A Few Snowdrops From The Curate's Hedgerow

Muslim prison gang stab Serb war criminal. Why is he in a British jail - are we paying for him?

UPDATE - the attackers, including one of Mary-Anne Leneghan's killers, were all serving life (one of the others had killed while on bail for rape). They've been given life sentences - to run concurrently. In other words, no sentence at all.


Will Hutton's Work Foundation (formerly known as the Industrial Society) goes bust with a large pension deficit. I thought Mr Hutton was against that sort of thing? He's still dispensing economic advice in the Guardian, I see.


Man with 48 IQ (low enough to make him a 'vulnerable person') banned from having (homosexual) sex on the grounds that, inter alia, he fails to understand the health risks :

The judge said it requires an understanding and awareness of the “mechanics of the act”, “that there are health risks involved” and that sex between a man and a woman may lead to pregnancy. He said that the psychiatrist thought Alan “believed that babies were delivered by a stork or found under a bush”, and that “sex could give you spots or measles”. On that basis the judge ruled that Alan did not have the capacity to consent to sex, but also ordered that the council should provide him with sex education “in the hope that he thereby gains that capacity”.

And woman with 'learning dificulties' could be forcibly sterilised to stop her giving birth to any more children.


"We can't control the Duchess of York" said Foreign Secretary David Miliband. Fair play to her - I believe her former husband had a similar complaint.


Composer James MacMillan on BBC recruitment:

"In my Labour Party days, during the 80s miners’ strike, my local branch was visited by a representative of Militant Tendency, who were on a recruitment drive. The Trotskyists have used entryism as an effective manouevre for a long time. It was not just the Labour Party they targeted, but many of our other institutions. Years after this Militant spoke to us (again in a VERY LOUD VOICE) I saw him cropping up as a senior news and current affairs reporter on BBC Scotland"

And Andrew Brown on the BBC and Ye Olde Grooming Saga - the Beeb actually asked some Asian youth what they thought of the Gori :

"Today the BBC took a good look at multicultural Britain – and they didn’t like what they saw."

"Accusing minority groups of being a security risk because they are a minority group is not a new practice" sayeth the (State-funded) Samosa blog. Laban points out in the comments instances where minority groups did actually constitute such a risk, and suggests that the important thing is to be able to distinguish between ill-founded fears (of dual loyalties) and well-founded ones. The fact that people have frequently made bad calls on this doesn't mean that calls don't sometimes need to be made.

A remarkable R4 programme, 'Teenage Kicks', which isn't quite like the Undertones single, and which I didn't get to record, illustrates the condition of 'girlfriends' in (primarily) inner-city black youth culture, an elephant in the room ignored by the producer and feminist commenters. Gone are the days when you'd tell your mates what you'd been up to - the thing to do now is give them all a crack, if that's not an unfortunate expression in this instance.

"I need me a bitch, like I need my crew
I need me a bitch to pass on to my boys soon as I get through "

Remember the Battle of Mullingar ? Some participants have been jailed:

"Gardai had to use a bus to transfer to prison twenty members of an extended family who were imprisoned for their role in an attack on a family home in Mullingar in a riot involving up to 60 individuals armed with slash hooks, hatchets, pitchforks, baseball bats and stones."

And 'Ditsy' Nevin was later back in court on charges of threatening to shoot officers from the Irish Criminal Assets Bureau who paid him a visit:

Det Gda Harrington said he thought Mr Nevin was going to "strike" the Revenue Bureau officer. He said that the defendant told the men to "get off the site" or he would shoot them and shoot himself before adding that he'd have "no problem" getting a gun and using it. He said Mr Nevin indicated this by pointing his fingers to symbolise a gun to his head... the defendant said it was a "slip of a word that came out on the day".