We'll see

I blogged recently on the right of homeowners/tenants to defend themselves against those who would choose to break into their properties, seems the circumstances of the people arrested who weren't the actual thieves has hit a nerve somewhere in the government.

Express.

USING “whatever force necessary” to repel a burglar means that stabbing them or hitting them with a poker won’t be a criminal offence, Justice Minister Ken Clarke said yesterday.

Speaking to the BBC, Mr Clarke said that under plans to clarify the law on self-defence “we will make it quite clear you can hit a burglar with a poker if he’s in your house and you have a perfect defence when you do so.

“If an old lady finds she’s got an 18-year-old burgling her house and she picks up a kitchen knife and sticks it in him, she has not committed a criminal offence, and we will make that clear.”

Mr Clarke has come under attack over what was seen as his soft stance on sentencing.

He accepted the defence of reasonable force already exists, but said: “Given that doubts are expressed, we are going to clarify that. What people are not entitled to do is go running down the road chasing them or shooting them in the back when they are running away or to get their friends together and go and beat them up.

“We all know what we mean when we say a person has an absolute right to defend themselves and their home with reasonable force.”

“Nobody should prosecute and nobody should ever convict anybody who takes these steps.”

 So what is reasonable force? Well the government and the laws view seems to be that you can only defend yourself if your assailant or other villain is facing you, the minute they run away it's no longer reasonable force. My idea of reasonable force is that anyone who breaks into my home or threatens me and mine should never be given an opportunity to do the like again and if that means chasing them down the road whilst shooting them in the back, then that strikes me as fairly reasonable. Suspect from the comments I got that my position isn't that unreasonable to most who read my stuff and if anything is a little mild. To me (and others) the minute you illegally enter a premises with the intention of breaking the law, then whatever rights you have, have gone out of the window and God help you if you run away, the only option you have should be surrender because running away means you might come back later so makes you fair game.

Too many of our politicians and lawmakers and enforcers don't really live in the real world where there is an ongoing problem with crime, they live in nice communities away from the reality of living with the fear of attack or robbery. Perhaps if they hadn't spent so much time disarming us (for our our own protection) and gave us more control over our lives and safety, we wouldn't be talking about this.

As it is, I really don't see anything in Ken Clarke's statement that gives me cause to rejoice, he's just stated the law as it stands and hasn't given any guarantees that people wont be arrested simply for defending themselves, until the law is changed to remove the "reasonable" force clause, then this I'm afraid is simply just soundbite policy on the hoof.

Give us the right to really defend ourselves, then perhaps I might just change my mind about what is and isn't reasonable.

Wuff Justice*

* Sorry, sorry, but too good a pun to resist.

I'm a great believer in people getting their just deserts when it comes to criminals, too many have had their lives made a misery so it's good to see that occasionally there's a bit of payback in the grand scheme of things.

Telegraph.

A knife-wielding robber's attempt to rob an off-license shop in Devon is thwarted by the owner's dog. 

Eve Watson, 55, and her six-year-old Staffordshire Bull Terrier, Cane, took on the intruder after he jumped over the counter with a Stanley knife demanding money from the till.

The shop owner fought back by grabbing a nearby craft knife, telling the robber, "so you like to play with knives, do you".

Mrs Watson then grappled with the robber and managed to pull down his hood, exposing his face to the CCTV cameras in the shop.

Her dog then joined in, biting the man between his legs before the intruder fled the shop empty-handed.

Well this day just keeps on getting better and better, amazingly enough she wasn't arrested for having a dangerous dog, nor was the dog dragged off to be put down.

Devon and Cornwall police praised Mrs Watson for her bravery and have now launched an appeal to find the culprit.

He is described as a white male, aged 23 to 25 with fair hair who has a thin, acne marked face and was wearing jeans and dark trainers.

Hopefully walking with a pronounced limp and unable to sire any children either (well we can hope)

Why are we paying for this?

Seems every time I look at the activities of those involved in the maintaining of public services from management to unions I keep finding stories of corruption and waste. At one time the UK ran an empire that controlled about a quarter of the globe and managed it with about 1500 civil servants, I know times have moved on and life is a tad more complex now but the over-manning, waste and general corruption is truly shameful especially as it comes out of the pockets of the taxpayer. This is one of the little scams that the unions have to get paid for doing their job out of the public purse rather than out of their members subs.

Telegraph.

More than 360 civil servants are working full-time on trade union duties, figures obtained by The Daily Telegraph show.

The cost of the officials to the taxpayer is estimated to be nearly £19 million, an increase of more than £2 million in the past year.

The Ministry of Defence employs 66 full-time civil servants working on trade union duties and 321 working part-time for unions, the figures released under freedom of information laws show.

The figures were obtained by Dominic Raab, the Conservative MP for Esher and Walton in Surrey, amid concern among ministers over the spread of militant trade unions in the public sector.

The civil servants are entitled to work full-time on trade union business, including representing workers’ grievances and negotiating over pay and other perks. Some ministers suspect they are privately building support for strikes.

There is simply no justification for this, if people want to be involved in union activities, then it's not the job of the taxpayer to be paying for them to do so, that should be down to the union members to pay for any full time officials. There is no way such practices would happen anywhere other than the public services with their magic money trees, even if (predictably) the unions have the nerve to blame it on Tory reform laws.
I expect as the public services go on strike over the next few weeks that a lot of these stories will come out of the woodwork as the government lays the ground to gut the public service unions.I also think the unions are going to be quite surprised at the low level of public support they will get too, those of us who work in private industry having little or no sympathy with those who want to keep their perks and gold plated pension at our expense and that at the end of the day is the crux of the matter, the public services do what they do at our expense, no-one expects them to do without necessities, but we do expect them not to take the piss either and using the public purse to pay for your union reps rather than doing the job they are supposed too is seriously taking the piss!

On your Mark's

The Euro, love it or as most of us do ignore it has a poor history, supposedly one of the flagship marques of the European Union it was an artificial currency that took no notice of regional economies as it did not have anything like the checks and balances built in to alleviate regional differences that its so called rival the US Dollar does.
Still, with the current difficulties it faces with the Southern Mediterranean states (and Ireland) the possibility of a Greek default on their loans, you'd have suspected that it would have been one of those states who would eventually be the first to leave the Euro. and that the Euro bolstered by the more stable Northern EU economies would survive.

Express.

ALMOST three-quarters of Germans doubt that the euro has a future, a poll reveals.
They also believe rescue attempts are futile as billions more euros will be paid to bail out Greece.
A poll by German newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine, found 71 per cent had “doubt,” “no trust” or thought there is “no future” for the euro. Only 19 per cent expressed “confidence” in it.
Sixty eight per cent said they did not think the emergency bail out of Greece would work.
A separate poll last week showed more than half of Germans thought that Greece should be thrown out of the euro.
Rumours are also rife in Germany that Deutsche Mark bank notes are being printed again in preparation for ditching the euro.
It is said Germany’s central bank, the Bundesbank, has been ordered to print marks as part of contingency plans to leave Europe’s single currency.

Couple of years ago I'd have been gobsmacked by such an announcement, that was however until I noticed something a bit odd on my till receipts from my occasional booze cruises to France in that they all had the amount in Francs still printed on them, seems the only people who thought the Euro could work were the EUphiles and despite their claims, they still only form a minority of people throughout the EU, the rest being either highly hostile or mostly indifferent to the EU, just check out the percentage of votes cast in the EU elections, hardly a vote of confidence is it?
I expect the EU to move heaven and Earth to keep the Germans onboard, but Merkel is walking on a knife edge, elections are due and it's just possible that the opposition will force the German governments hand. If Germany leaves the Euro it will be the end of it, far more so than if Greece does.
We can dream.
Can we leave yet?

Same rules should apply

It's all about respect, certain professions should command respect and occasionally fear if you cross a certain line, fear of the consequences that is. Remove the respect and you remove the fear and you can expect morale to plummet and can probably watch as the whirlwind is reaped.
This is especially so with the Police, not that the higher echelons have much of a clue as to what is really going on at the lower levels as most of them are Common Purpose placemen having been politically chosen for their politically correct/equality/multicultural views and support of certain left wing dogmas where it comes to treating certain sections of the people, which is why some forces now carry a card telling them that they can't arrest people for abusing them.
Mail.

Police have been banned from arresting foul-mouthed yobs who abuse them with the most offensive swear words in the language.
The rule change, which has sparked a revolt in the force and anger among MPs, is revealed in secret advice issued to officers and leaked to The Mail on Sunday.
Scotland Yard has issued a card to its officers, telling them to do nothing if they are subjected to a torrent of obscene abuse.
The card, which the police are told to keep on them, secreted behind their warrant badges, says: ‘The courts do not accept police officers are caused harassment, alarm or distress by words such as ‘f**k, c**t, b*****ks, w*****s’.
The guidance has been issued despite existing laws that sanction the fining of people who swear at police and the jailing of persistent offenders.
The same section of the card warns that yobs cannot be handcuffed ‘just’ because they pose a threat to the safety of officers. ‘‘Handcuffed for officer safety” – Not sufficient!’ it says. ‘We must be able to justify it.
Fully detail all the circumstances, set the scene and describe their build, your build, their demeanour and any warning signs. Include all the factors available to you.’

 Now this is an area where most of us would expect something to be done if we were so stupid enough to go around abusing a police officer, after all we wouldn't like it done to us and there are certain circumstances in which if it was we'd expect the law to take a hand and deal with the perpetrator. If the police cannot do this any more then they will lose what little respect they have left, though I rather suspect that the higher ups intend that anyway, after all unless there is massive civil unrest to justify the placemen of Common Purpose to be able to take over, then what's the point of having all these laws in place to deal with it?
Taken as individual items, the collapse in morale of the police, armed forces and various other "guardians" of society, coupled with the introduction of alien creeds and cultures (yes Islam we're looking at you) and a general breakdown of society where people are at each others throats could be dealt with, but when they all appear at once it begins to look more like someone is pulling the strings. Yet I do wonder just what is waiting in the wings, after all, if the morale of the guardians is shattered, the Gramscian/CP placemen wont have a street army to enforce their diktats anyway. Certainly they aren't loved by the masses and a good few of us know what they are all about and who they are, even in their own organisations. Even those who might ostensibly be on their side such as the unions might not be able to raise the numbers necessary to bring about the one world order (communism/socialism) that seems to be the aim with an elite living the life of Riley at the top lording it over the drones controlling them by a massive security force. After all this has been the end result of every attempt to do things the lefts way so far, practically the definition of insanity, doing the same thing, the same way and expecting a different result. Though with their current treatment of the security services, you have to wonder where they'll get them from, certainly I doubt there will be a spontaneous uprising lead by the CP crowd, we don't trust them because of what they did anyway, then again we don't know who they all are anyway. The only way it could work is via the demagogue method, someone to convince us to follow them and there's no-one like that on the horizon anyway, the destruction wrought on our society has made it unlikely one could arise.
The destruction (possible) of the EU might put a massive kink in their plans anyway, we'll have to wait and see where this is all going, the endgame isn't in sight yet.

Equality or ability?

One of the massive failings of socialism and socialists is their inherent blind spot where it comes to equality of everything, mostly because it always ends up being an equality of the lowest common denominator.
This means that in the case of choosing a talented person who is just right for a certain job, they hamstring themselves by putting in a person of the correct gender/religion/skin colour. Harriet Harman is a prime example of this congenital idiocy of the left.

Mail.

Harriet Harman has resurrected her demands that one of Labour's two top posts should always be held by a woman.
The arch-feminist MP has proposed a change in the rules to stop her party reverting to its 'default position' of having men as leader and deputy.
Miss Harman believes women are 'still a long way from equal' in the Labour Party, and wants a vote on the issue by next year.
Her comments that Labour has a default position of choosing men for the top jobs is extraordinary given that she was fairly elected deputy leader of the party four years ago.
She secretly tried to change party rules in 2007 to ensure it could never again be led by an all-male team, but was foiled.
Miss Harman called last year for new rules to ensure half the shadow cabinet was made up of women.
But the suggestion provoked a furious outcry from male and female Labour MPs who branded it undemocratic.

yes, it's not only undemocratic, it's only equality of gender, not of ability, though I suspect that Harman merely sees it as a possible sinecure to keep her in a top job for as long as possible.
That's always the problem for those who seek to make life "fair" in that by making it fairer for some they usually make it unfair for others. Now personally I don't have a problem with Labour making themselves unelectable by this means, however there's always the chance that in (another) moment of madness the electorate will give them another chance. Certainly the Tories are not exactly thrilling the electorate at the moment, so it is a possibility. This would mean that there would be a possibility of the idiot Harman's schemes being inflicted on the rest of us like she did with the hideously unworkable Equalities Act.
People aren't equal, everyone has differing abilities all you can do with legislature is ensure a level starting point, after that it's up to raw talent and often enough luck. What you cannot do is start with the top placings and demand equality there, more often than not you'll displace people who have worked hard to get themselves there and cause a serious morale problem as people with lesser talents get promoted simply by being who they are not how good they are.
People like Harman see injustice where there is none and attempt to correct it by being unjust. Sums up the Equalists in Labour to a tee really.

It pays to ask

There are times when I wonder if I'm the classic voice in the wilderness, or rather a minority voice in the wilderness as you can tell from my blog list. I tend to read quite a few other blogs not mentioned on the list too, though they are mainly what I call the "opposition" and it would be churlish to expect that they blogroll me. Nor do I see any reason to list them, particularly as they rarely have anything on to write home about, though if you do blog and have me on your blogroll and I don't list you, let me know, quid pro quo is the exchange of choice out here in the blogosphere.
In practice though we only tend to go where we feel welcome, so with a few notable exceptions most of my blogroll is of right, libertarian, Anglo-nationalist blogs, one of the few exceptions being Harry's Place which for all I don't tend to agree with them is always a damned good read.
Still, it's nice to know that my views on certain things echo with the public as a whole occasionally.

Express.

SEVEN out of 10 voters want Britain’s spending on foreign aid frozen or slashed.

And 43 per cent want to scrap it entirely, a new poll reveals today.

David Cameron has vowed to increase Britain’s foreign aid budget to more than £12billion by 2013 while ordering most other Government departments to make drastic spending cuts.

But 69 per cent support freezing the budget at its current level of £8.4billion a year, saving £3.7billion, according to the YouGov/ TaxPayers’ Alliance survey.

The poll also reveals support for cutting spending on the controversial high-speed rail project, trade union funding and a Green Investment bank.

Results found that 48 per cent support cancelling the high-speed rail link between London and Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester – a saving of £30billion.

And 51 per cent would like to save £67.5million by stopping the practice of paying full-time trade union organisers in large public sector organisations.

Matthew Sinclair, director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Ordinary families are facing higher taxes and huge pressure on their finances.

“There is strong support for cutting expensive projects like high-speed rail, which they don’t see as the right use of their cash.

“There is no way taxpayers’ money should be supporting thousands of trade union activists who are planning strikes and fighting very necessary cuts to public spending.”

Naturally enough the Tax Payers Alliance are going to have a sympathetic place in my mind, but it's always nice to know that somewhere out there at least half of the people (roughly) agree with a few of the things I have a go at, mainly that charity begins at home and that the government should not be a charitable giver, even to the point of not paying the way of union reps in public service.
There is a direct disconnect between politicians and the use they make of taxpayers money, they see it as their money to spend how they wish and it's not for us to tell them what to spend it on. Which is why I'm also coming round to the idea that Referism is worth supporting, after all if they know we'll get a direct vote on their spending, they'll make damned sure we'll like what they put to us (we can always hope) but most people who could be bothered to vote will at least know the economic realities involved. I can't see the powers that be going for it unless they have their hands twisted up their backs by the weight of public opinion, or more likely their heads in a noose.
It's always nice to know though that in the greater scheme of things, you aren't quite a small minority after all.

My gaff my rules

People should have the right to defend themselves and their property, the law even (supposedly) allows this with a reasonable force addendum to any crime in which the perpetrator is injured. Though personally speaking the states idea of reasonable force and my idea of reasonable force don't really match as mine includes the possibility of the perpetrator never being in a position to attack/rob me or mine (or anyone else) ever again, which seems reasonable to me.
So it still irritates me to see headlines like this in the media.

BBC.

A burglar has been stabbed to death and the householder arrested on suspicion of murder after an attempted break-in at his house in Salford.

Four masked men attempted to get into a house in Ethel Avenue before midnight on Wednesday.

The stabbed man, 26, is believed to have been carried away by the other intruders as they fled, before being dumped in a street in Pendlebury.

Peter Flanagan, 57, son Neil, 29, and his son's girlfriend are being held.

The men and the 21-year-old woman are being questioned on suspicion of murder.

Police said the stabbed man was found on Hospital Road and died a short time later.

Ch Supt Kevin Mulligan, who heads Greater Manchester Police's Salford division, said the man suffered "at least one stab wound" during an altercation in the house involving at least one person from the address and four people breaking in.

He said he could not comment further on the injuries or the cause of death until a post-mortem examination had been carried out.

He also refused to comment on whether the weapon had been taken into the property by the intruder or if it belonged to the householder.

 Now to my mind, anyone breaking into someone else's house immediately puts themselves beyond the laws protection, that ought to make them fair game for any self defence that the property owner/tenant should decide to use to defend themselves and their goods. Not according to the law of the land though, as far as they are concerned if you commit a crime defending yourself then your going to be prosecuted. The law as it stands only allowing you to defend yourself physically if your opponent is facing you. Stab them in the back and it's assault and upwards and you probably spending more time inside than they do such is our crazy system, just ask Tony Martin.
No, I'm not suggesting that people be allowed to set mantraps in their gardens, but what I am saying is that felons are beyond the laws protection either coming towards you or running away during the course of the felony and you have the right to use as much force as you like as they are fair game. You do not have the right to go round to their place the following morning and shoot them though, however the rules of hot pursuit should be recognised too, their only recourse being to turn themselves in whilst trying to escape.
In the USA you shoot a burglar, you don't get arrested, but in certain states the people with the burglar are arrested and charged with the manslaughter/wounding with intent as the injuries sustained committing a crime are deemed to be the criminals responsibility. Strikes me as common sense which is probably why our legal system will persecute the victims rather than the perpetrators.
The state wants all forms of violence firmly in its hands or those outside the law, has done for a while now, after all armed people might just go after the powers that be. That in a nutshell is why people who defend themselves frequently end up being prosecuted and incarcerated themselves.

You couldn't make it up.

I'm an engineer, I've done some daft things in my time going against the prevailing wisdom, following orders from the boss to the letter (and not the spirit) but I've always managed to avoid making a complete laughing stock of myself.

BBC.

Council bosses have admitted scoring an "own goal" after a fence was built through the middle of football goalposts in a park in York.

The new fencing was installed at a cost of £6,000 on playing fields in Heworth.
It was erected before £37,000 worth of new play equipment is phased in at the park over the next few weeks.
Dave Meigh, City of York Council's head of parks and open spaces, said: "We recognise that the failure to relocate the goalposts is a real own goal."
It has left local people who use the park to play football confused.
Mr Meigh said the council had asked the contractors to "resolve the issue as a matter of urgency and can only apologise for the error".

Spot the slight problem?

Truly a situation that mobile phones were made for, I mean what the hell were the contractors thinking? Nobody comes out looking that great from this, not the workers, the contracting firm or the council itself for not having any sort of oversight or input.
Made me smile though.

Despicable

Most crimes are despicable, though some crimes seemingly go beyond that into the truly despicable, particularly those which involve robbing or using violence upon the disabled, elderly, very young or in the case here, robbing a charity.

BBC.

The Midlands Air Ambulance's headquarters have been raided by three masked men armed with a Taser.

Police said the men burst into the charity's office on the Enterprise Trading Estate, off Pedmore Road, in Brierley Hill at around 0845 BST.
An ambulance spokesman said they held 20 members of staff hostage with the Taser although it was not used on them.
No-one was injured, and the men escaped in a member of staff's car having stolen bags of money.
Midlands Air Ambulance charity director Hanna Sebright said: "I find it hard to comprehend that people would commit such a violent crime and steal money from a life-saving charity.
"Dedicated people have gone to great lengths to raise money for the charity, and it is appalling that it will be unable to be used for the purpose of keeping the air ambulances in the air.
"This despicable act could actually cost people's lives."
Police said the men are all described as black, in their 20s and wearing scarves across their faces.

 It's akin I suppose to robbing from the poor box of a church, when churches of course had a poor box. That money was raised to help an air ambulance service run so it could save lives by getting the injured to a hospital safely and a lot quicker than by road. Instead the costs of running the service will have to be raised again by the generosity of the public assuming they can, these are hard times after all and if they can't perhaps lives will be lost as these things cost for fuel and maintenance along with wages for the staff.
I know under the law all crimes are supposedly equal, that robbery is robbery and it's only the degree that is taken into account use of violence etc. But frankly these guys if caught should be looking at spending the rest of their lives chopping down trees in hard labour somewhere cold and unfriendly.
But they won't, you and I know they wont, because there is no such thing as real justice anymore, just degrees of law without any real deterrent to breaking the law.
Personally I think we should just be allowed to lynch them, but that's just my anger and vitriol at a system that fails us time and time again coming out.

No sympathy

Expecting sympathy when you're an illegal immigrant being extradited is only going to come from certain quarters, mostly the idiot left and human rights lawyers who see a chance of making some money particularly when the immigrant is desperate enough to do this...

Telegraph.

The man is receiving treatment in hospital after the Virgin Atlantic flight from London Gatwick to Kingston, Jamaica, was postponed.

A UK Border Agency spokesman said an investigation was being launched into how the man was able to inflict the ''superficial injuries'' on himself.

Passengers, who watched in in horror as the incident took place, have been offered counselling by the airline.

Emergency services prevented more serious injury by "gluing" his throat together, a source said.

A spokeswoman for the airline said: "Virgin Atlantic confirms that flight VS69 from London Gatwick to Kingston has been delayed until 12.45 on June 21 following a passenger incident.

"The aircraft which was due to depart at 12.45 on June 20 was met by the relevant authorities and the passenger was taken to hospital for treatment.

"The safety and welfare of our crew and passengers is Virgin Atlantic's top priority. Virgin Atlantic is cooperating with the authorities in their investigation of the incident and is offering counselling support to passengers and crew.

"All passengers on board the plane have been provided with hotel accommodation, refreshments and meals until the flight departs tomorrow. Any passengers who wish to change their flights will be able to do so."

I do hope once his injuries are temporarily repaired enough to travel that he's put back on the next plane preferably in chains. Hopefully the enquiry will also be able to take place in his absence too.
The last thing we really need in this country (actually there's a load of last things but bear with me) are illegal immigrants trying to blackmail the authorities by using self inflicted injuries to prevent deportation, even on the plane itself.
Particularly when it's only a flesh wound...

You what?

The problem as I see it for the Equality and Human Rights Commission is that they have to find racists or discriminators under every stone or they'd be out of a job. Sometimes however they pick on the wrong target and get a wtf reaction.

Telegraph.

Muslims are integrating into British society better than many Christians, according to the head of the Government's equality watchdog. 

Trevor Phillips warned that "an old time religion incompatible with modern society" is driving the revival in the Anglican and Catholic Churches and clashing with mainstream views, especially on homosexuality.

He accused Christians, particularly evangelicals, of being more militant than Muslims in complaining about discrimination, arguing that many of the claims are motivated by a desire for greater political influence.

However the chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission expressed concern that people of faith are "under siege" from atheists whom he accused of attempting to "drive religion underground".

In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph ahead of a landmark report on religious discrimination in Britain, he said the Commission wants to protect Christians and Muslims from discrimination, admitting his body had not been seen to stand up for the people discriminated against because of their faith in the past.

While the equalities boss promised to fight for the rights of Christians, he expressed concern that many cases were driven by fundamentalist Christians who are holding increasing sway over the mainstream churches because of the influence of African and Caribbean immigrants with "intolerant" views.

In contrast, Muslims are less vociferous because they are trying to integrate into British "liberal democracy", he said.

Trying to integrate seems to mean it's ok to blow up tubes and buses, drive cars with gas canisters wrapped in explosives and nails into airport entrances, try to set of nail bombs in cafe's, go over to Sweden to set off bombs, travel to Israel to blow up a bar in Tel Aviv, plot to kill thousands by blowing up trans-Atlantic airliners with liquid explosives hidden in soda bottles, as consulate staff supply weapons to Hamas in Jerusalem, try to blow up a plane with a shoe bomb, run paedophile grooming gangs, beat up religious teachers, demand gay free zones, abuse returning troops...

Some integrating Muslims

Don't see radical Christians trying those sort of things in the UK do you? Might get more respect if they did.though.
Trevor Phillips and his Equality and Human Rights Commission are clearly taking the mickey if they think that radical Christianity is a problem, radical Islam now clearly has issues with, well with just about everyone who isn't a radical Islamist. Again we have a government quango trying to persuade us that one side is as bad as the other (equality in action?) when it is self evident that this is clearly not the case! They are so frightened to appear to demonise a minority that they target a law abiding majority. Yes Christians take employers to court for discrimination, what they don't do is threaten to kill them for perceived discrimination, that's the difference between radical Christians in the UK and radical islamists and the percentage of radical Islamists is far higher than radical Christians. Almost a third of British Muslim students believe killing in the name of Islam can be justified, according to a you gov poll.Doubt you'd find that attitude amongst Christians, which say it all really.

They lost that one too.

The public service unions after 13 years of cosseting and enlarging by labour are now beginning to feel the pinch of the coagulations slow down in borrowing and the squeeze that is being put on their gold plated retirement funds along with their early retirement age. It's obvious to anyone outside of the public service that things couldn't continue the way they were going and that in order to pay for their pensions they were either going to have to pay more or work longer. It was also fairly obvious that other than direct frontline services where the public come into contact with public services, police, nurses, doctors and firemen along with a healthy respect for the armed services, the rest of them are not held in such high esteem. So when a public union apparatchik boasts of a general strike bigger than the one in 1926, you can imagine the rejoicing.

Telegraph.

Britain is facing the biggest wave of industrial action since the 1926 general strike, Dave Prentis, the leader of the largest public sector union, has warned. 

In issuing his threat, Mr Prentis, the general secretary of Unison, has stoked the row over Government pension reforms. Unions are considering walking out on negotiations over plans to make most public sector employees work longer and pay more for less generous pensions.

Mr Prentis said: “It will be the biggest since the general strike. It won’t be the miners’ strike. We are going to win.”

Danny Alexander, The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, provoked union anger by warning public sector workers it would be a “colossal mistake” to reject a deal that was the best they could hope for.

The reforms include increasing the general retirement age in the public sector from 60 to 66, moving from a final salary system to benefits based on career-average earnings and raising contributions by an average 3.2%.

But Mr Alexander insisted that those on the lowest incomes would not have to pay any more and that low and middle earners would get roughly the same benefits as they do now.

Question is, will those of us in employment even notice the vast majority of those who go on strike? Food will be delivered, taxes paid by employers, fuel delivered papers on sale life will go on as normal. We might notice the strike during abnormal circumstances, needing medical attention, or the police/fire service but the blame for their absence will shift to the unions, not necessarily the members.
Oh I'm sure some of those on the left are licking their chops at the chance of bringing the government down, but I suspect that all they'll do is harden resolve, the public aren't stupid, they know the pot has run dry. What they might end up with is a new government with a Tory majority and one hell bent on revenge. The unions hated what Thatcher did to them, but they forget it was they who tipped her hand, it will be interesting to see who wins this, but I suspect it wont be the public services. Push hard enough and I expect we'll see the echelons of the public sector gutted, some areas privatised and much in the way of background services reduced.
Perhaps this strike will be a good thing after all, return us to the days where public servants were just that, public servants and not a massive bloated bureaucracy dedicated to the upkeep of the bureaucracy. Fact is we don't need so many of them working in the background and they know it, that's why they'll push the case of those who do work in the frontline as a smokescreen.
They'll lose, they may win a battle or two, but they'll lose.

Justice?

Andrew Symeou the young man arrested under the controversial European Arrest Warrant has been found not guilty.

BBC.

A student from north London who was accused of killing a Welsh roller hockey player on holiday in Greece has been cleared of manslaughter.

Andrew Symeou, 22, from Enfield, was charged with the manslaughter of Jonathan Hiles, from Cardiff, at a Zakynthos nightclub in July 2007.

Mr Hiles, who fell from a dance podium, died after he suffered a brain injury.

Mr Symeou denied being in the nightclub at the time. He has been held in Greece since his extradition in July 2009.

He was held in a Greek prison having been extradited, he was held in an overcrowded prison condemned by human rights groups for its inhumane treatment of inmates. Mr Symeou has revealed the appalling conditions in the maximum-security Korydallos jail in Athens. "I've seen people beaten half to death, I've seen blood, I've heard people being raped at night," he said, adding: "I've been verbally threatened and I've had to deal with all this. Yet the evidence given to extract him would not have passed scrutiny in a UK court.

Telegraph.

It all started on the holiday island of Zakynthos at 1.30am on 20 July 2007. In a nightclub called Rescue, a young Welshman, Jonathan Hiles, remonstrated with someone for urinating on the floor. That person then punched him and he fell, suffering fatal brain injuries. Five of Jonathan's friends, with him that night, gave initial statements to police saying the assailant was clean-shaven, with a blue shirt.

Andrew says he wasn't in Rescue when the incident happened, and had no idea it had even taken place. He had a beard at the time, and wore a yellow shirt that night. On 22 and 23 July, the victim's five friends, in separate interviews, gave new statements to the police identifying Andrew, from a group photo, as the killer.

But there was something odd. Although supposedly taken at different times on different days, all the statements used precisely the same words. The photo shown to the witnesses had Andrew circled with the word "perpetrator" written on it.

Then the police hauled in two friends Andrew had been with on the night of the killing. They, too, gave statements implicating Andrew.

But as soon as they emerged from police custody, they retracted them, saying the testimony had been dictated to, and beaten out, of them.

Georgina Clay, their holiday rep, saw the two afterwards. One had a swollen face, she said, and they were clearly terrified.

In statements to the Welsh inquest into Jonathan's death, the five original witnesses against Andrew also changed their stories. Four of them now said they hadn't seen the punch being thrown at all, only the urination. And the descriptions all gave still didn't match Andrew Symeou. These statements appear to be the only evidence against him.

They are highly unlikely to have passed the threshold for prosecution in this country.

This scandal is not so much about Andrew Symeou, though the sheer injustice of his incarceration before his trial is an utter scandal. This is about the idiocy of our politicians who allowed a law which enabled UK citizens to be snatched from this country on evidence that would not pass scrutiny in a UK court, because the UK courts are obliged to assume all other countries courts who are signatory to the "European Arrest Warrants" are by definition equally fair, and operate to equal standards as the UK. equivalent standard, when clearly the case is that they are not and do not.
So instead we had a young man dragged off to Greece and incarcerated waiting for trial for almost 2 years on clearly trumped up charges. Witnesses appear to have been abused and forced to sign confessions and such confessions being clearly at odds to the facts. His trial was a total farce with cheap court interpreters being replaced 3 times for being unable to translate accurately the proceedings to Andrew and the real perpetrator who murdered Jonathan Hiles seems to have gotten away with it as the man the Greek Police had in their sights clearly and obviously didn't do it!
This is the legacy you get for allowing integration via the EU route, important safeguards such as habeus corpus have been bypassed in the pursuit of making the various police forces lives easier. Andrew Symeou would not have even been convicted by a UK court, held in custody for any length of time and released by extradition into the hands of another countries police force on the evidence presented.
We have the EU to thank that he was.
Can we leave yet?

So tell us something we didn't know

Lot of blogs like mine have been banging on about the dire legacy that socialist and social engineers have left this countries education system in. It's easy enough to point the finger at New Labour, though if truth be told the general malaise set in a long time before that.

Telegraph.

In a damning indictment of Labour’s legacy, it emerged that deprived pupils in countries such as Estonia, Indonesia, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Mexico and Slovenia perform better than those from Britain.

Data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development shows some 31 per cent of poor children internationally manage to exceed expectations for their social class in school tests.

But in Britain, the proportion slumps to just a quarter – placing the country below the global average and 39th out of 65 countries.

It suggests disadvantaged children in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have less chance of climbing the social ladder than in the majority of developed nations.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, said achievement among the poorest pupils was a “scandal” and suggested a £30billion rise in the schools budget under Labour failed to improve results.

Well sadly most of the £30 billion did not go on improving education standards so much as fiddling the curriculum to constantly show improving results at all levels despite the clear evidence from universities and employers that it wasn't getting better, but the standard of education of the students entering university or being interviewed was if anything getting worse.
Successive governments have damned whole generations of kids to struggle and not be able to improve their status in life by getting a good education save by luck. Meddling with the core subjects to include "Britishness", "climate change" and "diversity/multiculturalism" all deemed to be politically correct subjects whilst being of scant use to the pupils themselves. Every effort was made to bring schools down to the lowest common denominator rather than stream the brightest and best into higher levels. That was looked upon as elitist and simply couldn't be allowed, if some had to fail then all must fail, though they deemed the failure in standards a success, after all didn't the figures show results were getting better year in year out? Though we know why that was and it wasn't that pupils were getting smarter or eduction standards improving.
We need elitism in education, we need a means to encourage the brightest and best to move to a higher graded school, we don't need an everyone must be a winner mentality, because if real life tells us one thing, there are winners and there are losers.

Crime and punishment

No not the boring novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky (well I found it boring, mental anguish and moral dilemmas about murder are not my cup of tea) No this is a rant at the Supreme Court of the UK and their (mis)use of the Human Rights Act.

Telegraph.

Thousands of sex offenders, including rapists and paedophiles, will be able to apply to be removed from the sex crimes register under human rights laws, the Government has announced. 

A Supreme Court ruling has forced the Government reluctantly to draw up new rules allowing serious sex offenders put on the register for life to have their place on the list reconsidered.

The Home Office plans were opposed by child protection campaigners and Conservative MPs, who said some offenders could never be considered completely “safe”. The new rules were drawn up because the Supreme Court ruled that automatic lifetime inclusion on the register breached the Human Rights Act.

David Cameron said the ruling was “offensive,” but ministers say they have no choice but to comply by changing the rules on the register.

The case is the latest involving the Act to set judges against political opinion. It has increased calls for reform of the Act, which is being reviewed by a Coalition committee.

Under current rules, anyone sentenced to more than 30 months in jail for a sexual offence is put on the register for life on release. Those on the register are monitored by police and visited regularly by officers. The Home Office estimates that there are about 44,000 people on the register, about 25,000 of them for life.

Now normally I'm of the opinion that once you've paid your debt to society as a criminal then other than a period of time in which an employer can ask if you have a criminal record, that's it, your life is yours to lead as you see fit barring a few areas of employment where there might be some conflict of interest such as the police or security forces. A fully rehabilitated ex con is an asset to society providing they can find work and pay their way (though that's a different story) and shouldn't be further punished once his/her time is done.
Sexual predators though are a different story, in some cases it's more in the way of a mental illness, psychological rather than sociological in that it's about the way they think rather than the effects of society upon them. Like any patient with a history of mental illness they need keeping an eye on, if necessary for the rest of their lives as many of them don't see anything wrong with what they do/did nor feel any remorse.
Simple fact is, some people do need keeping an eye on permanently and kept from contact in some employment areas or other association with their potential victims, be it women, children or in odd cases men. Even I can see the point of this, you don't put wolves into the sheep pen, because whilst you can rehabilitate a dog, a wolf remains a wolf and though there are times we probably ought too, we no longer cull wolves.
Again the courts come out with a judgement that might put ordinary people at risk, all to do with the poorly legislated Human Rights Act which placed all rights on a level playing field instead of grading them from basic to full. Criminals and sexual predators should only have restricted rights, once an ordinary criminal is released though he gets his full rights back. A sexual (or violent) predator who is still deemed to be a danger to the public though should remain on a far tighter chain as we're supposed to with mental patients and care in the community.
Truly the law is an ass!

Not enough details

The BBC report that 10 men have been arrested in raids for child grooming offences. This is on top of arrests elsewhere in Rochdale (11 so far) and even today one of the men involved in the disappearance of Charlene Downes.
Yet (not so very) strangely enough the BBC are very coy about the identity of the men involved. As the two other cases were of Pakistani Muslims and not generic Asians as the BBC and the MSM like to tar anyone from the East whilst conveniently ignoring/insulting the Chinese and other oriental types who are also technically Asians.

BBC.

Ten men have been arrested in police raids in Manchester and Derbyshire as part of a major investigation into the sexual exploitation of children.

Officers have spoken to more than 30 girls in one of the largest inquiries carried out by Greater Manchester Police's Major Incident Team.
Some are victims and others are witnesses, a police spokesman said.
Girls from Stockport are said to have been given drink and drugs and taken to sex parties in Manchester and Salford.
Men, aged in their late teens to late 20s, were arrested in Cheetham Hill, Fallowfield, Levenshulme, Moss Side, Chorlton-on-Medlock and Woodhouse Park.
One man was also arrested in Buxton, Derbyshire.
Mr Sweeney said the raids built on earlier arrests in Rochdale and Bury, following a three to four month police investigation.
He added that he anticipated further arrests.

 Not one hint of who or what they are bearing in mind that the Rochdale and Bury arrests were of Pakistani Muslim males. This is the BBC at its multicultural best deliberately concealing the fact that there is a problem within a certain community and the closest they will ever come to describing it is in calling the people involved "Asian"
In fact most of the MSM are similarly coy, though the Telegraph does give a very broad hint.

Terry Sweeney, assistant chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, said the force was now “fully prepared” to acknowledge the issue of ethnicity.
However, he emphasized that on this occasion the alleged perpetrators were a mix of Asian and white men.

Ah, there's that "Asian" again and I wonder what kind of mix, though I suspect predominantly "Asian" will be the next startling revelation. You can bet your bottom dollar that if they were all white English males we'd know about it if only to deflect the criticism of the Muslim community and its vile religion of peace which permits the attitude that all non Muslim women are easy meat and there for the taking and exploitation of.
Yet the BBC and the rest of the MSM keep down this path of flogging a dead horse with the term "Asian" which most of us now read as "Pakistani Muslim" or more often than not just Muslim despite the fact they come in all colours as it isn't a racial thing.
It would be nice to see the media be a bit more forthcoming about this problem which has been known about for years yet brushed under the carpet in the name of community cohesion. Until then we'll have to put up with the "men of no appearance" mona's being foisted upon us to try and keep us in the dark about the extent of the UK's real racial/religious crimes.

Too little too late

One of the ways many illegal immigrants gained access to this country was by getting an education visa and simply just vanishing into the system once they got here. Lot of scam courses from a lot of scam colleges were allowed to be set up by the previous government and a lot of people got very wealthy because of it..

Express.

A CRACKDOWN on abuse of the student visa system should cut overall immigration by more then 200,000 over the next four years, it was revealed by the Government last night.

Officials estimate the new policies being introduced gradually will mean 260,000 fewer student visas are granted between now and 2015, and 100,000 fewer awarded to students’ dependants.

It should lead to a 230,000 reduction in net migration. Today ministers are expected to set out latest details of the timescale for their continuing reform of the system which has become a major route for would-be immigrants to get into the country.

The issue has caused some controversy, with Lib Dem Business Secretary Vince Cable concerned that immigration curbs will hit university quality and revenue.

But the Home Office insists its aim is to tackle abuse and establish controls which command confidence while encouraging the best and brightest young people to come here on genuine courses.

 Yes 260,000 over 4 years sounds good, but it's still only a drop in the ocean as some 586,000 people arrived to live in Britain and 344,000 emigrated just last September and student visa were already 30% up in that time anyway.
The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that anyone who can make it to the EU and pick up an EU passport can come here anyway. and we're stupid enough to pay them benefits when they do.
Now it would be great if the people arriving had skills we could use, except in a majority of cases they aren't, they're here to take up cheap labour jobs that our homegrown people wont do because our benefits system makes it not worth their while doing. So they come here, work, live far too many to a house and send money home, as our minimum wage is a lot more than what they can earn for doing similar stuff back home.
The only way to stop this is to leave the EU, reform the benefits system root and branch and kick out any and all illegals regardless. Once we leave the EU, we'll have control of our borders back, control of our laws and a sovereign parliament that will do the right thing for the country rather than the EU and its odious bureaucracy.
Can't come too soon.
Nor should we ever forget Labours role in this farce.

An inconvenient lie

Normally you expect the MSM to slavishly follow the global warming, climate change, climate disruption mantra, though in the last year or so the wheels have been slowly falling off this ruinous theory that we can do something about the climate of the planet, or indeed that the so called experts who claimed rising seas and mass polar bear die offs were inevitable if we didn't all stop breathing out CO2 and live a nice medieval lifestyle, with no power, homespun sack-cloth and obeyed an elite environmental dictatorship as they flew around in their private jets telling us how to live. But enough of the BBC, this article popped up in the Express.

WITH ­energy firms poised to hike their prices by up to 22 per cent, consumers may well feel it is time to question the growing burden of so-called green taxes.

While energy experts will point to a rise in the price of oil, the Government’s commitment to renewable energy is the real reason behind the increases, as we ­already have 14 per cent added to our bills to fund projects which cut carbon emissions and global warming.

However a leading scientist who worked for Australia’s Department for Climate Change for many years, says experts got their predictions wrong and the whole idea that ­carbon dioxide is the main cause of any global warming is in fact a lie.

David Evans, who was a consultant for the then Australian Greenhouse ­Office until last year, said: “The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of any warming is based on a guess made in 1980 that was proved totally wrong by scientists as far back as the mid-Nineties.

The whole thing is now a train wreck. Although no one started out to scam or mislead, really the ­climate scientists are a bit corrupt now as they know they are exaggerating, but there are now too many jobs, ­industries, trading profits and ­political careers riding along on this nonsense to admit it is just that.

Now leaving aside my suspicion that energy companies owned by foreign companies are using this country as a cash cow to subsidise their own countries, much of the higher bills we face is due to an environmental levy (or tax) to fund or subsidise so called "green" initiatives which in a lot of cases weren't particularly green, efficient or cheap. When questioned about these "scams" the case was often put forward that the technology would improve, though in the case of bird choppers, it is difficult to see how they could make the wind blow all the time and for solar, the sun shine all day (and night). The other low carbon alternative and the one that actually works was of course denied any subsidies by Chris Huhne the (allegedly) motoring ban dodging Energy Secretary.

Chris Huhne:
I can certainly confirm that we will not be providing public subsidy to nuclear and that we see nuclear as part of the energy mix for the future provided that safety concerns are met.

 So, we're being ripped off by the energy companies, ripped off by the government and lied to by environmentalists who are happy with the fact that we're being ripped off as it means it forestalls the imaginary ecospasm where the planet melts (or something) and there's nothing we can do about it unless or until there is a viable alternative to the LibLabCon power sharing scheme.
In the mean time the old will freeze and die in winter and the rest of us will wonder where all our spare cash has gone, yet many will still vote in the bastards that did this to us!
I'll leave the last word to David Evans...

“Yes, carbon ­dioxide is a cause of global warming, but it is so minor it’s not worth doing much about.”

You don't call, you don't write

How else can someone get your attention Theresa May? Well, the leader of the EDL managed...

Mail.

Theresa May was last night dramatically ambushed at a constituency meeting by the head of the far-right English Defence League.
The Home Secretary fears the group – whose marches she has banned in the past - will now seek to exploit the face-to-face confrontation for a propaganda coup.
The self-proclaimed head of the EDL, who normally gives his name as ‘Tommy Robinson’, managed to by-pass security checks by posing as the companion of one of Mrs May’s constituents.
He then began haranguing the Home Secretary about why the EDL – whose demonstrations have been marred by violence – was treated differently to other groups.
Mrs May says she walked away from the exchange in Maidenhead Town Hall – which comes ahead of a planned local march in the town by the EDL today.
Normally, the leader of a known extremist organisation would have no chance of getting near to the Home Secretary.

Ok, lets deal with the hyperbole, first the EDL as “far right”. The EDL is not a political party, nor is it a political organisation, it has no political ideology at all and campaigns only against Islamification and unfettered immigration. Whilst the cause of, and answer to, Islamification and unfettered immigration is political, so is the cause and answer to high fuel prices and food prices yet the motoring organisations and charities campaigning against those aren’t given left/right wing political labels. Calling the EDL "far right" is utterly misleading and a typical slur usually from lazy journalists or those with an agenda to smear an organisation with the "racist" brush, after all that's what "far right" means in newspeak...
Second, Tommy Robinson isn't the self proclaimed leader of the EDL, he's recognised by the organisation as its leader because he formed it and lead from the front, there was no proclamation, it's simply accepted he's the leader.
The EDL are not an extremist organisation, they don't blow up buses or planes, trains or disco's, they simply want the government to deal effectively with radical Islam and dealing effectively with does not mean inviting even more of them to come live here.
EDL demonstrations have been marred by violence, the vast majority of it aimed at the EDL, this is the equivalent of blaming the victim for the crime. A quick check of the arrests will show that when the EDL march, it's their opposition who get the most arrested.
Asking questions of the Home Secretary is not haranguing, it ought to be a democratic right!

Brave Theresa May ran away.
("No!")
Bravely ran away away.
("I didn't!")
When danger reared it's ugly head,
She bravely turned her tail and fled.
("no!")
Yes, brave Theresa May turned about
("I didn't!")
And gallantly she chickened out.

****Bravely**** taking ("I never did!") to her feet,
She beat a very brave retreat.
("all lies!")
Bravest of the braaaave, Theresa May!
("I never!")

With many thanks to Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Jailed indefinitely

Interesting term "jailed indefinitely" it really doesn't mean life, it just means we wont let you out till we're sure you aren't a risk or you manage to use the Human Rights Act to get around us.

Lancashire Telegraph.

A TEENAGER has been jailed indefinitely for raping a pensioner in her own home at knifepoint.

Farhan Ahmed, 18, sneaked into the woman’s house in Nelson to carry out a brutal two-hour attack described by senior a Lancashire detective as ‘the worst I’ve ever seen.’

And it has emerged that Ahmed had been kicked out of school and college for sexual touching.

Ahmed was was given an indefinite prison sentence for public protection, with a recommendation he serve a minimum 10-year jail term.

Burnley Crown Court heard Ahmed, then 17, prowled the streets armed with a stick looking for vulnerable women.

He sneaked into the house in the early hours through an unlocked back door, picked up a kitchen knife before confronting the victim.

The drunken youngster then forced her to carry out a series of ‘humiliating and degrading’ acts.

Det Supt Ian Critchley, head of Lancashire Police’s public protection unit, said: “This was the most despicable and callous attack that I have ever seen.

"It will have a lifelong impact on the victim.

"Ahmed continues to show no remorse, and has shown none throughout the proceedings.

Ok, it would be easy enough to go off on one about the "Religion of Peace", but in this case there are others out there who have committed other similar crimes or worse offences and will remain in jail indefinitely as the evidence against them including a confession has them "bang to rights" as the saying goes.
Normally I'm against capital punishment on the grounds that mistakes can be made, not for any moral or religious reasons, simply that if you get it wrong in that instance you can't make it right with a wad of compensation thrown in.
But, I do believe there is a case for capital punishment for the worst of crimes where the evidence and the conviction have moved the judgement of peers past the stage of reasonable doubt into the realms of no doubt whatsoever.
The ultimate deterrent for those crime that are truly abhorrent and would involve locking away (and feeding and keeping at our expense) not just murder but but any crime that would preclude ever being released back into society. These should be put before a committee and a decision made on the evidence and trauma for the victim as to whether execution is an option rather than keeping them locked up. All aspects from mental health, remorse or possibility of rehabilitation including the prospects of ever being able to live normally in society ever again should be taken into account and then a recommendation made to senior judges at an appeal panel. If the appeal fails then swift execution follows, no hanging around for years with appeal after appeal.
There are some, Sutcliffe, Huntley and Farhan Ahmed who do not deserve even the privilege of being incarcerated at Her Majesties pleasure, they have been caught bang to rights and it would be cheaper simply to rid ourselves of them.

Do you see what I see

Technology can be wonderful and it also can be a burden when it comes to intrusions in our lives, but trying to stop technology being introduced is a bit like swimming against the tide. Still you’d think that when introducing a new bit of technology the requirement would be to opt in, rather than opt out.
Mail.

Facebook is at the centre of another privacy row after bringing in facial recognition technology to automatically identify users in pictures.
The world’s leading social network has begun rolling out new technology that automatically identifies and ‘tags’ people in photos uploaded to the website.
The feature has been expanded from a limited test run in the U.S. to be widened across all of the States and ‘most countries’, Facebook said on its official blog yesterday – and, by default, it’s turned on.
Facebook’s ‘Tag Suggestions’ feature is designed to speed up the process of labeling friends in photos posted on Facebook.
If a friend ‘tags’ you in one photo, the technology will automatically scan your face and then try and find matches among all their pictures.
Daniel Hamilton, director of privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, said: ‘Facebook users will rightly be alarmed to hear that their private information will be used in this way. This is yet another nail in the coffin for online privacy.
‘Websites like Facebook owe it to their users to respect their privacy, not to scan their photo albums with facial recognition software.’

As I don’t use Facebook I have no particular axe to grind here and the program itself does limit itself to only your friends and family online. The worry is of course that it will simply run in the background and build up a pictorial database of the people using Facebook and that somehow or other the information gathered will be hacked or used by “villains” including the “State” to track down people they want to find or monitor. Though I suspect a lot of the more savvy villains don’t have their pictures up on facebook, just the odd idiots who advertise their villainy
Still it is an example of the intrusions of privacy into our lives by information technology and a warning to those who actually take notice of such things that whether you’re aware of it or not a hell of a lot of information is held about you from your online wanderings, be it from spyware, to malware to legitimate businesses like Amazon or even social networks and if you think the state can’t get at the information if it decides to take an interest in you then you are deluding yourself.
What people need to be aware of is just how vulnerable they are, though I suspect a lot don’t give a damn, after all the message nothing to hide nothing to fear seems to be almost a mantra of various people out there when others raise alarms. The problems might start though when or if the state becomes so intrusive that people do feel they want to remain more anonymous and find they can’t.
Saying told you so is going to be cold comfort…
There are various ways to protect yourself, here is a decent start don’t use internet expolorer, use firefox with various security addons such as adblock plus and no script. But be aware, if your info is out there, it’s probably out there for good.
Be careful out there, you never know who is looking.

Disciplinary action?

When you're in hospital, you expect to be treated with a bit of respect even if your situation is somewhat undignified. If friends or relatives are in hospital, you'd expect the same things for them. What you don't expect is this...

Mail.

The ultimate NHS indignity: Body of hospital patient left to die in corridor is ignored for hours... before staff simply drag him away

'He went to them for help and they left him out in the corridor to die', says Peter Thompson's daughter
Senior nurse claims it was 'the appropriate method of handling the situation'

Two heartbroken parents have slammed 'inhumane' nurses who left their dead son lying in the middle of a hospital corridor and stepped over his corpse for more than ten hours thinking he was asleep.
CCTV captured staff pulling the lifeless body of Peter Thompson along the floor like they were 'dragging the body of a dead animal'.
Today a coroner said his death was 'wholly preventable' and believes he could have survived but for the neglect of nursing staff, three of whom now face disciplinary proceedings.
41-year-old Mr Thompson had taken a cocktail of drink and drugs but instead of taking him to accident and emergency, staff at the Edale House unit at the Manchester Royal Infirmary left him sprawled on the floor, where he eventually died.

Disciplinary action is ongoing at the moment, though hopefully it will lead to sackings, culpability has been admitted by means of a written apology from the Trust, yet cases like this keep happening as human dignity seems to be a forgotten term to some members of the NHS.
 Yes the family are in line for compensation, but that just means the costs will be passed back to us as taxpayers, the nurses will lose their jobs (probably) but unless their license is actually revoked, will probably find employment again at some stage.
The whole ghastly business really stems from the social engineering carried out by successive governments since the 70's, and possibly before. People just no longer seem to care about other people any more, oh sure they'll care about family or friends, but the kindness of strangers seems to be sadly lacking from today's society, oh not totally missing of course, we still give generously to charities, though even then the governments foreign aid and fake charity set up's are straining peoples credulity when it comes to their own giving.
Yet it's becoming ever more apparent that some people no longer see the human dignity of another as a matter of any great concern. Perhaps it's down to education, or culture, but it should be a matter of grave concern to us all that this sort of thing can go on with people scarcely able to defend themselves or do anything about it.
Perhaps the disciplinary action should go further or higher into a criminal charge of neglect?
I don't know, but people used to dread going into hospitals because that's where you went to die, seems as if history is starting to repeat itself.

Changing the leopards spots

Throwing money at problems always was a Labour solution, particularly if the problem involved members of a minority or special interest group. They weren't so much as looking for solutions though in my eyes but soundbites and occasionally silencing of the more radical elements of the problem. They did the same with the NHS in their early days but ended up merely bloating the bureaucracy for very little gain, but in the case of security problems caused by radical Islamists, they dispensed with the bureaucracy and simply just threw money at them here and abroad.
All good things come to an end though and it finally looks like the money tree is about to turn over a new leaf and remove funding from the various groups claiming government (taxpayers) money without actually doing something about extremism other than perhaps using the money they got to fund said extremism itself.

BBC.

The government is to publish an updated strategy for tackling extremism and terrorism, on Tuesday afternoon.

The Times newspaper says a review identified serious failings with the existing policy - known as Prevent - set up four years ago.

Home Secretary Theresa May is expected to say some of the £63m annual budget was wasted on overseas projects which have produced no security benefits.

Spending more on countering radicalism in prisons is due to be recommended.

Other recommendations expected include monitoring people convicted of terrorism offences on their release and a renewed focus on the use of the internet, as the government considers a "national blocking list" of violent and unlawful websites.

Prevent was originally launched after the 7 July bombings in 2005 to stop the growth of home-grown terrorism.

A final draft of the new document, to be published in Parliament on Tuesday, was reportedly seen by the Times.

It says it was "possible" Prevent funding had gone to extremist groups promoting hardline beliefs.

Part of the problem though is that the government really don't understand what they are dealing with, they're treating the symptoms, not the disease itself. It's no good trying to deal with violent or extreme Islamists unless you deal with the root of the problem itself which is Islam. These groups are not doing anything new, they are similar in a way to Christian fundamentalists in that they've gone back to a purer more basic form of their religion shorn of the comfort zone of modern civilised values. Whilst the core values of the New Testament are peaceful though, the core values of the Koran and Hadiths are for the most part anything but. I frequently describe Islam as a fascist totalitarian ideology masked in the trappings of a religion, and I'm not exaggerating for effect believe me. The fact that a lot of Muslims are law abiding fairly well adjusted is despite their holy book rather than because of it. Islam in it's purer form is simply incompatible with modern liberal/libertarian values, it does not tolerate freedom of speech, it does not tolerate freedom of thought, it does not tolerate freedom of anything save the rights of Muslims to be Muslims and to hell with the rest of us, we can either convert or live under dhimmi status and pay them protection money on top of any other taxation they want to hit us with and that's on top of rampant misogyny and homophobia.
Yet the review itself states...

"Previous work in this area has made some progress but has not consistently reached the few people who are most susceptible to terrorist propaganda.

"It has failed to recognise the way in which terrorist ideology makes use of ideas espoused by extremist organisations and has not fully understood the implications this should have for the scope for our work.

"It has not effectively engaged with and used the influence and reach of communities and community groups. Previous Prevent work has sometimes given the impression that Muslim communities as a whole are more ‘vulnerable’ to radicalisation than other faith or ethnic groups."

 That's a criticism, yet it's probably the only part of "Prevent" that approached the truth of the matter that Muslims as a whole are more vulnerable because their religion and upbringing within that religion makes them that way.
Radical Christians, Buddhist, Hindu's Jains, Sikhs all cause problems in their own way, but none on the scale of the problems caused by Muslims and Islam. You don't see any others flying planes into buildings, blowing up tube trains and buses, driving cars with gas canisters wrapped in nails and explosives at airport entrances, blowing up disco's or cafe's or cars in Stockholm, (dis)honour killings, blinding or scarring with acid for not wearing a veil, vandalising posters that offend their values, putting up gay free zone stickers, burning poppies etc.
Islam needs to be treat differently because it is different, it's not civilised, though many Muslims are, it breeds fanaticism in a way no other religion does. No other religion says it's ok to kill your enemy, enslave them, rape their women and force them to pay you protection money, every other religion has adapted and improved over the centuries, yet Islam remains the same because it cannot be changed, it's "perfect" according to Muslims at least, though not to anyone who has studied it and its founder who was a pirate, a rapist and a mass murderer who married a 6 year old and consummated the marriage when she was 9 yet he is a man to be emulated and copied by Muslims.
So in the end the government will throw our money at a problem without realising what the problem is and that it can't be changed, simply removed, like cancer before it becomes fatal.

This article at Harry's Place is well worth a look at too.

The fear factor

Enviroloons thrive on fear, fear of the future, fear of resources running out etc. in a sense they are the ultimate in glass half empty types in that the "professional" greenies know if a solution is ever found for our energy problems they'll be out of a well paid job where it's a case of money for simply objecting to anything.
Shale gas extraction is a case in point, it might well sort out our long to mid term energy problems and move us away from foreign suppliers, at least or until someone somewhere finally manages to sort out fusion power.

BBC.

Green campaigners are objecting to plans to explore for gas on farmland in Kent, which they fear will lead to controversial shale gas extraction.

Coastal Oil and Gas Ltd, based in Mid Glamorgan, wants permission to drill an exploratory borehole at Woodnesborough to test coal and shale for gas.

The company said it mainly wanted to extract methane from coal, but did not rule out shale extraction in future.

The Kent Green Party said it was sceptical about Coastal's claims.

Green Party spokesman Steve Dawe said it believed that if gas was found in shale at the site, the company would later seek to remove it using the controversial fracking method.

Fracking was being used in Lancashire but was suspended last week as a precaution after two earthquakes in the county.

The process involves shattering hard shale rocks underground to release gas using either hydraulic pressure or tiny explosions.

"If they find the possibility of exploiting shale gas they will," Mr Dawe said.

"We wish to rule out such exploitation because it is a deeply polluting activity."

 Controversial, check, deeply polluting, check, earthquakes, check. Yep all seems to be in order for the standard enviroloon dogma output. Shale gas extraction is only controversial because greenies say it is, the method itself is not controversial at all just simple physics and chemistry. Nor I suspect does it cause earthquakes, land settlement perhaps, but not real earthquakes, what happened in Lancashire was an earth tremor, they got them before shale extraction started as well, Blackpool had an earth tremor of about 2.2 on the Richter Scale back in 2009 long before they started to extract shale gas. But any excuse by enviroloons to shut down a process they know will put a spanner in the works of driving us all back to a brutal medieval existence (except for those at the top of the tree) It's the same with nuclear power, greenies hate anything that actually works, they'd rather we played about with environmentally flawed and useless bird mincers that only run at 20% capacity and only if the wind blows at the right speed. They're even happy for the generating companies to be paid not to use them when they aren't needed.
Now, I'm all for protecting the environment from pollution and the unnecessary destruction of the landscape (which oddly enough is what a bird mincer does) I'm also very much for an energy policy that works when its needed and when I want it and not simply because the wind is blowing that day. That gives several options non of which are in favour of by enviroloons. We're sitting on masses of coal, we can build nuclear plants (and are) or we can (also) extract shale gas any of which will keep us warm and energy supplied for decades. Personally I don't want to see our old, our sick and our very young dying off from cold during a bad winter, but that I suspect is what the greenies will think is a price worth paying for their destruction of our civilisation.

This is not a right

The older I get the more I despise the effects of the Human Rights Act and the way it's interpreted by judges and lawyers if only because the vast majority of people who seem to benefit from it are criminal scum who pass through the justice system. Not that I consider all asylum seekers to be scum, but they have used the HRA and the legal system to their advantage when it comes to staying here even when they have no right to do so...

Telegraph.

Tens of thousands of asylum seekers have been awarded British residency under a controversial human rights law which allow foreigners to stay because they have a partner or children in this country.

Out of 161,000 foreigners allowed to remain in Britain as part of the Government's "back door amnesty", a significant number were ruled to have a case under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the "right to family life".

It was this factor that was decisive in winning the right to stay in Britain, rather than any evidence they were genuinely fleeing persecution.

In many cases, initial Home Office delays in processing the claims will have been the factor that allowed asylum seekers who entered Britain as young single people the opportunity to start families.

The development exposes the impact of asylum failures under Labour, which triggered a long-running project to clear more than 400,000 asylum cases, dubbed "legacy cases", which had been allowed to fester since the late 1990s. The exercise was heavily criticised last week in a report by MPs on the all-party Home Affairs Committee.

There you have it, get into the UK, sometimes illegally, claim asylum, find and knock up some woman and you can stay, ok, ok probably not as crude as that in all cases, but certainly the case for some including Aso Mohammed Ibrahim who ran down Amy Houston and ran off leaving her to die whilst disqualified from driving, yet instead of being deported was allowed to stay because Ibrahim's lawyers argued that his human rights would be contravened if he were sent back to Iraq as he now has a family here.
Most would say his family can go back with him if they want.
Cameron was supposed to be getting rid of the HRA, naturally enough he hasn't, he hasn't even tried for a British Bill of Rights, he got told by Ken Clarke that such a bill would have to lie on top of EU law and not supersede it. No-one in government it seems is prepared to do anything about injustices within the HRA system, no one in government it seems is willing to leave the EU, the ECHR and scrap the hideous legislation foisted upon us by the previous government such as the HRA and the abysmal Equalities Act.
Seems they'd rather ignore abuse than do something about it and then they wonder why we hold them in contempt.