Gary Monro’s blog

Spam problems here are giving me a bit of a headache so I’m trying out a new location.

Read more of my usual rubbish here:

http://englishconservative.blogspot.com/

Lynette Burrows, a family campaigner, has had a visit from our (are they really ours anymore?) boys in blue regarding a comment she made on a live radio show.

From the Daily Telegraph:

During the programme, she said she did not believe that homosexuals should be allowed to adopt. She added that placing boys with two homosexuals for adoption was as obvious a risk as placing a girl with two heterosexual men who offered themselves as parents. “It is a risk,” she said. “You would not give a small girl to two men.”

A member of the public complained and a homophobic incident was recorded against her. A social worker police officer was sent round to lean on Ms Burrows. The officer apparently explained that

…it was not a crime but that she had to record these incidents.

Our increasingly spineless police authorities explained this piece of totalitarian intimidation thus:

A spokesman said it was policy for community safety units to investigate homophobic, racist and domestic incidents because these were “priority crimes”.

It is standard practice for all parties to be spoken to, even if the incident is not strictly seen as a crime. “It is all about reassuring the community,” said the spokesman. “We can confirm that a member of the public brought to our attention an incident which he believed to be homophobic.

“All parties have been spoken to by the police. No allegation of crime has been made. A report has been taken but is now closed.”

So: no crime, no laws broken, no charges. But you still get a police visit for expressing an opinion. Evidently this ‘assuring the community’ garbage is - as one might expect these days - only about assuring some sections of the community. The others can go to hell.

And some of you want these people to be able to lock us up for 90 days without charge?

Seems I suddenly have a primative spam buster on this blog. When you write a comment you have to type in a number before your comment is posted.

Whoopee. I receive several hundred spam comments per day which, although they go into my moderation queue, are still a pain because, before zapping them into the abyss, I have to look out for genuine comments that should actually be posted.

So, two questions: first, why do spam comments still appear on my blog? They’re coming in fewer numbers but somebody has obviously found a way in regardless.

Second: if I’m going to use a paid-for service does anyone have a recommendations? I don’t want to host it - I have enough trouble finding time to write something on the blog without having to learn about what’s going on inside it as well. I want to be able to easily add pictures and customisations - without having to be a web-master - host my own ads (I’m thinking of getting rich quick) and give the site a touch of my own personality (yes, I do actually have one) - but all at the flick of a switch.

Of course, I am interested in a service that deals effectively with people trying to sell me Viagra (or vi.agg.ra as it seems to be often called), porn, pharmaceuticals from Canada, Texas Hold’em secrets (already know ‘em) and so on.

Any suggestions will be much appreciated.

Apparently if you possess up to 500 cannabis joints you won’t be counted as a dealer, according to the Home Office. It seems a normal user might be expected to possess up to that many spliffs at one time. If so, then that’s a rather large stash of weed, isn’t it? What might they be doing with that many joints - getting ready for hibernation? Do nicotine smokers have that many fags (American readers - both of you - note that a ‘fag’ is a cigarette in English English) at any one time?

Anyway.

Has the government heard of ‘demand and supply’? Demand is what people do when they want something. Supply is how the more enterprising get rich - they sell to the demanders whatever it is that they are demanding.

If you want to stop drug abuse then slapping the dealers all over town and going soft on the users is a mistake. The arrangement with users should be simple: possession gets you a big fine the first time and a prison sentence thereafter. You get extra time inside if you refuse to identify your dealer. All David Cameron’s tosh about education is laughable. Kids who take drugs often won’t be at school to hear the lesson and, besides, people taking drugs already know the stuff’s not exactly a health supplement. They consume them for reasons - street credibility, excitement, cool, peer pressure, depression, gross stupidity etc - that are entirely beyond the reach of educators or common sense.

The lure of drugs - and the grip such a lifestyle can have on individuals - is that strong that it can only be combated by an equally strong - but opposing - force. Asking people to apply intellect for uncertain, intangible benefits that are largely abstract or, at best, long-term when instant gratification - along with its accompanying elevation of status amongst peers - beckons enticingly is a mostly wasted effort.

Ask anybody who smokes, eats too much, drinks too much, doesn’t exercise, spends more than they earn, doesn’t save for a pension, puts off important jobs or engages in any one of a large number of minor sins if they recognise that they would be better off if they didn’t. Almost all do recognise it - and some try hard to change but, in the end, we mostly continue to enjoy the moment and ignore the damage. We get some benefit now from the habit and that’s what counts. The same applies to drug use.

The motivation to resist the pressure to try drugs - or to resist continuing using them once one has got over the initial taboo - must be applied from outside. The application must come from the forces of law and order and what must be applied is pain. Only financial pain or custodial pain will remove from drug-taking the sense of bohemian living, harmless rebellion, ‘everybody’s doing it’ attitude, that many otherwise ordinary people associate with the habit. It’s not enough to say that the occasional spliff or tab is no big deal. On its own it may not be. And maybe the user is a well employed professional, with a family and his habit is infrequent so where’s the harm?

But the accumulative effect of all this use is an expanded drugs economy which means that dealing in drugs remains a viable profession for many otherwise useless people and who in turn encourage the importation of all sorts of narcotics into this country. Users supply profits to dealers. That’s why we have dealers and dealers will always find ways of getting their product into the country. It is users who should be targeted. When they are no longer users the stuff is no longer required.

From the Daily Telegraph:

Sales assistants are ruder, more ignorant and less helpful than they were 10 years ago, according to one of the biggest surveys of its kind.

Overall, customer service has fallen by 3.3 percentage points while customer satisfaction is down by 1.6 points. The biggest decline was in knowledge - which fell by seven points.

Only one in four customers were served within a minute of queuing for a cash till, a fifth of sales staff did not smile while serving customers, 22 per cent had little knowledge of their products, and 24 per cent failed to say goodbye at the end of a transaction.

The survey was carried out by a consultancy called Grass Roots and was based on 1775 visits by mystery shoppers. The consultancy’s spokesman said,

…pressure on costs meant there was less money to spend on staff and training. “Staff are equally ready and willing, but less able to provide good service.”

It seems odd to me that the only way a member of staff can say thank you or greet you in a mannered way is if their company can afford the right kind of training. Manners which, apart from product knowledge, are what constitutes most people’s experience of customer service, are difficult to teach. If a person has them then training is of marginal use; if they don’t have them then training is of no use since all the training will give them is a set of techniques - which will be eventually forgotten.

At my local supermarket cashiers are told to greet each customer and offer to help pack their shopping for them. It’s a nice touch - made much more noticeable when you go elsewhere and the cashier barely acknowledges you at any point in the transaction. However, even within my local supermarket’s courtesy regime there is plenty of scope for the individual to adapt the company’s rules of engagement - from the cheerful, smiling greeting and enthusiastic assistance of one employee to, well, a total ignorance of the rules by another.

What it comes down to is the norms of society, the standards of behaviour that we insist on in our dealings with each other. And these have been degraded over time such that, now, it is a fairly accurate rule of thumb that if it’s polite service you require the older the assistant the better. These people have, in most cases, carried their culture’s habit of courtesy with them and have not succumbed to the brute insolence of today’s ‘rights but no responsibilities’ brigade.

They also have some command of the English language which means they can convey requests or information in whole, meaningful sentences - unlike my recent experience in my bank where the person allocating appointments asked/instructed (I’m not sure which) me to ‘Sit over there, yeah?’

In the end though I wonder if the decline in customer service - which may well mirror a general decline in incivility - is necessarily an increase in rudeness. For somebody to be actually rude implies they are aware of society’s norms and conventions with regards to manners but chooses to ignore them. Something I detect in the blank visage of the average youth when spoken to is actually the absence of confidence, rather than the wilful ignorance of accepted courtesies. Too often the person seems to lack the conversational skills necessary to navigate the white waters of mainstream communication - and he or she appears to be acutely aware of it.

This is faintly tragic. As the wonders of cultural instant gratification erase the human ability to focus and pay attention and the evils of state-provided education keep the lower classes well and truly in their place the victims of these attacks on human potential seem aware at some primitive level that they’re being marginalised, left out and deprived in a truly fundamental way.

If there is any such thing as social exclusion it is the removal of the basic ability to communicate with one’s fellow citizen that is its ultimate manifestation. Unable to perform adequately in a job interview, to debate with local or national representatives, to engage in the daily affairs of their community or country or to speak up effectively for themselves or their families when the need arises it seems that some people are condemned to live next to society but not necessarily in it.

It is an affront to democracy - and a betrayal of the working classes who are least able to spend their way out of difficulty - that a significant portion of our children cannot speak, write or converse effectively and it is a crime against all our people that the means of their subjugation - vacuous and corrupting entertainment, readily available narcotics, free and easy response to criminality, the state-sanctioned demeaning of the family, removal of most structures of authority, the subordination of educational striving to the more pressing needs of meeting governmental targets, and the exalting of the satisfaction of individual impulses over the need for humans to attend to duties before rights - are becoming more rather than less prevalent. All attempts to improve people against such an onslaught is an uphill struggle and one destined to fail.

Next time your local supermarket oik responds to you with a belligerent frown and a meaningless grunt it might be well to recognise that, rather than being wilfully ignorant, he may simply be a product of a depraved society and a corrupt governing class. In a country awash with so-called victims, he might be a genuine article.

A couple of days ago some furore was caused by the fact that, according to a survey of one thousand people, a substantial minority of ordinary people believe that a woman’s dress, behaviour and state of drunkedness could be partly responsible for them being sexually assaulted or raped.

The survey also found that 26 per cent of adults believed that a women was partially or totally responsible for being raped if she was wearing sexy or revealing clothing. Some 22 per cent held the same view if a woman had had many sexual partners. Similarly, 30 per cent said that a woman was partially or totally responsible for being raped if she was drunk.

Women’s rights groups were unimpressed:

Vera Baird, MP, who heads the Fawcett Society’s Commission on Women and the Criminal Justice System, said: “We tend to blame the low conviction rate on failures in the police and judicial systems. But if juries are thinking like this, then improving the procedures is not going to make much difference. The attitudes in this survey are glib and outdated. They implicitly mean that the guy can’t help himself.”

Did the survey actually reveal that people believed men who raped should be exonerated for their crimes if their victim was drunk or wearing scanty clothes? I’m not sure that it did.

For the record, I believe if a girl dresses revealingly - that is, sexually - and drinks herself silly then she inevitably becomes much more vulberable to those men who would prey on women in her state. One of the reasons I would want my own daughter not to behave that way is simply for her own safety.

Does this mean she deserves to be assaulted? No, not one little bit. Does this mean I think the man who rapes a girl in these circumstances is less of a rapist? Not at all. He is 100% a rapist and 100% guilty of rape - and should be imprisoned accordingly. But only a fool believes that if a woman dresses alluringly and behaves provocatively that no man will be allured and provoked. And a couple will act on that provocation regardless of the damge done to the girl. This is life and life isn’t politically correct. To deny that a woman can increase the chances of making herself a target of men who prey on women is mindless - and it’s a betrayal of responsibility.

Then today the various media report on a court case involving a very drunk college student and a possible rape. The 20 year old student was so drunk friends asked the university security guard, Ryairi Dougal, 20, to walk her back to the halls of residence. The pair had sex in the hallway leading to her room. The girl - who remembers nothing of the incident - didn’t even know she’d had sex until two days after the event when Mr Dougal himself said that it had happened.

She further admits she was too drunk to remember whether or not she had agreed to sex.

Now if Mr Dougal raped her he’s a pretty lousy human being and only the severest punishment is sufficient for this crime. But how does anybody know whether the girl was willing or not when even the girl can’t remember? And how, then, can Mr Dougal be found guilty of a crime that the victim doesn’t recall as even happening?

According to The Independent, the girl’s reasoning that she must have been raped is this:

During the trial the student told the court: “If I had wanted to sleep with him I would have taken the few steps to my bedroom.”

Then again, if he’d been genuinely raping her then, in her apparent semi-conscious state getting her to her room and then doing the deed in private would have been an easy matter - and a far safer bet.

It was actually the prosecutor, Huw Rees, who abandoned the case. Mr Rees was quoted by the BBC thus:

“The prosecution has taken stock, in light of the evidence revealed in cross examination,” said Huw Rees.

“The question of consent is an essential part of the case. Drunken consent is still consent.

“She said she could not remember giving consent and that is fatal for the prosecution’s case.”

With that, the judge ordered the jury to return a not guilty verdict.

Labour’s Vera Baird, MP had something to say on this case too. According to The Independent she said about the judge:

“He is wrong, there is no doubt about that, it is a dreadful error,” she said.

“The judge is utterly and totally wrong, he needs to be spoken to and sent on some re-training.

“This is a dreadful outcome because women will now think they cannot have a single glass of wine - I think this is going to put women off coming forward again and again.”

Now quite what re-training the judge needs I’m not sure. If the prosecution decides there’s not enough evidence to go ahead - silly stuff like, the girl doesn’t know what happened and there’s no evidence a crime had been committed - then there’s no case, surely?

Does Ms Baird want the defendent to be imprisoned anyway? Should the jury find him guilty just for the hell of it?

The girl cannot recall refusing consent so we must assume Mr Dougal’s innocence. Probably it is only Mr Dougal knows the truth of the case. But until Mr Blair and his various neo-con friends get their way in the UK you will be innocent until proven guilty.

Even the lamentings of Ms Baird cannot alter the fact that Mr Dougal is innocent until shown to be otherwise and imprisoning him because it would be politically correct to do so would be as serious a crime as the rape that we don’t even know took place.

The face-off between David Cameron and David Davis this afternoon on Jonathan Dimbleby’s show leaves me feeling very nervous about the Conservative Party’s fortunes. If David Cameron does win the leadership contest - as is being widely predicted - then we have an uncertain future. On today’s performance Mr Cameron seems to have a fair bit to do before he can be considered a self-assured performer of Davis’ calibre.

After the usual setting out of stalls in which David Cameron talked again about how ‘we have to face up to the big challenges that the country faces’ and the need ‘to change the party’ - phrases so Blairesque in their total absence of meaning that I am aghast his advisors let him say them any more - he warmed up with a sensible sounding piece about how we should support the government when it gets things right because to do otherwise constitutes ‘opportunistic opposition’.

This was in reference particularly to the government’s education white paper - described by Shirley Williams and a Times journalist on ‘Question Time’ this week as so full of contradictions that it rendered itself meaningless - and which David Cameron himself had said illustrated that the government was too timid in its education changes.

David Davis pointed out to Mr Cameron that you need to be careful how you support this bill because if you’ve already called it ‘timid’ - which Mr Cameron has - and the government is already backtracking on the paper anyway - which it is - you could easily find you’ve actually supported a bill that provides a worse outcome than you expected. You end up being an accomplice to a bad bill.

David Cameron ignored this piece of advice and simply restated that it was principled to support the government when it did right.

In fact, Mr Cameron made quite a bit about how conservatives should ’stick to their principles’ and be ‘consistent’. That’s music to my ears actually and something I believe we have failed miserably to do for years. Indeed, when asked by an audience member whether he could convince people he wouldn’t be taken apart by Blair and Brown Mr Cameron replied, “They will take apart someone who doesn’t stick to their principles. We do get taken apart when we’re opportunistic.”

Mr Davis, who had listened to Mr Cameron’s various pronouncements on consistency and principle pounced: “You talk about consistency, David, but before the election you supported our policy on immigration, on tuition fees, on healthcare… you’ve changed your mind on the back of a single election loss. That’s not consistent. That can easily be represented - maybe misrepresented - as opportunistic on the back of one election result.”

Cameron: “If we don’t make changes we will lose again.”

So badly caught out was Mr Cameron I genuinely felt bad for him. There was worse for him to come.

Jonathan Dimbleby on Cameron’s opposition to patients’ passports: “… a classic example of what would open you up to the charge of opportunism. You fought passionately in favour of patient passports before the election and now you’re junking them.”

Mr Cameron’s answer revealed much. The policy was wrong, he said, “because it gave people the impression it was helping people escape the NHS.”

So the policy was wrong not because it was actually wrong in itself but because of the image it portrayed? So might Mr Cameron actually believe it was a good policy that simply looked bad? This little episode emphasised one of the more crucial differences between the two contenders: if it’s right Davis will argue it out - even if it’s controversial. Cameron may well junk it.

Mr Dimbleby to David Cameron: “Were you aware [before the election] this policy [patients’ passports] favoured the middle classes or didn’t you recognise it?”

Despite Mr Cameron’s attempts to sidestep the question Mr Dimbleby was dogged in trying to get an answer leading Mr Cameron to resort to a tactic similar to the one he used in the first Question Time head to head - attack the questioner. “You’re interrupting me more than Paxman,” he accused.

The audience laughed but for those of us who wonder if we’re looking at our Party’s future leader this was not funny.

The drugs issue is Mr Cameron’s achilles heel - and not just because of his own possible use in the past. It doesn’t help that his inconsistency when calling for consistency is so see-through:

“I want a drugs policy that works and not just one that sounds good.” Yet he dropped patients’ passports when they didn’t sound good.

Leaving aside David Cameron’s ham-fisted approach to the drugs issue - he seemed to believe that the sending of the correct ‘message’ to youngsters about drugs depended on whether you categorised drugs sensibly - the real problem is that, in a relatively friendly, relatively calm debating arena he loses out on fundamental points and ends up looking amateur. If Dimbleby - the presenter - and Davis can rattle him in what is only a hint at what will come if he’s elected leader then what will Labour’s big guns do to him?

Once again I find myself looking at the older man as being the one best placed to land the blows on Labour and best placed to make sensible, level-headed decisions with regards to his own Party. He seems the one least likely to be caught out saying one thing while doing (or having done) another. Davis is a safe pair of hands with the necessary experience and maturity to guide the Conservative Party through opposition and into power. Cameron is a great Conservative MP. I don’t think he’s yet a leader.

The Sunday Times:

THE security service MI5 is seeking to recruit 800 extra spies to combat the heightened threat of Islamic terrorism since the London bombings of July 7.

Ministers are expected to approve the expansion plan, which will contribute to a doubling in the size of the spy agency by 2009. Staff numbers are expected to increase from 2,000 last year to nearly 4,000.

Since intelligence is the leading weapon against terrorism - with immigration controls and proper sentencing for the terrorists’ support staff - rather than banging people up for 3 months while you try to work out if they’ve actually done anything I’m glad The Times reports that ministers are going to approve the funds necessary for the expansion.

And if intelligence is indeed the leading weapon against terrorism then Muslims themselves are the leading intelligence gatherers against the evil in their midst:

Hundreds of spies, surveillance and desk officers will be recruited. They will include many candidates from ethnic minorities. The agency wants to hire “streetwise” young Muslim men who are capable of infiltrating groups of Islamic hardliners.

And they can get cracking against the buggers who have decided Her Majesty is one of their ’severest enemies’. In the full version of the video featuring Mohammad Sidique Khan, ringleader of the London bombings,

…al-Zawahiri not only labels the Queen as one of Islam’s “severest enemies” but also sends a warning shot to British Islamic leaders who “work for the pleasure of Elizabeth, the head of the Church of England”.

He said those who followed her were saying: “We are British citizens, subject to Britain’s crusader laws, and we are proud of our submission . . . to Elizabeth, head of the Church of England.”

Nothing particularly intelligent here - just another of my infamous ramblings …

Firstly, why does almost everybody who isn’t a politician support the 90-day limit on holding suspects without charge? I mean, few people want to see nice people held in prison for 3 months (yes, 3 months - funny how it sounds so much more than 90 days, isn’t it?). None of us want to see the innocent stuck behind bars for weeks on end - 3 months of weeks on end - only to be finally released to go back to jobs that might have disappeared, relationships that may have fractured, children that have become distraught and friends and neighbours who will not have been able to avoid noticing their absence.

So why are so many people supporting such incarceration? Simple. Because whenever somebody mentions holding somebody for 90 days while they are investigated for terrorist crimes Joe Average immediately thinks of a Muslim terrorist - dark skin, soulless eyes, headscarf and a sneer - who is either aiding and abetting a bomber - or actually is a bomber - and who, as sure as eggs is eggs, is as guilty as the day is long. All the police need is enough time to gather the evidence to prove the case. Once they do we’re all saved from being ripped to shreds by the evil designs of these godless devils.

Now Joe Average is not making his assumptions due to any racist urges nor does he particularly have it in for Muslims. But he’s got a bee in his bonnet about people trying to blow him up and he automatically assumes that this legislation will only affect people who are, basically, in the business of doing just that. He does not for a moment imagine that anybody who doesn’t deserve it could possibly get caught up in what, for that individual, could be a defining moment of their lives.

And this is where, I think, those of us who opposed the 90-day measure have failed to do a decent enough job of promoting our view. Freedom, to Joe Average, is a given - rather like the right to vote. Nobody is excited about voting; barely half of us even bothered last time. You’ve got to actually lose the right to vote before Mr Average wakes up long enough to get a bit upset. Freedom, though, is a different creature and is much more difficult to measure and to realise that you even have it. Freedom’s not something you do, is it? So it’s difficult to imagine not being able to do it - unlike voting.

So what are some of the objections to 90-day detention without charge? Here’s a couple I prepared earlier:

1. It is wrong to be imprisoned without trial. And, while it is a subjective call, 14 days (the current limit) is reasonable while 90 days is imprisonment. There are prison sentences handed out for violent crime that result in the guilty suffering less than 90 days - 3 months - in prison.

2. The police are not 100% trustworthy. Shocking, from a conservative, but true nevertheless. Some are plain dishonest. The police are, after all, representative of the public at large and let’s face it, we’re not all pure as driven snow so why should the police be? Some officers, dedicated to the cause, will hold a man that they ‘know’ is guilty and present their evidence imaginatively to the judge so as to secure maximum time to hold their suspect. I do not think judges will often let a man free whom the police can portray as a menace to society.

And police fishing for suspects may well pull in a likely lad simply in the knowledge that, if they haven’t really got much on him, they can still hold him for a while until they do. It gives police an opportunity to avoid the necessary up-front work on gathering evidence and put it off until a later time. In the meantime, the suspect is effectively doing time.

3. It may well not be necessary. Tony Blair ignored the question in Parliament the other day but it’s a pertinent one, namely: has there ever been a case where the police have let a suspect go because they couldn’t hold him longer than 14 days (although they wanted to) and he went on to do something unpleasant? Somebody correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think there has been. It seems that if you haven’t got the evidence to nail him after 14 days you probably aren’t going to have it after 90. Better, then, to watch your suspect carefully, see who he mixes with, gather intelligence and then nab him when - if - you really do have something to pin on him.

The fact remains that the police, understandably, want all the tools they can possibly obtain in order to do their job. Whether they’re useful to them - or good for us - is of no concern. Just as I, in my job, will try to obtain as many resources to help me as I can, so too will the police. And if the police always get what they want then we find ourselves edging towards a police state because their wants will not sit easily with our liberties.

4. I don’t believe the Labour government itself particularly wants this legislation. What this is, I believe, is a golden opportunity for Labour to look tough to the public - always important in the government’s eyes - and obtain a Brucie bonus by making those Conservatives interested in protecting an Englishman’s freedom look like a bunch of softies.

When Blair sits there pompously going on about how he’d ‘rather lose doing the right thing than win doing the wrong thing’ (oh, come on!) and how this shouldn’t be a party political matter he’s actually committing the crime he’s accusing the Conservatives of. Because this is precisely a party political matter, deliberately contrived to create a conflict out of which only Labour can look good and all who oppose look like friends of terrorists. Even though the law has failed Blair can still take the moral high ground. It might be a small compensation but still he wins even when he loses.

5. I do not agree with pandering to the sensibilities of minorities wherever such pandering conflicts with the way of life or preferences of the majority. But nor do I agree with causing upset or trouble where it’s not necessary - mainly because it’s inhumane to do so but also because it’s impractical. Since this legislation may well fall disproportionately on British Muslims - and that’s perfectly understandable, as far as that goes - it will be they who bear the brunt of the pain of false imprisonments.

But they’re also in the forefront of our intelligence gathering activities to catch the murderers in our midst. How exactly are we going to secure the support of the decent majority of Muslims who will assist the security forces in their attempts to catch Muslim fanatics when they find the innocent amongst them being imprisoned without trial? The feeling that they - and they alone - are on the receiving end of undemocratic legislation will be hard to refute. They will complain that they are being imprisoned without trial - and such a measure will bring the disaffected ever closer to the embrace of fanatics.

6. Finally, I do not want to live in a country where the powers of MPs - who are supposed to represent us - and the police - who are supposed to serve us - are so overwhelming that we become subject to their wishes and preferences. They are our servants, not we theirs. The more we allow them to do to us the more they will do and the more we fall inot their control. This alters the character of our country in ways we might live to regret as we come more and more to resemble states we would never wish to emulate.

The 28-day compromise is a better deal but one has to be aware that, once 28 days becomes the norm, 35 days could be the next step. If we’re serious about catching bad people then, rather than giving the police more and more power over our liberties - powers which may, actually, provide limited benefit - we should consider giving them more and more freedom from paperwork and political correctness, allow them to recruit more officers to carry out the intelligence work necessary to thwart terrorists and start using the laws we already have to imprison - for years - the various thieves, planners, forgers, con-artists and assorted support staff who, in the end, make the fanatics’ final atrocities possible. Restrictions on liberty, if ever needed, should occur only when all else has been exhausted. I don’t think all else has been exhausted and this legislation is Labour’s way of scoring a few points with the electorate.

Thankfully it failed.

It says something for the state of our ‘civilisation’ when a mother has to go to court in order to secure the ‘right’ to know whether her child has been the victim of a crime - underage sex - and is also planning on terminating the baby in her womb.

Just reading through the Daily Mail’s report of mother of four Sue Axon’s bid to secure that right makes for disturbing reading:

Her QC Philip Havers told Mr Justice Silber, sitting in London: “This case raises the important question whether the parent of a young person aged under 16 who goes to her doctor or other health professional for advice and treatment in respect of contraception, or in respect of sexually transmitted infections, or in respect of an abortion, are entitled at least to be told about the proposed advice and treatment before it is provided.”

Labour have nationalised the family and now we parents have to apply to the State for our ‘right’ to look after our children in the best way we know. This is what happens in a rights based culture. Everything is allowed when and only when the government deigns to allow it.

“It is incongruous to me that I am required to have to consent to my daughter having her belly button pierced while she can have an abortion without me even knowing.”

Mrs Axon said she believed parents should be involved because “difficult discussions strengthen family life”.

The consequences of the decisions made with regard to abortion also “stay with you for the rest of your life”, she added.

This is a government that will happily ban privately owned drinking establishments from allowing the legal habit of smoking cigarettes to take place on their premises - a decision which removes the right of adults to make their own decisions - but will enable 13 year old girls to have illegal sex and then terminate the results as if they were old and wise and quite able to deal with such a procedure.

If parental responsibility is to mean anything at all then they must have a say in such life-affecting decisions of their off-spring. To take critical decisions on contraception and abortion away from the family and give them to the State is an abomination.

Whatever a child chooses to do, in the end, their family has to cope with any harmful fallout. If an underage child pursues a sexual relationship she is breaking the law and exposing herself to emotional trials she may not be able to deal with at such a young age. A decision over an abortion that doesn’t involve those who care for her most means that whichever way she goes the family may have to handle an outcome without having any involvement in the original decision. This being so, to allow the State to dictate terms is patently wrong.

Parental responsibility is being relegated to simply sending them off to school in the morning.

Today’s Telegraph reports that the government is seeking to tax homeowners who have a nice view from their houses.

Taxpayers are set to be charged hundreds of pounds extra a year if they are in a conservation area, next to an open space, have a swimming pool or tennis court or enjoy full or partial views of the sea, hills, mountains, lakes or rivers.

Extra charges are also expected to be levied on homes with more bedrooms than average, conservatories, large patios or gardens, roof terraces or balconies. Homes in “gated communities” will also face higher bills.

Official documents show that ministers are going to extraordinary lengths to build a detailed database of properties across England, with the intention of placing them in a higher council tax band.

A question occurs: when that nice Mr Prescott comes along and concretes over your nice view, will your council tax reduce accordingly?

One of the commenters to this log is in the process of denying the Nazi holocaust in the comments section of this post.
Because I don’t want another lengthy digression from the topic in hand (Iraq’s call for the wiping off the map of Israel) I’m posting his last comment here and then inviting interested parties to add their comments.

I hasten to add that, although I’m no scholar of Nazi history - and am well aware of the value of propoganda and the historical skewing that can take place to promote it - I do not accept that Nazi Germany had any other plans with the Jews than their extermination.

And, for the record: if Iran were to seriously threaten Israel in accordance with its recent words I for one would support any necessary means to neutralise that threat.

This posting isn’t to give a platform for a holocaust revisionist but to avoid jamming up the comments section with off-topic argument.

Click here for the comments (more…)

The Times prints some examples of questions the Home Office will be asking new entrants to Britain. The entire test takes 45 minutes and the applicant must score more than 75% in order to pass.

The applicant will be pleased to know that the GCSE his kids will take are a lot less rigorous.

The test exposes the hypocrisy of a government which seems not to place any importance on the British native understanding his own history whilst making itself look tough to the electorate by forcing Mr and Mrs Gupta to become near-experts.

It is laughable that new arrivals could well know more about this country than we do. Equally, it is laughable that knowing the answers to a list of questions determines your level of Britishness.

But, then, these measures are about making immigrants jump through hoops for the amusement of small-minded racists - but, for their sins, possible Labour voters - rather than promoting something truly and meaningfully British. This rotten government will never learn that patriotic yearnings will never be assuaged by picking on brown-skinned immigrants. We’re not improved by making their entry into this country difficult or belittling them in any other ways we might dream of. We’re improved by taking only the few immigrants we actually need and then addressing the appalling lack of national cohesion caused by multiculturalism, rampant multiethnicity, moral relativism and the degradation of national confidence and pride that is part of the Left’s on-going project to abolish this country.

Anyway, here are some of the questions which, answered correctly, somehow make a Chinese rice farmer British:

1) Where are Geordie, Cockney, and Scouse spoken?

2) What are MPs?

3) What is the Church of England and who is its head?

4) What is the Queen’s official role and what ceremonial duties does she have?

5) Do many children live in single parent families or step-families?

6) Which TWO telephone numbers can be used to dial the emergency services? 112, 123, 555, 999.

Answers are here (more…)

Conservative MP Anne McIntosh proposes a change in the law to allow householders greater right to use appropriate force against intruders.

At present, the law only allows for reasonable force to be used in defence of the self. One may not use force in defence of one’s property or personal belongings.

I believe that an individual should be allowed to use reasonable force against an intruder attempting to steal their possessions. The police should only take action against a victim of crime when it is clear that the response of that person has been excessive.

It is crucial that this right is given to both homeowners and businesses alike, and that the law is clear. The bill will also restore the balance of rights in favour of the property owner, as opposed to the burglar.

Hear, hear.

Blair’s strongly worded - almost admirable - statement on Iran yesterday may actually have been one of his ‘this’ll sound good so I’ll say it’ moments, designed to detract from the fact that his presidency of the EU has produced nothing and is another area of disappointment for his desire for a legacy. Either way, it was appropriate to the situation caused by the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s remarks:

“As the Imam [the late Ayatollah Khomeini] said, ‘Israel must be wiped off the map’ … The Islamic world will not let its historic enemy live in its heartland.”

Mr Blair responded:

“These sentiments are completely and totally unacceptable. I have never come across a situation where the president of a country says they want to wipe out another country - this is not acceptable. Their attitude towards terrorism, towards the nuclear weapons and towards Israel is not acceptable.

“If they continue down this path, people are going to believe that they are a real threat to our world security and stability.”

“I have been answering questions on Iran with everyone saying to me, ‘Tell us you are not going to do anything about Iran’. If they carry on like this the question people will be asking is, ‘When are you going to something about it?’ “

Iran’s remarks open up all sorts of cans of worms. In the first place, it reminds us that Israel has, for decades, lived in a neighbourhood which contains countries whose greatest desire is to see it eliminated completely. If you can imagine what it is like to live with that hanging over your head - and, I might add, with mini-July 7ths happening here and there, year in, year out (5 killed, 28 wounded Wednesday in the town of Hadera) - it may well add a layer of understanding to Israel’s sometimes apparently harsh treatment of Palestinian terrorism.

Furthermore - and more ominously - this open call for genocide has been made by a country that is probably in the process of creating the means to enact that genocide. It is now impossible, I feel, for the international community to simply stand by and allow that country to continue its nuclear activity. If you doubt this then run this sentence through your mind a couple of times: “We must wipe [insert your country’s name here] off the face of the planet!” and then ask yourself what you might like to do with Iran’s nuclear project.

Then we have a situation where one UN member state is calling for the eradication of another. This requires a bit more than words of condemnation followed by business as usual. If the UN is to do anything at all to rebuild some of its rapidly depleting credibility, Iran’s removal from the UN must be seriously debated now. And if the UN is reluctant to remove it then it should explain clearly why not. The case for removal has already been eloquently made by Iran itself.

I understand the need to tread carefully and avoid doing anything that might worsen an already deteriorating situation. Shaking big sticks at someone you don’t like isn’t always the answer - however much the war-mongers in our countries might desire it. But the stakes in this game are very high - and not only for Israel. An emboldened and armed Islamic state isn’t a source of comfort for any of us; the possible exporting of its nuclear technology to other states could very well be lethal for us.

Iraq never had weapons of mass destruction. Iran may well be obtaining them. If things continue in this vein the west might have more trouble justifying not attacking Iran than they’ve had in actually attacking Iraq.

Geraint Davies, a now-ex Labour MP, claimed more expenses than any other MP last year. His total of £176,026 was more than £7,000 above the MP putting in the next highest claim.

“I am glad I invested my time and energy and allowances in serving my constituency. It clearly seems to me that this shows I was one of the most hard-working MPs in Britain,” he said.

He claimed a massive £38,750 on postage - that’s over £100 per day for every single day of the year. What on earth was he posting?

Call me a reactionary if you like but I want that figure investigated.

Here’s the low-down from the BBC:

Top 5 spenders:

Geraint Jones (Labour) - £176,026
Margaret Moran (Labour) - 168,569
Angus Robertson (SNP) - £160,776
Ashok Kumar (Labour) - £158,844
Peter Duncan (Conservative) - £158,032

Bottom 5 spenders:

Terry Davis (Labour) - £42,709
Iain Wright (Labour) - £61,502
Dennis Skinner (Labour) - £75,487
Michael Portillo (Conservative) - £76,947
David Winnick (Labour) - £78,909

Of course, the MPs are more than willing to discuss their spending of our money:

…the figures are published at 1530 on Thursday afternoon - horribly close to most national newspaper deadlines and at a time when many MPs are either away from the Commons for the weekend or on their way off to their constituencies and can be extremely difficult to track down.

Well, maybe not.

Next time our Euro-fanatical MPs try to kid us that national sovereignty is not endangered by the EU note the words of Mr Chirac, uttered today in Strasbourg:

Mr Chirac said that Europe should never be just a “mere free trade area” but rather a “political and social Europe rooted in solidarity”.

This kind of thing is said quite often of course but it’s always useful to keep in mind that, Constitution or no Constitution, the plan to create a European super-state is at the forefront of our leaders’ minds.

To which I might reply: If the terror laws were only used against those nasty people you have in mind when you think of terror laws then maybe they’re not so bad.

But once you give a government power it sometimes feels the uncontrollable need to exercise it. So you get this:

34 year old property developer Sally Cameron was arrested under the Terrorism Act for walking along a cycle path in the harbour area of Dundee. She should have been cycling but wasn’t.

She said: “I’ve been walking to work every morning for months and months to keep fit. One day, I was told by a guard on the gate that I couldn’t use the route any more because it was solely a cycle path and he said, if I was caught doing it again, I’d be arrested.

“The next thing I knew, the harbour master had driven up behind me with a megaphone, saying, ‘You’re trespassing, please turn back’. It was totally ridiculous. I started laughing and kept on walking. Cyclists going past were also laughing.

But then two police cars arrived on the scene and Ms Cameron was indeed arrested. Ignoring muggers, rapists and assorted chavs dirtying our streets the police held her for several hours before charging then releasing her.

She said that she was particularly galled by the letter from the procurator fiscal’s office, which said that she would not be prosecuted even though “the evidence is sufficient to justify bringing you before the court on this criminal charge”.

It seems nobody knew why she was arrested. They knew which legislation they were using to make the arrest possible but quite what offence she had actually committed remains a bit of a mystery:

Keith Berry, the harbour master at Forth Ports Dundee, said yesterday that Ms Cameron had been seen as a “security risk”. Speaking about the incident, which took place in May, he said: “We contacted the police in regards to this matter because the woman was in a secure area which forbids people walking. It was seen as a security risk. We were following guidelines in requirement with the port security plan set up by the Government.”

A spokesman for Forth Ports said: “We will robustly prosecute anyone who breaches these new security measures because they have been introduced by the Government and we are obliged to enforce them.”

So these were ’security’ measures used to deal with a ’security’ risk. And they only apply to people with something to hide?

I wonder if Ms Cameron believes she has anything to hide? Maybe she ought to swap notes with Walter Wolfgang to see if he had something to hide when the police used the Terrorism Act to bar him from re-entering Labour’s conference? I bet they don’t come up with much…

[Thanks, The Daily Propaganda]

In 2002, our masters, the EU, slapped a travel ban on Mugabe. He’s not allowed to come to any EU country.

Then the UN invites him to a conference (on world hunger can you believe?) that took place in Rome - which is in an EU country (that information given for the benefit of the UN’s geography department).

Apparently the ban doesn’t apply to UN functions since these are held to be above the jurisdiction of any individual state. So Mugabe uses them as a platform for his delusional denouncements of the west - and makes fools of us all in the process.

The EU should prepare its bans more carefully because it ought to know by now the UN provides a tradesman’s entrance for all the world’s despots and dictators.

Beef from Britain - and some other European countries - is banned in the US.

Britain donated food - including beef - to the Hurricane Katrina victims and, for a while, the fact that our banned beef was being fed to people wasn’t noticed. Now it has been and so products containing the offending item are being kept in storage.

US officials are looking to forward the stuff to countries who are less fussy about eating our meat. In the meantime, they may eventually discover that, the UK having sorted out our infected beef problem, they might be better of with ours than theirs.

David Cameron’s lack of judgement in this ‘did you take drugs when you were younger’ business is worrying.

In an unfair world if you do not deny it then you are tacitly admitting it. I would hazard a guess that the only reason he’s not saying ‘I did not take any drugs’ is because he knows the instant he does somebody who saw him do it will sell the story to the highest bidder and, for Cameron, the leadership campaign would be over.

From The Times:

“I’m allowed to have had a private life before politics, in which we make mistakes and we do things that we should not — and we are all human and we err and stray,” Mr Cameron said on ‘Question Time.

All this talk about ‘erring’ and ’straying’ and ‘mistakes made’ (a typically weedy phrase of denial, often used by MPs caught in flagrante delicto with their secretaries and prompting one to wonder how the ‘lady’ in question feels about being regarded as a ‘mistake’) just makes him look bad.

Why not admit what everybody now knows to be true, express your regrets and move on?

PS About the ’sue me’ bit in the title… You wouldn’t really, would you? I mean, I was just kidding…. I made a mistake… I erred…. I strayed…

If you live in Holland and the burka’s your kind of fashion statement then the news is all bad.

The country’s hardline Integration Minister, Rita Verdonk, known as the Iron Lady for her series of tough anti-immigration measures, told Parliament that she was going to investigate where and when the burka should be banned.

Mrs Verdonk gave warning that the “time of cosy tea-drinking” with Muslim groups had passed and that natives and immigrants should have the courage to be critical of each other. She recently cancelled a meeting with Muslim leaders who refused to shake her hand because she was a woman.

An outright ban would conflict with Holland’s religious freedom legislation. However, on grounds of public safety the garment may be banned in shops, public buildings, cinemas, train and bus stations and airports, as well as on trains and buses. Which is just about everywhere, is it not?

Elsewhere, some European towns have banned the burka locally.

Last year several Belgian towns, including Antwerp and Ghent, banned the wearing of the burka in public, and recently started issuing £100 spot fines for breaking the municipal ordinance. Several towns in Italy, including Como, have invoked legislation introduced by Mussolini that bans hiding one’s face in public to impose fines on burka-wearers. France and several regions of Germany have followed Turkey and Tunisia in banning the wearing of the hijab, which leaves the face visible, in public buildings, most controversially in schools.

And in Holland itself Utrecht City Council has decided to cut the benefits paid to women whose wearing of the burka prevents them from getting a job.

Utrecht based its decision on the Work and Social Security Act, which states that somebody receiving welfare must not do anything to prevent getting work. The city also noted that the Equality Commission, an official anti-discrimination body, backed employers who refused to give jobs to people wearing burkas, because being able to see someone’s face was an essential part of many jobs.

Personally, I’m not for banning items of clothes like the burka despite them being an ugly blot on our streets. If we’re to ban the burka I’d first like to ban the wearing of jeans that ride half-way down their chav owner’s arses to reveal their tacky Anne Summers thongs…

Typhoo has been bought by Indian company, Apeejay Surrendra Group.

One of the brands that come with the deal is the London Fruit and Herb company. Ironic indeed that something with our nation’s capital in the title should be foreign-owned.

It reminds me of an Irish grocer shop that was, for many years, Irish owned and run. It specialised in all those home-grown Irish products and brands that the average ex-pat Irishman misses when he’s abroad. I imagine it was a little piece of heaven for its customers. One day my then house-mate went there for his weekly dose of home and found himself being served by an Indian. It turned out the owners had sold up and an Indian family had bought the place. When I last knew about it the shop hadn’t changed one bit and the new owners had remained loyal to the needs and requirements of their Irish customers.

Typhoo is Britain’s third largest tea brand behind Tetley and PG Tips. Tetley is also Indian owned - by the Tata group. I wonder if they’ll ever try to market Indian-class spiced tea - chai - in this country? It’s an amazing drink - definitely an acquired taste - and I’ve never tasted it in its proper form outside of India. I actually doubt it can be mass-produced but maybe I’ll be proved wrong.

I waited with anticipation this morning for the BBC Breakfast news coverage of Mrs Thatcher’s 80th birthday. They promised to explore her legacy - which to me meant we ought to hear about the routing of the trade unions, the defeat of socialism, the end of the Cold War, extended property rights, the diminishing of local democracy and the failure to address escalating social breakdown. Possibly it would mention her devoted husband, her wayward son and her relentless work ethic. It should end with some detail of how she was deposed.

I shouldn’t have bothered waiting.

The BBC’s coverage was a blatant and pathetic attempt to score points against the Conservative Party on account of it not having more female MPs. On were wheeled two female MPs - one Conservative, one Labour - and the Labour MP proceeded to demonstrate just why it is that all-female lists - such a patronising way of selecting by gender - are no good. She - like a number of her New Labour female counterparts - was abysmal.

Of course, the unstated undercurrent of the whole business is that if women don’t represent 50% of Parliament then there’s discrimination taking place (what else could it possibly be?) and that, in the scheme of things the Conservatives - predictably - are the most discriminatory of the lot. Yawn.

I’m not going to go into the whys and wherefores of social engineering parliament so that it has the ‘correct’ number of blacks, Hindus, Muslims, women, gays, one-legged single-parent lesbians…. But I am enraged that, days after the BBC has the nerve to demand more of our cash it then shows us so unashamedly what it is our cash will be spent on.

The Scotsman on a report written by economists at Scottish Enterprise:

The astonishing extent to which state spending is propping up Scotland’s economy is laid bare in new figures which suggest the ballooning public sector is strangling wealth creation.

The findings show that in some areas, three-quarters of the local economy is made up solely of the billions of pounds pumped in by the government.

I think I might replace the sentence ’state spending is propping up Scotland’s economy ‘ with something a lot closer to the truth - such as, ’state spending is propping up Labour’s tartan vote block’. Our tax-and-spend government maintains artificially low unemployment by moving unemployed onto disability benefit and by buying public sector jobs - as if the country needs them.

Such is the size of the public sector in these areas, business chiefs and economists fear it is swallowing up private enterprise, hoovering up talented workers and making it nearly impossible for companies to prosper.

The findings shed fresh light on Scotland’s chronic dependency culture - in which the economy is becoming increasingly reliant upon state handouts to provide wages for the ever rising army of public sector workers.

Some of the findings are pitiful. Just how does a person have any pride in a town or area when all that it is has been provided by tax-payers - via the government?

In Argyll and Clyde, 76% of the economy is generated from the state, in the form of spending by councils, health boards and through other forms of government activity. In Ayrshire and Arran, the figure is 74%. In Lanarkshire, it is 72%.

Only in oil-rich Grampian (35%) and finance-friendly Lothians (39%) do the figures fall below comparable English levels. Across the UK, state spending accounts for approximately 40% of the economy.

The figures have almost certainly been boosted by the rocketing sums spent by Scotland’s government since devolution. By 2008, Scottish Executive spending will be double that of 1999. Scotland’s benefits bill has also rocketed. Scottish Enterprise claims that total public spending in Scotland in 2002-03 reached £40bn, or 55% of Scotland’s total economy.

The warnings are stark - and probably set to be ignored:

Business chiefs warned that the high levels were ruining hopes of boosting growth.

Alan Mitchell of CBI Scotland said: “To have that much of the economy generated by wealth spending rather than wealth creating can’t be good for the Scottish economy long term.

“It has a major effect on the ability of companies to recruit and retain staff. Their margins are tight and they cannot compete in terms of holidays, pensions, childcare and all the other add-ons that the public sector can offer. If we don’t have ambitious small to medium size businesses growing then we aren’t going to develop that economy long term.”

Even the Scottish National Party is concerned:

Jim Mather, enterprise spokesman for the SNP said high levels of public spending would leave Scotland dangerously exposed when government funding was cut back.

Which is plain common sense (if you’re not a card-carrying member of the Blairite Tendency).

No wonder the Scottish National Party only secured 6 seats in the May General Election. Independence is just what Scotland doesn’t want.

[Thanks, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle]

Chinese attempts to demonstrate its superpower status were boosted by a televised launching of their second manned space mission.

From CNN:

The mission, reportedly due to last up to five days, is an effort by the communist government to declare its status as a rising world power with technological triumphs to match its rapid economic growth. It is only the third country to launch a human into orbit on its own, after Russia and the United States.

Much of the technology however is Russian in origin albeit extensively modified. The two astronauts are thought to be spending five days in space having orbitted the earth 80 times. Chinese confidence in the project was sufficiently high that they screened the take-off live on television.

The manned space program is a key prestige project for China’s ruling Communist Party, which hopes that patriotic pride at its triumphs will help to shore up the party’s public standing amid frustration at official corruption and social problems.

I wonder if a certain Mr Blair ought to be thinking of sending something into space soon - for rather similar reasons…