Hideously White, part 2

Is the liberal left beginning to turn on itself? I ask, because the television scriptwriter Jimmy McGovern has just accused the BBC of being "one of the most racist institutions in England". Well, I wouldn't quite go that far, but I would agree that al-Beeb does have something of a bias against white people, manifested in, among other things, its discriminatory approach to the reporting of racist crime, with racist crimes committed by whites against non-whites receiving vastly greater coverage than those directed against whites by non-whites.

Oh, that's not what McGovern meant? Here's what he actually said, in an interview with Simon Mayo:

I love the BBC as an institution and as an organisation and you do see lots of black faces in the BBC. But you see them in the canteen. You do not see them in positions of power. It would appear to me that one of the most racist institutions in England is in fact the BBC.

Now, unlike McGovern, I have not been, nor am I ever likely to be, invited within the hallowed portals of Broadcasting House, or indeed within those of the BBC's other place at Shepherd's Bush. I can claim no knowledge of the ethnic make-up of al-Beeb's canteen staff. However, does anyone in their right mind really believe that the BBC discriminates, deliberately or subconsciously, against non-whites?

Senior Beeboid, and fully paid-up member of the liberal-left, Andrew Marr, certainly doesn't think so. According to him, ethnic minorities, along with young people and homosexuals, are heavily over-represented among the employees of al-Beeb. And I don't think that he was referring to the canteen staff. Personally, it seems to me that BBC news reporters are disproportionately non-white; they certainly are on BBC London, where the two main presenters are Riz Lateef and Asad Ahmed (both Pakistani), with Kurt Barling (black) occasionally filling in. Really, I think that BBC London could do with recruiting a few more white presenters, in the interests of 'diversity'!

Does picking out a few non-white TV presenters really prove very much, in itself, about the BBC's attitude, positive or negative, towards minority groups? No. But it is no less probative of anything than Jimmy McGovern's accusations. After all, he produced no statistics to back up his claims: they were simply assertions, based, at best, on anecdotal evidence.

Perhaps the most contemptible thing in this whole story, is the BBC's response to McGovern's claims. In a statement read out by Simon Mayo, the corporation said:

We're actively seeking and nurturing ethnic talents both on and off air. This has been coming through in our output with a range of presenters and reporters across our peak time programmes...it is something we are always looking to improve on.

So, the BBC is expressly seeking "ethnic talents", is it? Rather than just talent. So, its response to an unfounded accusation of racism against non-whites is to say that it actually discriminates in their favour? In any sane society this would be seen as being just as bad. Sadly, we live in a society in which discriminating against white people is seen as a thing good in itself by the political and media elite, of which al-Beeb is at the very centre.

If al-Beeb wishes to deal with a very real and serious form of discrimination taking place within the corporation, it could perhaps attempt to deal with what Andrew Marr terms the "cultural liberal bias" that dominates its news reporting, and which has been heavily documented in blogs, newspapers, independent reports, and books. But I wouldn't advise anyone to hold their breath waiting: attempting to achieve the impartiality required of it by its charter will earn al-Beeb far fewer liberal brownie points than it can get by self-flagellating fawning over designated victim groups.

'Solicitor to the terrorists' under investigation

A leading solicitor is being investigated by police over allegations of bribery after a senior judge raised concerns about her conduct.

Mudassar Arani will be the subject of a criminal inquiry into whether she attempted to bribe a defendant in the recent July 21 bomb trial and asked the man to change his case.

The investigation will be conducted by Scotland Yard’s Specialist Crime Directorate. Depending on the outcome of that, she could face a charge of perverting the course of justice. That offence carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

The Times has learnt that the investigation began this week after Mr Justice Fulford, the judge in the trial, expressed concerns about Ms Arani’s activities. Lawyers for Manfo Kwaku Asiedu, the so-called fifth bomber who abandoned an explosive device on July 21, 2005, said during the trial that Ms Arani had attempted to bribe him to change his case. She was said in court to have sent Mr Asiedu £650 in cash and a card marking the Islamic festival of Eid with the message “lots of love Mudassar Arani”.

It was further alleged that documents were smuggled to Mr Asiedu inside Belmarsh jail suggesting how he might change his defence case to tally with statements made by other defendants who were Ms Arani’s clients. At the end of the trial last month, the judge was highly critical in public of what he said were delaying tactics by Ms Arani and her clients which had prolonged the trial unnecessarily.

But it has now emerged that he raised the matter of the alleged bribery privately with prosecution lawyers.

While Miss Arani has, so far as I know, no previous criminal record, this would not be the first time that she has behaved in a manner that might not be regarded as entirely ethical: in 2005, she was sued for racial discrimination and non-payment of earnings by her former paralegal. More recently, she attracted attention after claiming that jailed terrorists should be given prisoner of war status.

Obviously, the investigation has only just commenced: while Mudassar Arani gives the strong impression of being a woman of rather dubious character, with an attachment to her terrorist clients that goes somewhat beyond mere professional interest, she has not yet been charged with anything, still less convicted. Still, it should be interesting to see how this pans out...

Cameron on immigration

David Cameron has, I believe for the first time since becoming Tory leader, spoken about the issue which, of all issues, most concerns the people of this country: immigration. Having hitherto scrupulously avoided mentioning the issue, for fear of appearing to be right-wing (not that there's much risk of that), he told last night's BBC Newsnight TV programme that immigration levels under Labour have been "too high". Which is, to my mind, a bit like saying that Mount Everest is "quite big". Immigration was too high when Labour came to power, now, with over half a million immigrants known to have entered the UK last year, it has gone completely out of control. It would be nice to get the numbers down to just being "too high".

Leaving aside this gripe, however, it is still nice - and very rare - to see Cameron come out with something vaguely sensible. Unfortunately, he followed this up by demonstrating his complete misunderstanding of what the real problem with immigration is, saying:

I do think that people have a very real concern about levels of immigration and not because of different cultures or the colour of their skin. I think that people’s concern is about services. It’s the pressure on schools, pressure on hospitals, pressure on housing. It is important to understand that if your child is going into a reception class and suddenly 20 new kids turn up because lots more families have arrived then that is a big pressure.

Okay, so perhaps calling it a "complete misunderstanding" was inaccurate. He is of course right about the pressures that unlimited mass immigration puts on our schools, our hospitals, housing, our whole national infrastructure. Back in May I wrote about the effect that immigration has had on Slough, and I think that one of the quotes I took from a Times article is worth repeating:

In the past 18 months [Slough Council] has placed in schools some 900 children who arrived in Slough from overseas. In other towns, they might have had to wait weeks or months to be placed, but Slough established a special assessment centre to speed the process. But it’s slow work: the centre can take only eight children a week. Last year two primary schools accepted 50 Polish children and 60 Somalis in just one term.

As I pointed out at the time, the problem is exacerbated by the fact that many of the children coming in have extremely poor English language skills. There is no doubt, that if you are a British child unfortunate enough to be at a school that acquires fifty or sixty immigrant pupils, your education will suffer, just as you will suffer if you are a British couple patiently waiting your turn for a council house, and a few hundred impoverished immigrants move into your area, and jump straight to the head of the queue, on the basis that their "need" is greater than yours.

However, while the impact that immigration has on our infrastructure is clearly important, I think that Cameron is very wrong to claim that opposition to mass immigration is solely due to the structural problems it causes, and that it is "not because of different cultures". I believe that it is quite clear that the problems of different cultures, and, particularly, of the supplanting of the British way of life by the cultures of immigrant groups is at least as important a factor as the structural problems caused by immigration, in turning the public against mass immigration. I don't know whether Cameron's denial of this is down to deliberate dishonesty, or merely to ignorance. Being charitable, and assuming that it is the latter, I would point him in the direction of Sir Max Hastings, and Lord Carey, two relatively liberal figures, both of whom have spoken about the threat immigration poses to traditional British culture. Or he could read the words of Carol Gould, herself a first generation immigrant, at Jewish Comment:

...dare I say that the concept of an Englishman has been so distorted as to be unrecognisable? In the same country in which men used to tip their hats to me and cabbies called my father 'Guv'nor,' we now have British citizens and naturalised immigrants who rant and rave and want women subjugated, gay men thrown off mountains and the 'Infidel' beheaded, and whose entire demeanour is so alien to anything in my entire life experience that I wonder if I have left planet Earth.

Or, Cameron could just speak to a few members of the public, 69% of whom feel that Britain is losing its own culture. If Cameron seriously believes that the dissimilarity between British culture and that of many immigrant groups - most particularly Muslims - has nothing to do with opposition to immigration, and is not in itself a far greater problem than any structural problems, then he is madder than the maddest of mad mullahs.

Nonetheless, while Cameron completely underestimates the importance of culture in opposition to immigration, he is right that there are too many immigrants. If, in the unlikely event that he were to win the next election, he actually proceeded to do something to reduce immigration, I wouldn't much mind why he did that, so long as he actually did it. However, I very much doubt that a Cameron government would do much to tackle immigration. That he has waited nearly two years since becoming opposition leader before raising the issue, and that he does so in such an essentially desultory manner, making no concrete commitments, and not even bothering to fully understand people's views, suggests that this is merely a sop to the substantial public anger over the level of immigration. And if all we want is people who are going to tell us that they understand our concerns and then ignore them completely, then we might as well stick with Labour.

Make GCSEs easier, to boost pupils' self-esteem

Despite an abundance of evidence suggesting that school exams have got substantially easier over the past twenty years, the Joint Council for Qualifications yesterday called for a significant increase in the number of "low-demand questions", in GCSE science papers. According to the JCQ, which represents Britain's examining boards, fully 70% of questions in foundation level exams, and 50% at advanced level, should be "low-demand".

So why does the JCQ want to make such changes? Well, according to its director, Jim Sinclair, it would be good for pupils' self-esteem to have lots of easy questions, although he inexplicably denied that having a greater number of easy questions would make exams easier. As he put it:

Part of the desire is that the student can come out of the exam with a feeling of success that they have actually tackled a significant proportion of the questions and achieved the best grade expected. The vast majority of candidates taking this exam are going to achieve grades D to G, and they deserve a positive experience of science.

So, if there are more easy questions then even weak pupils will be able to answer most of them, and will feel good about themselves, and about science in general. How nice!

Except, that the primary purpose of education is not to make children feel good about themselves. Still less is boosting their self-esteem the purpose behind exams. The purpose of education is to educate - to assist children in learning about the subjects that they are studying. And the purpose of exams is to assess the extent to which children have learnt about their chosen subjects. Nothing more, nothing less. In the highly unlikely event that it is suspected that a child will suffer severe psychological harm as a result of poor examination performance, then that child should probably not be entered for that exam.

There seems to be an increasing belief that children have a positive right to get good grades in their school exams, regardless of such irrelevancies as ability or effort. Their self-esteem demands it, apparently. This view, which has manifested itself most recently in the proposals of the JCQ, is not only wrong, but harmful. Not only will it not benefit those whom it is intended to benefit - having a C rather than an E at GCSE will not make them any more intelligent, any more skilled, or, since the devaluing of GCSEs is well-known, any more attractive to an employer. However, what a system that is designed to ensure that everyone does well will do is devalue the achievements of the genuinely able pupils, as well as the exams themselves. And, ultimately, lowering standards to raise pass rates will harm the entire country, by turning out a generation of young people with appreciably fewer skills, not only than previous generations, but also than their economic competitors in other nations.

A real community punishment!

The man in the above picture is, as his placard makes clear, a drug dealer. His patch was in an area of South Belfast and, on Sunday evening, he was tarred and feathered by two men, while a crowd of local people looked on. This vigilante attack appears to have been carried out by members of the Ulster Defence Association, after the police repeatedly failed to act.

Now, the UDA is itself a reprehensible terrorist organisation, not to mention one which is involved in a range of criminality, including drug dealing - its members deserve tarring and feathering themselves. However, to my mind the principle underlying the tarring and feathering of this man is a perfectly good one. It is, that when the police consistently fail to act against criminals, then the public are entitled to take such action as they see fit. After all, local people generally know who the thugs and other lowlife who blight their communities are, even if the police are not interested, and therefore they generally know against whom they should direct their ire.

It would be nice to see this kind of action spread to Great Britain, in addition to Northern Ireland. Here too there are communities infested with low-level thugs, who make the lives of the local people miserable, and who have gone unchallenged by the police, and unpunished by the courts. If the decent majority were to take action themselves against the yobs who wreck their communities, then, not only would that teach them a lesson, but it would also have a salutary effect in reducing the fear with which they are regarded by many people, and which they use to intimidate those who might otherwise stand up to them. A few months ago I wrote about the American woman who was convicted of stealing from Walmart, and who was, upon conviction, ordered to stand outside Walmart wearing a sandwich board bearing the legend "I am a thief, I stole from Walmart". Ideally we would have similar judicially-sanctioned punishments in the UK, or at least a toughening up of existing sentencing, but until we do, and until we have a police force that is actually prepared to take serious action against the thugs, the public themselves have the right to take appropriate action against those who threaten them.

Heroic police tackle hardened thug

Readers may have noticed that it's not often that I have nice things to say about the police. After all, when you have a situation where a man reporting a GBH is told to write to his MP, because the police are too busy to deal with it, but where the police can find the time to go out and arrest a schoolgirl for objecting to working with pupils who did not speak English, or to go and interrogate a ten year-old for using the word 'gay' in an e-mail, then you might very well get the impression that the police are more interested in bullying the law-abiding, than in taking on real criminals.

However, that impression would be surely be dispelled forever the moment one read of the case of the hardened thug Frank Gibson, and how heroically the police dealt with this clearly very dangerous and evil man:

A frail 81-year-old who was charged with assaulting two burly policemen on his way from church last Christmas Eve will have to wait until after next Christmas for the chance to clear his name.

Frank Gibson, OBE, a former Conservative councillor, Tory group leader and mayor of Gravesend in Kent, went on trial in Chatham last week after denying assaulting the two young, well-built officers.

To his dismay, Mr Gibson - who is hard of hearing, has high blood pressure, arthritic hands and, at the time of his arrest, could barely walk following major surgery on his feet - was told at the end of the prosecution case that there was no space on the court calendar for the defence to be heard until January.

[...]

Mr Gibson is accused of pushing one officer in the chest and twisting the thumb of another after they pulled him over on suspicion of drink-driving as he drove home his Volvo.

A breath test was taken but, as Mr Gibson had only had a sip of communion wine, it was negative. But because the pensioner refused to get out of his car, saying he had done nothing wrong, Mr Gibson claims the two officers grabbed an arm each and dragged him from his vehicle.

Pc Steven Cole told Medway magistrates' court that Mr Gibson had grabbed his thumb. "It hurt. He twisted it back and I noted down in my pocket notebook that I let out a yelp. There is no way else of describing it."

John Fitzgerald, prosecuting, said: "Mr Gibson's reaction was to push Pc Thomas McGregor in the chest with his left hand and walk back to his car."

The officers said that they were so traumatised by the OAP's actions they called for back-up before arresting him.

Ah diddums. No wonder the police don't bother to challenge real thugs: they'd be spending the rest of their lives in therapy.
How many officers were eventually needed to bring this arthritic octogenarian under control, I wonder? Four? Six? Still, I don't suppose there was anything more important to do. I mean, everyone knows there's no crime at Christmas time, don't they?

So, in essence what has happened in this case? Well, an 81 year-old who can barely walk is attacked by a pair of young thugs who haul him out of his car. He defends himself and, since they are, like most such thugs, inveterate cowards, they need to call in more thugs to help them push the old man around: two young healthy men against one disabled OAP proving worryingly close odds, as far as they're concerned. In any decent society, these young thugs would be arrested and given a good thrashing by the police, and would ultimately end up in prison. However, in Britain, these thugs are the police. And so it is the octogenarian who finds himself handcuffed and locked in a police station cell. Subsequently, he is subjected to a campaign of legal harassment, being chased through the courts by the police thugs, and their friends in the Crown Prosecution Service. Despite the long backlog of cases awaiting hearing, the police, who are delighted to give a mere caution to the common run of young thugs who have actually done something wrong, persist in their harassment and malicious prosecution of Mr Gibson.

On the side of the law-abiding? What a joke! The police have time and again shown themselves to be the enemies of decent members of the public, and the friends of criminals. Only when we recognise that they are far worse than useless, and begin a mass campaign of both actively resisting the police, and enforcing the law ourselves, will we be able to do something concrete to challenge the real criminals and thugs destroying our communities.

Lib Dems flaunt their stupidity

Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants should be granted an "amnesty" to stay in Britain, the Liberal Democrats said last night.

Nick Clegg said foreigners who had dodged the authorities to live here for "many years" without permission should be allowed to remain.

Outlining proposals for "managed" migration, the party's home affairs spokesman said those who had never committed a crime and were devoted to Britain had "earned" their right to stay.

Quite how we can know whether these people are "devoted to Britain" is unclear. I'm not quite sure what light the Lib Dems, who evidence their own devotion to Britain by seeking to flood us with immigrants, close prisons, and hand over our national sovereignty to the EU, can shed on this. Personally, I'd far rather have anyone's hatred, than the Lib Dems' devotion.

Leaving that aside, however, I am happy to agree with Nick Clegg on one point: only those illegal immigrants who have never committed a crime should be allowed to stay in Britain. By which I mean, none of them, since they're all criminals. The clue is in the name, Nick: 'illegal immigrants'. These people came into this country in breach of the law; their very presence here is a crime. As I've said time and again, the notion that because criminals manage to evade justice for a lengthy period of time they should be rewarded for their crime is simply abhorrent.

I've previously written about the demands for an amnesty for illegal immigrants made by the Archbishop of Westminster, and the Institute for Public Policy Research. More reasons for objecting to such an amnesty can be found at those posts. Suffice to say, that I think that it's a thoroughly bad idea, which will not only reward criminals for their crime, but will encourage more people to commit the same crime, in the hope of obtaining the same reward. No surprise, then, to find the Lib Dems giving it their enthusiastic backing.

Who pulls the strings?

In a comment, Najistani points me towards the following somewhat worrying story:

Labour is involved in a new "sleaze" probe it has emerged.

It followed allegations that a Muslim businessman used a "front" organisation for secret donations.

The Electoral Commission confirmed it is investigating a group called the Muslim Friends of Labour, which gave the party £100,000 a month between April and June.

It is the first such inquiry since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister in June.

Glasgow-based Imran Khand is alleged to have injected large sums into the organisation. But as his cash did not go direct to Labour, his identity remained secret.

Until recently the organisation donated only small amounts, but it is now the party's second biggest non-union donor.

The probe comes hot on the heels of the ending of the "cash for peerages" inquiry, which saw Tony Blair questioned three times over claims that major donors were promised knighthoods.

The Muslim Friends of Labour - registered to a PO box in South London - is an "unincorporated" association, which it means it does not have to identify people who give it money. But the commission is investigating its status amid allegations that it is actually a members' association, made up "wholly or mainly" of members of a political party.

There are two aspects to this that worry me. First, there is the simple fact that our government appears, once again, to be involved in some financial dodgy dealing. However, while this is saddening - it would be nice to have a government which wasn't corrupt - it is not surprising. After all, we can't say that we haven't been prepared for the fact that the Labour Party may not always be scrupulously honest when it comes to receiving donations.

The second cause for concern lies in the fact that a Muslim organisation is now the second largest private donor to this country's ruling party. We already know that in many parts of Britain Labour relies on the Muslim bloc vote - the vast bulk of which (about 85% in 1997, for example) goes Labour's way - to keep it in power. This alone gives Muslims considerable influence over Labour - after all, the government doesn't want to lose the votes of this large and growing group, does it? Now we hear that Labour is in hock, not only to Muslim votes, but also to Muslim money. This is bound to further increase the influence that Muslims wield over the government; the only question being, by how much will it increase that influence? And how great is that influence already? One thing's for sure, though: the Muslim influence over our government, whatever its degree, will be malign.

Fancy a kickabout?

The latest thing to upset Muslims:

Footballs.

And not just the little green kind.

Getting their priorities straight

We can't deport him, because that would breach his "human rights". Now it transpires that we, the British taxpayer, will also have to pay millions of pounds to help keep Learco Chindamo, the immigrant murderer of Philip Lawrence, safe from those who feel that twelve years' imprisonment is an insufficient sentence for a vile killer, and who may seek to exact the justice that the state shied away from.

Among the measures likely to be taken to protect this worthless piece of rat excrement, when he is released from prison, will be the provision of a new identity, a ban on the media revealing any details of his new life, and the provision of 24 hour police protection, with a panic button being installed in his home so that, day or night, come rain or shine, Plod can hasten to the defence of this poor defenceless murderer whenever he feels threatened.

Leaving aside the vast cost to the taxpayer of all these measures, and the fact that the only occasion on which vermin like Chindamo leave prison at all should be when they're taken to the gallows, it is this last point which particularly annoys me. After all, only a few days ago we had the news that a man whose son had been beaten unconscious by Chindamo-like thugs was told to write to his MP, and stop bothering the police with such trivial matters as GBH against a law-abiding citizen. However, it seems that because he has killed someone, Chindamo is to be rewarded with a level of police protection that those of us who have inexplicably neglected to stab anyone through the heart can only dream of. I guess that in modern Britain, crime really does pay.

Save a life - shoot a social worker

I've just been over to A Tangled Web, where I read about one of the most disgusting stories of state interference in the life of a decent, law-abiding, British citizen that it has ever been my misfortune to hear of. The citizen in question is Fran Lyon, a pregnant twenty-two year old, and the act of state interference is the decision of social workers to remove her child from her, the very moment it is born. Why are they doing this? Well, it's not because she has a track record of abusing children: indeed, it's not because of anything she's done at all. Nor is it because she is clearly and indisputably incapable of raising a child - rather, she is an intelligent woman, with a degree in neuroscience. No, the reason is, that a doctor who has never met her thinks that she may in the future suffer from a psychiatric condition which doesn't exist, even though other doctors (who actually have met her) have said that she would be a perfectly good mother.

Specifically, the physician, Dr Martin Ward Platt (pronounce the last part like a Japanese, and you've got it about right) - who, incidentally, is a paediatrician rather than a psychiatrist - claims that it is possible she might develop Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy (MSBP): a condition in which a person with influence over another induces in that person an illness, or belief in an illness, in order to gain control over that person and attention from others. His evidence for this appears to extend as far as the fact that six years ago she had an eating disorder and self-harmed. Now, to me a prediction that she might develop this condition, based on such very limited evidence, is in itself an unacceptably weak basis for removing the woman's child from her. Even if social workers are worried, could they not simply keep a close eye on both mother and child, and take action the moment something appeared wrong? Well, no, they probably couldn't: after all, they have quotas to meet.

However, the weakness of the evidence is not the only problem with the social workers' claim. Another, even more significant, weakness is that MSBP has never been conclusively shown to exist at all. Many doctors are highly sceptical about the condition, which was discovered/invented by the infamous Roy Meadow in 1977. Meadow, who has remained its principal promulgator over the intervening thirty years, has subsequently been shown to be a charlatan quack to the satisfaction of both the judges of the Court of Appeal, and his fellow doctors in the General Medical Council, who found him guilty of serious professional misconduct. His mendacity and ineptitude while appearing as an "expert" witness in the trials of a number of women accused of murdering their babies led to several convictions being overturned, and to calls both from within and without the legal profession for a wholesale restructuring of the rules governing expert witness evidence. Should a theory which owes its very existence, let alone most of its subsequent support, to such a man as Meadow be considered anything close to a sufficient justification for removing Fran Lyon's - or any other woman's - child? Not in my opinion.

As for the social workers: they are so far beneath contempt that if they climbed for a year it would still only be a distant speck on the horizon. They appear to have systematically rejected all evidence tending to support any outcome other than removing the child, which almost makes one wonder whether some of them have a personal grudge against Ms Lyon. Pete Moore at ATW suggests that Ms Lyon and her family should prepare to use lethal force to prevent doctors or social workers from taking the child: I too believe she would be justified in doing so.

Isn't modern Britain great?

Another day, another breathtakingly vile act of senseless violence from lowlife thugs:

A 23-year-old man with learning difficulties has died in hospital after being attacked by a teenage gang on a housing estate.

Doctors had feared Brent Martin might not survive the weekend after suffering a catalogue of injuries in the unprovoked late night attack.

Detectives hunting the youths have now urged parents "to think about what their children were doing" on the night when he was set upon by a gang of at least five youths.

The attack happened on the Town End Farm estate, in Sunderland, around 10pm on Thursday night.

Mr Martin, a local man, died this morning in Sunderland Royal Hospital.

Northumbria Police described the incident as a "prolonged, savage attack" which is believed to have been carried out over a period of time.

His attackers are believed to be between 16 and 17 and at least two were wearing hooded tops pulled up around their heads.

They only needed a hug...

Meanwhile, The Guardian has an interview with a self-proclaimed "Nogzy soldier" - a member of a criminal gang based in the Norris Green area of Liverpool, close to where eleven year-old Rhys Jones was shot dead on Wednesday:

We are good us, we never do robbing. The Crocky [a gang based in the Croxteth area of the city - FR] does robbing. We do grafting. Mostly cars, I suppose I rob about two cars a month and sell them on.

[...]

I've been done for possession of crack cocaine - I was selling it, not doing it - and threats to kill. I've just got out a couple of months ago, I got two years for assault on a police officer and criminal damage for smashing a police van up. I was in the Farms [Lancaster Farm young offenders institution in Lancashire] and [HMP] Altcourse.

I've had charges since I was 10 or 11, all different assaults and that. My mum and dad were not too happy.

No, I would think not.

I wonder whether there is some remote and uninhabited island to which all these bloodthirsty scum can be shipped off en masse, armed with as many guns and knives as they can carry, and left to fight to the death, a la Battle Royale? After all, would it really matter if they all killed each other off? I can't imagine that I would shed many tears were such a scenario to eventuate. Neither, I imagine, would many of those who live in areas infested with these vermin.

Of course, the Battle Royale option will most likely not be put into practice any time soon. Therefore, more prosaic methods will need to be used to stop the gangs. Now, it seems to me that the only thing these gangs will actually respond to is force; specifically, force greater than that which they are capable of exercising. As such, I believe that, in the worst sink estates, where the police have completely failed to tackle the gangs, the army should be sent in to maintain order. Perhaps they might have more success in keeping these scum under control than the police have enjoyed.

Labour jumps back into bed with the MCB

Via Conservative Home, I read that, just one year after Ruth Kelly, in perhaps the one decent action of an otherwise worthless career, began taking steps towards sidelining the Muslim Council of Britain, her successor as communities secretary, the equally worthless Hazel Blears, has jumped right back into bed with the organisation. Apparently, a meeting between Blears and representatives of the MCB took place on August 8th, indicating that, with Blears replacing Kelly, the MCB is back in favour. That is, assuming that it was ever really out of favour; I would not be at all surprised to learn that the government only ever gave it the cold shoulder in order to maintain the pretence that it is "tough on extremism".

One aspect of the MCB's behaviour that has earned it particular criticism has been its decision to boycott Holocaust Memorial Day, on the rather spurious grounds that attention should be focused on a wider range of genocides than just the Holocaust. However, to my mind that is perhaps the least of the MCB's many flaws. A read through the archives of the sadly defunct MCB Watch blog should be sufficient to demonstrate why this organisation is utterly unfit to have any influence over the government. For example, this is an organisation which praised the leader of Hamas, Ahmed Yassin, as a "renowned Islamic scholar", and which has also got kind words to say about the Caliphatist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir. And, while Iqbal Sacranie, who once expressed the view that death was "too easy" a punishment for Salman Rushdie, no longer leads the MCB, Inayat Bunglawala remains firmly ensconced as the organisation's media secretary. Bunglawala, who believes the MSM to be "Zionist-controlled", and delights in listing those senior media figures who belong to what he charmingly terms "the Tribe of Judah", once praised Osama Bin Laden as a "freedom fighter", and has also been suspected of sending death threats to Charles Johnson, author of Little Green Footballs (when challenged over this, Bunglawala again blamed those pesky "Zionists").

These, then, are the people who, once again, have the ear of the government. People who peddle conspiracy theories and openly support terrorists. This, dear readers, is what dhimmitude feels like.

Another idiotic and pointless idea, courtesy of Her Majesty's Government

Police are being urged to let more vandals, joyriders and teenage drunks escape punishment if they agree to sign a good behaviour "contract".

The Acceptable Behaviour Contracts are handed out instead of spot fines or criminal penalties.

Thugs and other offenders have to abide by promises which could include "I will not set fire to things", or "I will not damage property".

Breaking the ABCs, which normally last for six months and carry no criminal record, will not automatically mean a punishment either, as they are a voluntary agreement.

ABCs were first introduced four years ago for low-level anti-social behaviour. Almost 25,000 have been issued, and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith now wants a huge expansion in their use.

Her department has produced guidance making it clear that the contracts are to be used instead of criminal penalties.

This will give offenders a chance of avoiding court action - provided they behave themselves.

I have to say, having read this, that I am quite impressed with the government's seemingly limitless ability to propose an endless succession of new initiatives aimed at tackling crime and thuggery, without at any point suggesting what seems to me to be the most logical and effective method for dealing with young hooligans: tougher sentencing.

This latest proposal is quite the most idiotic that the government has yet come up with. Because, the new "ABCs" are completely and utterly pointless. After all, all that the young thugs who sign them (assuming that they can actually write their own names) are agreeing to do is to refrain from criminality: that is, they are agreeing to do something which society is entitled to - and does - expect all its members to do anyway, whether with their explicit agreement or not. The obligation to obey the law will not in any sense be enhanced by the signing of an ABC, because it is already absolute. And as those signing ABCs will already have shown great willingness to violate the standards expected of them, I fail to see how simply setting out the requirements in a document will make the slightest bit of difference.

This is particularly the case when the contract is one which is apparently unenforceable, in the sense that no extra adverse consequences attach to a crime in breach of ABC, than to a bare crime. As a result, the ABCs would appear to be a free gift to criminals, allowing them to commit at least one offence without fear of consequences. After all, since there are no adverse consequences attendant on breaching an ABC, and since signing one allows one to escape prosecution, then I fail to see why any young thug with an ounce of sense would not happily sign one, and then go off and continue to behave exactly as they were doing before. Since these are people who have already violated the obligation to behave decently imposed upon them by membership of society and by the dictates of morality, I doubt they'll have many qualms about breaking an ABC.

My scepticism about the ABCs would appear to be in accordance with the known facts regarding their effectiveness. Reportedly, 60% are broken. And this is in a situation where they are used sparingly, presumably in a targeted manner, focusing on those young people who are most likely to respond well to them. If used generally, in place of punishment, then I imagine that the percentage that were breached would be considerably higher.

As I wrote above, the only real way to deal with young thugs is to get tough. Prisons, boot camps, and perhaps tough community punishments for the lesser offenders is the way to go. ABCs, which carry no moral obligation and no coercive power, will prove completely ineffectual.

Judicial travesty of the day

Michael Porter, 38, recently pleaded guilty to 24 counts of indecent assault and gross indecency against victims as young as eighteen months old, spread over a fourteen year period.

Now, one might think that in such a situation, it would be taken as read that this serial pervert would get a prison sentence. However, the judge, after hearing that he is now "a changed man" (as all criminals are, when sentencing time comes around), sentenced him to...three years of "community rehabilitation".

Another great triumph for British "justice"!

Update: This is in fact the third example of such lax sentencing to be reported this week. On Tuesday we had the case of Colin Read, the management consultant who branded his wife with a steam iron and slashed her with a knife because she forgot to make his sandwiches, and who got off with a £2,000 fine. Thanks to the Mild Colonial Boy, Esq. for reminding me of that one. And then on Wednesday we had the anaesthetist Stuart Brown, who was ordered to pay £500 compensation and serve a two-year community sentence after throwing his wife to the floor and punching her at least 24 times in a row over the purchase of a car. Prison, of course, is reserved for such really serious offenders as septuagenarians who fail to pay their council tax.

"He looks the guilty type"

One of the most bumblingly inept of all the bumblingly inept Labour government ministers, is Tony McNulty, MP for Harrow East, and minister of state for the Home Office. McNulty, who once advised members of the public who saw a crime being committed to "jump up and down" in a bid to distract the criminal, has particular responsibility for the police service. And, in that capacity, he has once again distinguished himself as being quite possibly the most idiotic minister in the current government - a rather impressive feat, it has to be said.

Yesterday, the government, represented by the rotund figure of McNulty, brought into force a set of new laws enabling the police to challenge town centre drunks. Under these new laws, the police will be able to slap troublesome drinkers with an order, called a "direction to leave", which will have the effect of banning them from a set area for two days. If you, as a suspected troublesome drinker, fail to comply with Plod's command, you will face a fine of up to £2,500, and Plod will also be able to take your fingerprints and DNA.

Now, this sounds fairly draconian in any event. After all, if someone is actually committing a crime, then I don't see why the police should not just arrest them, and then deal with them through the conventional channels. And if they're not actually committing a crime, then I fail to see why they should be treated as if they were. However, the direction to leave will not only apply to those who are rip-roaringly drunk and causing a disturbance. It will also apply to those whom the police suspect might get rip-roaringly drunk and cause a disturbance. This can extend, not just to people who are having a drink but are not drunk, but also to people who have not even started to drink.

Quite how the police are going to identify violent drunks before they've touched a drop is beyond me. Unless the police have hitherto unknown powers of prophecy, I imagine that there will be rather a lot of guesswork involved. And, personally, I think that the idea that people can be prevented from going about their lawful business, and potentially face a very substantial fine, solely on the grounds that some semi-literate Plod thinks that they 'look the type', is repugnant.

The aim of these new police powers is to reduce alcohol-fuelled crime and disorder. And this is, of course, a perfectly laudable aim. However, I have a very radical idea, which might, just possibly, prove somewhat more effective than guesswork in preventing crime. And that is, that the police should actually do their jobs properly. Just yesterday, I wrote about the man in Portsmouth who was told by the police that he should write to his MP after his son was knocked unconscious by thugs, since there were no police officers available to deal with the crime. Now, perhaps if the police were to devote a bit more time to actually patrolling the streets at chucking out time, and a bit less time to harassing law-abiding people, then they might prove somewhat more effective at preventing alcohol-fuelled crime. Just a thought.

Hat-tip: Mr Smith

Prince Charles faces "represcusions"

In June, there was a piece at Pub Philosopher about the truly terrifying threat posed by Cornish terrorists, who were reportedly targeting such "celebrity chefs" as Jamie Oliver. Well, you can sympathise with that, can't you?

Now, I read that Prince Charles has been the target of threats by another bunch of incompetent IRA wannabees, the Welsh Republican Army. The threats relate to Charles's purchase of a farmhouse in Carmarthenshire: apparently, the WRA doesn't want the Prince of Wales living in their neck of the woods (again, one can sympathise), so they issued the following rather amusing statement:

We, the representatives of the Army Council of the Welsh Republican Army call upon Charles Windsor the English Prince and usurper of the Title Prince of Wales, to vacate his Welsh mansion Llwynywormwood, Myddfai, Llandovery, Carmarthenshire, by December 11th 2007 or become a legitimate target for Republican action.

We further call upon Mr Windsor to relinquish his claim to the title Prince of Wales. Failure to accept the terms of this warning will result in the most severe represcusions [sic].

I'm not sure, though, that Prince Charles has all that much to fear in terms of "represcusions", or even repercussions. The WRA is linked to the Free Wales Army, which attempted to blow Charles up back in 1969. Sadly for the FWA, its heroic bombers, evidently the spiritual forefathers of the Glasgow Airport terrorists, succeeded only in blowing themselves up.

"Islamophobia" strikes Cornwall, no deaths reported

In the Daily Mail, I read the latest harrowing tale of the persecution which is inflicted upon Muslims in Britain every day. The latest culprits: the people of St Columb Major, in Cornwall. You see, St Columb Major hosts a village fete each August, and this year one group of people - composed of men as well as women - decided to dress up as Muslim women in burqas, and stage a mock beauty parade, as part of the fete. Styling themselves the "Page Three Beauties from the Ramalama Ding-Dong Times", they carried placards bearing such titles as "Miss Notbadinbedabad" and "Miss Reallyamanistan". On the parade they performed mock prayers, using a compass to find the direction of Mecca. Not, perhaps, the funniest idea ever devised, but probably mildly amusing at a village fete, particularly if one had enjoyed a few non-Halal beverages beforehand.

And, it seems that the local worthies judging costumes at the fete had been at the non-Halal beverages, because they shortlisted the Page Three Beauties for a prize for best costume. Then that heroic protector of the public, PC Plod, arrived, and ordered the group to leave the carnival, as complaints had been made about "racism". The carnival's organiser, Nina Brenton, described what happened:

We were approached by about six students from out of the area and they thought it was disgusting and offensive to Muslims.

They asked how we could allow it in our carnival, but it's not up to us to dictate what's offensive. We did advise the group in question what had happened and gave them the choice of whether to carry on in the procession, and they did.

Everybody was having fun, but in the end the police got involved and moved them on.

Yet another highly efficient use of police time, no doubt.

I must confess, though, that I am somewhat bemused as to who the six censorious students were, who took such great offence at a bit of harmless fun. I'd guess that they were rich white liberals, rather than Muslims. The kind of people, who like to preempt Muslim outrage, and end up going further even than the Muslims in their desire to ban things.

In any sane society, the police would have told those making the complaints to mind their own business, and not to watch the carnival if they didn't like what was taking place. However, we do not live in a sane society. Rather, we live in a society in which doing or saying anything which is even mildly disrespectful of Islam is, essentially, prohibited. After all, do you really think that if these people had dressed up as nuns, and had performed a burlesque of Catholic ritual, then anyone would have complained, or that the police would have got involved? No, me neither.

Plod triumphs again!

A peer who collared a boy who swore at him and kicked over his bicycle has been told by police that he was in the wrong.

Baron Phillips of Sudbury tackled two boys who were riding their bicycles on a crowded pavement in the Suffolk market town on Monday.

He told them they should not be cycling there and was met with abuse from one of the cyclists and an 11-year-old, who was walking.

Lord Phillips, 68 - the solicitor Andrew Phillips who for 20 years was known as the "legal eagle" on the Jimmy Young show on Radio 2 - walked away, leaving his own bicycle propped on the kerb while he went into a shop.

The boy on foot then pushed over the peer's bike and ran away but Lord Phillips caught up with him, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and held on until a passerby stopped a passing police car.

An officer took statements from the boys and Lord Phillips before giving the boys "words of advice" about their behaviour and allowing them to go.

However, yesterday Suffolk police said Lord Phillips had not done the right thing. "Members of the public should always have a regard for their own personal safety and our advice is to call the police immediately," the force said in a statement.

The point that members of the public can sometimes be at risk if they challenge young thugs is a valid one. The recent cases of Garry Newlove and Evren Anil tell us that. But citizens cannot allow their lives to be dictated by fear. The notion that a peer of the realm should cower away from a pair of eleven year-olds is simply ludicrous, and that it is even thought of is indicative of the cowardly nature of so many people in Britain today. And, in any event, I would point out that the potential danger that Lord Phillips risked by challenging these young boys was infinitesimal: this is Sudbury, for Heaven's sake, not Peckham or Brixton. The risks of challenging anti-social behaviour should be considered, but they should not dictate one's behaviour.

However, quite aside from the question of any minor risks Lord Phillips might have incurred, is the question of what use the police would have been had he taken their advice, and called them as soon as he had found a nice place to hide from the two terrifying eleven year-olds. As I understand it, Lord Phillips pursued the boy who kicked his bicycle over because the boy was running away. Astonishingly enough, the boy did not seem that keen to stand and wait for the police to arrive. This suggests that if Lord Phillips had not taken the action he did take, then the boy would have made good his escape, so that the police would have arrived far too late to do anything useful.

Of course, the above scenario presupposes that the police would actually have bothered to turn up. Because, for all the comments that the police routinely make to the effect that the appropriate course when faced with anyone doing anything wrong is to cower away and wait for them to arrive, they aren't actually all that good at turning out. Take this story, for example:

A father who phoned 999 when his son was knocked unconscious by a drunken thug was told to write to his MP rather than bother the police.

Businessman Pete Bayliss called after his 22-year-old son Chris was taken to hospital with a broken nose and other injuries. But police said they were too busy to investigate the attack.

Mr Bayliss, 51, was visiting his son in Portsmouth last weekend when the pair decided to go for a night out.

They were queueing for a taxi in Southsea early on Sunday morning when the yob targeted them.

The man, who has not been caught, kicked the young chef repeatedly in the head.

The attack left his victim unconscious with severe bruising across his face. The thug then ran away.

Mr Bayliss senior, who is from Northern Ireland, called the emergency services while his son lay bleeding on the pavement.

But although an ambulance came and took him to hospital for treatment, there was no immediate response from police.

"Somebody phoned for the emergency services after Chris was attacked and the ambulance turned up but there was no sign of police," said father-of-two Mr Bayliss. "After about 40 minutes I dialled the police because there were other fights going on in the area and we wanted the guy who did this to get caught.

"I couldn't believe my ears when the operator told me there was no one available to deal with it and that I should contact my MP if I had a problem with that.

"It's not the sort of reaction you expect from the police and I am disgusted that they should give me that sort of reaction.

"I thought the police should be dealing with assaults and not fobbing it off on to the MP for the area."

But the police have not only abdicated their duty to uphold the law and protect the public; now, they all too often are on the side of the criminals against the law-abiding. Lord Phillips should, perhaps, consider himself lucky he didn't end up like Tony Martin, Linda Walker, Fred Brown, or any of the other respectable and law-abiding citizens who have found that, while the police did nothing to protect them from criminals, Plod was quick to turn out and arrest them the moment they took steps to protect themselves. While the police do not see any need to actually do the work they're paid for, they hate the idea that a citizen might do it for them. For the police, the ideal citizen is a cowering victim, who kneels submissively before the thugs, and does nothing to challenge them. We should drop the illusion that the police are useful, good, or on the side of the law-abiding. They are not, and we would in all probability be rather better off without them.

Good on Texas

Yesterday, with its unlimited desire to amalgamate power to itself apparently unsated by merely removing the sovereign status of twenty-seven nation states, the EU took it upon itself to begin interfering in the internal affairs of the USA, and, particularly, of the State of Texas. Specifically, as Texas prepares to execute its 400th murderer since 1976, the EU issued a declaration calling on the governor of the state, Rick Perry, to introduce a moratorium on the application of the death penalty. According to the EU "elimination of the death penalty is fundamental to the protection of human dignity, and to the progressive development of human rights".

Astonishingly, the governor of Texas did not take particularly kindly to this act of interference, and, in the politest of terms, invited them to take their declaration, and forcibly insert it into that orifice from which springs the vast bulk of EU legislation. As the governor's spokesman said:

Texans long ago decided the death penalty is a just and appropriate punishment for the most horrible crimes committed against our citizens.

While we respect our friends in Europe...Texans are doing just fine governing Texas.

Exactly. And, in my opinion, our own dear British politicians should be telling the EU exactly the same thing.

Texas, and particularly its justice system, is very successful at making European liberals really, really angry. They seem genuinely unable to cope with the idea that in at least one part of the Western world, the worst criminals are still getting the punishment they richly deserve. Far better, in their opinion, would be the system that prevails in Britain, whereby murderers get a sentence of "life imprisonment" which, in practice, means a jail term of something in the region of ten to fifteen years.

Personally, though, I rejoice in the fact that Texas, despite the anguished squeals of foreign and domestic liberals alike, continues to execute these scum by the cartload. Long may she continue to do so! And hopefully, we'll see the restoration of capital punishment in Britain too, one of these days...

Boris Johnson: Worse than Hitler

Were I a betting man, I wouldn't mind putting a few quid on Boris Johnson for next mayor of London. Why do I think this? Well, I don't believe that the Labour Party, and its innumerable hangers-on, would be attacking Johnson quite so frequently, and with quite so much vigour and vitriol, unless they were really rather scared of him.

In the latest attack, the Brownite Compass group has accused him of being "a type of Norman Tebbit in a clown's uniform", "a champion of the 'regressive consensus' who threatens the 'very large progressive consensus in the capital'", and a threat to multiculturalism. He sounds more appealing already, doesn't he?

Compass has gone so far as to create a dossier of Johnson's thought crimes, which sounds like rather interesting reading:

The dossier's charges range from his "enthusiastic" support for the Iraq war (where he once claimed there had been only 150 casualties) and George Bush, to his opposition to the Kyoto treaty on climate change, the minimum wage and the public smoking ban. Mr Johnson also supports fox and stag hunting, grammar schools and section 28 - Tory legislation outlawing the "promotion" of homosexuality in schools.

His risque jokes as a magazine and newspaper columnist are also in Compass's sights. It cites instances when he referred to black people as "piccaninnies" with "watermelon smiles"; accused New Guinea of "orgies of cannibalism" and insulted both Portsmouth and Liverpool - the latter offence prompting Michael Howard to force an apology, even though, as editor of the Spectator, Mr Johnson had not personally penned the offending editorial.

As motoring columnist for GQ magazine Mr Johnson has also committed to print his full share of sexist remarks, referring to a sports car he test-drove as "the swishest, fastest, most chick-pulling Lotus ever devised", while in a Ferrari he felt that "the whole county of Hampshire was lying back and opening her well-bred legs to be ravished by the Italian stallion".

So, what do we learn from this? Well, we learn that the people at Compass are a humourless, censorious, bunch of PC neo-Bowdlerists, and that Boris Johnson is rather more sensible on most issues than the average Cameronite. Speaking for myself, after reading this summary of the dossier's contents, I feel rather more pro-Johnson than I did previously.

I have written about the attacks made on Johnson by the PC left before, and my views remain the same as they were then: he may be far from being an ideal mayor, but he would certainly be an immense improvement on Livingstone. For this reason, I would certainly give him my second preference vote, and urge others to do the same.

Just lock him up, part 2

Earlier in the month I wrote about the execrable Pete Doherty, and the repeated failure of a long succession of magistrates and district judges to do the only sensible thing and send this habitual and unrepentant criminal to prison.

Now I read that this contemptible creature has managed to escape receiving yet another criminal conviction, after the police were too slow in bringing him before the court after he was arrested for breaching his conditions of bail. Apparently, the conditions attached to his grant of bail required him to refrain from possessing illegal drugs, a requirement too onerous for Doherty, who was arrested on Monday morning for drug possession.

The man claims that he is undergoing a rehabilitation programme to deal with his addiction to various drugs. Given his arrest for possessing drugs, it would appear that this is not going awfully well. His next appearance in court - barring any further arrests - is on September 4th, for sentencing for one of his numerous previous offences. Personally, I'm hoping he gets jail. Anything less would be (yet another) complete mockery of the legal system.

A Nation of Wicked "Islamophobes"

Britons are more suspicious of Muslims than Americans and other Europeans, according to a poll for the Financial Times.

Only 59 per cent of Britons thought it possible to be both a Muslim and a citizen of their country, a smaller proportion than in France, Germany, Spain, Italy or the US - the other countries polled by Harris Interactive.

Put me down in the 41%.

Actually, on a literal reading of the question I should be in the 59%. Because it is possible for a Muslim to be a British citizen - there are, sadly, a few million of them holding British citizenship at the moment. It's just not possible for a Muslim to be truly loyal to Britain.

British citizens were also the most likely to predict a "major terrorist attack" in their country in the next 12 months; consider Muslims "a threat to national security", and believe Muslims had too much political power in their country.

However, on more personal measures of integration - having Muslim friends and accepting the marriage of their child to a Muslim - Britons showed more enthusiasm than some other countries.

The findings suggest that terrorist plots against the UK, including the London bombings of July 7 2005, have hardened British attitudes towards Muslims. Osama Saeed of the Muslim Association of Britain blamed the findings on what he called "a vicious campaign" by the press against the Muslim community.

Hmm, yes Osama. And it quite clearly has nothing to do with the fact that Muslim terrorists murdered over fifty people in 2005, and that they have attempted to repeat this feat on a number of occasions since. After all, it is the height of Islamophobic bigotry to suggest that negative public perceptions of Islam could arise from the behaviour of Muslims.

Rather astonishingly, the FT asserts that:

France emerged as the country most at ease with its Muslim population. The French were most likely to say they had Muslim friends, to accept if their child wanted to marry a Muslim, and to say Muslims in their country had received unjustified criticism and prejudice.

Patrick Weil, political scientist at the University of Paris 1 Sorbonne, said: "In France we are very good at cultural integration. We are very bad in fighting discrimination, especially in high-level jobs. In the UK it is the opposite."

Exactly. And I'm sure we can all think of a few examples of Muslims integrating really well into French society.
Is Weil deluded, or is he just an unconscionable liar, I wonder? And, is the French nation as a whole suffering from a rather serious case of Stockholm syndrome?

Postscript: The FT clearly believes that it is a sign of irrational prejudice to feel that Muslims wield an excessive amount of political power in one's country. However, I would draw their attention, and that of anyone minded to agree with them, to this story, from the Daily Mail:

The BBC has dropped plans to show a fictional terror attack in an episode of Casualty to avoid offending Muslims.

The first show of the hospital drama's new series was to have featured a storyline about an explosion caused by Islamic extremists.

Now the bomb will be set off by animal rights campaigners instead.

Oddly enough, al-Beeb did not feel a similar need to avoid causing offence last November, when another of its programmes depicted Christian terrorists (because there are so very many of those about, aren't there?) murdering Muslims. Why is it that the Muslim minority must never be offended, but the Christian majority can be attacked with impunity, unless because Muslims do wield a hugely disproportionate degree of power in this country?

The silence of the blogs

Just to let readers know that I'm going off for a week's holiday in the morning, so will not be posting until next Tuesday evening or Wednesday.

If any readers do have any issues they want to discuss, then feel free to use this post as an open thread.

Also, a story I would write about more fully but for time constraints: the recruitment of sixteen year-olds (!) as community support officers by Thames Valley Police. Idiotic, if you ask me. I'm damned if I'm being ordered round by some schoolboy!

UN website hacked

Apparently, the hackers left anti-American and anti-Israeli comments on the website.

I'm surprised anyone noticed anything different.

Hang 'em high

A 57-year-old man who was attacked after tackling teenage vandals has died in hospital.

The man was assaulted by up to eight youths at 10.45pm on Friday on Station Road North in Warrington, Cheshire.

He was taken to Warrington General Hospital but died, police said.

The victim is understood to have approached youths causing criminal damage in the area but was then attacked.

A Cheshire Police spokeswoman said eight male youths, aged between 15 and 19, were arrested and were helping with inquiries.

I wonder when the area in question had last seen a police patrol? Perhaps if there were more police actually walking the streets on a regular basis then, in the first place, vandalism of the kind these scum were perpetrating would be less frequent, and, furthermore, people like the victim in this case would be less at risk if they did intervene to stop such a crime being committed.

As a result of the essential abdication by the police of their duty to maintain law and order, we are, as Gareth at BNP and Me wrote after he had a run-in with a couple of graffiti "artists" a few months back, left with a choice between putting ourselves at risk of serious, potentially fatal, injury, and allowing young thugs to vandalise property and intimidate communities without any repercussions. Perhaps if the law-abiding citizenry were allowed to carry guns the situation might be rather better...

As for the thugs who did this: words are inadequate to express the loathing I feel towards them. Only the lowest kind of scum would actually kill someone because he asked them to stop doing something that was both illegal and wrong. As far as I am concerned, they are a good advertisement for the death penalty.

Update: More details of the crime are now available from the Daily Mail (thanks to a commenter for the link). The victim's name was Gary Newlove, and he was reportedly attacked after challenging teenagers who were throwing stones at a mechanical digger parked in his driveway. Apparently, there was a pre-existing problem with young thugs in the area drinking, taking drugs, vandalising property, and intimidating residents, and Mr Newlove had been attempting to set up a neighbourhood watch scheme in an effort to challenge this pattern of behaviour.

Good news

No action to be taken against Patrick Walsh.

It's still a disgrace that he was even arrested, mind you.

BNP "lies" exposed...as truth!

A hidden world in which Asian [MSM code for 'Muslim' - FR] men “groom” young white girls for sex has been exposed with the jailing yesterday of two men for child-abuse offences.

Zulfqar Hussain, 46, and Qaiser Naveed, 32, from east Lancashire, were each jailed for five years and eight months after exploiting two girls aged under 16 by plying them with alcohol and drugs before having sex with them.

Both men pleaded guilty at Preston Crown Court to abduction, sexual activity with a child and the supply of a controlled drug.

Despite being told explicitly by police and social services that both girls were under-age and should be returned to care, the men picked up one girl from a children’s home in Blackburn and then drove on to collect her friend who was living in temporary foster care in North Wales.

Naveed, from Burnley, gave one girl the first of five Ecstasy tablets at a motorway service station before having sex with her on the back seat of the car while the group drove back to Lancashire. The court was told that the two men later took the girls to an address in Blackburn where Hussain, from Blackburn, had sex with the second girl and gave her a total of ten Ecstasy tablets.

[...]

The trial came amid growing concern at the attitudes of some Asian men towards white girls which campaigners for women claim few people wish to address.

Parents have complained that in parts of the country with large Asian communities white girls as young as 12 are being targeted for sex by older Asian men yet the authorities are unwilling to act because of fears of being labelled racist.

Ann Cryer, a Labour member of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, has been at the forefront of attempting to tackle the problem after receiving complaints from mothers in her constituency about young Asian men targeting their under-age daughters.

Although campaigners claim that hundreds of young girls are already being passed around men within the Asian community for sex, she said that attempts to raise the problem with community leaders had met with little success, with most of them being in a state of denial about it.

[...]

However, Ms Cryer added: “I think there is a problem with the view Asian men generally have about white women. Their view about white women is generally fairly low. They do not seem to understand that there are white girls as moral and as good as Asian girls.”

Wow. It's almost as though their society was institutionally racist!

Incidentally, I seem to recall that the BNP has been going on and on about this issue for years, and have been repeatedly accused of spreading "racist myths" by groups such as the confused far-leftists of Unite Against Fascism. Now, however, it seems that the wicked Nazis may have been on to something after all. How unexpected...

The "immigrant-dependent" NHS

An inquiry into the competence of foreign doctors has been launched by Britain's medical regulator after it was revealed that they were twice as likely to face disciplinary hearings as UK medical graduates.

According to the Times, three times the number of doctors who trained abroad were struck off the UK medical register last year compared with 2005.

The General Medical Council has commissioned a series of research projects which will look at a range of issues including the competence of foreign doctors and whether they are subject to institutional racism within the health service.

More than 5,000 cases were dealt with by the GMC in 2006, the paper said.

Of these 303 resulted in a fitness-to-practise hearing and 54 doctors were struck off - 35 of whom had trained outside the UK.

One of the common refrains in the hymn book of the pro-mass immigration left is that the NHS is completely dependent on immigrants to keep it going. However, I would point out that there are currently some 8,000 British-trained doctors who have been told that if they wish to practise in their chosen profession, then they should go abroad. And as a result of the apparently appalling application system for junior doctor positions, those who have failed to get places actually possess, on average, more impressive qualifications than those who have been successful. So it's hardly as if we're talking about utter incompetents: we're talking about people who would in all probability be excellent physicians. So why on Earth is the NHS turning these people away, in favour of second-rate foreigners, many of whom have a command of English so poor that they cannot fill in a death certificate, and of whom a more than negligible number may actually pose a positive threat to patient safety?

It seems that the NHS is no more immune to population replacement than the rest of society...

Anti-Islam protest banned

Back in March I mentioned the planned anti-Islam demonstration organised by the group Stop the Islamisation of Europe (Sioe), due to be held on September 11th, in Brussels. Now, I read that the mayor of Brussels, Freddy Thielemans, has banned the demonstration, on the grounds, first, of public safety, and second, that it might upset Muslims living in Brussels.

As to the first point: I find it unlikely that the protesters would be the ones causing the trouble. After all, the people at Sioe have taken all steps to cooperate with the authorities, and it would greatly undermine the message they are trying to send for the thing to degenerate into a riot. The Belgian magazine Expatica says that "Thielemans fears the event could lead to incidents between the protestors and the local ethnic population". In other words, he fears that offended Muslims could get violent, something that they have indeed been known to do, on occasion. This first reason for objecting to the march would, therefore, seem to flow directly from the second reason for preventing it: Muslim anger.

Obviously, as mayor of Brussels, Thielemans has a duty to prevent a riot taking place. But it seems to me that that could easily be prevented by sensible policing, keeping the Sioe demonstrators and any Islamic or leftist thugs that might show up well apart from each other. If the Brussels police have even a modicum of competence, this should not prove impossible. And they would seem to have some experience of managing protests: each year the authorities in Brussels receive between five and six hundred requests to hold protests, and in the past five years just six of these have been banned.

However, it is quite clear that only the second argument made by Thielemans actually motivated his decision. While he must know that the threat of violence could easily be contained, he genuinely does fear angering the Muslims. And with good reason. As Filip Dewinter of the Belgian Vlaams Belang movement has pointed out, Muslims have votes. And in Brussels, they have even greater influence than they do in Britain. Paul Belien at the Brussels Journal has written that 22% of municipal councillors in the Belgian capital are non-European immigrants. A substantial number of these are Muslims, and the overwhelming majority of these are, like Thielemans, socialists. With Belgium, and Brussels as a whole, this far down the road to Islamification, Thielemans was faced with a choice: do the decent thing and allow the march to go ahead, and then kiss his career goodnight, or ban the march, play the dhimmi, but keep the Muslims onside. Unsurprisingly, being a socialist politician, he chose to sell out Western civilisation, and keep his place on the gravy train.

However, despite Thieleman's disgraceful actions, there is one big positive point that can be extracted from all this: the Muslims and their leftist allies are scared. They are scared that the people of Europe are beginning to see the destruction that is being wrought on our countries by the left-Islamic axis, and they are scared that the people of Europe are going to do something about it. This is what lies behind the ban on this rally, and the various other attacks made on those who have challenged the Islamification of Europe (such as the repeated prosecutions of Nick Griffin, for doing nothing more than telling the truth about Islam). The traitors and little Vichyists are scared. And so they should be.