a full hour at the end of their shift 'recording how many meetings they've had, who they've spoken to, and how many leaflets they've dished out – all logged in some system which is only needed because of a shortage of trust'.
A school playground fight, she said, might end up requiring '50 different forms, if both children have different stories, and both have to be processed for reporting as both suspect and victim'.
Mrs Berry added: 'The public never asked for this, she adds. "What (the public) would expect is for the police to investigate, for both children to be given words of advice, and for a discussion – involving the parents – about how such behaviour could affect their future.'
The former Police Federation chairman also warned that bureaucracy was hindering the successful prosecution of criminals - including rapists.
She said that, in a complex rape case, an overstretched police force might 'not worry about the quality of the paperwork, instead concentrating on getting the file off its own desk by passing it to prosecutors.
'The prosecutors, though, can't succeed without a strong file, so they might respond by dropping the case.'
Controversially, one of the solutions she offers to the cutting of red-tape is the use of cautions - which are being used in increasing numbers for violent crimes.
Mrs Berry said there needed to be a 'debate' on the issue, adding that, so long as they are only used when 'it is genuinely right for the victim, and right for the offender, and never because cautioning is convenient', they could reduce the burden of paperwork on the police.
The percentage of time spent on paperwork has risen from 18.4 per cent of all officer time in 2005 to 19.7 per cent, according to the most recently published figures.
Meanwhile, the time spent on patrol is down from 15.3 per cent to 13.6 per cent.
In last week's interview, former Home Secretary Mr Straw rejected claims that filling in paperwork following an arrest took officers off the streets for hours at a time.
He added: 'One police officer says it takes four hours to fill in the forms, whereas I can tell you that good police officers will take an hour to fill in the same forms because they want to get out and catch criminals.
'Some police officers - whatever they may say - actually enjoy staying in the police station in the warm.'
Police leaders described his remarks as inflammatory and irresponsible
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Eastern European gang members have brazenly posted chilling photographs of themselves armed with lethal automatic weapons on the internet.
The group, who call themselves the On The Run (OTR) gang, has uploaded the disturbing pictures on to the Bebo social networking site.
In one snap a gangster is holding a black pistol up to another man's head and others show men and women with OTR tattoos on their arms, hands and stomachs.
Some of the vicious members say they are from Albania, with one describing himself as a 'True Albanian Soldier'.
The gang, from Bromley, Kent, has also posted a music video online showing members posing with large quantities of cash and holding weapons.
The crude four-minute rap then brags that an OTR gang member will "put a punch in your mouth" and says: "If I pull the trigger you're going to permanently bleed."
The hate-filled lyrics add: "I pull guns out of hats, now that's magic.
"I'm pulling my Glock, I'll feed you to dogs, throw your body over a cliff, leave you sleeping with rocks."
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An increasingly large number of MPs from the three Westminster traitor parties have become hysterical over the rise of the British National Party and have urged their leaders to introduce a new immigration hoax to trick the voters.
In a statement, the cross-parliamentary group on balanced migration, which includes 20 MPs from all three parties and a number of other well-known anti-British activists, said that the million votes which the BNP received in the June 2009 Euro elections was a “warning sign.”
“For too long the major political parties have failed to address these issues and the intense, if largely private, concern that they generate throughout our country,” the statement, issued by former Labour cabinet minister Frank Field, on behalf of the group, read.
The solution which the professional conmen and liars — who are the ones responsible for the immigration crisis in the first place — have come up with is a plan for “balanced migration.”
Essentially this con says that the number of people leaving the country should be the same as the number entering, thereby maintaining a constant number of residents and preventing the population rising above 70 million.
This plan ignores the reality that well over 20 percent of the already present UK population is of Third World origin and that their reproduction rates are far higher than the indigenous British people.
Even if all immigration were halted today, the Third World element would still outbreed the native British people within 30 or 40 years.
In addition, a steady inflow of immigrants — as is the declared policy of all three Westminster parties — would exacerbate this situation even further.
Every year, nearly half a million British people leave our country, fleeing the multiracial hellhole into which many of its cities have been plunged through decades of Tory and Labour immigration policies.
The “balanced migration” con would quite happily replace these emigrants with half a million Third World immigrants each year to “balance the population,” thereby making this situation much worse.
The “balanced migration” con is nothing but a trick which will not solve Britain’s immigration crisis but in fact speed up this nation’s decline in Third World status so that it ends up resembling a cross between Pakistan and Nigeria.
Only the British National Party has the guts to point this out and declare that the only solution is to halt all immigration and take immediate steps to encourage the return of as many recent Third World immigrants as possible.
The BNP says that each nation on earth has the right to remain free of colonisation — and this applies equally to our own people.
The BNP is proud of its achievement in forcing the conmen of the three other parties to resort to the “balanced migration” lie. We are satisfied that no one is going to be fooled by it.
The BNP will continue to grow because we are the only party with a clear vision on how to solve the immigration invasion.
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The Westminster expenses scandal reignited today as it emerged stringent proposals to overhaul the system had been scrapped.
In revised reforms published this morning, the new parliamentary watchdog reopened the issue of MPs continuing to employ relatives.
Some politicians who live just outside London may also be able to claim for second homes, one of the practices which drew vigorous condemnation. Crucially, MPs will be given the chance to vote on key proposals.
The new draft was issued by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa), which was set up in the wake of the expenses scandal.
Sir Ian Kennedy, chairman of the body, was immediately forced to deny the reforms had been 'watered down' from a blueprint drawn up by
'These are interpretations that some might seek to put out. I don't recognise the notion that we were watering down on capital gains,' he said.
He said Ipsa was committed to the principle that 'no one should use public money for private gain'.
'The new rules must command public confidence,' he continued. 'If they don’t it will be impossible to restore the public’s confidence in our MPs, and thus in our parliamentary democracy.”
The original blueprint had been drawn up by the chairman of the Committee of Standards in Public Life, Sir Christopher Kelly.
He had favoured stopping MPs within 'reasonable commuting distance' of Westminster from claiming for a second home and an outright ban on employing relatives.
However, Sir Ian has now suggested that only politicians living in zones one to six would be stopped from claiming for accommodation.
He also believes MPs should be allowed to give jobs to family members.
Changes to the Kelly report also mean:
- The worst abusers of the expenses system could escape from having their resettlement grants axed.
- MPs will decide which property is their second home and could switch the designation each parliament.
- MPs could get a say on whether they have to repay any capital gains they make on property funded by the taxpayer during a transitional phase.
- More MPs could carry on receiving public funds for security at their homes.
Sir Ian's paper does back some of Sir Christopher's main recommendations, including a ban on MPs claiming mortgage interest payments on second homes. In future they would have to rent.
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The inept policing of public space is preventing reporters and photographers from going about their lawful business
Over 300 of Britain's best-known photographers have signed a letter to protest against the use of terror laws to stop and search by police and the officious regiment of police community support officers (PCSOs). The letter comes after news that a photographer belonging to the NUJ – Andrew Handley of MK News in Milton Keynes – received £5,000 after being unlawfully held for taking pictures of a car accident.
What both these pieces of news demonstrate is that police nationally have, without proper legislative authority, taken it upon themselves to obstruct the rights of photographers and the duty of journalists to go about their business. As I have said before, there is an ongoing struggle about the control of public space, which has profoundly symbolic importance for a free society. What seems to be happening is that police using terror laws have decided that all public space has been re-designated as state space, over which the police and CCTV systems have exclusive photographic rights.
The letter to the Daily Telegraph, which is really quite mild considering the importance of this issue, says:
Some in the police, especially PCSOs, believe it is illegal to take any pictures of a police officer. This is because of ambiguous legislation, introduced earlier this year, which made it an imprisonable offence to collect "information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism". Given the existence of Google Street View, we do not believe the legislation should be used against ordinary photographers.
Meanwhile, on the Milton Keynes case, the British Journal of Photography reports that Handley, a photographer for the past 34 years, was handcuffed, arrested and detained for eight hours after trying to take pictures of a car accident at Stony Stratford in Milton Keynes from behind a police cordon. His fingerprints and DNA were taken – it is not known whether police also took his photograph.
"This is not the first time a police officer has told me to stop taking pictures," says Handley. "I explained that I was entitled to do my job and assumed I would be allowed to continue. Instead I found myself with my hands cuffed behind my back and in a police cell. As the hours ticked past I started to get more and more worried. I thought it would all be cleared up in a matter of minutes."
After the case was settled, Roy Mincoff, legal officer at the NUJ, said he hoped "good practice will prevail in the future, with police officers at all levels being properly trained in, and regularly reminded of, the special role of the media as a public watchdog, recording and reporting events in the public interest".
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Women who wear Islamic veils in public will be liable to a fine of more than £700 under strict new laws being formulated in France.
The amount could be doubled for Muslim men who force their wives or other female members of their family to cover their faces.
Jean-Francois Cope, president of Nicolas Sarkozy's ruling UMP Party in the French parliament, said the new legislation was intended to protect the 'dignity' and 'security' of women.
He is set to file the draft law in the National Assembly after Mr Sarkozy said veils are 'not welcome' as they intimidate and alienate non-Muslims, especially in a secular country like France.
'We want a ban in public areas,' said Mr Cope, making clear that the veil would not be allowed in public buildings, nor on the streets of France, as it encourages extremism.
Mr Cope said: 'The wearing of the burkha will be subject to a fine, probably of the 4th class, which is to say 750 euros.'
He said the fine would apply to 'all people on the public street whose face is entirely covered'.
A parliamentary inquiry into the wearing of all-body burkhas and niqabs is due to publish its recommendations next month.
In earlier debates Mr Cope said: 'Permanently masking one's face in public spaces is not an expression of individual liberty. It's a negation of oneself, a negation of others, a negation of social life.'
But he conceded that a complete ban faced certain legal obstacles, including a possible challenge before the European Court of Human Rights on the grounds that it limits religious freedom.
The burkha is a full-body covering worn largely in Afghanistan with a mesh screen over the eyes, and the niqab is a full-body veil with slits for the eyes.
President Sarkozy has called them 'a sign of subservience and debasement that imprison women', saying they are 'not welcome in France'.
The country's immigration minister Eric Besson has also described them as 'an affront to national identity'.
France - home to more than five million Muslims, the largest population in Europe - passed a law forbidding veils and other religious symbols in schools in 2004.
The latest move to outlaw such garments comes as a national identity debate rages between those defending multiculturalism, and those who believe France is being overrun by foreign cultures.
Despite the controversy, a recent police report revealed that only around 400 women across the Channel wore veils, which are common in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia but not in the North African countries where most Muslim immigrants to France came from.
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Panicking ministers yesterday sought to calm City jitters over the Treasury’s soaring debt crisis amid fears that Britain is facing bankruptcy.
Business Secretary Lord Mandelson insisted the Government had detailed plans for slashing the £178billion annual borrowing bill despite growing scepticism on the international money markets.
And Gordon Brown was forced to defend his spending splurge in angry clashes over Britain’s soaring national debt in the Commons.
The pair were stung into action following predictions that Britain’s international credit rating is set to be downgraded, leaving the Treasury struggling to borrow from investors.
Some Westminster and City insiders fear Gordon Brown and Chancellor Alistair Darling could be forced to beg for a bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund – a desperate move not seen since the late 1970s.
In his first speech of the New Year, Lord Mandelson insisted the Government had “a clear objective – to halve the deficit by 2013-14.” He added: “It is bold and tough, the equivalent of something approaching an £80billion turnaround in the public finances.
“This is the sharpest reduction in the budget deficit for any G7 country. This is vital for credibility, vital for attracting inward investment.”
He rubbished Tory demands for hastening the reduction of the Government deficit.
“This would only stall recovery, stymie growth, put unemployment up and the costs it imposes on us, reduce the tax take and make the deficit worse, not better,” he said. His speech came after Scott Mather, a senior executive at investment firm Pacific Investment Management, claimed Britain had an “80 per cent chance” of having its credit rating lowered unless the Government stepped up action to tackle the deficit.
He said the Government’s debt reduction plan was “lacking in conviction and it is lacking in details.”
Concerns about the debt crisis dominated Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday. Tory leader David Cameron dismissed the Government’s debt reduction plans as “feeble” and warned that Britain had the biggest budget deficit of any advanced economy in the world.
Mr Brown hit back: “The debt of every country has risen as a result of a global financial recession.”
He told the Tory leader: “If we had taken your advice, many thousands more would be unemployed and many thousands of businesses would be lost.”
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Lawful Rebellion!
Rich Harrison and John Harris
There are two simple tools of Lawful Rebellion: 1, the affidavits which basically tells the Boss of the Realm ‘No more nonsense’ and; 2, NO CONTRACT RETURN TO SENDER (NCRTS) which basically means that I have no wish to contract with you (to play along with the con)
Since April this year Rich joined me in using the process of NCRTS against the police, the courts (including the high court), credit card companies, the DVLA, councils and many others, in fact anyone who sends us ‘paper’ through the post we do not wish to receive. The objective is very clear; we do not want to or have to contract with anyone we wish not to contract with. After serving our affidavits on the queen we instructed Elizabeth that we no longer wish to play their game and this is all we needed to do. The NCRTS process is the action needed to show that we mean what we say, i.e. walking the walk rather that just talking the talk. We said ‘NO’ and we mean ‘NO’.
We have both seen over the last few months a number of people and groups who have started to dilute these simple processes which complicate the action of ‘lawful rebellion’ by adding far more complicated procedures that in essence are not necessary and can cause more problems. This is being done it seems by a certain number who wish to bring this into the political arena and are doing so because the only real form of control that can be asserted upon lawful rebellion has to emanate from a political foundation, as this is the only real mechanism they have at their disposal.
Anyone who goes against the political status quo, i.e. the policy of conformity it seems, has to be brought back into the political arena. This steers a movement back into a position they can control it from. Policies (contracts) are the only mechanism for this; they cannot do this without a policy to allow them to do it. Contained within this are all the legal processes they use to destroy a movement. To reject such allows for no form of control to be asserted, thus if you have a remedy that falls outside these parameters, attempts must be made to steer that remedy back into that political/legal arena. This also means that any attempts to change the system from within the political/legal arena are doomed from the start.
All corporations, such as courts, government depts. police, councils, banks etc, work under a political corporate structure, working under and directed by policy (contracts). Anything they do has to fall within this structure and cannot be outside of it. Anything they require you to do is only achieved by them getting you to agree to do it. They achieve your agreement by offering you documents (forms), by your acceptance of these documents it is seen by them that you have agreed to contract, usually upon their third application. Once you have agreed you are caught in the legal structure of such agreements, a consequence of this is that they only offer you a legal remedy and nothing else, even though it does exist i.e. the power to say ‘NO’.
On not accepting their documentation you have broken the process and maintain your original position and they cannot move forward. They have to get you to accept their forms (paperwork) for the process to be valid. Without validation all and any processes are halted, the con is simply not to tell you this fact.
This is where ‘NCRTS’ is very useful because when an offer is posted to you and you don’t wish to agree to their offer, you put their paperwork back in their envelope, re-seal it, and put a label over the address window and write on it “NO CONTRACT – RETURN TO SENDER”. Put the mail back into the post box and the postal service will have to send it back to the sender.
As Rich and myself maintain once you have said ‘NO’ stick by it, as ‘NO’ is non negotiable.
This would also be a great thing to do with junk mail which was recently suggested, anything that is put through our letter boxes coming from whatever means will be sent back and we will not pay for the privilege.
See Also:
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A hard-working dustman has been removed from the bin round he has worked for more than 30 years after council bosses accused him of picking up too much rubbish.
Albert Stewart, 60, helped residents by taking away extra bin bags left beside overflowing wheelie bins.
But his obliging nature has angered his employers at West Lancashire Borough Council who've accused him breaking strict refuse rules. They say binmen should only empty wheelie bins and must leave other rubbish dumped beside the bins behind.
Householders caught leaving rubbish outside wheelie bins can be fined up to £1,000. Council officers issued Mr Stewart, who has been collecting rubbish on the same route in Aughton, Lancashire, for 33 years, with a written warning and moved him to another round several miles away.
Mr Stewart, a grandfather-of-six, from Ormskirk, Lancashire, accused the council of ‘spying” on its own binmen and said bosses were being motivated by money. ‘I have done the same round for over 30 years, and now, just because I took some side waste, I’m being punished,’ he said.
‘All I was doing was helping people out by taking the odd black bag or two from beside their full wheelie bins. ‘The council found out because they”ve had people going around spying on their own dustmen. It’s ridiculous.
‘Personally, I think it is for financial reasons. People can get fined for putting out too much rubbish and the council didn’t like me being helpful because it meant they were missing out on money.’ Householders caught leaving extra waste beside their wheelie bin are issued with a £100 fixed penalty notice but repeat offenders can be taken to court and given a £1,000 fine.
Mr Stewart, a married father-of-three, was moved onto a round in Skelmersdale eight miles away following the incident last year. He added: ‘I’m really annoyed and upset about this.
‘I’ve been on the same round for 33 years - I’ve seen babies born, go to school, grow up and have babies themselves. ‘I have worked on routes in Skelmersdale since but I miss the people on my old round.
‘They weren’t just people I took rubbish from – they were my friends too. ‘I’ve had lots of people coming up to me saying they miss me. ‘I just want to know what’s going on with my job – I don’t know what I’m doing from one day from the next and I want to go back on my Aughton round.’
People living on Mr Stewart’s former route said they were furious he had been moved. Doug Tate, of Aughton, Lancashire, said: ‘Albert is a good old fashioned worker who actually wants to help people even if it isn’t strictly within the guidelines.
‘I’m sure there are a few jobsworths who want things done by the book, but Albert was the one who was using his common sense. ‘Surely if the council was concerned about bags being left in the street it’s better for them to be thrown in a bin lorry?’
Another resident added: ‘Albert was not just a binman he’s also a friend. ‘He was always willing to help and it’s very sad that he has been taken off his route. I’m not the only one – everyone appreciated him when he came round.’
A spokesman for West Lancashire Borough Council said he could not comment on matters involving individual employees. However, he said residents were asked not to put out black bags next to their wheelie bins because it attracted vermin and binmen were instructed not to take away such bags because it encouraged residents to break the rules.
‘We have a grievance procedure in place for this type of complaint, which will be brought to Mr Stuart’s attention to resolve this matter,’ he added. Mr Stewart’s case is the latest in an ongoing battle between householders and bureaucrats over waste collections.
Yesterday the Daily Mail revealed how binmen in Coventry had been banned from emptying wheelie bins if their lids were open by just a quarter of an inch in case rubbish spilled out and injured them. Refuse collectors in the city have even been issued with tape measures to make sure they were not breaking health and safety measures by emptying bins that were slightly open.
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Dustmen have been banned from emptying wheelie bins if the lids are open by only a quarter of an inch – in case rubbish spills out and injures them.
Citing ‘health and safety’, refuse collectors use tape measures to check whether lids which appear firmly shut are open by even a crack, householders said.
If the bins exceed the ‘limit’, dustmen refuse to empty them.
Many of the bins cited in complaints by householders were packed with a fortnight’s rubbish for the first collection after the Christmas break. Bags of extra Christmas waste, which the binmen also refused to collect, have built up on the streets in areas around Coventry, leading to fears that they will attract vermin.
Coventry City Council said open lids could lead to rubbish spilling onto its workers and the public.
Residents were told to take excess rubbish to the local tip. But this was described as an impossible task for elderly and disabled people rendered housebound by snow. Bill Gough, a 54-year-old office manager, confronted the collectors when they refused to empty his bin on Tuesday.
‘I’d stamped on my rubbish to get it as flat as possible but the lid was still a little open,’ he said. Continued
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The BBC's governing body has launched a major review of its science coverage after complaints of bias notably in its treatment of climate change.
The BBC Trust today announced it would carry out the probe into the 'accuracy and impartiality' of its output in this increasingly controversial area.
The review comes after repeated criticism of the broadcaster's handling of green issues. It has been accused of acting like a cheerleader for the theory that climate change is a man-made phenomenon.
Critics have claimed that it has not fairly represented the views of sceptics of the widely-held belief that humans are responsible for environmental changes such as global warming.
The investigation will also focus on coverage of issues like genetically modified foods, the MMR vaccine and the way it reports on new technologies.
It will scrutinise the way the BBC has handled scientific findings on areas which affect 'public policy' and are 'matters of political controversy'.
A scientific expert will be hired to lead the review and it will concentrate on coverage of the issues featured in its news and factual output.
The corporation's Royal Charter and Agreement requires that the BBC covers controversial subjects with due impartiality.
The new report will not just include the natural sciences but also aspects of technology, medicine and the environment that include scientific findings or claims.
Richard Tait, BBC Trustee and chair of the governing body's Editorial Standards Committee (ESC), said: 'Science is an area of great importance to licence fee payers, which provokes strong reaction and covers some of the most sensitive editorial issues the BBC faces.
'Heated debate in recent years around topics like climate change, GM crops and the MMR vaccine reflects this, and BBC reporting has to steer a course through these controversial issues while remaining impartial.
'The BBC has a well-earned reputation for the quality of its science reporting, but it is also important that we look at it afresh to ensure that it is adhering to the very high standards that licence fee payers expect.'
The review will be launched in the spring and the findings of the probe will be published in 2011.
The BBC is planning to raise the profile of science this year with a focus on the genre across television, radio and online.
But there has been a string of rows in recent years over the way it has handled a number of scientific issues.
Last year a leading climate change sceptic claimed his views had been deliberately misrepresented by the BBC.
Lord Monckton, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, said he had been made to look like a 'potty peer' on a TV programme that 'was a one-sided polemic for the new religion of global warming'.
In 2007 the then editor of Newsnight hit out at the BBC's stance on climate change.
Peter Barron said it was 'not the corporation's job to save the planet'. His comments were backed up by other senior news executives who feared the BBC was 'leading' the audience, rather than giving them 'information'.
Mr Barron had claimed the BBC had gone beyond its remit by planning an entire day of programmes dedicated to highlighting environmental fears.
His comments had come after the broadcaster had already been accused of not being objective on green issues and of handing over the airwaves to campaigners. In 2007 it had devoted a whole day of programming to the Live Earth concerts.
The BBC then decided to scrap the Comic Relief-style TV event on climate change amid fears it would make it look biased.
In the past the BBC has also been attacked over other scientific issues. It was accused by an adviser of adding to the hysteria about genetically modified crops with factual errors and bad science.
The expert claimed that makers of thriller Fields of Gold, starring Anna Friel, had ignored his advice when he pointed out factual errors in 2002.
More recently flagship current affairs programme Panorama was found to have broken editorial guidelines in a programme about the potential health hazards of wi-fi.
The BBC's editorial complaints unit said in 2007 that the programme 'gave a misleading impression of the state of scientific opinion on the issue'.
In 2006 scientists accused the corporation of 'quackery' in a programme which they claimed attempted to exaggerate the power of alternative medicine.
Earlier this year former BBC newsreader Peter Sissons claimed it was now 'effectively BBC policy' to stifle critics of the consensus view on global warming.
Mr Sissons said: 'I believe I am one of a tiny number of BBC interviewers who have so much as raised the possibility that there is another side to the debate on climate change.
'The Corporation's most famous interrogators invariably begin by accepting that "the science is settled", when there are countless reputable scientists and climatologists producing work that says it isn't.'
Thursday 7th January 2010
Good heavens! After nearly 13 years of government, the Labour Party, and Environment Secretary Hilary Benn in particular, have discovered something quite remarkable - that British farms, and the British countryside, actually produce food.
For more than a decade, this Government has ignored, derided and abused the countryside and those who live and work in it.
Labour has regarded it only as an area of recreation and leisure for the urban masses, while viewing the farming community as a mixture of silver-spooned toffs and bucolic straw-sucking bumpkins (of which I am proud to be one).
Now, all of a sudden, with Britain broke, unemployment rising and our population heading inexorably towards 70million, the Government has suddenly realised that farming and food production are actually quite important, contributing £80billion to the economy and employing 3.6million people.
That's why Hilary Benn yesterday launched a government campaign at the Oxford Farming Conference to boost Britain's self-sufficiency in food.
In my view, it is a campaign that smacks of hypocrisy and cynical opportunism. Since Labour has been in power, Britain's self-sufficiency in food has tumbled from 75 per cent to 60 per cent and is falling at the rate of 1 per cent per year.
In that time, too, the UK has produced 35 per cent less beef, 25 per cent less lamb and 35 per cent less pork.
In 1985 there were 28,000 dairy farmers in England and Wales - by November 2009 there were just 11,551, and we are currently losing nine dairy farms a week.
Astonishingly in a country that two years ago was self-sufficient in milk, Britain now imports 1.5 million litres a day - despite the fact that we are blessed with one of the most temperate climates in the world and our most successful crop is grass.
It is an appalling situation. Those dairy farmers struggling to create a living are now having to farm so intensively that their farms have become wildlife deserts and serious animal welfare issues are developing.
Some cows now never see a grass field - they are housed indoors night and day and have simply become milk-producing machines, fed on grass brought to them from the fields along with concentrates to boost milk yields.
Of course, the biggest blow to dairying came with the foot-and-mouth epidemic in 2001, when between five million and seven million animals were killed quite illegally, courtesy of Tony Blair's contiguous cull which flew in the face of humanity and common sense.
At the time, there was a farming suicide every five days - today, the figure has come down to one a week.
In England over the past 20 years, pig numbers have tumbled from 6.8million to 3.9million; cows from 7.3million to 5.6million; sheep from 18.2million to 15.4million; and the area of sugar beet has been reduced from 195,000 hectares to 125,000 hectares.
Again, to compensate for lost income, many farmers have intensified their production, which has led to a startling loss in farmland wildlife.
At the same time, the number of farmers and farmworkers has fallen from 477,000 to 353,000. At this rate farmers such as me will become an endangered species, just like the skylark, the English partridge and the brown hare.
While Hilary Benn has the gall to talk of boosting selfsufficiency, he knows full well that the decline in domestic food production over which his government presided has been met by increased food imports. It is almost impossible to know where to start when it comes to New Labour's disdain for the countryside.
Perhaps the party's approach to the rural population was best summed up by John Prescott's now infamous declaration at the 2000 Labour Party Conference that whenever he saw the 'contorted faces of the Countryside Alliance', he redoubled his determination to get rid of foxhunting.
Prescott's Left-wing orthodoxy has it that all rough shooters, followers of hunts, Pony Club girls and elderly women fly-fishers are Right-wing toffs, and that farmers are a curmudgeonly collection of conservative whingers whose daily milking of cows amounts to cruelty to animals.
The truth is that New Labour has presided over the slow death of the countryside. The party has never liked its traditional ways, has never bothered to try to understand its people, and has always believed landowners to be evil barley barons.
Back in 2002, in exasperation at being treated with such contempt, the quiet rural people of England, Wales and Scotland - people who have never been considered political hotheads - were provoked into marching on London in the biggest demonstration the capital had ever seen, to protest about the crisis in British farming.
Then these decent people were ignored. It is only now, with Britain's population booming as a result of unchecked immigration, that Labour has come to realise that the countryside does matter, that we really do need to think about self-sufficiency in food - and that, as Hilary Benn said yesterday, food security is as important to the UK as ensuring the country has safe energy supplies.
Of course, Britain's population boom has implications other than simply increasing demand for food.
It has been estimated that the increase in immigrants we face over the next 25 years is the equivalent of the entire population of London or seven cities the size of Birmingham. They will need millions of houses, which will mean even less land on which to grow food.
It was only two years ago that Britain's senior civil servants in Defra were actually claiming that Britain could buy all its food on the world market far cheaper than it could be produced at home.
In 2008, Jonathan Farr, a senior civil servant at Defra, actually told me: 'Food security is about ensuring consumers have access to a stable and adequate supply of food. It is not about maximising domestic production.'
It would appear that Hilary Benn now disagrees. Are we too late to save Britain's food and farming industry? We might be. Certainly, whatever we do, it will require a sterling effort. The challenge for Mr Benn is to allow British farmers to produce good food while receiving sensible prices for their products.
This will mean we have to break the armlock of the supermarkets who ratchet down prices paid to British farmers, thereby encouraging them to intensify production or go out of business and leave the field open to foreign imports.
It will also mean educating shoppers not to buy chicken nuggets produced from Thailand, green beans from Kenya and prawns imported from Indonesia. Shoppers should at every opportunity be encouraged to opt for local produce, perhaps through a taxation system which favours it in comparison to foreign imports.
Farmers should be allowed and encouraged to advertise produce at the farm gate in order to promote local, seasonal food. Local authorities, schools, the civil service, the armed forces and hospitals - all should be encouraged to procure British or local food where practicable.
Villages and towns must provide more land for allotments, and allotment holders should be encouraged to use their plots for growing food. Cooperative ventures between local enthusiasts who want to grow veg should be encouraged with the use of subsidies.
These measures together would certainly have an impact, but they are costly and will be difficult to implement given the soaring budget deficit.
Above all, we need a government which recognises the true value of British agriculture and is prepared to back up its rhetoric with firm action.
We can only wait and see whether Labour's clarion call for self-sufficiency really means it is finally prepared to support, rather than denigrate, British farmers.
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Thousands of illegal immigrants from almost every Third World country imaginable have been given jobs in the public sector while indigenous British unemployment continues to creep up towards the three million mark.
According to research produced by a daily newspaper, illegal immigrants have been given jobs at all levels of the civil service, including the headquarters of the UK Border Agency, which is supposed to control Britain’s borders.
The Home Office has been caught out employing 11 Nigerians and one Ghanaian, none of whom had permission to live or work here.
According to reports, ten of these illegals worked vetting other immigrants for entrance into Britain.
Two other illegal immigrants worked at the Whitehall headquarters of the Home Office, which houses the office of Home Secretary Alan Johnson. One was a chef in the canteen, while the other worked as a security guard on the front door for 19 months.
Three Government departments, 34 local authorities and 54 NHS trusts have been revealed as hiring a total of 349 unlawful foreign workers. The list featured 37 nationalities, including migrants from Kazakhstan, Zambia and Venezuela.
The report also stated that councils admitted hiring six illegal immigrants as teachers in secondary schools and ten got jobs as social and care workers.
None of the 91 taxpayer-funded bodies exposed as employing illegals received any fine or admonishment for the legal transgressions, it was also revealed.
The report stated that the local authority which was most at fault was Haringey, in North London, which gave jobs to 35 Third Worlders without bothering to check their immigration status.
Illegal immigrants also worked in the Ministry of Justice and, not too surprisingly, the Department for International Development which dishes out billions in “aid” to the Third World.
The Ministry of Justice gave jobs to three illegal foreign workers, including a Botswanian administrator working in the Access To Justice Department in Central London, which routinely handles sensitive data concerning legal aid funding.
Failed Zimbabwean asylum seeker Eugene Madzima used a fake passport to land a job processing immigration appeals at a tribunal in Leicester.
The Department for International Development admitted employing “fewer than five” illegal immigrants.
Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council admitted giving jobs to 15 illegal immigrants, including Ghanaian and South African home carers. Town halls in Bromley, South London; Hounslow, West London; and Nottingham also gave illegal immigrants jobs as carers.
One 34-year-old Indian managed to land a job as a dentist after providing health chiefs with forged documents generated by what the trust described as a “sophisticated national fraud.”
Guyanan nationals Indra Kumar Mohan and Kamini Shukram worked full time at Mayday Hospital in Croydon, South London, for three years while claiming more than £100,000 in benefits.
* The real reason why it is so easy for Third Worlders to walk into any job in Britain is because there is now an automatic presumption that to even question a non-British person on their status is tantamount to “discrimination.”
The British National Party is the only political party dedicated to destroying political correctness. The law must be enforced: equally, fairly and without prejudice or favour, no matter who it affects.
People who have broken the law (any law, immigration or otherwise) must not be granted special privileges or excused for their actions.
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A former Archbishop of Canterbury today revealed he fears for his grandchildren, as he said new immigrants coming to Britain should have an understanding of the country's Christian heritage.
Lord Carey is part of an alliance of leading public figures demanding immigration to be urgently curbed to stop the population hitting 70million and causing ‘serious harm’ to society.
The cross-party group wants manifesto commitments from Labour and the Conservatives to cut net migration to fewer than 40,000 a year – compared to the current rate of 163,000.
This is the reduction to net migration – the number of immigrants arriving in the UK, minus those leaving – needed to stop the population reaching 70million within the next two decades.
Lord Carey stressed today that he was not calling for a ban on non-Christian immigrants settling in Britain, but warned that if concerns about the level and nature of immigration were not addressed, it simply would play into the hands of the far right British National Party.
'What I think we must call for is an understanding on the part of those who come into our country that they are coming into one which values parliamentary democracy, which is built upon our Christian heritage,' he said.
'They have got to understand our commitment to the English language and espouse it, and they must understand our history.'
'I worry about my grandchildren. I want this country to carry on being one that values the Christian heritage, but most of all values the democratic standards and all that this country has fought over.'
Other signatories to the report, headed ‘70million is too many’, include Lord Jordan, former president of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union, Tory MP Peter Bottomley, Labour MP Peter Kilfoyle and the economist Lord Skidelsky.
The document pulls no punches in its warning of the consequences for society if the population hits 70million by 2029, as Whitehall statisticians predict.
It says: ‘We are gravely concerned about the rapid increase in the population of England that is now forecast. We believe that immigration on such a scale will have a significant impact on our public services, our quality of life and on the nature of our society.’
The demand has been issued by the Cross-Party Group on Balanced Migration, chaired jointly by Labour MP Frank Field and Tory MP Nicholas Soames.
The group says it recognises a large reduction in net migration will be difficult to achieve but warns of the danger signals of increasing support for ‘extremist’ political parties.
He added: 'The statistics indicate that, if we carry on at the rate we are, our country is going to be in deep trouble and this is going to foster social unrest.
Its document continues: ‘Over the last decade or so we have lost control of immigration. It will take several years to put this right.’
The group calls for a clear political decision to restore control over UK borders and to break the ‘almost automatic link’ between entering Britain and later being granted citizenship.
It states ‘We are convinced that failure to take action would be seriously damaging to the future harmony of our society. Nearly a million votes by our fellow citizens for an extremist party amount to a danger sign which must not be ignored.
‘For too long the major political parties have failed to address these issues and the intense, if largely private, concern that they generate throughout our country.
‘If politicians want to rebuild the public’s trust in the political system, they cannot continue to ignore this issue, which matters so much to so many people. The time has come for action.’
The Office for National Statistics suggests the population of the UK will increase from 61.4million in 2008 to hit the 70million mark by 2029.
Looking further ahead to 2034, the population is forecast to grow by 10million, with almost all of the increase in England. Of this rise, 7million will be due to immigration.
In a statement, Mr Field and Mr Soames said: ‘Poll after poll shows the public to be deeply concerned about immigration and its impact on our population.
'Yet, as we enter the General Election campaign, neither party has promised the British people they will prevent our population hitting 70million.
‘It is time the parties turned their rhetoric into reality by making manifesto commitments.’
Last month, Home Secretary Alan Johnson said the public was being ‘terrorised by the spectre’ of the population hitting 70million.
The Home Secretary said the Office for National Statistics, which has repeatedly made the projection, had been proved wrong in the past.
But he added that, if the politically-sensitive 70million barrier was reached, Britain would ‘cope’ as it is a ‘civilised’ nation.
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(Lee Barnes)
Last year the true face of the people who run this country was revealed.
A cross party body of MP's have signed a document that explicitly states that whilst they support the rights of indigenous peoples across the world to keep their own lands and culture from immigration and invasion, they do not believe that the indigenous British people even exist.
This is in effect a deceleration of intent to commit genocide.
By refusing to admit that we even exist, then we can be removed and no crime has been committed.
In effect this document is a declaration of intent to destroy the entire British people.
As we do not exist then we have no national culture, no civil rights, no right to stop ourselves from being a minority in our own country - we do not exist therefore the Britain we built, and our ancestors died to defend, does not exist.
This is the ultimate act of treason.
Every Briton who died for this country has been stabbed in the back.
They died for nothing as their sacrifice was for nothing.
All those lad and lasses dying in Iraq and Afghanistan are dying for nothing, as if they do not exist as indigenous British people then why not just allow Islam to take over Britain as we are not a Christian country (we are just a country), we are not a country with a Christian culture ( we are just a country) and therefore we can be replaced and a new culture imposed.
All our families who died in the First and Second World War died for nothing.
As they are not indigenous British people, just pawns in a political game, they therefore died not for Britain but for the politicians.
This document is like the (missing) one that Hitler signed to send the Jews to the death camps.
This document means we do not exist, and therefore we can be replaced and removed as the politicians wish.
For decades the BNP have been saying that the elite are traitors and that their aim is to use immigration as a way to displace and destroy the British people - this document is conclusive proof that this is the plan.
If we do not exist, then this is not our country.
If we do not exist, then we are not the British people.
If we do not exist, then when we are killed it is not a crime.
Now we know who the traitors are.
Over 122 MP's signed this motion.
Over 122 MP's who you elected are traitors.
Remember them.
Until the day of justice comes.
Early Day Motion
EDM 1299
RIGHTS OF TRIBAL AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
20.04.2009
Horwood, Martin
That this House welcomes the 20th anniversary of International Labour Organisation Convention 169 on Tribal and Indigenous Peoples, which recognises and respects the land rights of indigenous peoples; notes that protecting the land rights of indigenous peoples is the most effective way to protect the world's rainforests, crucial in the battle against climate change; further welcomes a memorandum submitted to the Environment Audit Committee by the Department for International Development and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs which recognises the importance of ensuring indigenous peoples' rights are respected in terms of ownership of the carbon asset;
notes the Government's continued refusal to put these rights on a firm legal footing and ratify Convention 169, on the grounds that there are no indigenous peoples in the United Kingdom;
further notes that this has not prevented either the Netherlands or Spain from joining the list of 20 countries, including Brazil, that have ratified the Convention; believes that protecting the rights of indigenous peoples is a matter of international concern; and calls on the Government to ratify Convention 169 without delay.
THESE ARE THE LIST OF TRAITORS THAT SIGNED THIS MOTION, NOTE THEY ARE TORIES, NEW LABOUR AND LIBERALS - these are the scum who have openly signed a motion declaring that the indigenous British people do not even existence and that this is not our country.
Remember their names.
Note that Jon Cruddas has signed this document, that will be remembered during the forthcoming election campaign in Barking and Dagenham.
Horwood, Martin, - Drew David - Cohen, Harry - George, Andrew - Russell, Bob
Hoyle, Lindsay - Spink, Bob - Jones, Lynne - Caton, Martin - Cryer, Ann
Bottomley, Peter - Leech, John - Illsley, Eric - Jackson, Glenda
McCafferty, Chris - McDonnell, John - Corbyn, Jeremy - Dean, Janet
Durkan, Mark - Turner, Desmond - Vis, Rudi - Wareing, Robert N
Williams, Stephen - Williams, Mark - Mackinlay, Andrew - Meale, Alan
Etherington, Bill - Hancock, Mike - Weir, Mike - Rowen, Paul - Davies, Dai
Mason, John - Singh, Marsha - Gerrard, Neil - Kilfoyle, Peter - McCartney, Ian
McGrady, Eddie - Stunell, Andrew - Riordan, Linda - Rogerson, Daniel
Reed, Andy - Jenkins, Brian - Llwyd, Elfyn - McDonnell, Alasdair
Clapham, Michael - Sanders, Adrian - Simpson, Alan - Iddon, Brian - Harris, Evan
Naysmith, Doug - Challen, Colin - Flynn, Paul - Stewart, Ian - Thurso, John
Alexander, Danny - Willott, Jenny - Ruane, Chris - Dobbin, Jim - Walley, Joan
Willis, Phil - Prosser, Gwyn - Havard, Dai - Mullin, Chris - Brooke, Annette
Cunningham, Jim - Taylor, Matthew - Williams, Betty - Short, Clare
Kennedy, Charles - Brake, Tom - Connarty, Michael - Abbott, Diane
Stoate, Howard - Heath, David - Williams, Roger - Galloway, George
Baker, Norman - Wood, Mike - Clark, Katy - Pugh, John - Younger-Ross, Richard
Hughes, Simon - Morgan, Julie - Harvey, Nick - Marshall-Andrews, Robert
Austin, John - Howarth, David - Hosie, Stewart - Opik, Lembit - Price, Adam
Barrett, John - Featherstone, Lynne - Swinson, Jo - Holmes, Paul
Carmichael, Alistair - Hoey, Kate - Oaten, Mark - Cruddas, Jon - Cummings, John
Curtis-Thomas, Claire - Doran, Frank -Battle, John - Begg, Anne
Hopkins, Kelvin - Dobson, Frank - Baldry, Tony - Humble, Joan - George, Bruce
Lazarowicz, Mark - Burgon, Colin - Pelling, Andrew - Smith, Robert
Love, Andrew - O'Hara, Edward - McIsaac, Shona - Gapes, Mike - Betts, Clive
Mitchell, Austin - Campbell, Menzies - Prentice, Gordon - Kramer, Susan
Osborne, Sandra
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Hot food and warm clothing were flying off supermarket shelves yesterday as shivering shoppers braced themselves for the deepening big freeze.
Where roads were not already impassable with snow, buyers seized the chance to stock up on vital supplies to see them and their families through in case they end up trapped at home.
And alongside the tinned soup, thermal underwear and bags of salt, there was a surprise best-seller - cat litter.
Following an article in the Daily Mail revealing how people are using it in place of grit to clear paths and driveways, demand has been soaring, with Asda reporting sales up by 55 per cent in just two days.
However, those who have put cat litter to the test report that while it makes surfaces less slippery, it does little to help melt snow and ice, and can make a mess when trodden into floors and carpets.
Bags of salt are also being snapped up, with sales of 1.5kg bags of cooking salt up five-fold at Morrisons and rock salt sales up 150 per cent at B&Q.
Hot, hearty food was much in demand, with Asda selling 50 per cent more porridge and other oat cereals as this time last year and 20 per cent more ready-made hotpots and casseroles.
Stodgy puddings were also up, while Tesco said soup sales were up 80 per cent on two weeks ago.
The deepening winter chill was encouraging shoppers to stock up on cold weather gear, with thermal underwear sales up ten-fold at Asda and wellington boots also sought after.
Meanwhile, travel mug sales increased by more than 160 per cent at Sainsbury's and motorists worried about getting stranded boosted demand for sleeping bags by a fifth at Halfords.
Drivers were also buying extra screen wash, de-icer and ice scrapers for the worsening conditions.
Halfords spokeswoman Diane Perry said: 'A lot of people were caught out before Christmas, so now they're preparing much more with things like snow chains, heat-proof travel mugs and emergency blankets.'
Supermarkets said they were working to ensure shelves remained full, but acknowledged that with more snow forecast, many shoppers were buying more than they needed in case they found themselves trapped at home.
'The last snowfall two weeks ago caught many people out and made shopping trips quite hazardous especially in more open areas, so it appears that this time round shoppers are being more canny and are stocking up just in case,' said Simon Williams, Tesco's senior convenience foods buyer.
'This is one of those occasions where normal January diets go out of the window and heart and body warming foods such as roast dinners and hot puddings makes better sense.'
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A Star primed to explode in a blast that could wipe out the Earth was revealed by astronomers yesterday.
It will self-destruct in an explosion called a supernova with the force of 20 billion billion billion megatons of TNT.
New studies show the star, called T Pyxidis, is much closer than previously thought at 3,260 light-years away - a short hop in galactic terms.
So the blast from the thermonuclear explosion could strip away our ozone layer that keeps out deadly space radiation. Life on Earth would then be frazzled.
The doomsday scenario was described yesterday by astronomers from Villanova University, Philadelphia, US.
They said the International Ultraviolet Explorer satellite has shown them that T Pyxidis is really two stars, one called a white dwarf that is sucking in gas and steadily growing. When it reaches a critical mass it will blow itself to pieces.
It will become as bright as all the other stars in the galaxy put together and shine like a beacon halfway across the universe.
The experts said the Hubble space telescope has photographed the star gearing up for its big bang with a series of smaller blasts or "burps", called novas.
These explosions came regularly about every 20 years from 1890 - but stopped after 1967.
So the next blast is nearly 20 years overdue, said scientists Edward M Sion, Patrick Godon and Timothy McClain at the American Astronomical Society in Washington. Robin Scagell, vice-president of the UK's Society for Popular Astronomy, said last night: "The star may certainly became a supernova soon - but soon could still be a long way off so don't have nightmares."
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This country used to be something very special..
Britain has dropped to 25th place on a list of the best places in the world to live - behind countries like the Czech Republic and Lithuania.
While France tops the poll for the fifth year in row, the UK is associated with a dismal climate, soaring crime rate and cost of living, congested roads and equally over-crowded cities.
Even former Communist countries where unemployment is still rife are considered better places to settle down in.
The Czech Republic and Lithuania were not even accepted into the European Union until 2004.
Since then thousands of people from both countries have flooded into the UK, but most are drawn by the chance to make money in a liberal, entrepreneurial economy, rather than Britain's quality of life.
Many eastern Europeans make as much money as they can in the UK before returning home at the earliest opportunity.
The Quality of Life Index, published by International Living magazine for the 30th year in a row, puts Britain down five places from 20th in 2009.
In all, 200 countries are surveyed across nine categories, including cost of living, culture and leisure, environment, safety, culture and weather.
Australia is placed second after France, with Switzerland in third.
Residents across the Channel enjoy everything from Riviera beaches and Alpine ski resorts to arguably the best health service in the world, but it is the country's 'bon vivant' lifestyle which sets it apart. Continued
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As one of the worst winters in 100 years grips the country, climate experts are still trying to claim the world is growing warmer.
With millions of Britons battling through snow and ice to get to work today, scientists claim that the cold conditions should not be used as evidence against man-made climate change. Blizzards, ice and sub-zero temperatures that have gripped the UK for almost a month in a record deep freeze are not “robust” indicators of global weather patterns, they say.
Their claims come despite the fact that the rest of the northern hemisphere, from America to Europe and Asia, is suffering some of the worst winters in living memory.
Huge snowfalls are being witnessed from China and South Korea, across eastern, central and western Europe and to America where even Florida is struggling to record temperatures above freezing.
Last night critics of the global warming lobby said the public were no longer prepared to be conned into believing that man-made emissions were adding to the problem.
Long-term forecaster and trends analyst Piers Corbyn, of WeatherAction, said: “Global warming is a failed science built on falsified data. It is a sham to say that man has caused it.”
But Stephen Dorling, of the scandal-hit University of East Anglia’s school of environmental sciences, remained adamant that the weather should not be used as evidence against climate change.
But he added: “It’s no surprise that people look out of their window and find it hard to rationalise what’s going on with the longer term trend.”
But he said it was wrong to focus on cold snaps or heat waves but look instead at longer-term trends.
In that case why do they use 'Heatwaves' as a justification and confirmation of Global Warming? You can't have it both ways and only now they are saying you can't focus on heatwaves because they wanted to include and justify of saying you can't focus on cold snaps and the commet wouldn't have been viable or able to be used without the latter. Furthermore they got it wrong again and again and we are told you can't predict seasonal weather or indeed short term predictions aren't viable either, therefore if they can't predict short term how on earth can they predict the temperatures for next ten years? There! in a nutshell! You simply can't predict it and the carbon issue as we all know was simply used to invent another commodity to prop up failing economies through carbon trading and imposing stealth taxes around the world! (Ed)
The Met Office’s Barry Gromett said December and January’s cold weather was “within the bounds of variability” in a global trend of rising temperatures in which 2009 is set to be the fifth warmest year on record.
He added that while Siberia, the UK and parts of the US were very cold, other areas including Alaska, Canada and the Mediterranean were warmer than usual. But China faces its worst winter in 20 years, with temperatures down to -43C.
Mr Gromett added: “Climate change is likely to give us milder winters, but there’s always opportunities within that to have colder years.
“The temperature graph is a series of peaks and troughs and there’s a lot of variability within the trend.”
Labour insisted yesterday that last month’s shambolic Copenhagen climate summit had led to greater efforts to tackle global warming.
But shadow climate change secretary Greg Clark branded the conference a flop, only delivering an accord that was “an agreement to disagree”.
Christopher Booker, author of The Real Global Warming Disaster, said: “It is amazing how this scaremongering from climate change lobbyists keeps arising even though they are constantly being proved wrong.
“Last year there was snow in Saudia Arabia and still they persist in saying the temperature is going up.”
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The voice was familiar but I couldn't quite place it. "It's Mr Sunshine, Lincoln," the caller explained and the penny dropped.
Ernest Freed, man of many parts and a more accurate forecaster of Devon's weather than many of those experts in Exeter with all their new-fangled electronics.
It was the weather, as well as sundry other subjects, he wished to discuss. Ernest had just read my rather dismissive comment on global warming in last week's column and felt he would like to add his two pennyworth
"You are absolutely right, dear boy," he declared. "All this talk about global warming is absolute rubbish. They are trying to frighten us and there are some firms with a vested interest who are making a great deal of money out of it."
So does Ernest not believe the climate change warnings that are sending shivers of fear around the world from Alaska to Auckland and has inspired the brand new Transition religion with its main temple in Totnes?
"Yes I do believe in climate change," the Torbay sage went on. "But the climate has been changing on a regular pattern over the centuries with periods of warming and then cooling. It is nothing new."
So that's a relief. Thinking of golf prospects in the weeks ahead I asked whether the freezing conditions that disrupted our lives over Christmas are likely to return or can we rely on the experts' forecast of a warmer lead up to spring.
"I think the worst is over," was his prediction. And sure enough, one of his disciples arrived at that moment bearing a message of hope: Our postman in shorts — but walking very gingerly because the lane was a sheet of ice.
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(Shanta Barley, environment reporter)
The Times has withdrawn an advert that aimed to boost its environmental credentials after complaints to the UK Advertising Standards Agency.
The advert claimed "climate change has allowed the Northeast Passage to be used as a commercial shipping route for the first time," according to The Register.
The Northeast Passage - a trade route linking North European and Siberian ports to Asia in summer months - has been open since 1934, according to The Register, and was made available as a route for international traffic after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The Advertising Standards Agency received 29 complaints in response to The Times' claim.
"We contacted News International Ltd and they agreed proactively to withdraw the advert," said an ASA spokesperson.
Last year, The Times retracted another advert, which claimed that the world's oceans would be free of fish by 2048.
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Thousands of elderly patients in care homes are being put at risk by having feeding tubes fitted unnecessarily, doctors warn.
Care homes claim to be acting in patients’ interests when the real motive may be to cut costs and save on staff, according to research by the Royal College of Physicians.
It has issued guidelines urging doctors and nurses to view artificial feeding as a ‘last resort’ wherever it takes place.
Putting a tube into the patient’s stomach raises the likelihood of complications and reduces quality of life, often in the last months of life, the report warns.
Fears that patients with impaired swallowing may choke on food are often misplaced, and researchers suggest it may be worth taking the risk in order to improve the patient’s pleasure from eating normally.
A survey for the research found 39,000 Britons were artificially fed either at home or in residential care in 2007, and there was a rise of 11 per cent in the number recorded last year.
But around one in five such procedures were found to be ‘futile’ and to do nothing to prolong life.
Dr Rodney Burnham, who co-chaired the group that produced the guidelines, said increasing numbers of care homes were refusing to take patients not fitted with feeding tubes.
‘We come down very strongly on any blanket refusal on those grounds,’ he said.
‘They may cite patient safety but there could be a hidden agenda on grounds of staffing or costs.’
He was unable to say what proportion of homes imposed the rule, but added: ‘It is fairly widespread, because every hospital and every nutrition team you talk to will have had that experience.’
Procedures to fit a feeding tube in the stomach are invasive and risky, he added.
Death rates of patients given tubes were 6 per cent on average after 30 days and in some cases as high as 30 per cent. Nearly a third of patients suffered ill-effects.
Professor John Saunders, co-chairman of the report, said the practice was most questionable when patients could not give their consent, as in the case of dementia sufferers. Such intervention was ‘actively unethical and dubious’, he said.
It is estimated that two in five hospital in-patients in the UK are malnourished. Some critics blame shortages of nurses and lack of training, which mean patients do not get the help they need to eat and drink.
The report calls for a multi-disciplinary solution involving doctors and nurses working together with patients and their families.
It also recommends that hospitals and care homes ensure the provision of sufficient staff to assist and feed patients who may take a long time to eat a meal.
Farage: Closer to the Tories than you might have expected?
Given the previous history of links between UKIP & the Tories, this 'newswire.com' report has a ring of truth to it.
Consider: Lord Pearson has got into all sorts of trouble for admitting to talks with the Tories, and, some of you will undoubtedly recall that a while back there was the strange, 'coincidence', of Cameron and Farage, just happening to go on holiday in adjoining properties - at the same time! There are more links but these two suffice to make the point.
The question that will now tax Nigel Farage is who has been talking.
Cameron will undoubtedly be furious that his machinations have been exposed by a leak from UKIP. And both of them will want to know who it was who leaked the story to the Press? The dirty tricks Dept. at No.10? We'll probably never know!
NEWSWIRE TODAY - www.newswiretoday.com
GENERAL NEWS RELEASE - 4 January 2010
CONSERVATIVE LEADERSHIP IN SECRET DEAL TO OUST BERCOW
A highly ranked source on UKIP's NEC (UKIP's governing body) has
confirmed the existence of a deal between the Conservative
leadership and Nigel Farage, ex-leader of UKIP and currently the
UKIP leader in the European Parliament.
Apparently Farage is being secretly backed by the Tory
leadership, as a proxy, to oust John Bercow, Speaker of the
House.
John Bercow is very unpopular with the Conservative
Parliamentary Party for his expressed sympathies for
'New Labour'. His election to the office of Speaker was only
possible because of overwhelming support from the Parliamentary
Labour Party, calculated to embarrass the Conservative front
bench.
John Bercow's wife has also confirmed her ambition to represent
Labour in the Commons, which has caused further irritation
amongst Conservative MPs.
According to the UKIP NEC member: "If the wheeler-dealer Farage
is elected, Bercow will lose his seat. Farage will then resign
shortly afterwards, creating a by-election which the
Conservatives will win, thereby adding to their number in what
may be an extremely thin Conservative majority or possibly a
hung Parliament."
Under new rules, MPs are not permitted to serve in the European
Parliament. Farage would be loath to resign his European
Parliamentary seat and the generous salary, perks and allowances
he receives, and not least his co-leadership of one of the
groupings within the Parliament. He will therefore resign his
Westminster seat, repeating a claim he has often stated that
real power lies in the EU anyway.
The existence of such a deal is likely to cause disagreement
within UKIP. Already, UKIP’s new leader, Lord Pearson, has faced
considerable opposition from rank-and-file membership. This
follows the revelation of a deal where Pearson proposed to stand
UKIP down in the general election in return for a promise by the
Conservatives to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. The
Conservatives dismissed the approach, which will have been made
with Farage's knowledge.
This time, however, the Conservative leadership is particularly
keen to see the back of John Bercow.
According to sources in the local Conservative Constituency
Association in Buckingham, "Something untoward is going on
behind the scenes but if it is true Farage is involved, we
must appreciate that he is heavily tainted in his own expenses'
controversy involving £2m. He is not someone we would want to
represent Buckingham, deal or no deal."
Our source speculates that if Farage is elected in Buckingham
and then duly resigns, he will receive a Peerage a year or two
later. Under the new rules, Peers are permitted to sit in the
European Parliament.
(Henry Curteis)
If there is one thing that really frustrates me about UKIP, it is their lack of dedication to their own cause. Douglas Carswell MP Harwich (Conservative)is bringing a Private Members Bill to propose an IN/OUT referendum.
He has campaigned for this a while, but has now decided that as there is no referendum offered on Lisbon – what’s the point? – the situation requires a full IN/OUT decision to be taken by Britain. And he alone has the right and guts to bring a Bill into Parliament. Britain’s future hopes literally rest in one pair of hands at this moment.
You would think that any organisation whose aims are to withdraw from the EU, might therfore be fractionally interested in Carswell’s Bill. You would imagine that they would be very pleased with any MPs which come out and vote for it. You might even imagine they would stand down their hopeless quest for seats at Westminster, which blocks eurosceptics from Parliament at every election, in the seats of those MPs who support the referendum bill. After all, UKIP claims that this policy is their policy.
But what happens? Instead of support there is total silence on Carswell’s Bill from UKIP. There is no excitement that Carswell is acting in the role than no one else is doing. He has accepted that he will never be given a Front bench position, and he prefers to attack the corruption of the Political Class from the back benches. All eurosceptics should be riven with delight that we have a champion, that there is still one small voice at Westminster who believes what we all believe, that there is one person with enough balls to say no.
This non-reaction to help and support Carswell, reminds me of UKIP’s response to IDS in 2003. He made it Conservative Policy to prohibit the Euro permanently. He was moving towards a withdrawalist policy, and making important directional speeches such as his Prague Speech. He was preparing a new EP Parliamentary Grouping, with Owen Paterson visiting many countries to build the new alliance, and quit the EPP. But what was UKIP’s reaction to this eurosceptic spring? Again total silence.
I asked Nigel Farage, who, I occasionally spoke to at that time when I lived in the UK, and had written one or two leaflets for him in 2001, why he did not do more to help support IDS against the europhiles in the Conservative Party? He seemed only to want to find a way to get UKIP MPs into Westminster. I would not disloyally give away the terms on which he wished to trade (I also know Owen Paterson who was IDS’campaign manager and was negotiating the first attempt to leave the EPP in 2002-2003), but I found it surprising that he was not more excited that the Conservatives were finally trying to get its EU house in better order.
Moving forward to today’s situation, six years on from the IDS period, Nigel Farage is now, in effect, asking Conservative voters again, this time in Buckingham, to give him a chance in Westminster. He again wants to be a part of the game of attacking the Political Class, from the inside, not from out in the cold, from Brussels, where he’s been working away for ten long years and more.
UKIP has grown from a tiny party, in this time, under Farage’s leadership, and before he was leader, when he was always by far the best proponent of UKIP’s withdrawalist policy.
He has kept alive the hope of British Independence through the long years of Conservative ‘Ín Europe But Not Run By Europe’. In this, he has received endless support from the BBC, as they saw Farage as a way to keep Conservative votes divided. He has rarely been out of TV and radio studios for years on end promoting the eurosceptic cause, for which he deserves much credit.
How excellent it would be if Farage could now turn that exposure round against the system, which tried to use him to divide their opponents, and turn from an outsider blocking the Conservatives, into an insider who helps to fire up a new joint front on the EU. The public still do not understand the extent to which the EU runs and controls everything in Britan. Farage could do as well as anyone else, or better, in explaining how the EU has corrupted our system of government to its core. He would be a totally free voice, able to speak his mind in Parliament. The idea has its attractions.
But there is one problem.
Farage cannot ask Conservatives to back him, if he doesn’t in turn show some respect for, and cooperate with Conservative eurosceptics like Carswell who are equally courageous and fearless in their attacks on the EU, and who are already in Parliament.
If all Farage wants to do is to promote UKIP, he would be wasting our time. If his business is to do that as his primary objective, and not to get Britain out of the EU in whatever way it takes, he would be more trouble than he’s worth. If he is like Scott of the Antarctic who wants to conquer the Pole, seeing Carswell as an Amundsen, who might get there before him, he will possibly even be destructive of Britain’s interests if he gets to Westminster. There would have to be cooperation, and an acceptance of the realities of what was possible.
That is Farage’s problem. Is he really a patriot? Or is he just UKIP, a messy little party, riddled with corruption, with 20% of its MEPs already in jail, itself allied with other EU Parties to form the Federalist and Racist Freedom & Democracy Group in the EP? The question for Farage is how loyal is he really to the eurosceptic cause?
Has he himself accounted for all the substantial monies that have passed through his hands? We know what Farage is proposing, but has he slowed down his political activist mind, to think how, if he wins Buckingham, he’ll be in a very different situation to where he is now, which needs different strategies.
He has lived like an outsider in the EP, an attack dog living in the woods, fearlessly taking on all the slimy and corrupt deals and personnages in the EP, but at Westminster, in the end, he will only do any good if he can work with the Conservative eurosceptics.
JOHN BERCOW MP BUCKINGHAM AND SPEAKER
The test for me will be how UKIP react to Carswell’s Bill. If they ignore it, and they stand against good eurosceptic MPs who vote for an IN/OUT referendum, if I lived in Buckingham, I would not vote for UKIP and Farage.
But if UKIP demonstrate that they do understand that their role is not to compete with Conservative eurosceptics, but to work together to win Britain’s independence in whichever way that can be done, by not standing against referendum-backing MPs, and by supporting Carswell’s efforts, then they would be demonstrating good faith, and greater intelligence of the situation they and we face.
But this blanket 500 Constituency regardless of how many eurosceptics they block from Parliament has got to stop, if UKIP, Farage and Pearson want to be taken seriously.
We have one Carswell in Westminster as it is. There will soon in all probability, be many others like him. The bigger the landslide for Cameron, the more backbenchers Carswell could find to back his efforts.
UKIP need to decide, are they really in the game of power? Or are they a bit of theatre, used by the media to colour the scene?
The Carswell Test will tell you.
If I was Conservative and living in the Buckingham Constituency, I would demand loyalty to Carswell’s cause from Farage and UKIP, in the way I describe, before ratting on the Bercows, who seem a mixed blessing with all the ‘antics’.
But how are we to know? They seem surprisingly popular with the locals! And what if John Bercow seizes the chance of backing Carswell’s Bill as his best defence against Farage?
PICTURE AT TOP – Carswell on Newsnight, when he launched his motion in no confidence in Speaker Michael Martin. His campaign to get rid of Michael Martin, The Speaker, succeeded, to the surprise of the media and a highly sceptical Jeremy Paxman.
Farage’s attempt on Buckingham is only possible due to Carswell’s pushing out Martin, and the elevation of Bercow to Speaker. Maybe Farage’s progress in the seat will now turn on Carswell a second time.
AND FINALLY THE QUESTION OF CAMERON ?
The question is, are UKIP as serious about getting Britain out of the EU as Carswell is? If not, they should go and play elsewhere. Until and unless Cameron moves to block Carswell’s attempt to get an IN/OUT Referendum Bill enacted, UKIP should wake to this direct challenge to their credibility, or be ready to lose Buckingham and many more votes besides.
If, on the other hand, Cameron scotches Carswell, then none of what I write would apply. There’s much to play for. Would, though, Cameron dare to enrage his eurosceptic supporters a second time just months before a General Election? I’d be very surprised….. In the absence of intervention, it is Carswell who will be setting the agenda. The more Cameron does to block Carswell, the more he is opening the door to UKIP.
Whichever way this pans out, I don’t think it’s going to end up being dull!!
Reader Comment and Submitted Link. Thank You A...
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The Director of Public Prosecutions was accused of political bias yesterday.
In an unprecedented attack, the Tories said Keir Starmer should 'spend less time going around attacking opposition policies'.
The rebuke followed two high-profile incidents in which the head of the Crown Prosecution Service has denounced Tory ideas.
In one case, Mr Starmer declared that the party's plans to scrap the Human Rights Act would 'shame' Britain.
And last month he used a BBC interview to dismiss Conservative plans for laws to protect householders who defend themselves against burglars.
The Commons intervention by Shadow Justice Minister Henry Bellingham puts a shadow over Mr Starmer's future should the Tories win the coming election.
It is also believed to be the first in the 130 years since the creation of the office of DPP that the incumbent has run into charges of political one-sidedness.
Mr Bellingham said Mr Starmer should be devoting his attentions to the problems of organising proper prosecutions rather than to politics.
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Gordon Brown’s refusal to get to grips with Britain’s soaring debt is as bad as the failure to combat Nazi Germany before the Second World War, a former minister has said.
Labour’s Frank Field said his own government is living in ‘cloud cuckoo land’ and adding to the ‘illusion’ that all is well by printing money to buy up its own debt.
He warned that ‘massive’ spending cuts would be needed to bring the public finances back into balance – a course of action that has been resisted by the Prime Minister.
Mr Field said there were ‘chilling’ comparisons between Mr Brown’s approach to the debt, which is set to soar to £1.5 trillion and the appeasers of the 1930s who said there was no threat from Hitler.
‘There has been an unwillingness to get to grips with the size and extent of the debt, equivalent to those denials about the dangers of Nazi Germany,’ he said.
The former welfare minister made his extraordinary attack during a Commons debate last night on the government’s new fiscal responsibility bill.
Mr Field said the measure, which makes it legally binding for ministers to halve the size of the deficit within four years, would have little effect when city firms are threatening to downgrade the government’s credit rating.
He added: ‘I don't believe the voters of this country have any idea whatsoever about how serious the financial position of this country is or how massive the cuts will have to be to try and get back some semblance of order to our national accounts.’
Mr Field warned that Labour’s policy of quantitative easing – essentially printing money so that the government can buy it’s own debt in the form of bonds – could leave Britain without financial support when it comes to an end.
‘What we don't know is what the markets will do when there is no more funny money to use to buy that debt,’ he said.
‘The point of maximum danger will come when we aren't going to print any more money to buy our own debt.
Chancellor Alistair Darling argued that it would help put Britain on course to economic recovery, claiming Tory fiscal plans were a "terrible risk" to the economy.
He told the Commons: "What this bill does is to require the Government... to halve our borrowing over a four-year period.
"I believe that that is absolutely essential and I believe the measures I have set out will enable us to do that.
"It is important, though, that we do that in a way that supports the economy, that doesn't damage the economy."
Shadow chancellor George Osborne said the Fiscal Responsibility Bill was "complete nonsense" that had been dreamt up by Gordon Brown on the eve of last year's Labour Party Conference.
‘It must be the biggest load of nonsense that this Government has had the audacity to present to Parliament in this current session,’ he said.
For the Liberal Democrats, Jeremy Browne branded the Bill "pathetic and dangerous".
He said: "We shouldn't need a law to make the Government do its job."
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If we are on course to lose the election,
let's bankrupt the country for the next Government!
Fears that Gordon Brown has left Britain on the brink of bankruptcy intensified last night as investors withdrew from backing the Treasury’s soaring debt.
US-based investment group Pimco, one of the world’s leading bond houses, said it will sell its UK government gilts this year.
It will be a hammer blow to the Treasury’s attempt to raise up to £200billion of government borrowing amid the deficit crisis.
The embarrassment is all the more acute because the younger brother of Cabinet minister Ed Balls is overseeing the gilt sale.
As head of Pimco’s European investment team, Andrew Balls is spearheading the exit from investment in the Government.
The Tories seized on the announcement as evidence that Mr Brown’s soaring borrowing is threatening the UK with the worst debt crisis since the 1970s.
Shadow Chief Secretary Philip Hammond said: “This announcement by the world’s biggest bond house is a damning verdict on Gordon Brown’s handling of the economy and raises yet more questions about where the government is going to borrow the £178billion it needs over the next 12 months.
“To restore confidence to the bond markets, keep mortgages down and get the economy growing, Britain needs a credible plan to get the deficit down.
“Instead we have a Prime minister and Chancellor at loggerheads over tax and spending. We can’t go on like this.” Concern has been growing in the City and on international money markets at the unprecedented scale of the British government’s debt crisis.
The Treasury is on course to borrow £178billion this year and the national debt is tipped to reach a colossal £1.5trillion for the first time in our history.
Experts fear the debt will damage Britain’s international credit rating, leading to concerns that investors will simply not be prepared to risk putting money into shoring up the government.
It could mean the country effectively going bankrupt, with the Government being forced to plead for aid from the International Monetary Fund.
The move by Pimco was being seen as a massive vote of no confidence in the Government.
Paul McCulley, a managing director at Pimco, said: “We are currently cutting back in the US and UK because supply and demand dynamics are likely to be negatively affected as borrowing rises and central bank buying declines.”
The decision was described by Mike Amey, Pimco’s portfolio manager in London, as “a significant policy statement”.
“Those areas of the bond market that have had greatest support from central banks will be most vulnerable as that support comes to an end,” he said.
The role of Andrew Balls in Pimco’s decision to sell UK gilts is understood to have led to dismay in Whitehall, given his closeness to his brother Ed.
Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, is still a key figure in Labour’s election strategy team, with a role in defending the Government’s economic stewardship.
He is also Mr Brown’s former chief adviser at the Treasury.
Wednesday 6th January 2010
Government reluctance to help Kent County Council pay for bills caused by asylum seekers could mean an extra hike in council tax bills.
Tory-run County Hall wants to increase April’s bills by 1.86 per cent, but is currently budgeting for an additional 0.71 per cent hike for asylum costs.
KCC says the Government has yet to make it clear if Whitehall will cough up, and council leader Cllr Paul Carter is in direct discussions with Minister for Borders and Immigration Phil Woolas over the issue.
Cllr Carter said: “Asylum is a national issue and we believe it is morally right that these costs are met nationally and not by Kent.”
A decision is expected by February 18.
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More than £28million was spent on offering basic legal advice to asylum seekers last year.
The extraordinary legal aid payouts were made to solicitors acting for more than 46,000 people who began the asylum claims process - at a cost of more than £600 per case.
The final bill is likely to be far higher, according to Tory immigration spokesman Damian Green, who uncovered the figure.
The vast majority of asylum cases also involve a court appearance, which costs almost three times as much in lawyer’s fees as the initial consultation.
The Tories claimed the Government was not working fast enough to process asylum claims.
There are currently 4,857 asylum appeals outstanding, which Mr Green said was evidence of the slow processing in the asylum system.
Many cases also go on to judicial review, at a cost of £2,500 each to the taxpayer.
Mr Green said: 'There are still hundreds of thousands of asylum cases that have been hanging around for years.
'This involves a huge cost to the taxpayer, as well as being unfair to those involved. A quick, efficient system would be a real benefit, but Ministers have failed to deliver this despite twelve years of trying.'
Ministers have repeatedly promised to get a grip on the asylum system.
But, after a period in which the number of failed asylum seekers being removed from the UK was beginning to rise, performance is once again slipping.
In the third quarter of 2009, the most recent period for which figures are available, there was a fall of 18 per cent in removals to 2,870 people.
This is despite there being an estimated 285,000 failed asylum seekers living in Britain.
Critics say asylum performance has dipped because officials have been ordered to focus on deporting foreign criminals as their number one priority, rather than dealing with asylum cases.
The size of the legal aid bill will also add to the disquiet over the cost of Labour's shambolic handling of the asylum and immigration system.
Last week it emerged that taxpayers are spending £1million a week on legal fees on behalf of foreign nationals seeking permission to enter Britain.
The public is being saddled with the bill after the Government decided applicants for family visas should not be expected to pay their own appeal costs.
As a result, when people wanting to visit a relative in Britain are refused a visa by immigration officers, the cost of their £762 appeal is met by the Government.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: 'Legal aid is not automatically available to immigrants and asylum seekers.
'Each application is considered on an individual basis subject to their means and the merits of their case.
'The applicant must shoe they have reasonable grounds for taking part in legal proceedings and that it is reasonable for legal aid to be granted.'
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Immigration must be urgently curbed to stop the population hitting 70million and causing ‘serious harm’ to society, an alliance of leading public figures demanded yesterday.
The call to action comes in a report signed by a host of respected names, including former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, ex-Labour speaker Betty Boothroyd and former Tory Party chairman Michael Ancram.
The cross-party group wants manifesto commitments from Labour and the Conservatives to cut net migration to fewer than 40,000 a year – compared to the current rate of 163,000.
This is the reduction to net migration – the number of immigrants arriving in the UK, minus those leaving – needed to stop the population reaching 70million within the next two decades.
Other signatories to the report, headed ‘70million is too many’, include Lord Jordan, former president of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union, Tory MP Peter Bottomley, Labour MP Peter Kilfoyle and the economist Lord Skidelsky.
The document pulls no punches in its warning of the consequences for society if the population hits 70million by 2029, as Whitehall statisticians predict.
It says: ‘We are gravely concerned about the rapid increase in the population of England that is now forecast. We believe that immigration on such a scale will have a significant impact on our public services, our quality of life and on the nature of our society.’
The demand has been issued by the Cross-Party Group on Balanced Migration, chaired jointly by Labour MP Frank Field and Tory MP Nicholas Soames.
The group says it recognises a large reduction in net migration will be difficult to achieve but warns of the danger signals of increasing support for ‘extremist’ political parties.
Its document continues: ‘Over the last decade or so we have lost control of immigration. It will take several years to put this right.’
The group calls for a clear political decision to restore control over UK borders and to break the ‘almost automatic link’ between entering Britain and later being granted citizenship.
It states ‘We are convinced that failure to take action would be seriously damaging to the future harmony of our society. Nearly a million votes by our fellow citizen for an extremist party amount to a danger sign which must not be ignored.
‘For too long the major political parties have failed to address these issues and the intense, if largely private, concern that they generate throughout our country.
‘If politicians want to rebuild the public’s trust in the political system, they cannot continue to ignore this issue, which matters so much to so many people. The time has come for action.’
The Office for National Statistics suggests the population of the UK will increase from 61.4million in 2008 to hit the 70million mark by 2029.
Looking further ahead to 2034, the population is forecast to grow by 10million, with almost all of the increase in England. Of this rise, 7million will be due to immigration.
In a statement, Mr Field and Mr Soames said: ‘Poll after poll shows the public to be deeply concerned about immigration and its impact on our population.
'Yet, as we enter the General Election campaign, neither party has promised the British people
they will prevent our population hitting 70million.
‘It is time the parties turned their rhetoric into reality by making manifesto commitments.’
Last month, Home Secretary Alan Johnson said the public was being ‘terrorised by the spectre’ of the population hitting 70million.
The Home Secretary said the Office for National Statistics, which has repeatedly made the projection, had been proved wrong in the past.
But he added that, if the politically sensitive 70million barrier was reached, Britain would ‘cope’ as it is a ‘civilised’ nation.
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Almost 30,000 non-EU technology workers came to the UK last year, sent to work for their companies' subsidiaries here under intra-company transfers.
Most (70%) came from India, according to the Times.
Many of the new arrivals came for low and mid-level IT jobs, yet there are no significant skills shortages at these levels among British-born workers, prompting concern that British workers are losing out to "cheaper" foreign employees.
Ann Swain, chief executive of the Association of Professional Staffing Companies, said: "These figures show how easy it is for foreign companies to bypass the UK labour market."
She added: "Foreign companies are supposed to pay workers brought in on intra-company transfers UK market rates but you have to wonder whether there is some economic benefit to transferring Indian workers from a low-wage economy to Britain."
Phil Woolas, the immigration minister, defended intra-company transfers, saying that they make the UK an attractive place in which to do business.
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A wealthy asylum seeker who lived rent-free in a flat paid for by Camden council while earning £75,000 a year as a carpenter and builder was behind bars today.
Fahd El-Hajj, 34, was exposed as a benefit cheat only after moving home and carelessly leaving more than £10,000 in a drawer, where it was discovered by the next tenant - a policeman.
In total, El-Hajj pocketed £43,500 in a four-year swindle at the taxpayers' espense after moving to Britain from Palestine.
El-Hajj arrived in Britain in 1999 and in January 2004 made a bogus claim for housing benefit at his home in Shoot Up Hill, Camden, on the grounds that he had no money.
A month later he was refused asylum but failed to declare his position to the authorities because it would have meant losing the handouts.
The swindle went undetected until September 2007, when he moved out and a policeman became the new tenant.
The officer discovered £10,500 cash in brown envelopes stuffed inside a drawer which El-Hajj had completely forgotten about, Blackfriars Crown Court heard. It then emerged around £150,000 had passed through several of his bank accounts in just two years.
El-Hajj, of Camden, admitted five counts of false accounting and was remanded in custody before he is sentenced later this month by Judge Deva Pillay.
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Asylum Seekers, Immigrants and those who question their validity 2009-2010
Three months ago we discovered that for at least eight years New Labour operated a secret 'open-door' immigration policy - part of a deliberate strategy to change the ethnic make-up of Britain and 'rub the Right's noses in diversity'.
Now we learn that even potentially dangerous asylum seekers - such as Taliban fighters fleeing Afghanistan - were waved through by the Home Office with minimal checks to make sure this flow of migrants was not clogged up.
Their magnificent townhouse overlooks a courtyard and is in one of the most expensive areas of London.
It has four storeys, six bedrooms (some with balconies), three sitting rooms and four bathrooms - as well as a concierge service.
The property is worth a cool £1.8 million and would cost you or me nearly £1,600 a week to rent.
So who do you think lives here. Is it: (a) a banker; (b) an MP fiddling expenses; or (c) an unemployed former asylum seeker and her family?
The last answer is the correct one.
A Somali family are living in a luxury £1.8million five- storey house in central London funded by the taxpayer.
Nasra Warsame, 40, has lived with seven of her children and her elderly mother in the six-bedroom house since October.
Westminster council pays the £1,600-a-week rent for the former asylum seeker.
The fully-furnished house, within walking distance of the West End, has three sitting rooms and four bathrooms.
The main lounge has two leather sofas, a flat-screen television and a glass coffee table. Annual rent for the house would cost £83,200.
Nearly 400,000 homes have gone to tenants who were born abroad, the Government's equality watchdog has said.
One in ten state-subsidised homes is occupied by an immigrant family, according to the first estimate of the impact of immigration on social housing.
More than half of the immigrants who live in council or housing association houses and flats are in London, the report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission found.
Asylum seekers refused permission to live in the UK should continue to receive benefits to prevent them turning to crime, a report by former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith's think-tank said today.
The Government's 'nasty' policy of refusing to support failed asylum seekers in an effort to force them to return home has failed, Mr Duncan Smith said.
A failed asylum seeker who entered the country using a fake passport is suing the Government for £150,000 claiming his detention caused him depression.
Fridoon Sadiqi says he started having mental health problems, including post traumatic stress disorder, after he was held for three weeks while his case was investigated.
Sadiqi, who lives in a flat above a Chinese restaurant Canley, Coventry, started legal proceedings against the Government claiming they breached his human rights and damaged his health.
The number of migrants who have come to Britain since Labour came to power has almost doubled according to a Government report.
More than 700 migrants a day have been let in, bringing the total to around three million since 1997.
In the last eight years, Whitehall has estimated that figures have reached 2.3million.
Immigrants are registering with a GP for free healthcare at a rate of more than one every minute, it was revealed last night.
Analysis of NHS research shows that 605,000 people who arrived from overseas registered with a doctor in England and Wales last year - up by 50 per cent in only seven years.
Campaigners say this places a significant 'strain' on services and could force patients to wait longer for appointments and treatment.
The Home Office squandered £1million on a scheme to encourage failed asylum seekers to return home.
Just one Iranian family volunteered to leave the UK, while others refused to go of their own accord, even when offered cash bribes of £4,000 per person.
A damning report into the debacle yesterday said the Kent-based scheme was 'mismanaged from start to finish'.
The number of British passports given to migrants is set to hit a record 220,000 this year.
In the first three months of 2009, 54,615 citizenship applications were approved - up 57 per cent on the same period in 2008.
At that rate, the number receiving passports - and with them the right to full benefits - this year will smash the record of 164,540 set in 2007.
Migrants will win fast-track passports if they stand on picket lines or knock on doors asking people to vote Labour, it emerged last night.
The Home Office says trade union activism and political canvassing should count towards the planned new system of 'earned citizenship'.
Migrants who complete 50 hours of voluntary work will be entitled to receive British citizenship after six years - two years earlier than if they do nothing.
The number of babies born in England and Wales reached an all-time high last year.
There were more than 700,000 births, 100,000 more than when the birthrate hit its lowest in 2001.
The birthrate has been pushed up fast in recent years by immigration. Last year nearly a quarter of all babies in England in Wales were born to mothers who were themselves born abroad.
Tens of thousands of immigrants have been allowed to register the same January 1 birthday on official Government records, it emerged last night.
They include at least 3,250 asylum seekers who told officials they did not know when they were born.
Some asylum seekers destroy their papers and claim to be younger than they actually are, in order to increase their chances of remaining in the UK.
Even failed claimants are not normally deported until they reach 18, if they arrived here alone.
Also, judges do not recommend foreign criminals for deportation if they were still minors when their offences were committed.
Labour allowed a ‘free-for-all’ on immigration during its first years in power, a Cabinet minister has admitted.
Large numbers of economic migrants were let into the country claiming they were asylum seekers, Communities Secretary Hazel Blears said.
It was the first confession from a senior Labour figure that Britain’s liberal asylum laws were abused after Tony Blair came to power.
The proportion of people living in Britain who were born overseas is more than three times the international average, it emerged last night.
Eleven per cent of British residents were born abroad, against the global figure of 3 per cent.
The campaign group Migrationwatch UK said the findings dispelled the Government's 'misleading' claims that very high levels of immigration to Britain had been consistent with world trends.
More than a million Muslims have migrated to Britain because it is more sympathetic towards Islam than other European countries, a study has found.
Latent Islamophobia in Europe means that many of those who move to the continent eventually end up in Britain, because it is seen as more tolerant.
There are now some 1.1million Muslim immigrants in the UK, according to the report by IPPR, the Blairite think tank. It means around 46 per cent of Britain's 2.4million-strong Muslim population were not born in this country.
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.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw two other figures rushing out of the bushes so I put the car into gear and my foot down hard on the accelerator,' he says. The first missile shattered the rear windscreen.
The second obliterated a back window on the driver's side, showering 26-year-old Will with shards of glass. A third left a huge dent in the bodywork of the car.
'An occupational hazard' is how he later calmly described being ambushed. Nevertheless, he could have been badly injured or even killed.
The Government's announcement yesterday that they are handing councils new powers to give local people priority on the waiting list for social housing is a clear admission that they have been misleading us over the huge impact of immigration on housing.
For years, they have been in total denial, refusing even to discuss how immigration has affected the supply of housing.
Now, at last, they have acknowledged that this is an issue which must be tackled. Supply of social housing has fallen far behind the demand for it because waiting lists have grown by over 60 per cent in just six years.
It may have been one of the least plausible attempts to avoid deportation - but it worked.
An illegal immigrant was allowed to stay in Britain because he had a cat, it was revealed yesterday.
The unnamed Bolivian was spared deportation after he told a court that he and his girlfriend had bought the animal as a pet.
Immigration judges ruled that sending him back home would breach his human rights by interfering with his family life.
More than 250 primary schools will have to be built over the next four years to provide places for the children of migrants, an MPs' pressure group said yesterday.
It said the schools will be needed for 67,000 children who have a foreign-born parent and the cost to taxpayers will be around £1billion.
The bill for the schools is just one element of the impact on taxpayers and families of 'uncontrolled immigration', the Cross Party Group on Balanced Migration said.
An immigrant baby boom is fuelling Britain's fastest population growth in half a century.
The number of people in the UK has passed 61million for the first time, figures showed yesterday.
Record immigration levels over the past decade have driven up the number of women of childbearing age.
An illegal immigrant is on the run after smuggling himself into Britain underneath a coach full of Border Agency officers returning from France.
The immigration officers - whose job is to stop illegal immigrants entering the country - were oblivious to the stowaway hiding between the fuel tank and the chassis of the coach bringing them through the Channel Tunnel until they arrived at their depot in Folkestone.
More than seven out of ten jobs created under the Labour Government have been taken by foreign-born workers, experts revealed last night.
The percentage of new jobs taken by those born overseas is the highest of any of the major economies analysed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
The Mail decided to investigate the identities of workers at the £9.3 billion Olympic venue after a flurry of letters, emails and phone calls from local people claimed that they were not being hired, despite the numerous goverment promises about 'job creation' for Londoners during the Olympic bid.
Only last week, Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell boasted about the Games 'helping the economy towards recovery by providing billions of pounds of contracts, jobs and skills. These benefits are real - I see evidence of them every day.'
Ministers were criticised last night for lavishing almost £8million on 'spin' to promote the controversial UK Border Agency while dramatically under-counting the number of migrant workers.
A study revealed that the Government's worker registration scheme may be underestimating the number of Eastern Europeans taking jobs here by a third.
The Home Office says there are 760,935 migrant workers registered but the University of Salford said there may be a further 253,645 not officially recognised.
Labour MPs are raging at the independent Office of National Statistics for having the temerity to reveal some uncomfortable truths about foreign workers.
In a sober release, which made no political comment whatsoever, the ONS yesterday pointed out the total number of non-UK born workers increased by 214,000 - to 3.8 million - in the year to December.
At the same time the number of UK-born workers in employment fell by 278,000 to 25.6 million, as the country slid into recession.
An Iraqi asylum seeker boasted yesterday of the ease with which his family were smuggled into the UK - thanks to a Calais border guard who, it was claimed, turned a blind eye to them.
Faradh Maruj, 28, said he had paid a people-smuggling gang the $800 (£530) 'family rate' in cash to travel across the Channel in a Dutch-registered lorry with wife Bahan, 24, and their two young sons.
A judge has attacked the Government's record on deporting foreign criminals, telling of his frustration at seeing them still walking the streets.
Judge Peter Jacobs said he repeatedly recommended immigrants for deportation - only to walk past them in the city where he works a few months later.
The broadside by the resident judge at Norwich Crown Court will pile more pressure on Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.
A senior judge faces the sack after saying that 'hundreds of thousands of immigrants' come to Britain to receive generous welfare payments.
Judge Ian Trigger was told yesterday that a disciplinary inquiry is to look at whether his criticisms of the links between crime, large-scale immigration and the welfare system were 'too political'.
The 65-year-old Crown Court judge, who has also served on immigration tribunals for just over a decade, made his remarks as he jailed an illegal immigrant and drug runner last month.
Just half a mile from the ferry terminal in Calais, a UK-bound lorry driver at the weekend makes the mistake of slowing down to a crawl on the A26 Autoroute des Anglais dual carriageway.
At a signal from their fixers, around 100 illegal migrants arise from the wooded verge where they have been concealed and try to swarm aboard the vehicle, and others behind, desperate to find somewhere inside or underneath they could stow away to reach the UK.
Britain's ‘enormous’ state handouts to asylum seekers were furiously criticised yesterday – by the Mayor of Calais.
Natacha Bouchart said these payouts were the lure for thousands of foreigners using the French port as a staging point to cross the Channel illegally.
She said the UK government’s policy was ‘imposing’ migrants on the town, costing the local economy millions.
Eighty foreign killers are exploiting the chaotic asylum system to set up home in Britain, it was revealed yesterday.
The convicted murderers from Albania have been given British passports despite being officially listed as 'wanted' by Interpol.
Most slipped across the Channel from Calais to Dover hidden in the back of lorries on ferries. They used bogus names and false papers to claim asylum, often pretending to be from the war-torn Balkan republic of Kosovo.
Four in ten of the convicts involved in the foreign prisoners scandal have been told they can stay in Britain for good, it emerged yesterday.
MPs were also told that only 333 of the original 1,000 criminals mistakenly released without being considered for deportation have actually been booted out.
To add to the farce, 90 of them have still not been traced - 30 months after the scandal cost then Home Secretary Charles Clarke his job.
A failed asylum seeker who has spent five years on the run to escape deportation was allowed to walk free from court after immigration officials couldn't be bothered to collect him from custody.
The 36-year-old Chinese national escaped with a conditional discharge for selling illegal DVDs and no one - including his own lawyer - expected him to turn up for the appointment. He has not been seen since.
A man who raped a frail mother of three while HIV positive is trying to escape deportation.
Linkoy Muhuri, a failed asylum seeker from the Congo, claims he faces dangers in his own country because of his medical condition and his ethnicity.
One in every five murders or manslaughters in England and Wales is committed by a foreigner, police figures revealed yesterday.
In one area of London, the figure is one in three. This is despite the fact that foreigners represent only around one in 16 of the general population.
The statistics are so alarming that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith will hold a migrant crime summit on Thursday amid worries that police are struggling to cope.
One in six rapes in Britain were carried out by foreigners last year, police figures have revealed.
Migrant workers and illegal immigrants were responsible for up to a third of all sex attacks in some areas.
Greater London was worst affected, with foreigners charged in connection with a third of rapes.
The figures were revealed following a Freedom of Information request by the Daily Express.
Only 35 of the 7,000 illegal migrants caught up in the Home Office security guard vetting scandal have been deported, it emerged last night.
The revelation is a blow to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith who promised to take tough action against those wrongly cleared to guard some of the country's most important government buildings.
She announced 15 months ago that up to 10,000 illegals had been cleared to work as security guards. Some 3,000 later established their right to work here, reducing the total to 7,075.
But yesterday it emerged that only 13 have been prosecuted for criminal offences, despite 3,275 of those cleared to work by the Security Industry Authority using a false name, or giving other false details, according to figures.
Many asylum seekers are economic migrants encouraged by lawyers and charities to 'play' the system with false claims, the Immigration Minister has said.
Genuine claims are 'fogged by cases that are misusing the law'. There are those who manage to claim asylum after several appeals, who had 'no right to be in this country',
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The pseudo-science of man-made global warming has received another blow — and we’re not just talking about the brutal cold gripping not only Britain but all of Europe, North America and China.
A newly released study from the University of Bristol by Wolfgang Knorr proves that the airborne fraction of man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) has not increased during the past 160 years.
Mr Knorr, based at the Department of Earth Sciences at his university, analysed atmospheric CO2 and emissions data gathered since 1850 and has shown that “the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has been 0.7 ± 1.4 percent per decade, i.e. close to and not significantly different from zero.”
In other words, the data shows that there has been no increase in atmospheric CO2 volume for the past 160 years — flying in the face of the climate change fanatics who claim the direct opposite.
According to the study, only 40 to 45 percent of emitted CO2 stays in the atmosphere.
Climate models currently assume that the airborne fraction of CO2 is increasing and will continue to do so, which is a key part of their long-term predictions.
The research, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, is the latest revelation that will further weaken public confidence in the political elite which uses the alarmism of the climatology cult as an excuse to impose massive tax hikes and interference with individual freedom on the citizens of the Western world.
What has already started with dangerous mercury light bulbs and a 15 percent increase on all our electricity bills to pay for the blighting of our landscape with inefficient wind factories, is set to become a crippling tax burden on consumers and to complete the deindustrialisation of the UK.
This is not an accident, it is intentional — and David Cameron’s Tories are as guilty of collaboration with this appalling scheme as the Labour government.
The abstract of Mr Korr’s paper, titled “Is the airborne fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions increasing?” can be found by clicking here. The complete article may also be purchased there for $9.
The abstract reads as follows:
“Several recent studies have highlighted the possibility that the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems have started losing part of their ability to sequester a large proportion of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
This is an important claim, because so far only about 40% of those emissions have stayed in the atmosphere, which has prevented additional climate change.
This study re-examines the available atmospheric CO2 and emissions data including their uncertainties. It is shown that with those uncertainties, the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, i.e. close to and not significantly different from zero.
The analysis further shows that the statistical model of a constant airborne fraction agrees best with the available data if emissions from land use change are scaled down to 82% or less of their original estimates. Despite the predictions of coupled climate-carbon cycle models, no trend in the airborne fraction can be found.
Received 18 August 2009; accepted 23 September 2009; published 7 November 2009. Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L21710, doi:10.1029/2009GL040613.”
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Labour's claim that Britain is benefiting from Government support for “green” jobs was exposed as a myth by industry yesterday.
The Engineering Employers Federation said over 90 per cent of the £2billion earmarked for the world’s biggest wind farm – the London Array, off Kent – is being spent overseas.
One investor, German power company E.ON, said only £180million is being spent here because there are no suitable suppliers.
Gareth Stace, from EEF, said: “In Germany you get government sitting down with business and saying this is what the targets are for renewable energy and what do you need.”
Chancellor Alistair Darling said 500,000 jobs would be created in a “green jobs revolution”.
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Taxpayers are being forced to contribute millions of pounds to job-creation schemes in Yemen in an attempt to counter a surge of Muslim terrorist activity.
The Government is to hike overseas aid to the Arabian republic by almost 50 per cent to £37million next year amid fears it is becoming a haven for Al Qaeda militants.
Most of the cash will be pumped into new roads, reservoirs and dams with the aim of providing jobs for around 300,000 jobless Yemenis.
Increased aid is understood to be part of a new blitz by Britain, the US and other Western nations.
But the move has sparked anger about Treasury cash being lavished on work-creation schemes abroad while dole queues grow in Britain.
Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “British taxpayers already spend huge amounts on aid. Frankly this extra money is needed at home.
“It may be a well-intentioned proposal, but with huge numbers of people losing their jobs in Britain we should not be spending a fortune trying to solve Yemeni unemployment. When people pay tax they are told it is to protect them if they fall on hard times. We are in those hard times now and our Government’s priority should be helping British people get back on their feet.”
Britain gave £25million to aid projects in the country on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsular last year, but the figure could rise to £40million in 2011-12. More than £120million of British taxpayers’ money is due to go to the war-ravaged nation in the next four years.
Some officials claim boosting economic development and tack- ling poverty is the key to combating the growth of terrorist sympathies in the Yemen, where failed Christmas Day airline bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is thought to have been trained. Unemployment in the country is estimated at around 35 per cent of the working- age population and rising. Yemen is also facing a growing economic crisis as the country’s oil is expected to run out by 2018. And it is suffering from an acute water shortage.
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Labour's efforts to tackle crime came under fire yesterday as it emerged that two-thirds of Britons are kept awake at night by the fear of being burgled.
Householders lose sleep over the risk of break-ins, vandalism, flooding and their homes burning down, according to a report which shows millions are frightened of being a victim of crime.
Research for the HalifaxHome Insurance also found that the countryside no longer has a crime-free, peaceful image.
Roy Rudham, chairman of the UK Neighbourhood Watch Trust, said: “It comes down to Government policies. We appear to be seeing an increase in the sorts of crimes that were normally attributed to the city and urban areas. That needs to be reflected in police resources. Whilst I’m not knocking the police community support officers, they need to be full police officers.”
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling called for policing to be given a shake-up to improve public confidence. He said: “All of this just underlines how over-stretched some of our smaller police forces are. And how important it is to get rid of as much of the bureaucracy that ties them to their desks as possible."
“It also shows that the social challenges we face aren’t just limited to urban Britain. We desperately need a fresh approach to dealing with these problems.”
According to the report, one in two people said they would feel unsafe walking along a country lane after dark. Two-thirds of 16 to 19-year-olds admitted they were frightened of being in the countryside at night.
One in five of those living in urban areas said t