A Few T-Shirts From The Curate's Washing Line

This is what happens with "target culture".

Thousands of people are being stopped and searched by the police under their counter-­terrorism powers – simply to ­provide a racial balance in official statistics, the government's official anti-terror law watchdog has revealed.

Lord Carlile said in his annual report that he had "ample anecdotal evidence" of it happening, adding that such a practice was "totally wrong" and constituted an invasion of civil liberties.

"I can well understand the concerns of the police that they should be free from allegations of prejudice," he said. "But it is not a good use of precious resources if they waste them on self-evidently unmerited searches."

"I have evidence of cases where the person stopped is so obviously far from any known terrorism profile that, realistically, there is not the slightest ­possibility of him/her being a terrorist, and no other feature to justify the stop."

He later said that while the police should not discriminate racially, it was equally important that they should not balance the statistics.
"If, for example, 50 blonde women are stopped who fall nowhere near any intelligence-led terrorism profile, it's a gross invasion of the civil liberties of those 50 blonde women.

"The police are perfectly entitled to stop people who fall within a terrorism profile even if it creates a racial imbalance, as long as it is not racist."

Former British diplomat Sir Edward Clay told BBC Radio 4's The World Tonight programme he was subjected to a stop and search five weeks ago while on his way to work at the National School of Government, near Victoria Station in central London.

He said he had found the experience "sinister" and "intimidating". He told the programme: "I'm 63, I'm a grey-to-brown-haired white male, I'm 5ft 10 ins tall, looking extremely conventional."

The latest police figures show that ­117,278 people were stopped under section 44 in 2007-08, of whom 73,967 were white, 20,768 were Asian and 15,218 black.

To be fair to the police, they're trying to stop terrorism as best they can - and they haven't done a bad job since 7/7.

But they'll also get hell from the Guardian and the BBC if they only stop people who fit a likely terrorist profile. After all, no race or religion has a monopoly on terrorism, do they ? Terrorists come in all faiths and colours. Better be on the safe side.

Hence the massive waste of resources and the unnecessary harassment of whites. Where's our equivalent of Lee Jasper or Trevor Phillips - and why aren't the BBC and Guardian giving him airtime and column inches ?

Don't answer that.


They've come over here to spray the graffiti the locals just don't want to spray.

Sentencing, Judge Michael Gledhill said it was "appalling" to see "talented" graffiti artists sitting in the dock.

Would it have been OK had they had less talent ?

Ringleader of the graffiti gang - called the AMF - Marcus Wisman, 22, was sentenced to 16 months for conspiracy to commit criminal damage. Scott Mulhearn, 21, Adrian Hing, 22, Luke Vassell, 23, Jack Shumack, 24, and Alex Wisman, 24, were also jailed over the vandalism attacks between late summer and Boxing Day last year.

More on Patrick Foster, the Times journalist who outed the excellent police blogger Nightjack (and destroyed his fine blog, which had just won an Orwell Prize), here, here, here and here. He certainly seems to be a nasty and unprincipled piece of work. Should go far in journalism. But I hope his name, and what he did, won't be forgotten.


The Romanians being attacked in Belfast are Roma, or Gypsies, something that wasn't immediately apparent from the early reports. Not that that excuses bricking in their windows. Callers to the R5 phone-in the other day said that they were earning a living by begging in the streets. Press reports say they sell newspapers or flowers. I hope they're not like the flower sellers in Malaga or Barcelona.

I don't know about attitudes in the North, but in the Free State attitudes towards travellers are pretty negative.