Crime, Yobs and Guardian Readers

Alan Travis fulminates in the Guardian about 'the myth of yob Britain'. We've allowed those nasty tabloids to induce 'media hysteria' - andwho better to put that right than Mr Travis ?

"The report does confirm that teenagers do commit more than their fair share of crime - about a third of all offences - but it also shows that the kind of crime people get involved in changes as they get older." That's alright then.

"Among juveniles non-injury assaults account for a large share of the incidents." Phew.

Hey - guess what ? Older people commit crime too ! So what's the problem ?
"Young people, particularly males, are more likely to offend and are responsible for a disproportionate volume of crime; but it also shows that older people are a numerically large group of offenders."


"Far from needing to worry about the alarming growth of "yob Britain" the survey carries the more reassuring message that minor offending is not uncommon, but most people simply grow out of it."
If you get mugged, the perpetrator is likely to be going through a passing phase. After all, we were all teenagers once.

Travis does drop one significant truth into his piece.

" ..the report makes clear that in fact most prolific offenders were involved in minor crime, some of it very trivial ... these are not the kind of offences that keep the police awake at night".


This appeared on the same day as an excellent post from the Policeman, commenting on Harriet Sergeant's excellent piece in the latest Civitas Review.

"In her piece, the justice gap (the gap between how good we think we are and what the public really think) is exposed as a yawning chasm that is being filled (in London at least) by private security firms of which Yauheni is an employee. Yauheni is from Belaurus but many of the other guards have served in the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). Officially, I think it’s a really bad idea to put people like that out on the streets with no diversity training but, as a resident, I know I would feel safer if I knew former IDF soldiers were patrolling the streets where I lived.

The residents of her neighbourhood feel under siege and the police do not take their problems seriously. Official statistics (bureaucratic inefficiency in mathematical form) would seem to indicate that things are improving, but reality shows otherwise. Senior policemen and crime theorists take the view that the general population are stupid and have an irrational view about crime. But people aren’t stupid: they know what makes them feel safe and secure and if the police cannot or will not provide it, then they’ll go elsewhere. ACPO and the Federation will continue to complain about the growing number of private security firms, the extension of the police family and “policing on the cheap” and at the same time will do nothing to allay the public’s concerns."



In today's Guardian Jackie Ashley thinks 'it's all our fault'. I think she's correct, if she's referring to Guardian readers and journalists.

Can't quite work it out though. After all, the cultural revolution is pretty much complete. In let-it-hang-out Britain, where repression of feeling is the greatest crime, and do what thou wilt is the whole of the law, why are so many teenagers unhappy ?

"At times it seems there is hardly a single family unaffected. This child, so bright and optimistic so recently, is sunk in grey depression and won't go to school. That one, so athletic and cocky, has been violently mugged and now avoids walking anywhere, lurking inside his bedroom. Another cuts herself. Another suffers extreme bullying and has ballooned in size. Another was stabbed while walking the dog."

Violently mugged, bullied, stabbed while walking the dog. Read Alan "Media Hysteria" Travis again for the full 'cognitive dissonance' effect.

"More bobbies on the beat at school are needed at let-out time to curb the explosion in casual mugging and bullying" - Ashley.

"Even the most cursory reading of the Crime and Justice Survey report would find it hard to sustain the idea that the country is going through some new, previously unknown, alarming growth in yob culture. " - Travis.

New US Hostage Is Named

The Guardian reports today on the latest reported hostage-taking, of a black American soldier, whose photograph was posted on an Iraqi website. He was shown seated in front of a black flag, gun pointed at his head.



He has been identified as Action Figure Cody, a toy doll of the 'Action Man' variety.


Hat-tip - Irene Adler.

UPDATE - hostage mother pleads for son's life.

"The Wishy-Washy Standards of Contemporary Christianity"

What a great title for a band. I digress.


I'd never heard till recently of Muslim convert (since 1951 - no bandwagon jumper he) Charles le Gai Eaton, a scion of old Britain (Charterhouse, Cambridge and the Diplomatic Service), but a lot of Muslims have. His book 'Islam And The Destiny of Man' is highly praised. In a Sunday Times piece on Muslim converts, he said "I have received letters from people who are put off by the wishy-washy standards of contemporary Christianity and they are looking for a religion which does not compromise too much with the modern world.”

Strange. According to the great and good of the Anglican and Catholic Churches, the thing is to be relevant, modern, progressive, forward-looking, spurning the dead hand of a 2,000 year old book in favour of an inclusive, user-friendly new brand of Christianity where Fair Trade Chocolate is more important than stuffy old 'thou shalt nots'. The kind of thing that Rasputin, Peter Selby, Richard Harries and now the new Bishop of Hereford are so good at.

"Sarah Jones, aged 43, has been a curate in the Ross Team ministry in Herefordshire for the past six months but until Monday night only her fellow clergy knew she had not been born female.
Her former life as a man was revealed to parishioners at an emergency meeting arranged at Ross Parish Church following inquiries by a national newspaper.
The Bishop of Hereford, the Rt Rev Anthony Priddis, who ordained Sarah in September, told parishioners that she had undergone a painful process to become the woman she believed she was."

More tea and oestrogen, Vicar ?

'If you don't take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits'

What with Iraqi elections and the traditional tax return frenzy, I missed this interesting news item from Germany.

I blogged this time last year :

Is selling sex in all its forms, from car adverts through Page Three and ladmag shoots to Amy and Lara, a major cause of gang rape, frustration and impotence, and eating disorders (Ms Bunting), ‘violence against women’ (femiluni Julie Bindel), is it just another job - sex work, or is it ‘a girl power thing’ where the exploited are the poor sad male punters (A Good Thing) rather than the girls (A Bad Thing) ?

After all, if sex is just another recreational activity, like a rubber of bridge or a game of tennis, then why shouldn’t some individuals sell their God-given talents and abilities ? And in a free market, you sell your assets or services at the market rate.For the TUC and their Women’s Equality Officer Rebecca Gill, ‘sex workers’ are ‘legitimate workers in need of protection’.

It looks as though in Germany, prostitution is just another job, following its legalisation two years ago.

A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job – including in the sex industry – or lose her unemployment benefit.

"There is now nothing in the law to stop women from being sent into the sex industry," said Merchthild Garweg, a lawyer from Hamburg who specialises in such cases. "The new regulations say that working in the sex industry is not immoral any more, and so jobs cannot be turned down without a risk to benefits."

Woah. A little problem I foresee, quite apart from angry partners whose women were either a) insulted by being offered an interview or b) insulted by not getting a job offer ("you're saying she's good enough for me but not good enough for your punters, are you ?") . And what about sex discrimination in the hiring process ? Could a man complain about not getting an interview ?

As I noted last year, in Victorian times you could do what you liked with your money but what you did with your body was subject to many legal and social restrictions. Now the situation is totally reversed - to the point where sexual relationships are the only area where racism is acceptable. You cannot advertise for a white flatmate, but a white bedmate is fine.

The Old Labour sociologist Norman Dennis, in his 'Families Without Fatherhood', commented on the cultural change which elevated the freedom to have relationships as and when you chose (regardless of the damage to third parties - for example children or an abandoned spouse) to an absolute right. Already, he wrote, the the classic phrases of rampant capitalism come to mind as the number of fatherless families mount - "Cannot a man do what he likes with his own ? As for the other party, caveat emptor - let her take the consequences of her bad bargain !"

When I lived in the Smoke I used to note that race was specified in the Time Out and City Limits personals (showing my age there ... remember City Limits ?). If race was specified by house-sellers they'd end up in prison like Robert Relf did. UK activists like the English Collective of Prostitutes say that a "working girl" has an absolute right to pick and choose their client.


If the business is instutionalised over here, how long before Trevor Phillips' boys and the Downing Street Women's Unit are sending 'mystery punters' to check that girls aren't discriminating on grounds of race, gender, or sexual orientation ?


UPDATE - John Band points me to this page, which indicates that the status of this story is as indeterminate as the sex of a Church of England vicar. No-one seems to be able to find the story in the German original, only a piece saying that the scenario is possible under the changed law.

I don't know, you'd think you could trust the Telegraph. If I want fictional stories I'll go to the Guardian.

A Policy Which Is Deeply Harmful to the Welfare of Very Young Children

The great and good Frank Field MP on Nu Labour and childcare.

"the Government has allowed itself to see childcare only in terms of provision outside the family"

"its new childcare tax allowance awards considerable sums of taxpayers’ money provided that a stranger, rather than the mother, does the caring"

"antisocial behaviour is the result of the careless way in which we value the nurturing of our very young and the downgrading, to the point of irrelevance, of the role of full-time motherhood"


Mr Field is the author of 'Neighbours From Hell - The Politics of Behaviour'. Would that all Labour MPs were like him. His analysis of where it all went pearshaped is similar to that of Norman Dennis.

Great Blogs and Little Blogs

When Tim Worstall first got Instapundited he was underwhelmed.

"Hey, great, only been out here blogging 2.5 months and the maestro himself a) likes my little piece and b) after some prompting links to the blog. But, ermm, what happened? I can see about 500 hits over the past two days via www.instapundit.com. Is this the longed for Installanche?"

But I'm truly grateful for Tim's kind words and the extra couple of hundred hits.

In the approximate words of de Morgan and Jonathan Swift :

Great blogs have little blogs upon their backs to bite ’em,
And little blogs have lesser blogs, and so ad infinitum.
And the great blogs themselves, in turn, have greater blogs to go on;
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.


Swift also noted a motto which would suit one blogger :

Libertas et natale solum:

Fine words! I wonder where you stole ’em.
(Verses occasioned by Whitshed’s Motto on his Coach. Translates roughly as Liberty And Homeland.)

UPDATE - Kernon Gibes did this in September 2003.

Great blogs have little blogs that seek a link for free,
And little blogs have lesser blogs, their end obscurity.
And the great blogs themselves, in turn, seek greater blogs for profit;
While these again seek greater still, to end at Instapundit.

Hillary Gets Religion

Gerard Baker in the Times takes this speech :

New York Times (January 24, 2005):

“Senator Hillary Clinton said on Monday that the opposing sides in the divisive debate about abortion should find ‘common ground’ to prevent unwanted pregnancies and ultimately reduce abortions, which she called a ‘sad, even tragic choice to many, many women . . . ’ Mrs Clinton, widely seen as a possible candidate for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2008, appeared to be reaching out beyond traditional core Democrats . . . (She offered praise) for the influence of ‘religious and moral values’ on delaying teenage girls from becoming sexually active.”

Then extrapolates a little. Sample :

The Washington Post
September 16, 2006

Senator Clinton yesterday urged a chastened Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, to stop “pussyfooting around” and get on with the long-deferred invasion of Iran.

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the growing tension between Washington and Tehran, Mrs Clinton, dressed head to toe in desert khaki fatigues, rounded on a plainly intimidated Defence Secretary and said that she had had enough of Mr Rumsfeld’s insistence on pursuing a diplomatic approach to the nuclear crisis in the country.

“Are you a man or a mouse, Mr Secretary?” she asked. “Rummy or Runny? There’s only one language these people understand. And let me tell you, it isn’t Farsi!” Mrs Clinton has recently been reaching out beyond the Democratic Party’s core supporters on defence and national security issues. Last month she joined the US National Guard and quickly impressed her commanding officers with her tactical genius.

Who Knew ?

The Today programme reviews the papers, which are overwhelmingly positive about the Iraqi election.

"Robert Fisk in the Independent strikes a different note ... the Guardian agrees".

The Archers, Knife Culture, and Self-Harm

Listening to The Archers this morning after a long layoff, bewildered by the strange accents the cast perpetrate, which bear no relation to anything I’ve heard in Gloucestershire or Worcestershire. I’ll except Jack Woolley (or ‘Jeck’ as Peggy calls him), whose rotund Brummie/Worcester tones are pretty much spot-on for an elderly Bromsgrovian.

Daughter of the house Helen Archer is currently in hospital being treated for anorexia - sorry, 'an eating disorder'.

Over the years the lesbian separatist collective that is an Archers scriptwriting conference have dropped about every PC cause du jour into the mix. A racist firebomb attack on Usha (‘I’m the only ethnic minority in the village’) Gupta, the conviction of Roy (now a reformed character) and the racist activist cell at Borchester Tech (I kid you not), domestic violence (I’ve lost count, but most female villagers of child-bearing age seem to have suffered), the drug culture, the mixed marriage (idiot Aldridge daughter – and Usha too, I think), the gay landlords gallantly battling homophobic locals (Peter Hitchens in ‘The Anatomy of Britain’ thought this unlikely, but our local was run for three years by a gay couple who had no problems and increased custom. They did good food, looked after the beer, and didn’t frighten the horses).

Only a week or two back Sid’s ex Cathy was raped. I doubt she’ll be pulled into the showers after this afternoon’s village soccer match, but the first Ambridge roasting incident is surely only a matter of time.

I’ve been listening so long that I can remember when Shula was a virgin (‘Isn’t it beautiful in this cornfield. What a perfect place to lie down and make love’ ‘That’s typical of you town people, damaging crops without a thought for the farmer. We’ll go over here by the hedge’), and there are very few PC causes yet to be raised. I’m surprised it’s taken so long for eating disorders to make it onto the menu. But there are a few newly created ones that could be fitted in.

‘Homophobia’ in schools is one of the government’s current priorities. Thirty years ago homosexuality was not all over the mass media like a Kaposi’s sarcoma, and so most primary school children were unaware of the words or the practice. Only in secondary schools did the poor unenlightened children use homophobic and other un-PC terms of abuse.

“Mongol !”
“You big puff !”
“Spazz !”
“You great fairy !”

Now of course no-one who turns on the TV or radio can be unaware (Radio 5 Live are discussing homophobia as I type, and South Africa are 150-odd for nine), and ‘gay’ is a favoured term of abuse among six year olds. How we have advanced.

It’s a good job the footy coach at the local primary has moved on. An excellent coach (and all round good bloke, but somewhat free with his language), his habit of asking eight year olds ‘are you gay or what ?’ after a poor tackle raised even my eyebrows.

So surely it’s time for Ambridge Primary (is it still there ?) to feature an episode of homophobic bullying. You could throw into the mix two other concerns – knife culture and what’s called “self-harm” – anorexia’s grown up sister. Perhaps the homophobic bully could wave a knife around in the playground, while back at home Helen decorates her flesh with knife cuts in the manner of certain tribes.






Knife culture is, as is well known, epidemic in Britain. Back in those unenlightened days we all carried knives in the playground, but we didn’t know what to do with them, using them for cutting sticks and playing games. Now, as our Schools Minister has said, we have the best educated generation in our history, and we know what to do with knives. They’re for cutting and stabbing other people.

At the same time our prisons are full of young ladies who delight in cutting themselves.

From a free market, pro-choice, libertarian perspective, there may be something to be said for bringing these two groups of people together. I’m sure there are many young men of the FHM and Zoo generation who would pay good money to spend an hour or two cutting young women. The girls get the blood running down their arms and the money.

If ‘sex work’ is any guide, an ‘uncut’ inmate with pristine skin would be more expensive than someone whose forearms already look like a fifteen-hour game of ‘Railroad Tycoon II’. Perhaps Ebay could match supply and demand, and the Prison Service could take a cut (sorry) of the money, arranging special ‘cutting visits’.

Private companies would be set up to arrange group visits and stag parties – I like the sound of ‘Cutting-Out Expeditions’. The video market would be pretty hot, too.

Of course there would be some unfortunate incidents. The odd punter (and they all would be) might get carried away. But shops get robbed and shopkeepers killed – yet no-one proposes shutting all shops on that account. And at least the perpetrator would be already in a prison – albeit of the wrong gender. Still, he could be handed to the other girls inside, who with a bit of impromptu ‘gender reassignment’ would soon sort that for him.

There are other advantages too for 21st century Britain. An activity carried out purely for private advantage or gratification doesn’t show up in the Gross Domestic Product, nor can it be taxed. But the moment you bring in what a sociologist would call ‘the cash nexus’ – hey, you’ve got a brand new business sector, literally at the cutting edge.

Take childcare – which involves the socialisation of the next generation. Back in the dark days of the 1950s, this was carried out on a voluntary, unpaid basis by a class of people called mothers. No tax, no wages – so no value.

The Polly Toynbees of this world have triumphed, and now children are still looked after – but by paid strangers (and what our rulers really think of childcare is revealed in the census job classifications, which roughly correspond to social class. Guess which category childcare assistant and nursery nurse are in ?). Childcare is an industry, with all the beneficial effects on GDP and taxation.

With changes like this you can see why we can have the fourth largest economy in the world yet have no indigenous aircraft, car or computer manufacturing. If our rulers can only find a way to make more consensual sex (which covers most sex – Ambridge excepted) paid-for and less consensual sex unpaid, we could perhaps be the third largest economy in the world.

(I penned this with tongue in cheek – then thought about tolerance zones and the number of prostitutes advertising in the local freesheet. Fifty years ago people would have laughed at the idea that healthy mothers would en masse hand over ‘their’ babies to strangers.)


Some old fashioned moralists (the type who consider perfectly reasonable anti-homophobia initiatives to be the sort of thing Section 28 was designed to stop) will probably make a fuss about the vibrant new cutting industry, calling such a trade ‘degrading’ and pontificating about spoiling God’s handiwork.

Fortunately progressive and civil liberties groups exist to defend our rights to cut and be cut from these bigoted Bible-bashers. The medical profession is one. You can get a whole, healthy leg removed in an NHS hospital if you suffer from Body Dysmorphic Syndrome, a condition in which having two legs is considered ‘seriously disabling’.

And if you want other people to cut you – and more – civil liberties campaigners are on your side.

The people who became known as the Operation Spanner defendants were a loose collective of sexual deviants (note - this is a description and is not necessarily perjorative - just accurate). Along with their more conventional (and illegal in the case of the 15 year old boy) activities, they 'enjoyed' sadomasochism for which extreme does not seem an unreasonable word. Among the videos found by police during their investigation were scenes of torture which at first led them to believe that people were being killed for the videos.

You can read the story of one of the defendants here. What I find inspiring (and what gives hope for the nascent British cutting industry) is that Liberty, the 'Civil Rights' organisation which had no time or resources to spare for the late Harry Hammond, was able to mobilise lawyers for an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in pursuance of a cause as noble as any in history - man's inalienable human right to use a power sander on the scrotum of his (consenting) fellow man.

Poverty Causes Terrorism Part 527

Fascinating Newsweek report on 'the resistance', US miscalculations (always easier to see in hindsight, of course) and a suicide bomber who survived. Like the 9/11 terrorists, he comes from a comfortable, middle-class Saudi family.

The typical profile is much like Ahmed al-Shayea's, twentysomethings and even teenagers from comfortable middle-class families. "They have got no experience, they are not trained," a Palestinian jihadi told NEWSWEEK. "They just have to drive the vehicle. But these boys—17, 18 years old—are important." What motivates them? "I think their religion is better than others'," he says. "They are rich, they are educated, and they need nothing, but they see that in this fight they will win either victory or heaven. This is their ideology. Either way, they win." Unless, like al-Shayea, they live to tell the tale.

Fingers Crossed

It’s early morning in Iraq. A historic day, one way or another. It seems improbable (though not impossible) that the Islamist/Baathist coalition (aka ‘the resistance’) can create enough havoc to stop the elections or drive turnout down to derisory levels. But they’ll be trying to kill enough voters and terrorise enough potential voters to discredit the elections, not only in the eyes of Iraqis but of the world.

If they succeed, their allies in the West will be rejoicing on the front pages of the Independent, Guardian and New York Times. Islamist groups worldwide will be emboldened by our defeat. The consequences for the Iraqis are unforseeable but unlikely to be pleasant.

If they fail, there will still be problems. The Sunnis will resent Shia political domination. The Shias will have to beware of what they now call ‘trumphalism’. Iran may poke the Shia fire. The Kurds will nurture new dreams of independence. The hereditary rulers of Syria and Saudi Arabia will be worried about losing their grip on power – with good reason. And ‘the resistance’ will still be shooting officials and chopping off engineers heads.

But a democratic Iraq, even if imperfect, could be a signal to the whole Middle East that there’s another way of doing things, of governing. This of course depends on there being enough Iraqis who really want democracy – and appreciate that democracy sometimes means that the other guy gets his way.

That’s the big question. Do they want it ? Can they handle it ?

I was never a fan of the project to democratise Afghanistan. The politics and culture of that fascinating nation are nearer to those of fourteenth-century England than to modern America. Imagine men from the Planet Zog arriving in 1350 to bring democracy to England.

Man from Zog : ‘Here you are, all registered, polling stations set up, we’ll check the count, carry on !’
1st Great Lord – ‘Super. Knights – you’ll all be voting for me‘
Knight – ‘Super. Squires – you’ll all vote for the Great Lord ‘
Squire – ‘Yeomen – put your cross by the Great Lord’s name if you want to keep that farm ’
Yeoman – ‘Serfs – I’ll show you where to put the thumbprint tomorrow’.
Serf – ‘Yes, Master’

I thought that the Taleban were as good a government as Afghanistan could reasonably expect, modern Puritans. Relatively incorrupt, they brought an end to the capricious violence of the warlords who ruled in the post-Soviet vacuum. They also reduced the amount of heroin being produced. Sure, their views on women and homosexuals wouldn’t go down well in Islington, but by their lights they were a pretty good bunch.

Unfortunately they chose to support Bin Laden and so had to be overthrown – not because of their reactionary views but because after September 11 it was impossible for America to leave Al Quaeda’s bases untouched. The world – including any other leaders who might have been thinking about supporting, or turning a blind eye to, anti-US terrorists, had to be made aware of what the price would be.

The lesson seems to have been pretty effective.

Steve Sailer has an excellent film review (of John Huston’s ‘The Man Who Would Be King’) which touches on the subject of the Afghans and democracy. You can also get a flavour of the area today from this wonderful Chitral website – Chitral, on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, is in the Kafiristan (now Nuristan – see this post) area where Kipling’s novel was set. These are some of the stories. Sadly, conversions to Islam are rapidly eroding the unique Kalash culture which gave Kafiristan (Land of Infidels) its name.


Iraq is a different case – a much more modern country in every sense. Democracy is certainly within the bounds of possibility. And listening to Iraqis being interviewed on Radio 5 yesterday made me think. I paraphrase from memory.

‘We are afraid. But we were afraid for the last twenty five years. I am worried about voting – that I may be killed. But I have to do it.’

‘I want to vote’
‘Aren’t you worried about the dangers ?’
‘There is always danger here. I cannot stay at home when I can vote’.

‘We have been waiting a long time for this day. I must vote’.

These may not have been representative. But comparing these people with our low-turnout, low-commitment electorate, I felt the Chartists and suffragettes would recognise them as fellow spirits. We’ve been too cosy too long – don’t appreciate the price that others paid, generations ago, for our freedom and democracy. Iraqis are paying that price now.

Good luck to them, and to the Iraqi, Brit and US forces. It was good to see the TVnews tonight of Brit soldiers finding explosives in Basra - a few bombs less. Keep that curfew up for a day or so as well – I have a nightmare about the head-choppers making door to door calls in search or people with indelible ink on their fingers – a sign that they’ve voted.

Fingers crossed. And keep your eyes peeled, boys.

Darfur Update

From everywhere.

African Union monitors have been trying to investigate the reported air attack on the town of Shangil Tobaya on Wednesday, where 100 people are believed to have died.

They were turned away by Sudanese soldiers on Thursday, an AU official told the BBC earlier.

Mr Pronk said observers could not get to the area because it is not safe. "We know that there are at the moment government military trucks driving in that direction," he told Focus on Africa.

He said government-linked Janjaweed militia had attacked around 40 villages in the area around Labado in south Darfur.

"Many villages around Labado are constantly being attacked - not with airplanes but by militia and these villages are being burned down and completely demolished," he said.

"Where the AU are present, they do not attack. The AU is doing an excellent job at the moment but they don't have enough people."

He described the militia as "loyal to themselves" whose objective is to "drive out all people who do not belong to their own tribes - mostly they are African tribes who are being driven out."

Never again, scar on conscience of world, etc etc.

UPDATE - Reader Gary writes

"Apparently, Bush is to blame for Darfur ... according to the Indie ...

"For the Blair government, a founding member of the International Criminal Court which has nailed its colours to the mast on Africa during its presidency of the G8 leading industrialised countries, it will be a moment to decide whether to stand up to the Bush administration."

China is only mentioned briefly at the end of the report, which is odd, because China has been the Sudanese government's "Special Friend" throughout the genocide. The EU is going to lift its arms embargo on China (the Indy does not mention this either!), in effect rewarding it for occupying Tibet, threatening Taiwan, and sponsoring the Darfur genocide (which is incidentally beneficial to Chinese oil interests).

Perhaps, it is not the US and Britain (the Indy seems to think that no other nations have any responsibility for anything, kind of ironic considering their attacks on US unilateralism) who should stop the Darfur genocide...perhaps it is China, which could easily end the killing through diplomatic pressure."

Mick Hartley also posts on Darfur and God Save The Queen on the disgraceful lifting of the arms embargo on China.

Money quote - "there are only two likely uses for any military hardware sold to China: internal repression or agression against Taiwan".

Charlotte Wyatt Update

Good Christian Justice Hedley has upheld the court-imposed (and doctor-inspired) 'Do Not Resuscitate' order upon sick baby Charlotte Wyatt, granted against the wishes of her parents.

So if Charlotte stops breathing the medics can go and have a nice cup of tea.

A further hearing 'before Easter' will hear new medical evidence, assuming Charlotte hangs on till then.

This case is not simply about one sick child, but about who is best placed to decide on the interests of that child. In 99% of cases this is, and should be, the child's parents.

The presumption, or default position, should always be in favour of preserving life, and in favour of parents as the arbiter of the childs interests. Only if these conflict should the law be called upon to decide.

One can imagine a case where the parents wished the baby to die but the doctors thought she had a good chance of survival. In such a case a call for a legal ruling could be justified. What must be far more common are cases where doctors and parents agree that resuscitation (aka 'aggressive treatment' in Newspeak) is prolonging the agony and ultimately hopeless. Fair enough.

Remember this case ?

"She described how, when doctors refused her pleas for Luke to be given an adrenaline injection and handed him to her so that he could die in her arms , she ransacked medical cabinets in Luke's cubicle to find oxygen.

Doctors also refused to administer this, she said.Though her son had stopped breathing, she gave him oxygen in a final bid to save him. "But it was no use, my precious little boy died in my arms," Mrs Winston-Jones said last night. "I was begging and pleading with them to save my boy, but they said no."

"I got down on my bended knees and begged and begged for Luke's life," Mrs Winston-Jones said. "I was weeping and saying: 'For the love of God, my baby is dying. You can save him, you know you can. There is nothing in the court ruling that prevents you giving him adrenaline. Save my little boy.' But the doctor wouldn't do it."


The arrogance of doctors and judges in believing that they understand a child's best interests better than her parents do is breathtaking. When their understanding is that the child is better off dead, and they have the power to enforce their decisions against the wishes of a parent, only words like 'evil' suffice.

Other posts on this issue here and here.

This'll Be Interesting

Charles Clarke is already starting to make David Blunkett look like a woolly liberal do-gooder. The courts having binned "Britain's Guantanamo" on the grounds that it discriminated between British and foreign subjects (presumably that's why our immigration laws also seem to be in abeyance), we are now presented with house arrest without trial.

Not just for Jordanian clerics and Yemenis who may have been backpacking in Afghanistan around December 2001 ('a friend asked me to look after his Kalashnikov. I thought it was a breed of dog ...'). British subjects will also be able to benefit from this radical new form of 'care in the community'.

In a Scotsman interview, an MP of whom I've never previously heard, Stephen McCabe, floated an interesting refinement.

Speaking after the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, announced new laws to control the movements of terrorist suspects, Mr Clarke’s adviser, Stephen McCabe, told The Scotsman he saw this extending to other groups suspected of using violence to further their ends.

The Labour MP said: "We can envisage this applying to animal rights extremists and the far-Right, for example.

"These people are locked up because we believe they are a genuine danger based on what we think is pretty reliable evidence, even if it cannot be divulged in a court of law."

There can be no doubt that ALF and its cohorts are literally terrorists. Anyone who has followed events in Newchurch, Staffs, where an entire village is the target, will note that although no-one's been shot in the back of the neck yet, a classic feature of Soviet and Nazi terror is present - the targeting of relatives.

It is only in the last few days that Mrs Hudson has finally succumbed to the pressure and left her job after activists turned their attention to her children and grandchildren. Three vehicles owned by her children were sprayed with paint stripper, causing thousands of pounds of damage. Her daughter Jayne also received a letter which warned: "If your mother doesn't quit within one week we can't be responsible for what is going to happen to you - so can you please display these yellow cards in the bedroom where your children sleep."

Yet even in this case the police and courts could stop the terror if they wanted to badly enough. Stake out the village at night with infra-red cameras and the SAS if need be. Photograph every car 24/7. Exemplary (maximum) sentences when you nail someone. You don't need house arrest - you just need the political will to actually enforce the existing law. Which they won't do.

The far right is a more interesting case. As far as I know no areas of England live in fear of BNP members bricking their windows/digging up their grandmothers/severing their power lines. All over the country ethnic mnority people live in fear of gangs of unpleasant, violent and foul-mouthed youths, but so do many natives. That's British culture, not far-right politics.

The measures include restrictions such as house arrest, curfews and electronic tagging, a ban on telephone and internet use and restrictions on who they can speak to.

A couple of months ago police arrested the BNP leader in connection with some unpleasant speeches by various unpleasant Bradford BNP members. As part of this investigation into traditional far-right practice (one of the Bradford people was filmed boasting of putting excrement through letter boxes) they took away Mr Griffin's computers.

Now I may be naive, but it's unlikely that the police were hoping to find the following Nick Griffin email.

'Hi Dave - Nick here. It'll really help us if you could put some excrement through Mr Hussein's letter box."

The police operation had all the hallmarks of a politically inspired trawling operation. Rather than investigating known wrongdoing by Mr Griffin, they were looking for evidence of unpecified wrongdoing which might enable charges to be brought. My bete noir Rod Liddle had more to say on this in the Spectator (registration required) a while back.

The BNP uses technology effectively, having the most popular website of any UK political party. I wonder if the government is thinking in terms of 'take the leadership, admin and web people away from computers and job done' ? (In passing, an arrest has been made after the BNP site was taken out by hackers least year. The alleged hacker comes from North-East Scotland - Caberfeidh country).

Watch this space - and also watch organisations like Liberty get in a twist as they defend the ALF and Captain Hook but turn the Nelsonian blind eye if the BNP are banged up. After all, if they wouldn't defend poor old Harry Hammond, they're unlikely to do much for Mr Griffin.

What's tragic in the long term is that the government will be destroying precious historical liberties for no good reason (and it would have to be a pretty damn good reason - like World War II).

As the Native Brit population declines, and natives become the minority in more and more areas, politics will almost inevitably become split on ethnic lines. The demographics are still pointing all one way, the Tories are unlikely to win this year and less likely to make major changes if and when they do ever win.

So in 20 years or so there'll be a nativist British party, representing a substantial proportion, if not a majority, of the native English. The only question is what the name of that party will be.

It may not be the BNP. It may be Veritas, or UKIP, or English Nationalist. It may even be the Tories, but it's unlikely. By the time they wake up to the fact that, with 80% of ethnic minorities voting Labour, natives being the minority in the major cities, and inward migration unchecked, they may never recapture urban seats, they may have been fatally compromised in the eyes of native voters.

So harassing the BNP is only delaying the inevitable, destroying liberty, and probably making some people pretty cross. 'After all, they locked us up without trial'.

Remember the destruction of our education system and the collapse of Brit culture. Will the Big Brother generation's kids care who's locked up, or what for, as long as there are TV cameras pointed at them ? People like Peter Hitchens, banging on about an Englishman's liberty, the Bill of Rights and 1688 will seem, as they do now, like survivors of some forgotten age.

It occurs to me that the browsing surfer may see this post as being pro-BNP, the happy days of 'I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it' being long past. My student generation are in power and 'no platform for fascists' applies.

I can only quote (approximately) from Mr John Wyndham, whose sci-fi book 'The Kraken Wakes' will have been read by many of my generation.

"If I should mention, as a matter of course, that autumn follows summer, that does not mean that I am all for getting a ladder and pulling the leaves off the trees".

Not Auschwitz

Maidanek



From this site.

(if everything's blank, it may be that the site is having bandwidth problems today).

More NHS Investment

In his economics text 'Eat The Rich', P.J. O'Rourke distinguishes between the four different ways you can spend money.

1) you spend your own money on yourself. You look for quality and value.

2) you spend your own money on other people. You still look for value, but quality's not so important. That's how I got given Ewan McGregor's 'Long Way Round' for Christmas (£11.99 at Tesco. I don't think my sister-in-law reads this blog. Read Ted Simon's Jupiter's Travels instead).

3) you spend other people's money on yourself. Quality - and don't worry about the cost.

4) you spend other people's money on other people. Any old thing will do - and who cares what it costs.

O'Rourke remarks "Unfortunately, most government spending falls into this last category. This is how the grateful citizens of the Soviet Union got Chernobyl."

And it's how the NHS got this.

(Pity the BBC have updated the page. In a fine example of Dumb Britain, Baluchi was originally described as an 'imminent psychiatrist'. Just about to qualify, perhaps ?)

UPDATE - that spoilsport Anthony at Black Triangle mails me to mug my beautiful post with a gang of brutal facts - chief among them the fact that the BMA, which accepted this taxi-driver as an eminent psychiatrist, is a self-regulating (i.e. private) body.

While I'm presuming that the taxpayer stumped up most of the million-odd pounds the guy made as an expert witness in asylum cases, that's an asylum issue rather than an NHS one.

While I'm in penitential mood, it's only fair to point out that a large amount of the expenditure of large corporations is category 4 cash - people spending other people's (the shareholders') money on other people. Which may be how the citizens of Bhopal got the Union Carbide plant.

Executive pay levels in said corporations are category three expenditure.

Hang On In There Baby

Remember Charlotte Wyatt ? The little girl who doctors at Portsmouth NHS (No Hope of Survival) Trust wanted to be left to die if she stopped breathing ?

She's now 15 months old. Her parents are applying for the 'do not resuscitate' injunction to be lifted.

Portsmouth NHS are still doing their best though.

"Relations between the family and the hospital remain tense. Doctors are not convinced that Charlotte has shown significant improvement. Darren Wyatt is allowed to visit his daughter only if accompanied by a security guard."

Family-friendly or what ?

Yesterday Carol Glass, a friend of the Wyatts, said: “Doctors said Charlotte would not live to see her first birthday and that was months ago. The hospital then said she was unlikely to make it through the winter months, but we are now a good way through.
“Charlotte should not have this ‘do not resuscitate order’ left hanging over her. She could now live on with the right treatment. Her parents Darren and Debbie want her to be treated and are hoping that one day she will be able to go home with them.”

Carol Glass should know. She literally had to fight the doctors to save her son's life.

A “Do Not Resuscitate” (DNR) order was put in the first applicant’s medical notes without consulting Ms Glass.

The following day Ms Glass found that her son’s condition had deteriorated alarmingly and was worried that this was due to the effect of diamorphine. The family demanded that diamorphine be stopped. Dr W. stated that this was only possible if they agreed not to resuscitate David. However, the family tried to revive David and a fight broke out between members of the family and the doctors. While the fight was going on, Ms Glass successfully resuscitated David.

Police were summoned to the hospital. Dr W. and Dr A. and several police officers were injured and all but one of the children on the ward had to be evacuated.

David’s condition improved and he went home on 21 October 1998 .

Several of David's family were imprisoned for preventing his death. David is still alive.

Immigration - The Guardian Gives You The Facts

"Now consider the (Michael Howard's) advertisement. It talked about "millions of people in other countries who want to come and live here. Britain cannot take them all." It suggested Labour supported unlimited immigration, which it does not".

Guardian leader, 24/01/2005



Blunkett: no UK immigration limit

David Blunkett has said there is "no obvious limit" to the number of immigrants who could settle in Britain last night, but added that there needs to be a "balance" between "different forms of entry, migration and residency".

Asked if there was a maximum population Britain could house, he replied: "I don't think there is".

The Guardian, 13/11/2003

Holocaust remembrance boycott

I'm not a big fan of Hypocaust Memorial Day. After all, we didn't do it - the Germans did, with some help from assorted Poles, Letts and Ukranians.

As commemorated in Britain's schools, it's an opportunity to point out to the Natives that saying bad things about asylum seekers marks you out as a potential cattle-truck-packer. As such all good multiculturalists should support it.

"British Muslims are to boycott this week’s commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz because they claim it is not racially inclusive and does not commemorate the victims of the Palestinian conflict.
Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, has written to Charles Clarke, the home secretary, saying the body will not attend the event unless it includes the “holocaust” of the Palestinian intifada."

It's true - there is no mention of the Jenin Massacre, when millions of Palestinians were killed in a deliberate act of genocide.

UPDATE - Blognor Regis has an interesting link on the Mufti of Jerusalem's wartime trip to Berlin - which also throws a sidelight on why the Bosnian Serbs weren't too keen on the Croats or Muslims (but which doesn't justify their atrocities in post-Tito Yugoslavia).

BBC Bias Part 219

Michael Howard has called for limits to immigration. How do the BBC present this story ? Here's the headline :

Tories accused of 'desperation'

First paragraph:

Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy has accused the Tories of desperation as they signalled that immigration would be central to their election campaign.

There's a pattern here. When a proposal fits the agenda the Beeb present it straight. When it offends liberal sensibilities the (negative) reaction - rather than the proposal - becomes the headline.

There's a lovely little example here.