Gary Monro’s blog

One of the occasional commenters on this blog has several times alluded to - but not explained - a government conspiracy behind the recent bombings/attempted bombings in London. I invited him to submit an article to me by email which I would then post in this blog. He has done that; I am now posting it.

I have read the article once and make the usual disclaimers about the views stated by the writer may not be shared by those of the writer of this blog. It is reprinted here in its entirety with no alterations to the text of any kind. In order to make his url references clickable I have created the keyword ‘Reference’ which will take you to the site the author suggests you might like to view.

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7/7 London …. Islamic Terror or Manufactured Nightmares?
by Christopher Brooks
29th July 2005

Are we really certain the “Muslim conspiracy theory” fits the facts and political realities?

If we believe the popular press reports and statements attributed to those charged with investigating the London Bombing event, the four Muslim men are already proven guilty as suicide bombers. Case closed.
Or is that just the perception intended though in fact when a serious analysis of all the claims, retractions and
suggestion are eliminated the case really has not been presented at all. The options are still wide open.

Could there be other possible explanations that could equally fit or better account for the facts and known character and background of these Muslim men? Their families and friends expressed utter shock and disbelief that these boys could have been responsible for the bombing as alleged. Is it impossible that the men are innocent?
It is not possible that these men and their families and communities are the greatest victims of this crime? Readers, I plead with you to give some rational consideration to this possibility.

There is not the slightest hint of motive intent or ambition towards carrying out such a brutal criminal act in the lives and character of these young men. In fact their prospects were good and two had young families or expectant wives. I say this with the expectation that readers are intelligent enough to discard the habitual mischievous slanting of the mundane and ordinary as suspicious and radical. It would not be the slightest surprise to discover that these men had spoken in anger against the conduct of the UK and the US military in Iraq or even elsewhere. I do so myself. I believe it to be justified. It is hardly evidence of a murderous intent or unstable mind though of course clever phrasing and dishonest journalism can twist anything.
What other explanations might there be? Reference.

As I write this article the “bomb” pictures are released to the media suggesting 16 bombs were found in a car hired to these young men and left in a railway station car park. The variety of exhibits reminds me of a terror bomb exhibition. Is this evidence real or staged? Why would the suicide bombers go off to their death leaving an exhibition for the media in their car? If the young men are mere characters in a drama of another’s design then this exhibit makes a lot more sense. What might be revealed in a court of law about this “evidence”?

The innocent Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes killed in cold blood was maligned by claims that he ran from the “police” foolishly leaping over barriers wearing suspicious attire and “feeling” guilty about a visa problem.
Further information questions this whole apologetic script that now leaves many questions unanswered.
Reference.

The traumatised public have certainly had a familiar seductive scenario painted by a stream of “information” that often was contradicted the following day only to be once again contradicted the next day.
Speculative suggestion relying more on imagination and stereotyping seemed to be the order of the day.
Consider what may have been the judgement of our Egyptian biochemist if he had not been alive to defend his innocence. We were told his flat contained dangerous chemical explosive material. He was headlined as a
“master” bomb maker. Very fortunately he was alive and is now declared unconnected to the crime.
What about his “explosive material”. Could this have possibly been innocent elements in hair spray or tooth paste? Is this the standard of justice the dead men are receiving? Have we been possibly deceived with
ambiguous interpretations to fit the “official” theme.

We now live in an age where confronting the propaganda lies of Governments and demanding that our historical standards of proof and judicial process be upheld has become a revolutionary act. Dr Mohammed Naseem suggests that we may need to question what we are being presented. Reference.

He questions the reality and nature of Al Qaeda. British MP Robin Cook also drew attention to this question recently. Reference. Why do many continue to pretend Al Qaeda is real?

(more…)

Police have caught what they believe to be all four bomb suspects from the July 21 attempt.

One was caught in Birmingham on Wednesday.

Two were caught yesterday in London. They were Muktar Said Ibrahim (pictured) who is suspected of trying to bomb the 26 bus and Ramzi Mohammed who tried to bomb at train at Oval.

One was caught by Italian police in Rome yesterday. He was Osman Hussain suspected in the Shepherd’s Bush train bombing.

And a possible 5th bomber - not caught on CCTV so far as we know - is being questioned also.

Hats off to the police, the intelligence chaps and all the security - and otherwise - men and women (including hospital and medical people) involved in the ongoing operation against terror.

Ongoing is the word though and police stress that this business is very far from over. The master-minds behind this operation are still at large. It can be hoped that those arrested will provide the information necessary to capture the planners and suppliers behind the eight - or possibly nine - bomb attempts. One can also hope that, if further attacks are planned, that the police will be able to thwart them before they take place.

Apparently, one of the two nabbed yesterday in west London was heard to inform the police, in a statement that more or less sums up all that is rotten in British society, ‘I have rights.’

Well, thanks to the United Nations and the European Union this is indeed true. And our craven politicians - and, in Blair’s case our craven politicians and their wives - will be sure to make a pretty penny out of enforcing those rights.

Very busy today - Real Life intrudes once more. Apologies in advance for scrappy writing in today’s ramblings (whaddya mean, you can’t tell the difference?)

The IRA, who murdered our people for decades, wring more concessions from the British government. They promise - it seems - not to kill or maim us so we (because we are, after all, dealing with nice, decent terrorists people) accept the quid pro quo implied in the IRA’s generous offer and dismantle some of our defences.

The Army has begun dismantling a number of security posts and bases in south Armagh following the IRA’s statement saying it had ended its armed campaign.

I’ll plead a certain amount of ignorance in the Northern Ireland business (I usually try to hide my ignorance but it might not be possible here) but I always assumed that when a society was being held to ransom by a violent minority the one thing that society could not afford to do - for practical reasons as well as reasons of principal - is lower itself to such an extent that it felt it could deal with the terrorists as if they were qualitatively the same as us.

While I am not oblivious to the fact that, by now, dozens of innocent lives have not been lost due to the ‘peace process’ - and that is wholly a good thing - I feel we have supped with the devil to achieve it and that however much we crave the ends the means have left us as being less than we were before.

Of course, led - if that’s the right word - by a government who long ago jettisoned any meaningful concept of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ (it’s ‘right’ if it secures votes, ‘wrong’ if it doesn’t is possibly their best definition) I guess all sorts of peculiar thinking is possible. Quoting from the BBC article, Sinn Fein’s Newry and Armagh MP Conor Murphy:

“The demilitarisation of communities is an important element in consolidating the progress already made and ensuring that we build a new future free from conflict and division.”

I find myself experiencing one of those moments when words really do fail me. There was peace before the IRA (Sinn Fein’s armed department) started killing in earnest and there’s (relative - but not actual) peace now. The ‘militarisation’ of Northern Ireland was a necessary consequence of IRA terror. Yet this quote suggests the terror was a response to the ‘militarisation’ and that the terror has achieved the ‘demilitarisation’ he speaks of. What curdles the blood is that this interpretation of events will go unchallenged by large sections of the liberal news media and our politicians.

In fact, accepting some responsibility for IRA terror (or, if not explicitly accepting it then passively allowing the accusations to go unchallenged - a de facto acceptance) creates the very environment the government needs to capitulate to IRA demands. When the IRA ‘gives’ a little (ie offers to stop creating widows or orphans) the government can release some of its widow-makers as if this is a fair deal.

I’ll leave the last words to Unionists:

The DUP’s Arlene Foster said it was “criminally irresponsible”.

“It’s startling that when the IRA give a statement saying they will stop what they should never have been doing, that the government acts so soon,” she said.

The UUP’s Danny Kennedy said it was outrageous that the government had “foolishly decided to act on IRA words alone”.

Indeed. The indecent haste with which the government rushes to offer those nice chaps in the IRA a reward for being so jolly nice means that, in fact, it’s we who are dancing to the IRA’s tune rather than the other way round. They keep their weapons until they no longer wish to keep their weapons. And when they give up the weapons they no longer want, hey presto, they get a reward.

The world is an upside down place.

The BBC warns that this email that’s doing the rounds is a hoax:

Important Number you should note 25/Jul/05 09:24 If you travel to work on the tube please note the following information: If your mobile phone has no signal (so even if you were in a tunnel) if you dial 112 it diverts to a satellite signal and puts you through to the 999 call centre. ALL phone companies have signed up and as it is a satellite service it also gives them a trace to you if you don’t know where you are.

Unless you have a signal on your mobile phone you can’t call anybody or anything. So if you receive this mail direct it to your nearest trash folder…

England and Wales abortion figures are out. The government’s PDF file is here.

Abortion rises yet again and the terminators of our unborn are getting younger. In 2004 we aborted 185, 415 babies for residents of England and Wales plus another 8764 for non-residents (many from Northern Ireland).

Predictably, young women between the ages of 19 and 24 were the main users of abortion operations but the under-age are getting into the habit in increasing amounts. Over a thousand under-age girls had illegal sex and then abortions in 2004. 157 of them were under 14 which is grotesque and tragic. 877 were actually 14.

I’m looking for the statistics on the conviction rates for the fathers of their children - I’m not hopeful of finding them. Interestingly the government’s statistics refer to the under-15s as ‘women’ when we know, in fact, that they are merely ‘girls’. But then this is the same government that allows the under-age to have abortions without having to tell their own parents.

At least 46,000 - but possibly many more - were single females with no partner.

The 20-34 age group terminated most babies - maybe children just aren’t good for one’s career?

Previously, the abortion rate peaked in 1990 then stabilised at a little below that peak until 1998 when it rose again and has steadily rose to the 2004 level. As the government’s statistics say,

“The rate for 2004 is the highest ever recorded.”

The state is increasingly becoming the terminator of choice. The level of privately funded abortion has steadily decreased from about 30% of abortions in 1995 to about 16% of all abortions in 2004.

While the circumstances leading to abortion are tragic and result in life-long guilt for many women for others abortion is becoming just another contraception method. One-third (32%) of women having abortions in 2004 had had at least one abortion previously. In numbers that’s more than 58,000 women who were having another abortion.

When wondering at how this escalating trend in termination is coming about it is instructive to look at what some of the organisations that deal first hand with abortion have to say. I quote this from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service - which advertises itself as Britain’s leading abortion provider:

On the under-age, illegal sex that leads to unwanted pregnancy and abortion - a trail of misery and tragedy for the poor girl concerned one might think - the BPAS grandly asserts,

The under-16 abortion rate was 3.7 compared with 3.9 in 2003. bpas comments that this steady abortion rate indicates that teenagers are being made aware of the choices that are open to them and reflects well on a teenage strategy that accepts that some young people are sexually active and therefore equipping them with the knowledge to make safe informed decisions.

Are you kidding me? Abortion occurs because you haven’t made ’safe informed decisions’. Abortion is the tragic end to a dreadful mistake, one that may very well emotionally - and physically - haunt the young girl for the rest of her life. And, for the BPAS’s information, teenage girls themselves admit in large numbers that they mostly regret their early sexual experience, are sometimes coerced into it and are often under the influence of alcohol.

bpas Chief Executive Ann Furedi, said: “Women today want to plan their families and, when contraception fails, they are prepared to use abortion to get back in control of their lives. Motherhood is just one among many options open to women and it is not surprising that younger women want to prioritise other things. We should stop seeing abortion as a problem and start seeing it as a legitimate and sensible solution to the problem of unwanted pregnancy.

Ah, child terminating as a means of taking ‘control of their lives’. Nice. And why ’should’ we stop seeing termination as a problem? Why not, for instance, suggest that its a pretty horrible business and that maybe - steady yourself, Ms Furedi because this is going to hurt - we should only have sex with people we’re reasonably confident we’re prepared to raise children with? And if the baby decides to make an earlier appearance than we would have liked then perhaps we should make a career sacrifice in exchange for the baby’s life?

I am actually not rabidly anti-abortion but the misery associated with the operation and the loss of young life make it, to me, a dreadful business. The trumpeting of the abortionists simply adds a layer of horror to the whole awful process.

Student Life Net takes a different view on industrial scale termination:

‘Whilst we are pleased that the under-18 abortion rate has dropped slightly we are astonished that the overall abortion figures have increased yet again to a staggering total of 195,000. Alarmingly, the number of under-14 abortions have also increased by 6%. This is a very vulnerable group of young girls and we are shocked that the abortion rate for this age category is increasing year-on-year.

‘It is clear now that the UK effectively has abortion-on-demand. The government must take immediate steps to reduce this horrific number of abortions by at least half through cutting the abortion time limit.

‘The abortion statistics also indicate that now 60% of abortions take place between 4-9 weeks gestation. This is, no doubt, a result of the government relentlessly cutting abortion waiting times to increase the numbers of abortions.”

And Pro-Life comment thus:

Despite increased access to contraception, relentless sex education programmes, and easy availability of the abortifacient morning-after-pill, the abortion figures in England and Wales are climbing towards 200,000 a year and likely to continue to rise.

‘We note too that the private abortion providers (Marie Stopes, BPAS, et al) have increased considerably their share of this grisly market, particularly as agents for the NHS, a share which they have tripled in the last ten years (see Figure 2). Their overall percentage when combined with private provision is now some 60% of the market. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that we saw them recently banding together against any restrictive reform of the Abortion Act. Their livelihood depends on abortion.

Expect calls from New Labour for even more sex education, even more contraception advice and even more access to ’services’. And expect the rate to still rise despite this.

There’s always one…

Mohammad Naseem, the chairman of Birmingham’s central mosque believes Muslims are being unfairly blamed in the war on terrorism. He claims also that the eight suspects in the two bombing attacks on London “could have been innocent passengers”.

Mohammad Naseem, the chairman of the city’s central mosque, called Tony Blair a “liar” and “unreliable witness” and questioned whether CCTV footage issued of the suspected bombers was of the perpetrators.

He said that Muslims “all over the world have never heard of an organisation called al-Qa’eda”.

So Blair’s a liar. Nobody doubts that but what’s that got to do with the police and the security services that are running the counter-terrorist operation?

The irony of the cleric’s outburst was that he made it at a press conference that involved police and Birmingham City council and was designed to allay fears of racial or religious tension after a spate of arrests there. From today’s Daily Telegraph:

He said: “Tony Blair has told lies on going to Iraq and in a court of law if a witness has proved to be a liar he ceases to be a reliable witness. So we cannot give our blind trust to the Government.

“To have that trust it is important that the process of law should be independent, open and transparent. I am also sad that unfortunately the impression has been given that Muslims are to be targeted in this war against terror. There seems to be a directive to target Muslims. Why do we not have an open mind about this?

“Muslim bashing seems to be more earnest than the need for national unity and harmony. Terrorists can be anybody - we will have to see [whether the bombers are Muslims]. The process is not open; the process is not transparent; the process is not independent. I do not have faith in the system as it stands.”

Quoted on the BBC News site he explained his doubts about the existence of al-Qaeda:

Speaking to BBC Radio WM on Thursday he questioned the existence of al-Qaeda.

“I don’t think al-Qaeda exists because we Muslims all over the world have not known this organisation,” he said.

“The only information about this organisation is coming from the CIA. Now, the CIA is not known for telling the truth.”

How representative of British Muslims is this man? I suspect - would like to suspect - that today British Muslims reading his words are breathing a collective sigh of frustration and wish the man would just quietly disappear. Thing is, I only have the insistent assertions of the politically correct police ‘authorities’ - the very PC PC Blair - and the very gay, sometime contributor to anarchist publications Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick - to go by. Paddick has already shown his own mental insanity by saying that ‘Islam’ and ‘terrorist’ don’t go together when clearly, to a minority, they go together like toast and marmalade.

Methinks British Muslims need to tell these mullahs where to get off.

Thankfully, one already has:

Mr Khalid Mahmood, the first Muslim to be elected into Parliament, said: “What he has done is brought into disrepute the role of the chair of the Central Mosque and the Muslim community in Birmingham.

“If he wants to make cheap political points then he really ought to relinquish his position as chairman and let somebody who is neutral and has the interests of the community do it.”

Yes, he ought to relinquish his post. Or, maybe, British Muslims should give him the push he needs to vacate it…

Another outstanding piece from the Daily Telegraph entitled Ten Core Values of the British Identity.

In my opinion, we can never remind ourselves often enough of what it is that we, the British, are, what we stand for and what we’ve achieved.

The leftist-liberal influence in our society - the BBC, The Guardian newspaper, the host of parasitical non-government agencies that perpetuate the ‘victim’ culture wherever it operates and, of course, the mentally and morally retarded politicians that make up a substantial part of our political class - has sucked our spirit and nurtured disgust and contempt for our own forefathers and their achievements.

They have promoted a model of society that, in assuming the inadequacy of the individual and the tyranny of the family, has ruined the lives of millions of our people as the government has taken on the roles of parent, employer, sole arbiter of right and wrong, provider of welfare, health, education and dispenser of all wisdom and knowledge.

In the meantime, our people, deliberately deprived of a set of clear and coherent standards flounder in a morass of moral and cultural relativism that leads them, in many cases, onto the path of ruination.

There are many reasons why our country is disintegrating before our eyes and I’ve only touched on a couple of them. Unlike some British conservatives, though, I feel a glimmer of hope simply because I do not believe that we, the British, are the kind of people that will allow things to continue like this for so long that we eventually sink without trace into a bubbling sea of mediocrity and decay. True, we are slow on the uptake (slow to excite, I suppose - a national characteristic) and maybe things have to get pretty bad before we’re prepared to do something about them.

But we are a proud nation and when push comes to shove I believe we’ll shove harder than our enemies.

Here’s the article itself. Please read it all.

Click here (more…)

Police arrested a man in a house in Birmingham early this morning. He is suspected of being one of last Thursday’s (July 21) London bombers. Three other people were arrested in a seperate house in Birmingham.

They shot the bomb suspect him with a Taser stun gun.

A suspect package was also found and, on the advice of the Army, local residents evacuated. BBC News this morning say the package was blown up in a controlled explosion.

Two other men were arrested in Lincolnshire on a train heading for King’s Cross. They were picked out by two off-duty police officers. Apparently they began their journey in Newcastle.

In other news, Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Ian Blair told Channel 4 News that police have dealt with 250 suicide bomb scares since the July 7 bombings.

In the Brazilian hometown of Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, shot 8 times last week after being mistaken for a suicide bomber, relatives and friends have staged a protest march, demanding arrests be made.

Police are still speculating there may have been a fifth bomber after a bomb was found in a telephone box near Little Wormwood Scrubs on Saturday.

Speculation as to the bombers’ next moves is rife. Possibly they will carry out another attack. Or, bowing to the inevitable - that they’ll be tracked down - they may hole themselves up somewhere, wait for the security forces to arrive and then go out in a blaze of glory, as per the Madrid bombers.

Thanks to Samizdata…

The UK blogosphere has been following this story for a while. It concerns The Guardian’s employment of a trainee journalist Dilpazier Aslam - a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist Muslim organisation banned all over the world (except in Labour’s Britain, of course).

The Guardian isn’t taking things very well. Under the headline Aslam targeted by bloggers the paper is quite obviously very irritated by us bloggers and doesn’t seem minded to disguise the fact.

First of all, it seems to blame right-wing (right-wing being the Guardian/BBC blanket phrase to imply all sorts of nasty attributes for people who don’t think in the way they do) US bloggers for the campaign against their man and then quotes some of the sillier things some of these bloggers have said (some nonsense about ’send me his head’).

The Guardian lays into the chap who is generally (I think) credited with actually being the source of this story:

Scott Burgess, a blogger from New Orleans who recently moved to London, spends his time indoors posting repeated attacks on the Guardian for its stance on the environment, its columnists such as Polly Toynbee, and its recent intervention in the US presidential election campaign.

He pitched into Mr Aslam, who as it happened, beat him to the traineeship on the Guardian. Googling the 27-year-old Muslim’s name, Mr Burgess picked up some articles the journalist had openly written in the past for Hizb ut-Tahrir websites and denounced him on his blogspot, The Daily Ablution, saying: “He is on record supporting a world-dominant Islamic state.”

While snarling at the blogosphere for their impertinence….

Mr Burgess fished out a website article written by Mr Aslam before September 11 for Hizb ut-Tahrir. He quoted one line: “Establishment of Khilafah [the worldwide Islamic caliphate] is our only solution, to fight fire with fire, the state of Israel versus the Khilafah state.”

… The Guardian also quoted the blogosphere in its own defence:

A fellow blogger, Dsquared, promptly accused him of using quotes out of context. “It is more than four years old, written when the author was a teenager, before 9/11 and during a really nasty episode early in the intifada. How many people posting on this blog would like to have their teenage scribblings used as an assessment of their politics as an adult?

“The way you’ve used these excerpts is a bit spintastic and if this is the worst you can dig up, I don’t think the Guardian can be blamed for not rumbling him.”

Then the poor hack (there’s no name given for this article’s writer) takes a snotty swipe at a few others - and not just bloggers either but fellow ‘proper’ journalists:

Perhaps the most extreme blog was posted by “dreadpundit”, a right-wing New Yorker using the name “Bluto”. He wrote: “Okay, Dilpazier, I’ve decided to bow to your ‘logic’ - sauce for the goose and all that. That’s why I’m issuing a secular fatwah and asking for some loyal Briton to saw off your head and ship it to me (use Fed-Ex, please, so I can get a morning delivery, and do remember the dry ice, also, a videotape of the “execution”).”

In the Independent on Sunday, Shiv Malik, also briefly a Guardian intern, accused the hapless Aslam of mounting “a sting by Hizb ut-Tahrir to infiltrate the mainstream media”.

And in the tabloid Sun, their attack-dog columnist, Richard Littlejohn, took the opportunity to claim: “A Guardian journalist has been unmasked as an Islamist extremist”.

The Guardian regains some - but only some - composure in the end:

The episode was a striking illustration of the way that blogs and bloggers can heat up the temperature and seek to settle scores - as well as raise legitimate concerns about journalism and transparency - when something awful happens in the streets of London.

Ah. It’s nice to see the ordinary working-class joes of this world giving it large-scale to big corporate interests.

And that’s a line I could have stolen from The Guardian itself…

The Guardian has produced this ICM poll.

As anybody with more than three functioning brain cells could predict, a small percentage of Muslims believe (or say they believe) that the bombings were justified - and, even, that more would be justified.

Add just a couple more brain cells and you can do the sums: in a country with 1.8 million Muslims even a small percentage is still a lot of people.

So we’re informed that 63% per cent of Muslims had considered leaving the UK in the wake of the bombings. Big deal. If that figure is true, I reckon it’s at least as representative of the UK’s population overall as it is of British Muslims. I’m sure 63% of the entire UK population has at least once considered life abroad before. I have; every time I see Blair on television I reach for my passport.

Much more worryingly though is this:

A small rump, potentially running into thousands, told ICM of their support for the attacks on July 7 which killed 56 and left hundreds wounded - and 5% said that more attacks would be justified. Those findings are troubling for those urgently trying to assess the pool of potential suicide bombers.

Drawing on those additional brain cells, if there are 1.1 million Muslims over the age of 18 (as The Guardian says there are) then 5% is over 50,000 people. If just 1% of that 50,000 is actually prepared to involve himself directly in attacks on the British public then we have at least 500 people walking around willing to commit murder and mayhem in the UK.

And that is seriously bad news.

One in five polled said Muslim communities had integrated with society too much already, while 40% said more was needed and a third said the level was about right.

I wonder what ‘too much’ means - and how they came to that conclusion? Are these conservatives who regard not wearing a burka as integrating too much? Or simply moderates who regard drinking and fornication as integrating too much? The 40% offer some hope for the future. British Muslims will always be better Muslims than foreign, non-integrated ones.

More than half wanted foreign Muslim clerics barred or thrown out of Britain, but a very sizeable minority, 38%, opposed that.

Thrown out just for being foreign? Maybe British Muslims feel that way because, first, they recognise that the uncompromising violence that some of these foreign imams bring with them is not only objectionable but it’s getting them a bad name; and, second, perhaps they recognise a need for a British Islam - as opposed to an Afghani one or an Iranian one.

It does seem that there’s a polarisation - and a huge gulf - between those that emphatically reject violence carried out in their name and those that support it. The latter are very much the minority but, worryingly, they still represent a substantial number of people.

Keeping the cheerleaders to and organisers of terror out of the UK has got to be the government’s first major step.

So - do we know if this chap is still scheduled to visit our green and pleasant land?

According to The Scotsman Britain is worth a few bob these days:

In a report entitled Capital Stocks, Capital Consumption and Non Financial Balance Sheets, it [the Office for National Statistics] valued Britain at £5,843 trillion - an increase of £404 billion on the previous year.

This was arrived at by adding up the value of the nation’s capital items such as buildings, roads and financial assets.

Housing continued to be the most valuable asset with a total value of £3.43 trillion - up 12 per cent on the previous year and making up 59 per cent of the country’s total wealth.

Trouble is, of course, you can never be sure whether the accounting is honest or another of Gordon Brown’s little wheezes…

In life, whatever you think, whatever you conclude, whatever you say and whatever you choose to do - or choose not to do - you achieve something. You get a result. You might not like the result you get but you get one. It’s impossible not to.

Elevated Life blog

One of the big questions on my mind regarding the Brazilian chap the police shot last week - namely, why did the man run? - may have been answered.

His visa had expired.

Following one link after another (leading me ever further away from the article I started reading - don’t you hate it when that happens?) I ended up on the Commission for Racial Equality’s site.

Here’s their mission statement:

We work for a just and integrated society, where diveristy is valued. We use both persuasion and our powers under the law to give everyone an equal chance to live free from fear, discrimination, prejudice and racism.

I, personally, value and enjoy diversity - in my own home. I married a foreigner, am very pleased to have and we live a properly multicultural life at home. (By ‘properly’ I don’t mean the pseudo-multiculturalism that has been forced on everyone else, I mean multiculturalism that was freely entered into, by choice, with genuine consideration and give and take on both sides to form a mutually beneficial and harmonious relationship of our own choosing). That’s our business - not yours and not anybody else’s.

But why should you - or any other person - value diversity? What’s to value about it? Why must we value other lifestyles that are unlike our own? I see no reason why we must - and nor, I suspect, does anybody else. The coercion used against us - law, human rights legislation, abuse (the ‘racist’ tag, for example, if, like me, you dare to question these things) - is an admission that, in fact, many others see no real reason why they should do what the CRE or the government tells them to do.

Anyway, I have put to the CRE, using their query form, the following question:

I would respectfully request that, if you intend not to answer my query, that you inform me of that decision.

Could you please describe to me five of the main values of racial and cultural diversity as alluded to in your mission statement?

Many thanks,

Gary Monro

I will post their reply when I receive it.

Seems the Met Police has experienced a surge in applications to join up. From the Telegraph:

“We have seen a huge increase,” said an official at the recruitment centre in Hendon, north London. “Many want to do volunteer work, but we’ve also had inquiries from people who ask specifically about anti-terrorist and undercover work.”

The fatal shooting aside, many of us are impressed with the police’s performance in tracking down the 7th July bombers. It’s likely that people feel confident Thursday’s failed bombers will be caught too.

When they are I guess the recruitment office will be greeted with even more wide-eyed action man wannabes…

A couple of commentors on this blog hint at - or are downright blatant about - government conspiracies and the practice of dark arts in the matter of the London bombings.

This latest shooting incident is baffling, to be honest, and I suspect there will be people with alternative explanations to the ones offered by the authorities.

If you want to add them to this post feel free. May as well keep them in one place where people can debate them if they wish to.

We’re told the man the police shot was not connected ot the recent bombings. He’s been named in a BBC report as 27 year old Jean Charles de Menezes - a Brazilian.

He emerged from a house that was under police surveillance.

When approached by officers he ran.

He leapt the tickets barriers and ran onto a train.

Witnesses saw a bomb belt and wires coming from his body.

But he’s got nothing to do with the terrorism in our streets.

I absolutely do not want to go down the road of conspiracy theories and I’ll choose ‘trust’ as my default attitude towards the security services. But this is going to take some explaining.

Why was this house being watched?

Who was this man?

Why did he run when challenged?

Were the witness reports of wires coming out of his body wrong?

If he was innocent then it is a truly horrible occurrence but until we have answers to basic questions then I for one am left a little sceptical.

An excellent piece in today’s Daily Telegraph entitled Ten urgent steps to make Britain safer

I support particularly the first point (see below). The fairly unique point about the Islamic terrorism in Britain is that it was carried out not by foreign imports but by people born in our hospitals, educated in our schools, who walk our streets and breathe our air.

Yet they regard us - not themselves but the rest of us - as aliens, foreigners. This must partly be due to the weak sense of identity we, the British, have of ourselves. New Labour, Tony Blair and the general leftist attempt to make us ashamed of our history, our achievements, our dynamism, our courage and inventiveness have combined to create a flaccid, ignorant, weak nation that has nothing to nail its colours to - indeed, outside of the occasional international football match it has no colours to nail - and little self-respect in terms of nation and history.

It is little wonder that if we at best are indifferent to ourselves and, at worst, despise ourselves, then anybody with an alternative culture to Britishness might just go for the alternative. Instead of using foreign-born murderers - as must happen when planning outrages for New York or Madrid - plotters can rely on home-grown, British citizens to do the job against their fellow countrymen.

We can rail at violent Isalm all we like. In many ways though we nurtured this poison in our midst when we decided to embrace multi-culturalism and reject Great Britain.

Here are the Telegraph’s 10 points. The headings seem a bit tame but the text that accompanies each is very sensible and well worth reading. Click here to read the entire article.

1. Confidently assert British values

2. Exclude foreign undesirables

3. Repeal the Human Rights Act

4. Crackdown on propaganda

5. Intercept evidence admissable in court

6. Visible police presence

7. Sensible policing

8. Expectation for Muslims to join the police and security forces

9. Effective border controls

10. Increased detention facilities

In today’s Daily Telegraph Pakistan’s President, Gen Pervez Musharraf gives Britain a few home truths:

“We certainly have a problem here [with Islamic militancy] which we are trying to address, but may I say that England also has a problem which needs to be addressed.

“There are the extremist organisations in Britain such as Hizb ut-Tahrir and Al-Muhajiroun which operate with impunity. They also give sermons of hate and violence.”

He dismissed the idea that the London bombers could have been indoctrinated during their short visits to Pakistan. “Three out of the four are accused to be from Pakistan, the fourth is from Jamaica. If the aspersion is that they got indoctrinated in Pakistan, where did the Jamaican get indoctrinated?

“Three are from Pakistani parentage. But they have been born, educated and bred in the UK. There is a lot to be done in Pakistan, but may I suggest there is a lot to be done in England also.”

As it turns out, one of the three who allegedly went to Pakistan actually did not. We may have a case of mistaken identity.

Either way, Britain’s reluctance to deal with Muslim hate mongers is roundly criticised by security agencies world-wide. The French coined the phrase ‘Londonistan’ for the capital’s willingness to give free reign to the worst of them while the Americans have expressed dismay several times at the laxity of the British approach to radicals and extremists.

Briefest of reports here on the BBC site.

Here’s their full report in case you can’t get on to the site:

Man shot by armed police on Tube

A man has been shot at Stockwell Tube station by armed police officers, police confirm.
Passengers were evacuated from a Tube train on the Northern Line station in south London after the incident.

Passenger Mark Whitby told BBC News he had seen an Asian man shot five times by “plain-clothes police officers”.

Services on the Victoria and Northern lines have been suspended following a request by the police, London Underground said.

Police are hunting four would-be bombers after Thursday’s London blasts.

The bombers fled after detonators went off, causing small blasts, but failed to detonate the bombs themselves.

Mr Whitby, told BBC News: “I saw an Asian guy run onto the train hotly pursued by three plain-clothes police officers.

“One of them was carrying a black handgun - it looked like an automatic - they pushed him to the floor, bundled on top of him and unloaded five shots into him.”

Passenger Briony Coetsee said: “We were on the Tube and then we suddenly heard someone say, ‘Get out, get out’ and then we heard gunshots.”

Yesterday’s London bombings - exactly two weeks after the previous which have killed 52 people - failed to kill or injure any Londoners. For that we breathe a huge sigh of relief - but the bombers themselves are now on the run.

The attempts at widespread murder - on three trains and a bus, just as on July 7th - failed because the small explosives that made up the detonators failed to ignite the rest of the explosives in the rucksacks containing the devices.

Witness statements reoprts a man exclaiming out loud when his device failed to go off; a second was seen to flee when his detonator activated. One of the bombers was standing next to a woman and her baby when his detonator went off.

From The Guardian:

Witness said they had heard a sound “like the popping of champagne corks” from a large black rucksack on a train seat, and the carriage had begun to fill with smoke.

When the train pulled into the station a young man next to the bag dashed out of the train and fled into the street.

The driver of the No 26 bus, Mark Maybanks, heard a bang coming from the top deck of his bus. He ordered his passengers off and went upstairs to investigate.

Mr Maybanks, 38, said: “I’ve never been so frightened in my life as when I went up the stairs. After what happened earlier this month I didn’t know what I would find.”

Four bombs, each in a rucksack, have been recovered from each of the scenes.

The trawl through CCTV footage has already begun. Confidence in the ability of the police and security services to catch these four must be sky-high at the moment. After outstanding work in tracking down the last four these four must know the game is up. It’s only a matter of time.

Detectives are assuming these men are part of a bigger team although the possibility is that they are simply copy-cats. However, a security consultant interviewed on television this morning believes there is little chance that, on seeing the bombings of 7 July, anybody could have planned and prepared a replica in just 14 days. He suggests the explosives - which are thought to have come from the same batch as those used on the 7th - failed to detonate simply because they had degraded over the intervening period.

Having done a bit of jiggery-pokery before the election with his capital expenditure figures, Gordon Brown is at it again.

He outlined his plans Tuesday to the House of Commons Treasury select committee. First, he’s going to set the spending levels for each and every government department for the next 5 years meaning that whoever succeeds him as Chancellor is going to have had the job’s biggest decisions already taken for them.

But the second is the really devious one. According to Gordon ‘Prudence’ Brown sound financial management means that, over an economic cycle, the sum of all the deficits and surpluses should cancel each other out. Now, the economy he inherited from the last Conservative government has been doing pretty well but, obviously, nothing can keep up forever with the Labour tax-and-spend machine. We’re running out of money and taxes must rise. So Brown is going to convince himself (and only himself because the rest of us aren’t likely to fall for it) that the cycle he’s been referring to all this time is actually not the one he first thought it was. He’s convinced himself it’s a different - better - one:

He said he now believes the cycle started in 1997-98, not 1999-2000 - a move which gives another £13 billion of leeway. The cycle is due to end in 2006, and economists predicted that he would miss his target.

Well he won’t be missing it now, will he? The move was greeted with seething fury on the select committee:

Susan Kramer, a Liberal Democrat, said there is a “perception that the government is marking its own exam papers”.

Okay, not quite seething…

Independent commentators in The Guardian put it a little more starkly:

“The change in the cycle makes it slightly easier to meet the rule but as soon as you fiddle around with the rules, the credibility benefits of having those rules is rather less,” said John Hawkworth, fiscal expert at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The CBI’s chief economist, Ian McCafferty, said: “The announcement only serves to highlight the sharp contrast between monetary policy, which is well-understood and appears genuinely free of political involvement, and fiscal policy, where the Treasury is able to act as both judge and jury.”

Which means really we’re not solving our problems; rather, we’re simply storing them for a slightly later date. And when the economy falters - as it appears to be doing - these problems will come home to roost and then we’ll have to deal with them at a time when we’re least able to.

Always nice to have something to look forward to, eh?

It is more or less common knowledge amongst the British public that school standards are in free-fall. As a result of their insane fantasy to put 50% of British children through the university system this Labour government has undetaken a frenzy of educational dumbing down in order to meet that target. The failings of the system are legion - I had a bit of a rant about this here.

The level of bureaucratic control exhibited by Big Brother this government of ours has also become a matter of concern to those of us that are, well, concerned about such things. You can never get bored with criticising government interference and control freakery because there’s always something more to keep you awake.

The latest is this: the government has done away with hand-written student reports and has replaced them with a computer package. Perhaps not such a heinious crime but they have also decided what comments are available ot the teacher when making his/her assessment. So instead of reading the personally considered thoughts of the assessing teacher the parent reads the cut-and-paste remarks of a government-inspired computer package.

Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: “A report should be a direct communication from teacher to parent and any weakening of that is going to spoil the effect of comments that can make pupils and parents take notice.

“This cut-and-paste idea is a very backward step. Parents and children should get the teachers to change their ways. If they use computerised phrases, it will stop them from making their typical pithy comments.”

The excuses for this kind of thing are, as usual, as ridiculous as the change itself:

Daryl King, of Simple Logic, the company behind Report Assist, said: “If you have 30 reports to do, it is hard to write original stuff if 20 of them are on the same level. We offer 12,000-plus possibilities.”

He added that Report Assist “also removes worries about spelling and grammar“.

A National Union of Teachers spokeswoman said: “Think about how many reports teachers have to write. This is about efficiency. It also helps parents who struggle with teachers’ handwriting.”

Simple Logic - how well that name mirrors its representative’s remark - miss the point; just because 20 students perform at the same standard does not mean the 20 comments will be the same. A clever student performing at average will require different comments to a student with learning difficulties who also performs at average. Each has achieved entirely differently. Only the teacher’s own thoughts can express the reality of these situations.

And as for removing ‘worries about spelling and grammar’… Well, these are teachers, aren’t they? Is it being uncharitable to expect them to know how to write in proper English?

And the NUT - another aptly named outfit - might consider that a teaching workforce freed of government shackles and ‘initiatives’ would be more than able to write their reports - as they have done for decades - and that its energies might be better focussed on getting the state out of our education.

Ah. But that requires faith in the teaching profession to be able to do a good job without government fatwas every three minutes. Only some of us have such faith…

The BBC this morning seems to be quite impressed with a school in England that has introduced random drug testing. Personally, I think it’s tragic that we’ve reached a stage where this has become necessary. But what do I know?

The chatter in the article is about dealing with destructive drug behaviour through ‘better’ drug education, ‘more’ drug education and so on. It’s the same thing we hear about sex education. Kids have sex, get pregnant and diseased so we teach them more about the very thing they’re already doing. The more we ‘educate’ them, the more they do it. So, on ITV’s news - also this morning - kids who realise that wearing a bicycle helmet could prevent terrible injury or even death refuse to wear them because it doesn’t look ‘cool’. The risks of not wearing are remote; the risk of wearing is terminal uncoolness. No contest then and stick your education where the sun doesn’t shine.

Anyway, the intro piece on the BBC’s story on drug testing in the school talks about ‘educating’ children to the dangers of drugs. Trying desperately - and failing - to avoid mild feelings of irritation that nobody has yet learnt that education about dangers does little to dissuade those that are intent on drug taking (or having sex, or smoking, or drinking or riding a bicycle without a crash helmet, or stealing cars etc) I just wondered why the biggest danger of drug taking isn’t that posed by the police who will arrest and imprison you if you’re caught even thinking about the stuff.

We are still mired in this ridiculous notion that drug-takers are innocents and only the drug-sellers (because they’re capitalists, perhaps?) are evil. The users have ‘issues’ caused by ‘poverty’ (newsflash: there is no poverty in the UK) or ’society’ or ‘exclusion’ or ‘alienation’. And so on. Hence the crime of drug-taking involves two sides, one whose criminality is met with ‘education’ while the other’s is met with prosecution.

But it seems that the ingenuity of the customs officials trying to prevent the stuff coming in is matched - or exceeded - by the ingenuity of those with other ideas. This must be a ‘war’ that our authorities expect to lose. If they focus on supply they know they’ll never do better than disrupt it. And if they focus on education they know they’ll forever be competing with a culture that has great PR - glamorous pop stars, ‘cool’ screen idols, the lure of easy money, a culture that long ago lost the distinction between right and wrong personal behaviour and, of course, an endless supply of ‘experts’ and social liberals saying that, hey, actually drugs aren’t so bad. To combat it we have: an educational establishment that’s got a few teachers and a class room of kids desperate not to be there.

Yet one of the most effective weapons in the arsenal against drugs would be simple prohibition against their possession in any quantity regardless of whether you’re using or dealing - backed up by meaningful prison sentences. Is it too simplistic to point out that there is no drugs supply where there is no demand?

Our government is deeply soaked in the need to be seen to be doing something. Style is indeed the new substance and, as with their illegal imprisonments of British citizens, religious hatred laws and the proposed ID cards, the appearance of meaningful activity is the facade behind which Blair, Brown, Prescott and the rest of this lousy government hide earnestly hoping they’ve created enough of a stir with their anti-British diktats to be able to blame everybody else when the doo-doo hits the fan.

It has taken the slaughter of more than 50 human beings in our capital city to make the Labour government finally take action against the inhabitants of that shadow-city called Londonistan. What kind of drugs carnage will our youth bring upon itself before that government decides it will also get tough on them?

Did anyone watch this in BBC1 the other day?

More fly-on-the-wall stuff… I’ve only actually watched one of these types of programmes before (‘Laddette to Lady‘) but I feel like the formula is now ancient. Take a group of people, put them in a new or unfamiliar environment, set them tasks, watch them fight and argue.

This David Dickinson chap I’ve seen before (mostly in television adverts, actually). Basically, he’s big in antiques - an expert, probably - so myself and the Mrs thought we’d try a bit of cultcha to see if we could learn something about old stuff.

I was disappointed from the outset. Seems you can’t make a programme these days unless you’re prepared to swear a bit and so, to show us all how game he is, we’re treated with the intro of a heavily bleeped Dickinson doing what the BBC wants him to do - swearing. I guess this is just so the BBC can demonstrate it’s not grown too high-brow while our attention was diverted. BBC, worry not. We know there’s no chance of you doing that…

Read (more…)

Blair yesterday (quoted in The Telegraph) (emphasis mine):

At lunchtime, the Prime Minister said those who advocated suicide bombing ‘’whether it’s in London, whether it’s in Afghanistan or Iraq, or it’s in Palestine or it’s in Turkey or Kashmir, or anywhere … have got no place in our country'’.

So is Yusuf al-Qaradawi allowed into the UK or not?

As I mentioned yesterday, this chap - who has been banned from the US since 1999 - regards suicide attacks as “the highest form of Jihad”. So I think he meets Blair’s criteria for exclusion.

If we are to send out a serious message to the haters and racists that come here we have to be resolute and uncompromising. For Blairites - who, let’s face it, just don’t get it - this means: not pandering to correctness but to rightness, putting Britain and the British first (now there’s a radical idea), stopping crawling to the Muslim block vote - they don’t want haters here either and, in the event of possibly making a wrong decision we should be erring on the side of the British people’s well-being rather than the foreigner’s.

So. We watch. And we wait.

The Daily Ablution blog uncovered this story.

One of The Guardian’s trainee reporters - Dilpazier Aslam- is a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist Muslim organisation banned all over the world (except in Labour’s Britain, of course).

The Daily Ablution has lots of comment on this - go take a look. I’ll just quote from The Independent which is now twisting the knife itself:

The Guardian newspaper is refusing to sack one of its staff reporters despite confirming that he is a member of one of Britain’s most extreme Islamist groups.

Late on Friday The Guardian released a statement to The Independent on Sunday saying: “Dilpazier Aslam is a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an organisation which is legal in this country.

So’s the BNP. When is their mole starting work on The Guardian, I wonder?

Here’s one of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s more recent escapades - this took place during the May election and is reported in This Is London:

The bitter election battle in the East End has spilled into violence, with extremist Muslims and anti-war protesters targeting George Galloway and Oona King.

Fighting broke out when Muslim fundamentalists tried to interrupt one of Galloway’s meetings, saying voting was un-Islamic. Not for them a few tuts and raised eye-brows though.

The men said they were angry at Mr Galloway’s attempt to woo Muslim voters. They said they were “setting up the gallows” for him and warned any Muslim who voted for his anti-war Respect party that they faced a “sentence of death”.

Galloway spoke to The Standard a few minutes after the attack:

“I was meeting people who live in the flats. Hizb-ut-Tahrir suddenly filled the room and blocked the door. I tried speaking calmly. They then said I was parading as a false prophet and served a sentence of death on me. They were claiming I was representing myself as a false deity and for this apostasy I would be sentenced to the gallows,” he said.

“They said they were setting up the gallows for me. Thank God my daughter was not with me. She was in the car outside. Otherwise there would have been nobody to call the police. The police saved my life.”

So this is the kind of organisation Mr Aslam associates with and this is the kind of person The Guardian employs. Some of Aslam’s writing in The Guardian is an apologist’s view of the London massacre. He starts his article by saying

I think what happened in London was a sad day and not the way to express your political anger.

A more underwhlemed expression of anger, dismay or condemnation you couldn’t imagine. Then his true feelings are displayed thus:

Second- and third-generation Muslims are without the don’t-rock-the-boat attitude that restricted our forefathers. We’re much sassier with our opinions, not caring if the boat rocks or not.

The don’t-rock-the-boat attitude of elders doesn’t mean the agitation wanes; it means it builds till it can be contained no more.

The Guardian - who would never dream of having a trainee BNP-supporting journalist on its staff (or somebody like me for that matter) - is keeping its mouth shut on the situation - the story is not being run in its own paper. In the meantime, they give a mouthpiece to the very kind of person that British Muslims are now starting realise they could do a lot better without.

The Independent says:

One [Guardian] source said: “There was a feeling that we genuinely wanted more diversity, and like all national newspapers we were still a bit ‘pale and male’ so we were keen to recruit from different backgrounds.”

Wonderful. If you were to complain your working environment was a bit too brown and female so you’re looking particularly to employ some white men you’d be slowly and painfully executed.

In the meantime, we watch to see what - if anything - the Guardian intends to do about this man.

There were already questions about whether the bombers were actually suicide bombers. Reuters has chipped in - with their own hat tip to The Mirror newspaper - with a report that says the police here aren’t using the word ’suicide’ to describe the bombers. I’m going to pay closer attention to the language the police use but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re keeping their options open.

The Daily Mirror report said several factors cast doubt on the suicide theory — two of the men had pregnant wives, they did not carry the explosives strapped to their bodies, and they bought return rail tickets from Luton to London.

I heard elsewhere they even bought parking tickets for their cars at Luton station. But it’s the lack of suicide notes - either religious rants or else something for their loved ones - that really puzzles.

It also makes one wonder about the charges the masterminds will face if they’re ever caught. I assume they’ll be charged with being accessories to murder with regards to the innocents that were slaughtered in London. If it transpires though that they deceived the bombers, telling them they were merely planting the bombs when, in fact, they would die in the explosions then surely they’ll receive murder charges for the actual killings of the bombers?

It’ll make an interesting trial. I hope we get to see it…

That nice Yusuf al-Qaradawi is coming back to England. The man who regards suicide attacks as “the highest form of Jihad” spent time as Red Ken’s special guest last year, upsetting all sorts of people. This year he’s coming to Manchester for a conference.

The Americans have already banned him from their country. Apart from their refusal to see suicide attacks as the highest form of Jihad they’re miffed about his ‘cyber jihad’ against their computers - which, incidentally, they believe was initiated from computers in the UK. Anyway, we’re not at all worried by people who hold violent, hateful or racist views - we’ve been hosting them for years.

So will Charles Clarke let this man into our country or won’t he? From The Telegraph:

Last Friday the Home Office outlined proposals aimed at restraining militants by making it a crime to glorify or condone terrorism. Ministers said that would cover statements suggesting that suicide bombers were martyrs.

Okay, so al-Qaradawi fits the bill. He’ll be banned, right? After all, he said about suicide bombings in Israel on Newsnight last year:

“It is not suicide; it is martyrdom in the name of God. I consider this type of martyrdom operation as an indication of the justice of Allah almighty. Allah is just.

“Through his infinite wisdom he has given the weak what the strong do not possess and that is the ability to turn their bodies into bombs as the Palestinians do.”

Has Mohammed Shafiq, of the Ramadhan Foundation, which organised the event, thoroughly checked out al-Qaradawi to make sure he’s not going to be an embarrassment to Muslims - especially at a time like this?

“He is a moderate and he says that what he has said has been taken out of context and we take his word on that. He is a respected figure in the Muslim community and that is why he has been invited: to help promote cultural and religious diversity.”

That’ll be a ‘no’ then.

The problem with many of these foreign Muslims is that they can sound very reasonable in some areas and then totally potty in others. Hence, al-Qaradawi’s condemnation of the 9/11 bombings was emphatic. Yet they don’t square with other views he holds - including these I picked from his own web-site, Islam Online.

I originally posted some of this information in a comment on Samizdata when one of its correspondents hinted I was over-stating the case when I described some of al-Qaradawi’s views as scary. Actually, I think his views are obscene - I was just trying to be nice. To read them click (more…)

Friday evening my wife and I met up with friends and got to discussing the class issue - as you do.

One of our friends suggested that a simple determinant of a person’s class is how they spend their disposable income. I suggested that this definition was limited in efficiency simply because people who had little disposable income would lack the means to define themselves adequately this way. A person who just scrapes a living makes very different decisions about their spending than a person with 5 or 6 hundred pounds a month left over after all outgoings.

On another point about class I suggested that the various facts that defined one’s class included elements that one cannot alter and that, therefore, whichever class environment one is born into that, more or less, meant that one is forever of that class.

That proved contentious too but I think this was because my friend sees class hierarchially, with the progression from the underclass to the upper classes as being representative of a stepped increase in virtue. And so my view that I, for example, was born working class and would therefore die working class was regarded as my handicapping myself with limitation and stunting my potential to improve my lot due to a surrender to some sort of social inevitability.

But this isn’t so. One’s first 20 or so years on this planet are usually the most formative. Even if I one day became wordly wise, educated, generous and wealthy those first decades are not erased and the influence of my working class family and the conditions in which we lived still exist in some form within me. It may be that I am repelled by those experiences or it could be that I am inspired by them. But they are real and meaningful and they form one of the bases of what I do later in life - even if what I do in later life has all the hallmarks of being middle class.

I am neither proud nor ashamed of my class; I am indifferent to it. I am not constrained - or conditioned - by it either but if we are all affected to some extent by our environement then my council house start in life, my father’s entrepreneurial successes from very ordinary beginnings, our family’s lack of education, my grandparent’s financial discipline and ‘old fashioned’ certainties were all there as the tapestry into which my life was woven.

Just as the way we raise our children will be partly informed - negatively, positively or some combination of both - by the way we ourselves were raised so our world view, beliefs, values and principles will, in some way, be flavoured with that which prevailed at home.

The present and the future are all connected to the past. One is built on the other - even if the present is a deliberate rejection of the past. The past is always there and is always a part of you. In class terms my past is working class and working class is what I will forever be - even if my behaviours, aspirations, achievements and principles would otherwise label me as ‘middle’ class.

… to see if you are.

From the Daily Mail (no on-line source available):

A brief IQ test is said to distinguish the brightest candidates for a job within three minutes.

3,500 college students took the test as part of its development; only 17 per cent got them all right. A third got all three wrong. Men made up two-thirds of those who got all three correct while women made up two-thirds who got all three wrong.

Here are the three questions:

1. A bat and a ball costs £1.10. The bat costs £1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

2. If it takes five machines five minutes to make five widgets, how many minutes would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?

3. In a lake there is a patch of lily pads. Every day the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how many days would it take for the patch to cover half the lake?

To see the answers - after having given it careful thought yourself, of course - click on (more…)

“Education, education, education..” - Tony Blair

So good he named it thrice…

If you throw enough money at something, you can make it support your social engineering aims. Or can you? While, in the May election campaign, our politicians tried to out-spend each other in an orgy of profligacy the real results of all this increased spending are staring us in the face - and it appears things are coming apart at the seams:

Ruth Lea, Institute of Directors:

We congratulate students for their success and hard work but, from an employer’s point of view, the A-level now is not the A-level of 20 years ago.

Chris Woodhead, former chief inspector of schools:

We cannot have a situation where young people are kept for longer and longer at school, and at greater and greater public expense, but who end up in fact knowing no more than people in the past did who left school younger.

He said that if everyone passed an examination it was not fulfilling its prime function of discriminating between them.

Yes, well, if you use a word like ‘discriminating’ within 3 miles of a liberal/leftist you’re asking for trouble Mr Woodhead.

New Labour wants equality of outcome - no matter how low the standards have to drop to achieve that. This means, amongst many other things, that some A level students - with decent grade passes - now enter university without the required knowledge to even begin their chosen degree.

Universities now have to offer remedial courses to bring the student up to the level that, 10 years ago, he would have naturally reached by virtue of having attained the A level.

Annis Garfield, examiner:

I am the examiner, referred to by John Clare in his Any Questions? column who has been told that 26 per cent of the candidates must be awarded a grade A (80 marks out of 100) and that the average candidate is to be given a C (60 out of 100) - no matter how undeserving their answers may be.

This, I have been told by my chief examiner, who accused me of being too mean with my marks, is the predetermined result. He has instructed me to mark more leniently - in other words, to lower my standards.

Read the whole article here - it would make you laugh if it weren’t so serious. By the way, she was fired for speaking to the press.

After years of denying A-levels were getting easier New Labour has to face the facts. In February this year Ruth Kelly says I’ll make GCSEs and A-levels harder. She confessed:

Children are not being stretched and challenged in the way I would like them to be.

David Bell, head of Ofsted: The failure rate of England’s further education colleges is a national disgrace. He added:

If you happen to be a 16 year old looking for a second chance, having not done very well at school, tough luck. If at first you don’t succeed, you don’t succeed.

And this, from December, is damning:

The United Kingdom has slipped significantly down the world education league, particularly in maths, a report said yesterday.

In the second round of tests conducted by the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) involving more than 250,000 15-year-olds in 41 countries, it dropped in three years from fourth in science to 11th, from seventh in reading to 11th and from eighth in maths to 18th.

But what really shows the government up for the lies it has been telling us about ‘rising standards’ is this:

The UK’s declining performance in reading, which contrasts sharply with rising scores in national tests, is particularly embarrassing for the Government because the standard of Pisa’s tests is held constant. Questions are repeated from year to year, whereas the comparability of national tests is questionable.

Since the first Pisa round, the UK’s reading score has dropped from 523 to 507.

So a standard, unchanging test shows our performance declining, the government’s scoring system shows it’s rising. One has a vested interest in showing the true state of play while the other has a vested interest in showing year on year improvement. I think we can draw our own conclusions.

Finally, you might think that the Labour-dominated ‘Commons Education and Skills Select Committee’ could deliver Mr Blair some cheering news:

From January this year:

THE Government is wrong to claim that billions of pounds in extra funding for schools has produced better examination results, the powerful committee of MPs said yesterday.

The Labour-dominated committee chastised Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, for saying that “the sustained high investment in education since 1997 has resulted in a measurable improvement in standards

They went further. From The Times, ‘Schools still cannot teach pupils to read by age of 11′:

“Even if government figures are taken at face value, at age 11 around 20 per cent of children still do not achieve the success in reading (and writing) expected of their age. This figure is unacceptably high,” it said.

It all makes for very depressing reading - especially if you, like me, have a child just entering the comprehensive school system.

Anyway, no use in moping. I’m not doing much this afternoon - I think I’ll get myself an A-level…

(Note: this post, in a slightly altered form, appeared in my previous blog, A Very British Insurgency - which is now closed)

This is the CCTV picture released by police of the four London bombers on their way to commit their atrocity. They are seen here at Luton, en route to the capital.

The BBC says the police have now confirmed the four men’s names - Mohammed Sidique Khan, 30, Jermaine Lindsay, 19, Hasib Hussain, 18, and Shahzad Tanweer, 22.

Thier families are devestated by the news their sons were involved in the bombing.

The families of Khan, Hussain and Lindsay have all issued statements expressing their shock and sadness at events.

“Our thoughts are with all the bereaved families and we have to live ourselves with the loss of our son in these difficult circumstances,” Hussain’s family said.

Khan’s family said: “We are devastated our son may have been brainwashed into carrying out such an atrocity.”

Tanweer’s uncle said the family had been “left shattered” by news of his involvement.

Not all the four men fit the stereotypes of suicide bombers as per the Palestinian model - young, uneducated, poor, disaffected.

Khan was married, with an 8 month old baby; he worked with disabled children. Tanweer, a sports science graduate from Leeds University, was playing cricket a few days before exploding himself in a train. He was not employed but helped his dad in the family’s fish and chip shop. Lindsay was possibly the foursome’s leader. He is remembered as being gentle, respectful, well-mannered and clever. He has a child and another on the way.

Hussain possibly had problems at school; he was involved with gangs and dropped out of school with just one exam pass - a GNVQ.

I imagine that terrorist profilers now fear for their jobs because there seems to be nothing in a person’s lifestyle or background that suggests a propensity to carrying out the murderous actions we experienced on 7th July. They either need to rewrite the book - or throw the thing away and forget it. Intelligence, surveillance and the removal of extremist influences - fanatical imams, inflammatory websites, etc - seems now to be the order of the day.

Oh - and an end to this idea of multi-culturalism where everything is considered equally worthy. When people - some wanted for terrorism in other countries - can stand up in Hyde Park and openly call for the deaths of British people without being imprisoned for treason or for inciting violence or hatred we know we’ve taken the idea of the equality of values far too far. British values are best for Britain. Until we assert this with vigour- and back it with law and meaningful action - we cannot be surprised to find others amongst us comfortable in their assertions that their foreign ideas are at least as worthy as ours - if not more so.

A group of abused Kenyan women have set up their own village as a refuge from their men. Jealous of the women’s success th