• The deportation of Zimbabwean asylum seekers to their homelands has been halted. Fears for their safety under the regime of Robert Mugabe had led to protests from various groups and now Blair has called a halt - until after the G8 meeting. According to The Times today:

    Human rights groups described the policy shift as a cynical ploy to avoid embarrassing Tony Blair during the meeting.

    Ministers are also anxious to see an end to the hunger strike by Zimbabwean detainees as they do not want Britain’s treatment of refugees to dominate the summit agenda.

  • Also in The Times, another sickening example of the violence that blights the lives of ordinary people. A man is kicked to death outside a restaurant by teenagers as young as 14 years old. Four have been arrested. If they’re guilty will they be punished appropriately? Or will we hear the usual tripe about their young age, their poor backgrounds, the failure of schools/social workers/ police/society etc etc to prevent such things happening in the first place?
  • Amidst the madness, Mayor Ken Livingstone, advises not to flush the loo if we only pee - to save water. As usual, the south-east is running short of good ol’ H2O. Let’s get out of the EU, encourage some business to relocate to the north with attractive tax breaks, move government departments to unemployment blackspots out of the south-east area and so ease the pressure of an ever increasing demand for resources in this part of the world. Anything - but don’t tell me not to flush my loo. It’s disgusting.

  • Our authoritarian rulers moved a step further with their ID cards project. The Guardian reports:

    The government’s Commons majority was more than halved to 31 last night when leftwing MPs joined Tories, Liberal Democrats and other critics of Charles Clarke’s ID card bill to make clear that they want it radically improved - or dropped.

    There were 40 abstentions in the vote. If they had voted - and voted wisely - they would have been able to throw this thing out. Now it will get its second reading.

  • A wonderful piece of clarity in the lefty Guardian’s coverage of a 22 year old millionaire (he won it on the lottery) who has just been given an ASBO for the latest in a long string of offences - all committed while he was a millionaire. The Guardian has finally woken up to the fact that “the 22-year-old was proof that money does not change anything.” Really? So will you stop screaming ‘Poverty!’ every time some ne’er-do-well mugs an old lady, steals a kid’s mobile phone or drives off in someone else’s car? I doubt it.

    Anyway, his latest escapades are described in the paper thus:

    His offence was to cruise through Downham Market in a black jeep lit by blue neon lights taking pot shots at cars and shops with a ball-bearing loaded catapult. When he was arrested, Carroll admitted he had done the same thing on 29 other occasions, and wrote “sorry” on his police form. He was given 240 hours’ community service yesterday, ordered to pay £3,628.97 compensation and put on his first Asbo.

    His lawyer admitted he was lucky not to be sent to prison. Many others might think it’s not luck at all. Rather it’s just another example of Blair’s ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ being the empty sham that we all knew it would be.

    On Saturday 56 year old Terry Barrett was beaten to death by yobs he’d confronted after they’d thrown eggs at his house. And the week before (June 18) Peter Wareing, a 42 year old barrister, was beaten senseless by a gang of youths and has been in a coma for the last 10 days.

    The truth is, the yobs and criminals rule our streets, not the police. One day this might change but that day won’t be soon. In the meantime, we live in fear and god help you if you should tackle one of these yobs. If they don’t do for you you’ll probably be arrested for infringing his civil rights.

  • Apparently Saddam is going to sue us. So says The Guardian. But not for the war that has ravaged his country. Nor for the lies we were told in order to get us into the damned thing. But for The Sun’s pictures of him in his underpants.

    Granted, the pictures weren’t exactly flattering but what does the ex-dictator and all-round monster want? A spread in ‘Hello’ magazine? And exactly how does he intend to spend the money? Hasn’t he got other things to think about? Like a possible death sentence?

  • Last - and by no means least - the British Navy’s out-standing victory at Trafalgar was celebrated yesterday. According to the BBC:

    Thousands of spectators braved wet weather to watch a Battle of Trafalgar re-enactment off Portsmouth - the climax of bicentenary celebrations. Fusillades of gunfire, blasts from cannons and fireworks helped mark the 1805 victory over France and Spain.

    Earlier the Queen conducted a massive international fleet review.

    As any history buff will tell you, this was an historic battle between the blues and the reds and the blues won. Or, if he isn’t politically correct, he’ll tell you it was a battle fought by Britain against the expansionist French and their Spanish allies and we won one of our most decisive victories ever.

    Out-numbered 33 to 27 the British lost no ships, the enemy were left with just 16. Lord Nelson’s strategic brilliance and the unflinching courage of his captains and their crews inaugurated the beginning of Britain’s century of supremacy, an age when the Royal Navy dominated the seas. Our Navy has never been as large as it was then. Indeed, it is now smaller than it has ever been since the middle of the 18th century.

    Let’s hope we don’t need a navy in the near future…