"Britain has been our destination from the day we left"

Up to 160 migrants a night are attempting to jump on British-bound lorries in Cherbourg, it has emerged.

To put that in context, that equates to almost 60,000 such attempts over the course of a year. Of course, it is likely that many of those involved are responsible for multiple, perhaps even nightly, attempts. But it is still a very significant, and very worrying figure. Although, compared with the nearly 600,000 immigrants who entered Britain last year, it's little more than a drop in the ocean.

The figures were revealed by the management of the northern French ferry port, who say urgent action is needed.

"Last night we again had between 150 and 160 attempting to break into the port area to try and get to England," said Serge Henry, director of the Cherbourg port authority.

"It's like this every night."

Although police guarding the port area are stretched to the limit, almost 300 people are still arrested each week.

The figures were released after a "welcome centre" similar to the notorious Sangatte refugee camp was proposed to provide food and shelter for the increasing numbers trying to reach England on the daily ferry and freight services to Portsmouth, Poole and Southampton.

The people of Cherbourg are not happy about this - after all, would you want fifty or sixty thousand immigrants descending on your town? But at least Cherbourg is only ever going to be a holding zone for these people, while they head on to their ultimate destination:

Many of those preparing their journeys to Britain are currently living in makeshift camps dotted around the town.

On one site yesterday, home to some 20 shelters, about 70 men aged between 18 and 40 were sitting nearby.

"Britain has been our destination from the day we left our home countries," said one, who claimed to be a 19-year-old Iranian called Ali.

"Most of us have travelled thousands of miles to come here because we were told it was an easy route to England.

"Calais used to be where everybody headed towards, but Cherbourg is now better."

Since the closure of Sangatte there have been more patrols by increasingly heavy-handed Calais police, infrared searches of lorries and trains, and other measures to try to keep undesirables away.

Accordingly, many have moved 200 miles along the Normandy peninsula to Cherbourg.

One of Ali's travelling companions, a 36-year-old also originally from Iran who asked to be referred to as Mo, said: "Charities give us food each day, but we need proper accommodation here.

"Fights sometimes break out between groups from different nationalities."

Pointing to a group of Iraqis living in tents in a different corner of the site, he said: "We never speak to them, and they never have anything to do with us. The only thing we have in common is that we all want to get to England. We do not have visas or passports, but we will get across whatever the cost."

As regards the fights that reportedly break out between different immigrant groups: does this not indicate that if you stick large numbers of impoverished people, particularly those of different backgrounds and cultures, together in the same area, then they will often come to blows? And is there any reason to believe that the different groups will be less likely to clash once they arrive at their final destination? I don't think so. The immigrants jumping on the lorries in Cherbourg tonight (perhaps at this very moment, indeed) are the potential race rioters of tomorrow.

But the more important point is that tens of thousands of people from all over the world are voluntarily packing their bags and travelling thousands of miles, through dozens of countries, aiming always to get to Britain. Why? Why do these immigrants have such an urge to come to Britain in particular, that a country like France, which has a standard of living roughly equivalent to that of the UK, is regarded as no more than a stopover on the way? What is it about Britain that leads them to desperate attempts to smuggle themselves onto lorries in order to get here?

The answer, if anyone really doubted it, is that Britain is a genuine "soft touch". The government may deny it, but the immigrants are voting with their feet: Britain is their preferred destination, because it offers them more than any of its 'competitor' destinations. If we want to reduce the level of immigration into our country - and I personally have seen absolutely no evidence that the government does want to do this - then we will need, not only to secure the borders, but to reduce the attraction of our country to would-be migrants. We could start by ending the benefits entitlement of all non-British citizens (excluding genuine refugees, of whom this country, as I have explained before, has absolutely none), and by ruthlessly cracking down on those who enter this country illegally. Reducing the incentives for immigrants to come here, would almost certainly have the effect of reducing the number of immigrants who do come here.

Save a life - shoot a social worker, part two

Remember Fran Lyon? She's the woman I wrote about a few weeks ago, whose child, as yet unborn, is likely to be taken from her mother at the very moment of birth, on the grounds that a doctor who has never met Ms Lyon believes that she may, in the future, suffer from a non-existent psychiatric condition dreamed up by a discredited quack. Those who have read my post about that, or any of the many posts written on the subject at other blogs, will know that the wonderful and saintly people behind that decision were the dedicated men and women of the social services department - those valiant people, who put the 'nanny' in 'nanny state'.

Well, now I discover where Ms Lyon went wrong: she wasn't a lesbian. Had she been a lesbian then, as we learn today, social workers would have considered it "homophobic" to take her daughter, even if there was a genuine risk of abuse occurring. That, at least, is the impression that I get from reading about the case of Ian Wathey and Craig Faunch.

Wathey and Faunch were one of the first homosexual couples in Britain to be approved as foster parents. Over a period of fifteen months, eighteen children, many of them emotionally disturbed, were placed with them, of whom they sexually abused four. When the mother of one child complained, social workers ignored the complaint, and even started sending more seriously disturbed children to live with them. Of the conduct of social workers involved, a report published yesterday by Wakefield Council said:

One manager described the couple as 'trophy carers' which led to 'slack arrangements' over placement. Another said that by virtue of their sexuality they had a 'badge' which made things less questionable. The sexual orientation of the men was a significant cause of people not 'thinking the unthinkable'. It was clear that a number of staff were afraid of being thought homophobic. The fear of being discriminatory led them to fail to discriminate between the appropriate and the abusive.

As a result of this fear, concerns raised about the behaviour of Wathey and Faunch were "inadequately investigated, understood or acted upon".

Hmm, liberals refusing to confront, or even accept the existence of, paedophilic actions, for fear of appearing to be prejudiced against a designated victim group. Never heard of that happening before!

Readers will be aware that this is by no means the first case in which social workers have failed, and failed in the most abject manner, to prevent genuine abuse from taking place. The tragic Climbie case would be the most notorious recent example of this. Thankfully, Wathey and Faunch didn't actually kill any children, although they must nonetheless have inflicted great damage on those they abused. And I expect that it is only a matter of time before we see another child killed, after social workers fail to intervene.

And yet, social workers are now taking an unprecedented number of children into care. It has even been alleged that some children are being taken into care solely in order to meet government targets. If the Lyon case is anything to go by, then there are some pretty spurious excuses being used to justify taking children away from their natural parents.

Social workers today have a huge amount of power. The ability to separate parent from child is the greatest of the powers they possess. As possessors of this power, it is incumbent upon them to exercise the greatest care, both when taking children from their natural parents, and when placing children with foster parents. At the moment, it seems that they are all too often falling far short of even the most basic degree of competence, in both instances.

Stupid Criminal of the Day

A medical salesman who fooled magistrates into believing he was a doctor attending an emergency call to get himself off a speeding charge was caught after billing the court for compensation.

Mohammed Chiang, 26, who has no medical training, was caught on camera travelling at 38mph in a 30mph zone in Southampton city centre.

He had a green light on top of his car. After convincing Southampton magistrates that he was attending an emergency call, he was given an absolute discharge.

His costs were paid through central funds.

So far, so good, at least for the fraudulent "Dr" Chiang. Unfortunately (or rather, fortunately), he then got a little bit greedy:

But instead of keeping a low profile, Chiang applied for £1,162.80 costs to cover the employment of an imaginary locum doctor for the day he was in court.

Staff at the Safer Roads Partnership investigation team in Hampshire became suspicious when his application was littered with spelling mistakes and his name could not be found on the medical register.

They found that although he was not a doctor he used notepaper that identified him as a doctor and drove a car with a “doctor on call” notice on the back and a green light on the roof.

The car also contained a defibrillator and a fluorescent jacket with "Doctor" on it.

Chiang, who, according to the Mail on Sunday, turned down the option of a fixed fine in order to have his day in court, now faces prison after pleading guilty to deception, and perverting the course of justice. I suppose it just goes to show: crime may pay, but stupidity generally doesn't.

ATW Post on Academia

At ATW, I've written a short post on the unutterable pretentiousness and political liberalism now dominating and corrupting British academia.

"We are in moral anarchy"

Her bizarre habit of supporting the odious Ken Clarke for Tory leader notwithstanding, Ann Widdecombe has always struck me as one of the few decent people left in parliament. And this view was not undermined by her comments in an interview in today's Daily Mail:

"It is the liberal dictatorship," says Widdecombe angrily. "Most of our social ills are down to loss of authority; in schools, by the police, in the home, in organised religion.

"There is a slow descent into anarchy. We are in moral anarchy. In some estates it is already there. To change things, you must start to restore authority to the police."

She says that the force should introduce "proportionality" - not sending six officers to arrest someone for making a politically incorrect comment, but instead targeting muggers.

She believes we live in an age in which the liberal tyranny cows people into silence. "People need to be free to say what we think.

"We must not accept this liberal tyranny which says that if you go against the orthodoxy, you will not only be ostracised but criminalised as well.

"We have to take on the three ugly sisters: the rights culture, the compensation culture and political correctness.

"We now have something we have never before had in this country, but is what the Soviets had - which is, that you can be punished by the law for disagreeing with the prevailing orthodoxy."

[...]

One reason that Widdecombe is at ease with herself, whatever her public image, is that she is true to her conscience.

She is at a loss to see how other Catholics, such as Cabinet minister Ruth Kelly and the soon-to-be-converted Tony Blair, can square their actions with their consciences.

"If I had been Ruth, I would have resigned over the Catholic gay adoption issue. And I don't understand Blair's actions and his faith," she says.

"There is no doubt he was a huge Catholic sympathiser. But he never once took a pro-life line on abortion.

"He also voted against exempting Christmas Day and Easter Day from Sunday trading regulations.

"And then his government introduced civil partnerships and forbade Catholic adoption agencies from making their own choices over gay adoption.

"If you are being received as a Catholic, as I was, you have to say that all the Church teaches is revealed truth. It is not a pick and mix religion."

She also accuses Blair of weakening Christianity in this country and thus allowing predatory fundamentalist faiths to enter. "The loss of Christian faith has coincided with the growth of a more predatory faith. We should stop confusing respecting the faith of others with surrendering our own."

I don't think there's a word she says here that I don't agree with, although I would say that if the police are to regain their lost authority, then they will have to work hard for it. The loss of trust in, and respect for, the police is something that has been brought about, not just by the incompetence of politicians, but by the actions of officers themselves, many of whom seem only too keen to side with criminals against the law-abiding public.

Miss Widdecombe's comments about Islam (at least, I assume that her talk of "a more predatory faith" was not an effort to expose the hitherto unknown threat posed by hardline Buddhists!) were also encouraging. Even if she did not go as far as I or many of the readers of this site would go in her condemnation of that religion, it is still nice to hear a politician from one of the big three parties come out with something that goes beyond "Islam is a wonderful Religion of Peace".

Of course, the real problem is that Ann Widdecombe is approaching sixty, and will be standing down from parliament at the next election, whereupon she will no doubt be replaced with some liberal Cameronite yes-man. It seems to me that almost all the members of the political elite who sometimes or often speak words of sense are of Miss Widdecombe's generation, or older (two examples that come to mind are Lord Tebbit (76) and Frank Field (65)), while the younger generations of politicians and commentators are almost all tied up in politically-correct liberalism. As the country continues to meander up a certain creek devoid of a paddle, the political elite looks set to move further and further into a liberal dreamworld.

Mega Mosque Update: Public Debate Planned

For the first time supporters and opponents of the proposed Olympics mega-mosque in East London will meet to debate the key issues surrounding the proposals, at a public meeting 7 September in Stratford.

Following the recent petition against the mosque which attracted over 250,000 signatures on the 10 Downing Street website, a tense atmosphere will be expected as both sides put forward their arguments head-to-head in front of an open audience.

Support for the mosque will be led by Abdul Khaliq Mian, a former mega-mosque project manager and spokesman, and also a former parliamentary candidate (East Ham 2005) and local council candidate (Newham 2006) for George Galloway’s Respect party.

Leading those opposing the mega mosque plans will be Councillor Alan Craig, leader of the Christian Peoples Alliance group on Newham Council.

The debate has been organised by Newham Muslim voluntary sector group ‘Islamic Circles’ and is open to the public.

“I’m delighted we are to debate the mega-mosque issue face-to-face at last,” said Cllr Craig, who has been the leading East London opponent of the project. “I first asked for discussions with mosque promoters Tablighi Jamaat over a year ago but they have always refused to meet. This is the first real opportunity to do democracy, and I expect the debate to be hard-hitting but civilised.”

Cllr Craig also criticised the stance taken by Ken Livingstone over the mega-mosque. “This debate will also serve to publicly discredit the Mayor’s offensive and unfounded slur that opposition to the mosque is by nature Islamophobic and BNP-inspired,” said Alan Craig. “It isn’t. Many Muslims oppose the Tablighi Jamaat mega-mosque, and non-Islamic local opposition is rational, reasoned and based on respect for our Muslim fellow citizens. We stand against BNP hate-mongering.”

The Christian People Alliance leaders concluded: “Of course the Mayor’s unreasoned biased backing for the mega-mosque simply strengthens the cause of all opponents.

“Fortunately he has no planning powers over the Olympic zone, so he cannot directly impact the final planning decision about the mosque.”

The debate is to be held at 6.15pm on Friday 7 September at Ithaca House in Stratford, East London.

Leaving aside Mr Craig's somewhat ill-informed anti-BNP diatribe, I wholeheartedly support his efforts to prevent the construction of this monstrous symbol of the Islamic takeover of our country. Because that is what this mosque is: a triumphalist symbol of the coming Islamic dominance of British society. The proponents of the mosque claim that calling it a "mega mosque" is deceitful, since it will "only" have space for 12,000 worshippers. Yet Britain's largest Anglican cathedral - Liverpool - has space for only 3,000 worshippers. I think that a mosque four times the size of any cathedral can fairly be called a mega-mosque, don't you?

And the Muslims of East London do not need a mosque of such enormous capacity. According to the mosque's own website, Tablighi Jamaat "currently attract about 3500 to our gatherings every Thursday and about 2000 on Friday". So it's unlikely that the mosque will get even halfway to being full to capacity.

No, this mosque is far more than just a place for Muslims to go, and pray, and learn that Jews are apes and Christians pigs. It is a symbol: it will dominate the East London skyline, rising high above all the churches, the synagogues, the gurdwaras, even above St Paul's Cathedral, and it will say, more powerfully than words ever could, "we are Muslims, we are here to stay, and we are here to rule over you".

Regarding the debate about the mosque, as opposed to the mosque itself: I have to say that I am deeply suspicious of the motives of the Islamic group organising this public meeting. I note that the event will be on a Friday - the Islamic holy day, and simultaneously the day on which the native British are least inclined to attend a political debate. I wouldn't mind betting that we will see Muslims pouring out of the mosques straight into Ithaca House, and that Mr Craig will find himself arguing the point with an audience packed full of his opponents.

Having said that, I would of course, urge those living in East London, those who will be personally affected by having this thing deposited on their doorsteps, to make it down to the debate, if at all possible. And maybe, in a good neighbourly spirit, anyone going could take along some sausage rolls to share round...

More pressure for EU "treaty" referendum

Gordon Brown faces increasing public pressure over Europe with the publication of a new poll for The Daily Telegraph showing that almost two-thirds of voters want a referendum on the European Union reform treaty.

That, by the way, is the "reform treaty" that has been described as being 90% the same as the rejected EU constitution by the Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, as 96% the same by the think-tank Open Europe, as "very, very near" to the constitution by the arch-Europhile Valery Giscard d'Estaing, and as "essentially the same proposal as the old constitution" by the European commissioner Margot Walstrom. That "reform treaty" - not a different one.

But hang on, what's this?

Mr Brown has so far rejected calls for a national vote on the grounds that the new treaty is much less far-reaching than the original constitutional treaty abandoned in 2005 after Dutch and French voters rejected it.

Douglas Alexander, the International Development Secretary, and Ed Balls, the Children, Schools and Families Secretary, repeated that view yesterday.

Douglas Alexander is an unscrupulous little liar, and Ed Balls is talking...well, look at his surname and then take a wild guess.

But the YouGov poll discloses that only five per cent of voters agree, with 63 per cent wanting a national vote on the issue.

With more than one in five (22 per cent) still uncertain on the issue, the number could rise far higher as the pro-referendum campaign gathers pace.

I think that Brown will fight tooth and nail to avoid any public vote on the matter. After all, no politician wants to call a referendum that he is more likely to lose than to win. However, it is true that the campaign for a referendum is gathering pace: as the Telegraph points out, even some strongly pro-EU figures, such as the vile Keith Vaz, have called for a referendum. It will be interesting to see how well attended the pro-referendum rally, due to be held in London on the 27th October, will be.

Of course, getting a referendum is only the first half of the battle: having got it, we will need to win it, and preferably by a large margin. I believe that this can and will be done, but it should not be regarded as a foregone conclusion. The likes of Vaz have not come over to supporting a referendum out of any respect for the public voice; rather, they see a referendum as inevitable, and accordingly wish to make a virtue of necessity, and gain brownie points for professing a willingness to listen to the public. I note that Vaz has said that he wants to turn the referendum, from being focused on the constitution, to being a de facto referendum on Britain's continued membership of the EU. While I believe that we must one day have such a vote, now is not the time. Vaz wants to turn the referendum into one on EU membership, rather than the EU constitution, because he believes - rightly - that a vote on EU membership will, for now, be easier for his side to win. If and when a referendum comes, pro-EU elements must not be allowed to distort the question in such a manner.

But all that is in the future: the question of whether we will get a referendum at all still hangs in the balance, and the increased momentum of the pro-referendum campaign is something to be thankful for.

Keith Vaz: Hypocritical Racist Scum

It has long been my belief that if there were a prize for the most loathsome of all the loathsome scum currently floating around the Palace of Westminster, then Keith Vaz would probably win it. The passport-flogging former Europe minister and current MP for Leicester East, who in 1989 led a 3,000 strong mob against the publication of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, has made something of a career for himself as a professional "anti-racist". Earlier this year, for example, his experience of leading a lynch mob no doubt stood him in good stead when he led the witch hunt against the white Celebrity Big Brother contestants accused of racially-abusing the Indian actress Shilpa Shetty.

Today, I read that he has called for a new law to be introduced, enabling the Labour Party to impose all non-white shortlists on local constituency associations selecting parliamentary candidates, and has pledged that he, the Valiant Vaz, Champion of the Oppressed, will personally introduce this proposed law into parliament. Why is this new law needed? Well, at the moment discriminating on the basis of race when selecting parliamentary candidates would fall foul of laws against racial discrimination. The exact laws, in fact, that people like Keith Vaz profess to champion. Of course, those who genuinely champion anti-racism legislation don't tend to demand that that legislation be overridden the moment it inconveniences them.

Personally, I'd be happy to see all anti-racism laws abolished. It's true that if I were a member of the Labour Party, I would certainly not be at all happy if the party started imposing all-black shortlists, but I'm not a member, and if those who are members decide that they want all-black shortlists, then that's nothing to do with me. If I, as a non-party member, object to this, then I am free to vote for another party. Equally, if a white businessman wishes to employ only white employees, then he should be free to do so - if other people don't like that, they are free to boycott his products.

So, on the first issue, the right of the Labour Party to impose all-black shortlists, I would actually agree with Vaz that they should be allowed to do so, although that is of course not the same as saying that they should do so. But I rather doubt that he would share my view that a white business owner should be free to hire only white employees. Anti-white discrimination is more than okay, anti-black discrimination is evil!

The reason for this discrepancy, is that Vaz is, like most race baiters, an utter hypocrite. His belief in racial equality, which he expresses loudly and often, really amounts to little more than, to paraphrase Orwell: "all races are equal, but whites are less equal than others". Of course, even his commitment to advancing the interests of non-whites in general (at the expense of the interests of the majority population, if need be) comes only a poor second to his commitment to advancing the interests of Keith Vaz in particular. In a parliament and a Labour Party stuffed full of intellectual and moral pygmies, Vaz still contrives to appear Lilliputian. He may not have done as much damage to the country as the likes of Tony Blair, but for his own smug, hypocritical, and utterly amoral personality, he is the most loathsome MP around.

Britain Welcomes Multicultural Rapists!

Exhibit One (via Laban Tall):

A Pakistani businessman yesterday escaped prison and deportation after being found guilty of a string of sex offences.

Naeem Waqas Rehmat was sentenced to three years' probation after being found guilty of sexually assaulting two women and a 14-year-old girl.

The 24-year-old restaurant manager appeared at Forfar Sheriff Court faced with possible deportation under the Immigration Act.

Rehmat, of 137 Dundee Road, Forfar, assaulted the women and the teenager at various addresses in Forfar in separate incidents over two years.

He assaulted one woman on various occasions between February 8 and May 8, 2005. And on a separate occasion he assaulted a second woman on one occasion between October 1 and October 31, 2005.

He was also found guilty of using lewd, indecent and libidinous practices towards a 14-year-old girl, on March 28.

Advocate Tim Niven-Smith said Rehmat entered the UK in February 2005.

As a commenter at Laban Tall's blog points out, this means that he must have started his run of perversion almost as soon as he stepped off the plane.

Exhibit Two:

A Polish migrant subjected a British woman to a violent rape only one week after he arrived in Britain, a court heard.

Michal Piotr Kwidzinski, 22, seized a 38-year-old barmaid as she walked home from work in the early hours.

The burly 6ft 5in Pole dragged his petite 5ft 2in victim into a builder's van where he raped her three times whilst holding her down by the neck and beating her head on the floor.

[...]

Sentencing him to nine years in prison, of which he will serve half, Judge John Neligan said it was "pointless" for him to recommend deportation after he has served his sentence because of "the current state of the law".

So, we appear stuck with both of these lowlife. At least Kwidzinski should be out of action for the next four years or so. But Rehmat, a man who attacked two women and an underage girl in the space of a few months, and whose entire life in the UK has centred around his perverted criminality, is still walking the streets as freely as you or I. I think that if I were a woman living in the environs of Forfar, I'd want to take self-defence classes, and possibly get my hands on a knife as well.

However, the failure to give Rehmat a lengthy custodial sentence is not the only thing wrong with the decisions of the judges in these cases. The second point is that both Rehmat and Kwidzinski are being allowed to remain in this country, when they should be deported. When they entered into Britain, they entered on sufferance, on condition that they abide by the law of the land. Having failed, and failed spectacularly, to do that, they have forfeited any right they may have had to remain here, and should be sent back the moment their sentences come to an end. Sadly, however, it seems that we now have a completely open door immigration policy, in which we cannot even deport murderers, let alone rapists and child abusers, and in which the detritus of every society on Earth are welcome to come to Britain, secure in the knowledge that they're coming to a country that is a very soft touch, not just on immigration, but on crime as well.

In related news, I read that the number of Britons emigrating to Australia has tripled in recent years. You can't blame them, can you?

Population Replacement in Birmingham, and Britain

In the Telegraph, I read that a team of demographers at Manchester University has predicted that whites will be a minority group in Birmingham by the year 2027. According to the university's Dr Ludi Simpson, the growth of the "minority" population will be driven by the doubling in size of the Pakistani population.

So, not just population replacement, but the first steps towards Islamification as well. Isn't Mark Steyn supposed to be a paranoid racist for predicting demographic change of this nature?

Interestingly, Dr Simpson is scathingly dismissive of the common liberal notion that, in such Balkanised cities as Birmingham, the numerous different ethnic groups now living within Molotov cocktail-throwing distance of one another will just join hands and sing "Kumbaya". Rather, he acknowledges that the suburbs of such cities are "sites of real tension". And, it should be noted that this tension does not just arise between whites and non-whites; it also arises between different non-white groups, with the most notorious recent example being the clashes between Pakistanis and blacks in the Lozells area of Birmingham, two years ago.

The gradual population replacement taking place in many of our largest cities should be a cause of immense concern. The increased likelihood of inter-racial violence, as our cities become increasingly fragmented, and increasingly segregated along racial lines, with each group mistrusting the next, is a considerable problem in itself. And not one that any mainstream politicians are really making much effort to address. They all subscribe to the Kumbaya fantasy.
However, the second concern is, as I see it, more important. It is that we are witnessing a massive change in the racial make-up of our society. Where Birmingham goes, the rest of Britain is likely to follow. This change truly is without precedent - never before has a majority population voluntarily turned itself into a minority - and its implications are potentially immense. And yet, there has never been a serious public debate about this most important of all issues. Indeed, any debate on this issue is positively shut down, with the label 'racist' hastily applied to any who dare raise it. I believe that the British people deserve to know the details of what the political elite has inflicted upon them, and they deserve a debate on whether we want the demographic change that this country has already endured to be exacerbated by continued mass immigration. Sadly, I don't expect that we are likely to see any such debate anytime soon.