More Sick-Bags

And next time I hear someone say:- "He'll come out of prison one day - it's us that are serving a life sentence", I shall throw up. - The Magistrate's Blog.

More 'emotional claptrap' from the sister of a barman stabbed to death by five men after he stopped one of them pestering a woman :

Mr Owens' sister, Donna Owens, said: "The men responsible for TJ's death will never feel our pain or understand our loss.

"So it's fair to say it is only us that have been dealt a truly life sentence."

Five men have been jailed over the death of a barman who was stabbed as he stepped in to help two women being molested by one of them on a night out.

Trevor Owens, 25, from Birmingham, was attacked in Broad Street, Birmingham, in November 2005. The case led to a knife amnesty by West Midlands Police.

Mazoom Ali, 30, of Bordesley Green, was jailed for life after admitting murder.

Four other men were jailed for between six years and nine months and nine years after admitting manslaughter.

The barman, known as TJ, stepped in to help two women who were being abused, pestered and molested by one of the group of five.

In other news : this story and this one are all over the place. According to a commenter here, there was a media blackout on the rape of the five year old until the BNP site reported it.

Technical Illiteracy

Luke Harding in the Guardian on the German Maglev rail crash.

The accident is the first involving the Transrapid system and calls into question the long-term viability and safety of magnetic trains. They had been hailed by some as an ecologically friendly alternative to conventional diesel-powered train travel.

Of course. Conventional trains are perfectly safe to run at high speeds over a line containing a stationary maintenance vehicle. It's only with maglev that you get a collision.

London

You can find these reports tucked away on the BBC website, but somehow you never hear them on the news :

A man was stabbed to death yards from his front door in an attack by a mob of up to 40 youths on bicycles.

Jason Gayle-Bent, 29, was sitting on a wall with two friends when the gang rode up in Ludwick Mews in south-east London on Sunday, police said.

One of the youths pulled out a gun, aimed and fired several shots before the group dispersed.

Police believe the same gang may also have attacked and wounded another man shortly afterwards in Deptford Wharf.

Straight after the attack on Mr Gayle-Bent, the gang is thought to have fired shots in the air outside the Community Action Centre in Grove Street.

Police believe they then chased a man who fled the centre on a moped. In his bid to escape the gang, he crashed his bike and then tried to run off.

The youths caught up with him at a doorway of an address in Deptford Wharf, where he was assaulted and stabbed.

A firearm was also discharged at the scene. The victim was treated in hospital and has since been allowed home.

Police are investigating whether the two attacks were linked and are keeping an open mind as to the motive.

More today - again I haven't heard anything on the news.

Gang threat shuts schools early

More than 2,000 pupils were sent home early on police advice, after threats of gang violence outside two schools in south-east London.

Pupils at the Peckham Academy, Peckham, and Harris Girls' Academy in East Dulwich were sent home at 1400 BST.

Police advised head teachers to end the school day early and said they would step up patrols over the weekend.

BBC London correspondent Guy Smith said it could be linked to the murder of a man in nearby New Cross on Sunday.

"Revving Engine in a Racist Manner"

via Tangled Web, this story.

Scottish motorist Ronnie Hutton, 49, was jailed for two days for the crime of "revving his car in a racist manner" last September. After waiting more than a year to try the case, the Stirling Sheriff court finally convicted Hutton last week of breach of the peace and fined him £150 (US $282).

An off duty officer, Chief Inspector Eoin Jenkins, said Hutton had revved the engine of his Lotus Esprit near two Muslims last year. After Hutton dismissed Jenkins' concern with an expletive, Jenkins immediately dispatched two police officers to Hutton's home where he was taken and thrown in jail for two days without formal charges. Hutton explained that his revving had nothing to do with nearby pedestrians, rather, he was keeping his temperamental and expensive V8 engine from stalling and being damaged.

"To be convicted for revving my car in a busy street is hard to take," Hutton told the Sunday Mail newspaper. "Does this mean anyone driving a noisy car in Scotland is now a criminal?"

Asked in court why the man may have revved his engine, Hana Saad, 23, said through an interpreter, "Maybe because we are Muslim."

That great patriot Billy Bragg is interviewed "by phone from his Barking, Essex home".

Somebody tell the Ottowa Citizen he left years ago ... but he's still got his finger on the pulse.

"People are being deported from our country because they have Arab-sounding names"

More Lib Dem Moonbattery

Even before the Lib Dems Mark Oaten found himself in the pooey stuff, I'd long since marked his card.

It was the go-karting lessons that got me, even more than votes for Ian Huntley.

But this is worse than any amount of dodgy daggy doings.

Radical ideas were suppressed - such as his long-held wish to abolish prison. "If I'd been brave enough when I had the home affairs brief, that's what I wanted to say, that we should abolish prisons. But I was clamped down. 'For God's sake, Mark!' they'd say. 'Even just saying something like prisoners should have the right to vote is causing us enough electoral damage.' So I never said it."

This was at the same time the dippy deviant was coming out with stuff like this.

"The plan for community justice panels is part of what Mr Oaten calls "tough liberalism" - policies which he says are liberal, effective, but not perceived as weak.

The challenge is to appeal to voters wanting a tough approach on crime while keeping support from those preferring a liberal stance.

Mr Oaten told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the idea of recruiting residents of estates or parishes to the panels was a "tough option" against offenders. "

Tough liberalism, eh ? While all the time he'd have let all the bad guys out ?

Two faced ? He's got more faces than Bradford Town Hall clock.

"the best possible nanny"

La Toynbee :

"if they want to avoid future generations of scary youth, they should urge higher taxes to pay the state to become the best possible nanny to all babies. "

Erm ...

Three-quarters of children in care have no educational qualifications at all when it ends, a report into the state of the care system claims.

Out of the 6,000 children who leave the care of the state each year, 60 make it to university, says a report by think tank the Centre for Policy Studies.

Report author Harriet Sergeant said a failing system was a "major contributor to social exclusion in this country".

But don't worry - something is being done.

The Department for Education said it had plans to help children in care. A department spokeswoman said: "We are already working on a major consultation document"

The Countdown Begins ...

Following the distresssing news of Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond's high-speed crash, how long before the first "what goes round comes round" piece about it in either the Guardian or Independent ?



UPDATE - at 8.58 pm Richard Williams is first out of the pits in the Guardian.

"an expression of a culture that is long past its expiry date ... how could anyone possibly justify the need to drive a car - any sort of a car, in any circumstances - at more than 300mph ? .... Campbell ... Cobb .... distinguished ... engineering history ... the makers of Top Gear and their viewers, however, appear oblivious to the fact that those days have gone for good ... very stupid indeed ... heedless self-indulgence that imperils the future of the planet ... a culture that is now not only obsolete but positively dangerous ... to the human race as a whole, and to its habitat ... Some will say that Richard Hammond's accident used up scarce medical resources".

Others will say that Richard Williams uses up scarce oxygen.

Well It Made Me Smile

Go to Google.

Type in "Woman Sour".

Hit "I'm Feeling Lucky".

Spot The Racist

via Majority Rights, an apparent (i.e. if it's genuine) EU-funded project to automatically scan the web for racist websites (well, some racist websites anyway - those of "majority groups"). I wonder what they'd want to do that for ?

I'm not sure about the methodology. They're picking a bunch of what are generally agreed to be racist websites (the stormfronts of this world), analysing the text and applying the results of the analysis to other websites. Whether that'll pick up the hideously subtle racism which according to the Guardian pervades almost the entire UK media and infects Brit society from top to bottom I'm unsure.

While I've little sympathy for some of the more outre views on sites like MR (according to the comments Baroness Tonge's Global Zionists are behind it all), I can't but enjoy the irony of this bit.

"Minority social groups and belief holders conceptualise truth as something which has been repressed or ‘concealed’ through socialisation processes and global information control at the hands of their chosen out-group. This paranoiac worldview ...."

So you're paranoid if you witter on about global information control and the repression of some ideas - according to this tax-funded supra-national project apparently designed as an aid to exactly that.

“We are living in dangerous and potentially cataclysmic times”

Pity Lord Carey never came up with stuff like this in the days when he had more influence. Still, more rejoicing over one repentant sinner etc etc.

Lord Carey said that Muslims must address “with great urgency” their religion’s association with violence. He made it clear that he believed the “clash of civilisations” endangering the world was not between Islamist extremists and the West, but with Islam as a whole.

The Magna Mater notes the speech, and also John Reid's words in London today.

It seemed to me that what Reid was doing, by addressing the Muslim community in this way, was not merely making a plea to parents but also, for the first time, drawing a line in the cultural sand. In effect, he was saying: this is one country, and it will not be fragmented but everyone has to observe the same basic rules ...whether this tentative throwing down of the cultural gauntlet in the face of creeping Islamisation does mark a more general shift away from the Whitehall strategy of appeasing extremism that has obtained until now remains to be seen. There is still a huge distance for the government to travel before it emerges from its state of collective denial.

Damn right there is. No, I think the collective liberal attitude to Islam and its followers is still to grasp at any hopeful straws (how about "they could hold a multicultural conference") and look steadily away from anything disturbing.

Time for the old post once again :

Blair has no intention of doing anything about the chain migration which, along with natural fecundity and a severe shortage of lesbian feminists, will have tripled the Muslim population of places like Bradford in thirty years.

The liberal elite's attitude to Islam reminds me of Churchill's comment about Prince Paul of Serbia, whose nation had deeply offended Hitler by the (anti-German) coup of early 1941, but who feared to provoke Germany by mobilising their armed forces.

Prince Paul's attitude, Churchill wrote, "is that of an unfortunate man in a cage with a tiger - hoping not to provoke him, while steadily dinner time approaches".

"How Dare You Come To A Muslim Area ?"

Sometimes you think it's a good thing Labour won in 2005. I imagine had this been a Tory Home Secretary that the Labour Party would as one be denouncing the Islamophobic racists in the Home Office.

Home Secretary John Reid's attempt to connect with British Muslims was hijacked by radical protesters claiming he was an "enemy" of Islam.

Others attending a speech he gave to a 30-strong group of Muslims in Leyton, east London, were angered by calls for Muslim parents to look out for the signs of brainwashing in their children in the fight against terrorism.

Mr Reid was 10 minutes through his speech when well-known extremist Abu Izzadeen, clutching the hand of a small boy, interrupted him. The Home Secretary had just listed a number of terror attacks around the world when Izzadeen began his tirade and forced him to stop.

"How dare you come to a Muslim area when over 1,000 Muslims have been arrested?" he said. "You are an enemy of Islam and Muslims, you are a tyrant. Shame on all of us for sitting down and listening to him."

The Home Secretary stood and watched as police officers ushered him out of the room, followed by hoards of cameras, photographers and reporters. Continuing his diatribe, Izzadeen accused the Government of state terrorism and said Mr Reid, Tony Blair and George Bush with their crusade could "all go to hell".

After the furore died down, Mr Reid said: "This is not a new experience for me or for those involved in politics. There will always be people who will not be prepared to take part in a dialogue, but who will try to intimidate and shout down. They are not confined to the Muslim community."

But Mr Reid had only just re-started his speech when a second protester, radical Anjem Choudary, stood up to protest.

"Muslims do not need British values," he said. "We believe Islam is superior, we believe Islam will be implemented one day. It is very rich for you to come here and say we need to monitor our children when your Government is murdering people in Iraq and Afghanistan."

In his speech Mr Reid stressed that the terrorists were waging a "violent and indiscriminate war" and warned that communities needed to be more aware of signs of terrorist activity. He urged Muslim parents to look out for the "tell-tale signs" of radicalisation in their children.

"These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for one thing," he said. "Grooming them to kill themselves in order to murder others. Look for the tell-tale signs now and talk to them before their hatred grows and you risk losing them forever."

I'm not sure I'd have used that last argument - does Mr Reid actually think about his audience ? Just as a Christian would prefer a child to be in heaven rather than on earth but doomed to hell (believe it or not such a view would have been quite mainstream only a few generations back), so a religious Muslim parent might not consider having a martyr in the family to be 'losing them forever'. After all, they could argue, they'll meet again in paradise. Life on earth is short, and eternity a long time.




UPDATE - of course what the press reports fail to mention is that the vast majority of moderate Muslims at the meeting threw themselves on the hecklers, roughed them up, and slung them out the doors ;-)

Lib Dems For Suicide Bombers

And againat the evil Jewish Conspiracy, as reported on the Today Programme (RealAudio, 20 mins in).

Baroness Tonge: "The pro-Israel lobby has a grip on the western media - a financial grip".

She went on to repeat the remarks about suicide bombers which Charles Kennedy considered to be 'completely unacceptable and 'not compatible with Liberal Democrat party policies and principles'.

Only one, nuanced change to her views. The bomber pilot who inadvertantly kills non-combatants is no longer merely the moral equivalent to the suicide bomber deliberately targeting civilians. No - he's worse. After all, the bomber pilot "goes home for a beer" afterwards. I don't think these guys do, actually.

Her views were echoed by MEP Chris "wallowing in your own filth" Davies.

Upper Class Lefties

We've seen the background of media darling Jon Snow.

But compared to the Guardian's Felicity Arbuthnot, Snow is a raving Tory. Anyone who can seriously compare US policy in Iraq with Pol Pot's Year Zero has a different angle on reality. No wonder she and John Pilger are as close as any two people can be without signing a civil partnership form.

Idly wondering about her aristocratic-sounding name, I did a quick Google.

Blimey.

Felicity Anne Clarendon-Hyde (mind you, if she came from this family, she might have married down) married into a family of blue-bloods whose connections are straight out of a Python sketch. A little map of a corner of upper-class Britain, with more soldiers 100 years ago and more solicitors now.

Thelma Grace Arbuthnot. Born 3 October 1911. Died 23 June 1974. Married first, 8 October 1932, Somerset Struben de Chair, ygr son of Admiral Sir Dudley Rawson Stratford de Chair, KCB, KCMG, MVO. Divorced 1950. He remarried more than once.

Rodney Somerset de Chair. Born July 1935. Educated Wellesley House, Broadstairs. Married first Sarah Trubshawe. Married second, 10 July 2000, Camilla ("Cilla") Joy Victoria Burdett-Blackett.

The younger generation are doing well :

Alexander Broadbent Arbuthnot. Born 1 May 1986. Educated Westminster under school; Eton College; Imperial College, London (Physics).

Katherine Rose Joste Arbuthnot. Born 14 July 1989. Educated The Lycée, then Highfield, then Wycombe Abbey.

Eleanor Sophie Duff Arbuthnot. Born 11 August 1992. Educated The Lycée, then Wycombe Abbey.

Alice Wemyss Tempest Arbuthnot. Born 31 May 1998. Educated The Lycée.

I see David Hare, another upper-class leftie, also married in. Different world.

"May Allah Curse The Pope"

At Mass today :

"We pray for Pope Benedict, that he may bring understanding to those of different faith - even those whose misunderstanding is deliberate. Lord hear us.

Lord, graciously hear us".



Meanwhile at Westminster Cathedral ....