"Euthanasia extremely rare" - BBC News
"Euthanasia : doctors aid 3,000 deaths" - Guardian
Oh No...
9 hours ago
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Respect The Cons
It seems like only the day before yesterday that we were tut-tutting over those nasty Nottinghamshire rozzers, dissing their clients in a most unprofessional manner.
Now the hideous virus is spreading to Yorkshire.
Prison officers at Leeds Jail have been criticised by the Chief Inspector of Prisons for describing inmates as "cons" and "bodies".
This is just awful. I feel as if society's falling apart. No respect at all for "some of the most abused and brutalised people in our society" (© J. Hari 2004). It's political incorrectness gone mad.
A little ray of light in the gloom, though. As the Englishman reports, HMP Woodhill is at least attempting to meet prisoners needs adequately.
Now the hideous virus is spreading to Yorkshire.
Prison officers at Leeds Jail have been criticised by the Chief Inspector of Prisons for describing inmates as "cons" and "bodies".
This is just awful. I feel as if society's falling apart. No respect at all for "some of the most abused and brutalised people in our society" (© J. Hari 2004). It's political incorrectness gone mad.
A little ray of light in the gloom, though. As the Englishman reports, HMP Woodhill is at least attempting to meet prisoners needs adequately.
Immigration and the BBC
I've always said that the BBC are neutral betwen Tories and labour - they're happy to attack the Tories (from the left) or Labour (from the left).
Good to hear this from the BBC's ex-business editor, Jeff Randall.
But surely the BBC's journalists give the government a hard time?
'They attack Labour ministers, but usually for not being sufficiently left-wing.'
On business :
'On the whole, they treated business as if it was a criminal activity'
On the BBC and immigration :
'Whenever we had an anti-immigration interviewee, it was a Nazi with a tattoo on his face who looked like he'd just bitten the head off a cat. I pointed out that it's the white working class who have to make immigration work. Immigrants don't move to Hampstead, mate'.
and on BBC bias :
'It's not a conspiracy. It's visceral. They think they are on the middle ground'
via Biased BBC
Good to hear this from the BBC's ex-business editor, Jeff Randall.
But surely the BBC's journalists give the government a hard time?
'They attack Labour ministers, but usually for not being sufficiently left-wing.'
On business :
'On the whole, they treated business as if it was a criminal activity'
On the BBC and immigration :
'Whenever we had an anti-immigration interviewee, it was a Nazi with a tattoo on his face who looked like he'd just bitten the head off a cat. I pointed out that it's the white working class who have to make immigration work. Immigrants don't move to Hampstead, mate'.
and on BBC bias :
'It's not a conspiracy. It's visceral. They think they are on the middle ground'
via Biased BBC
Reading - Torture Capital of Britain ?
We had the trial of Daniel Higgins' torturers and murderers at Reading Crown Court recently - although the deed took place in Burnham.
Home Office pathologist Dr Ashley Fegan Earl told the jury that Mr Higgins' killers used a machete to cut into his head. They also stabbed him all over his body and hit him with a blunt weapon.
We have the continuing horror story of Mary-Ann Leneghan's final hours - a case for the return of the death penalty if ever I heard one (probably one of the few things Jamal and I would agree on) .
When Mary-Ann’s friend lifted up her pillowcase she saw Johnson stabbing Mary-Ann all over her body as she curled into a ball, the court heard.
“They said they wanted her to die slowly, she became unable to move and just lay there crying. When she cried or made any sound she was stabbed again,” said Mr Latham, referring to accounts from the surviving victim.
Now, via Nosemonkey and the Philosopher, this.
Police have urgently stepped up their hunt for three vicious mini-thugs - two black, one white - believed to be as young as 13-14, who carried out an horrific robbery attack on an innocent 44-year-old man near Reading town centre in the early hours of New Year's Day. The mind-numbing ferocity of the incident is said to involve the man having his eyelids and one ear cut off.
The victim was walking alongside Kennet Side, Reading, when he was attacked as he came out from under the King’s Road bridge. He was punched to the ground by the first offender and then kicked in the head and body by all three members of the group.
The young thugs then demanded money and temporarily stopped the attack while the victim handed over his wallet and £1.50. The offenders said that this was not enough and began to attack him again.
The attack happened between 3am and 4.15am on New Year’s Day. The victim was treated at the Royal Berkshire Hospital where he remained for four days. He received more than 100 stitches to repair damage to an eye and ear and also required surgery to repair some nerve damage.
It sounds like the people who carried out this attack - on a mother and her daughters - five days previously.
Home Office pathologist Dr Ashley Fegan Earl told the jury that Mr Higgins' killers used a machete to cut into his head. They also stabbed him all over his body and hit him with a blunt weapon.
We have the continuing horror story of Mary-Ann Leneghan's final hours - a case for the return of the death penalty if ever I heard one (probably one of the few things Jamal and I would agree on) .
When Mary-Ann’s friend lifted up her pillowcase she saw Johnson stabbing Mary-Ann all over her body as she curled into a ball, the court heard.
“They said they wanted her to die slowly, she became unable to move and just lay there crying. When she cried or made any sound she was stabbed again,” said Mr Latham, referring to accounts from the surviving victim.
Now, via Nosemonkey and the Philosopher, this.
Police have urgently stepped up their hunt for three vicious mini-thugs - two black, one white - believed to be as young as 13-14, who carried out an horrific robbery attack on an innocent 44-year-old man near Reading town centre in the early hours of New Year's Day. The mind-numbing ferocity of the incident is said to involve the man having his eyelids and one ear cut off.
The victim was walking alongside Kennet Side, Reading, when he was attacked as he came out from under the King’s Road bridge. He was punched to the ground by the first offender and then kicked in the head and body by all three members of the group.
The young thugs then demanded money and temporarily stopped the attack while the victim handed over his wallet and £1.50. The offenders said that this was not enough and began to attack him again.
The attack happened between 3am and 4.15am on New Year’s Day. The victim was treated at the Royal Berkshire Hospital where he remained for four days. He received more than 100 stitches to repair damage to an eye and ear and also required surgery to repair some nerve damage.
It sounds like the people who carried out this attack - on a mother and her daughters - five days previously.
Dawkins
A.A. Gill, of all people, has an entertaining (i.e. reinforces my prejudices) review of "The Root of All Evil ?"
"His splenetic, small-minded, viciously vindictive falsetto rant at all belief that isn’t completely rooted in the natural sciences is laughable. Dawkins is a born-again Darwinist, an atheist, so why is he devoting so much blood pressure and time to arguing with something he knows doesn’t exist? If it’s not there, Richard, why do you keep shouting at it?"
"Dawkins is, of course, the archetype of a man who protests too much, and I’d say he’s well on his way to, if not a Pauline, then at least a Muggeridgian conversion. Any day now, he’ll be back on telly quoting CS Lewis."
UPDATE - Cobb on Dawkins' infinite patience - though I'd call it infinite arrogance.
Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or on thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing ?
We're back in Clockwork Orange territory, where we can make people good even if they don't want to be (Anthony Burgess seems to have been a prescient writer).
Cobb writes :
"Listen to the Alphas and deploy the Betas, it's time to correct those faulty Gammas. Serious business.
This is truly dangerous. It means that we will become dependent on some institutions that correct us, that perfect us. By definition the budget for such an institution would have to be infinite, because the capacity of humans to be wrong, to be immoral, is practically insatiable."
"His splenetic, small-minded, viciously vindictive falsetto rant at all belief that isn’t completely rooted in the natural sciences is laughable. Dawkins is a born-again Darwinist, an atheist, so why is he devoting so much blood pressure and time to arguing with something he knows doesn’t exist? If it’s not there, Richard, why do you keep shouting at it?"
"Dawkins is, of course, the archetype of a man who protests too much, and I’d say he’s well on his way to, if not a Pauline, then at least a Muggeridgian conversion. Any day now, he’ll be back on telly quoting CS Lewis."
UPDATE - Cobb on Dawkins' infinite patience - though I'd call it infinite arrogance.
Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or on thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing ?
We're back in Clockwork Orange territory, where we can make people good even if they don't want to be (Anthony Burgess seems to have been a prescient writer).
Cobb writes :
"Listen to the Alphas and deploy the Betas, it's time to correct those faulty Gammas. Serious business.
This is truly dangerous. It means that we will become dependent on some institutions that correct us, that perfect us. By definition the budget for such an institution would have to be infinite, because the capacity of humans to be wrong, to be immoral, is practically insatiable."
Monday, January 16, 2006
After All, Most Child Abuse Takes Place In "The Home"
In the wake of the Ruth Kelly brouhaha, liberals are reminding us that :
As the NSPCC points out, most abuse happens at home. One child is killed each week by a parent or carer; six die each year at the hands of unknown predators.
Actually it's worse than that. About 3,500 babies are killed each week by strangers with the mother's collusion. These strangers are usually doctors. But let it pass.
"Most abuse at home" was repeated in today's Guardian, and on the Today programme by professor (of Sexualised Violence - I'm not making this up) Liz Kelly, who runs the taxpayer-funded Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit at London Metropolitan University (formerly Camden Women's Institute), a male-free zone which boasts femiluni Julie Bindel among its alumni.
Strangely, what you'll never hear in the Guardian, on the BBC, or from Liz Kelly, is the kind of home where abuse takes place.
I quote :
According to data from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), young people are five times more likely to have experienced physical abuse and emotional maltreatment if they grew up in a lone-parent family, compared with children in two-birth-parent families.
All studies of child-abuse victims which look at family type identify the step-family as representing the highest risk to children – with the risk of fatal abuse being 100 times higher than in twobiological- parent families according to international (figures) from 1976.
However, the use of the term step-father has become problematic, as, whilst it used to refer to men who were married to women with children by other men, it is now used to describe any man in the household, whether married to the mother or not. An NSPCC study of 1988 which separated married step-fathers from unmarried cohabiting men found that married step-fathers were less likely to abuse: ‘for nonnatal fathers marriage appears to be associated with a greater commitment to the father role’.
Analysis of 35 cases of fatal abuse which were the subject of public inquiries between 1968 and 1987 showed a risk for children living with their mother and an unrelated man which was over 70 times higher than it would have been for a child with two married biological parents.
Of course, the family isn't disintegrating - just changing.
This is a public information post.
As the NSPCC points out, most abuse happens at home. One child is killed each week by a parent or carer; six die each year at the hands of unknown predators.
Actually it's worse than that. About 3,500 babies are killed each week by strangers with the mother's collusion. These strangers are usually doctors. But let it pass.
"Most abuse at home" was repeated in today's Guardian, and on the Today programme by professor (of Sexualised Violence - I'm not making this up) Liz Kelly, who runs the taxpayer-funded Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit at London Metropolitan University (formerly Camden Women's Institute), a male-free zone which boasts femiluni Julie Bindel among its alumni.
Strangely, what you'll never hear in the Guardian, on the BBC, or from Liz Kelly, is the kind of home where abuse takes place.
I quote :
According to data from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), young people are five times more likely to have experienced physical abuse and emotional maltreatment if they grew up in a lone-parent family, compared with children in two-birth-parent families.
All studies of child-abuse victims which look at family type identify the step-family as representing the highest risk to children – with the risk of fatal abuse being 100 times higher than in twobiological- parent families according to international (figures) from 1976.
However, the use of the term step-father has become problematic, as, whilst it used to refer to men who were married to women with children by other men, it is now used to describe any man in the household, whether married to the mother or not. An NSPCC study of 1988 which separated married step-fathers from unmarried cohabiting men found that married step-fathers were less likely to abuse: ‘for nonnatal fathers marriage appears to be associated with a greater commitment to the father role’.
Analysis of 35 cases of fatal abuse which were the subject of public inquiries between 1968 and 1987 showed a risk for children living with their mother and an unrelated man which was over 70 times higher than it would have been for a child with two married biological parents.
Of course, the family isn't disintegrating - just changing.
This is a public information post.
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Your Honour, I was trolling in a westerly direction, when I vada'd ...
Britains "most-gay-friendly employer", where 10% of the staff bowl round the wicket, is Staffordshire Police.
A spokesman for the Staffordshire force said gay and lesbian officers were entitled to attend up to three gay pride rallies a year in paid time, to have paid parenting leave if they adopted a child, and to run parties with gay groups from neighbouring West Midlands constabularies.
I've got no problem with paid leave for adoption, and what parties they attend is their affair, but I'm raising a bijou eyebrow at paying taxes for people to go on marches.
Nature vs nurture is always an interesting debate in relation to any aspect of human behaviour, though in the case of homosexuality my money's on nurture, as a 'gay gene' wouldn't seem to be one that would confer reproductive advantage. But the current politically correct "fact" is that they were born that way, immutable part of self, discrimination as bad as racism, etc etc. Any evidence to the contrary is ignored and its exponents vilified.
So lets assume that they're right, and batting for the other side is an immutable part of your being, like skin or eye colour. In that case, why should taxpayers pay for people to "demonstrate the pride of the marchers in being gay" as Met Commander Cressida Dick puts it ? Would Staffordshire Police expect taxpayers to subsidise a White Pride march ?
(It's a pity Commander Dick has such trouble with the job she's paid to do).
Elsewhere, in Nottinghamshire ...
A detective is facing disciplinary action by his force for referring to a career criminal as “pondlife” in a private conversation with another officer.
The detective constable, who faces possible dismissal from his job, has been told that the criminal “might have been offended” had he heard the remark, although he was not present at the time.
Mustn't demonise the villains, must we ?
Sir Robert Peel is rotating at 7,200 rpm.
A spokesman for the Staffordshire force said gay and lesbian officers were entitled to attend up to three gay pride rallies a year in paid time, to have paid parenting leave if they adopted a child, and to run parties with gay groups from neighbouring West Midlands constabularies.
I've got no problem with paid leave for adoption, and what parties they attend is their affair, but I'm raising a bijou eyebrow at paying taxes for people to go on marches.
Nature vs nurture is always an interesting debate in relation to any aspect of human behaviour, though in the case of homosexuality my money's on nurture, as a 'gay gene' wouldn't seem to be one that would confer reproductive advantage. But the current politically correct "fact" is that they were born that way, immutable part of self, discrimination as bad as racism, etc etc. Any evidence to the contrary is ignored and its exponents vilified.
So lets assume that they're right, and batting for the other side is an immutable part of your being, like skin or eye colour. In that case, why should taxpayers pay for people to "demonstrate the pride of the marchers in being gay" as Met Commander Cressida Dick puts it ? Would Staffordshire Police expect taxpayers to subsidise a White Pride march ?
(It's a pity Commander Dick has such trouble with the job she's paid to do).
Elsewhere, in Nottinghamshire ...
A detective is facing disciplinary action by his force for referring to a career criminal as “pondlife” in a private conversation with another officer.
The detective constable, who faces possible dismissal from his job, has been told that the criminal “might have been offended” had he heard the remark, although he was not present at the time.
Mustn't demonise the villains, must we ?
Sir Robert Peel is rotating at 7,200 rpm.
Scary
"As the British authority passes ... the old hatreds between Moslem and Hindu revive and acquire new life and malignancy. We cannot easily conceive what these hatreds are." Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 1931.
I blogged about the 1947 India partition massacres here. But there's nothing like an eye-witness account.
Radio Four are repeating their series 'Sleeping With The Enemy'. The first part (RealAudio) deals with what happened to thousands of women who survived the massacres - abducted as booty (no pun intended).
It's medieval - if not Biblical - stuff - men, many doomed to be killed themselves, slaughtering their wives and daughters to prevent them being dishonoured by the enemy. The difference being that this happened within living memory. Participants - victims and perpetrators - may still be alive. The last time stuff like that happened in the UK was probably the Danish invasions of the 8th and 9th centuries, and before that the Saxon cleansing of the Celts from what is now England.
During this period, so many women disappeared that the newly formed governments of India and Pakistan were compelled to act. They formed official 'recovery' departments to bring their women back...sometimes with even more tragic consequences. Sleeping With The Enemy tells the story of Ranjit Kaur, a Muslim woman who survived a massacre and was then claimed by a Sikh man who married her. She was 10 years old.
To prevent such perceived 'dishonour', Bir Bahadur Singh, a Sikh man, relates how he watched his father publicly behead his teenage sister - along with 25 other female members of their family - in front of a Muslim mob.
I wouldn't listen just before bedtime if I were you though.
UPDATE - I said nothing like that had happened in England since the 8th century - there was one more such (smallish) episode in England, where Jews led by Rabbi Yom Tob killed themselves at York in 1290 rather than fall into the hands of a bloodthirsty Christian mob (animated and led by a number of people who owed money to Jews).
"The mob then returned to the cathedral where the records of debts due to Jews were in safe-keeping. They compelled the guardians to turn these over to them to be burned then and there in the sanctuary."
I blogged about the 1947 India partition massacres here. But there's nothing like an eye-witness account.
Radio Four are repeating their series 'Sleeping With The Enemy'. The first part (RealAudio) deals with what happened to thousands of women who survived the massacres - abducted as booty (no pun intended).
It's medieval - if not Biblical - stuff - men, many doomed to be killed themselves, slaughtering their wives and daughters to prevent them being dishonoured by the enemy. The difference being that this happened within living memory. Participants - victims and perpetrators - may still be alive. The last time stuff like that happened in the UK was probably the Danish invasions of the 8th and 9th centuries, and before that the Saxon cleansing of the Celts from what is now England.
During this period, so many women disappeared that the newly formed governments of India and Pakistan were compelled to act. They formed official 'recovery' departments to bring their women back...sometimes with even more tragic consequences. Sleeping With The Enemy tells the story of Ranjit Kaur, a Muslim woman who survived a massacre and was then claimed by a Sikh man who married her. She was 10 years old.
To prevent such perceived 'dishonour', Bir Bahadur Singh, a Sikh man, relates how he watched his father publicly behead his teenage sister - along with 25 other female members of their family - in front of a Muslim mob.
I wouldn't listen just before bedtime if I were you though.
UPDATE - I said nothing like that had happened in England since the 8th century - there was one more such (smallish) episode in England, where Jews led by Rabbi Yom Tob killed themselves at York in 1290 rather than fall into the hands of a bloodthirsty Christian mob (animated and led by a number of people who owed money to Jews).
"The mob then returned to the cathedral where the records of debts due to Jews were in safe-keeping. They compelled the guardians to turn these over to them to be burned then and there in the sanctuary."
Saturday, January 14, 2006
Yes, it's Gordon"Union Jack" Brown !
I told you this would be fun.
The solutions will be the entertaining bit. Having knocked down Britishness over 40 years, they're arrogant enough to believe they can rebuild it with a few citizenship lessons, a rebuild of the history curriculum and some media pressure. They'll find destruction is much easier than construction.
As promoted in the Guardian, on the BBC, on the Today programme :
Britain should have a day to celebrate its national identity, Gordon Brown will propose in a speech portraying Labour as a modern patriotic party.
The chancellor is to use his first major speech of 2006 to urge Labour supporters to "embrace the Union flag".
"The Union flag should be a British symbol of unity around our values. All the United Kingdom should honour it". says this noted Briton.
And what exactly are the values around which we should unite ?
"We should assert that the Union flag is a flag for tolerance and inclusion."
That's a good selling proposition which will unite us all.
"The Union Flag - it means whatever you want it to mean."
or how about
"The Union Flag - unite around - whatever ..."
Bwah-hah-hah-ha-ha! Gordon, stop ! You're a Jelly-bellied Flag-flapper !
Jennie Bristow wrote about this in spiked a year or more back.
"Britain's core national values consist of the unwillingness to promote core national values - a sense of national pride in non-judgementalism, provided the line is drawn on certain key law-and-order issues ('[P]eople should not be allowed to smoke dope on the street because it is part of their culture', says Phillips. 'That is nonsense. It is against the law.').
Phillips sees this apparent dumping of multiculturalism in favour of a core of multicultural Britishness as recipe for an 'integrated society'. It looks more like a re-statement of every New Labour pronouncement on citizenship, every left-leaning tract on the problem of social fragmentation, every desperate attempt to address the problems within Western culture, while still praising the virtues of diversity and the important contribution of the politics of difference."
This Josie Appleton piece on citzenship tests is also worth revisiting.
"Rather than face up to our inability to give 'content and meaning' to British citizenship, the issue becomes one of their inability to understand our ways.
This explains the immense difficulty the government has with drawing up guidelines for immigrants. The exercise of trying to tell immigrants how to be British is becoming an embarrassing demonstration of the fact that the elite doesn't know itself."
I can see the future British identity, as the Native Brit percentage of the population continues to decline. The Fabians should be studying the recent history of Fiji, where the population is split 50-50 between native Fijians and the descendants of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent.
The solutions will be the entertaining bit. Having knocked down Britishness over 40 years, they're arrogant enough to believe they can rebuild it with a few citizenship lessons, a rebuild of the history curriculum and some media pressure. They'll find destruction is much easier than construction.
As promoted in the Guardian, on the BBC, on the Today programme :
Britain should have a day to celebrate its national identity, Gordon Brown will propose in a speech portraying Labour as a modern patriotic party.
The chancellor is to use his first major speech of 2006 to urge Labour supporters to "embrace the Union flag".
"The Union flag should be a British symbol of unity around our values. All the United Kingdom should honour it". says this noted Briton.
And what exactly are the values around which we should unite ?
"We should assert that the Union flag is a flag for tolerance and inclusion."
That's a good selling proposition which will unite us all.
"The Union Flag - it means whatever you want it to mean."
or how about
"The Union Flag - unite around - whatever ..."
Bwah-hah-hah-ha-ha! Gordon, stop ! You're a Jelly-bellied Flag-flapper !
Jennie Bristow wrote about this in spiked a year or more back.
"Britain's core national values consist of the unwillingness to promote core national values - a sense of national pride in non-judgementalism, provided the line is drawn on certain key law-and-order issues ('[P]eople should not be allowed to smoke dope on the street because it is part of their culture', says Phillips. 'That is nonsense. It is against the law.').
Phillips sees this apparent dumping of multiculturalism in favour of a core of multicultural Britishness as recipe for an 'integrated society'. It looks more like a re-statement of every New Labour pronouncement on citizenship, every left-leaning tract on the problem of social fragmentation, every desperate attempt to address the problems within Western culture, while still praising the virtues of diversity and the important contribution of the politics of difference."
This Josie Appleton piece on citzenship tests is also worth revisiting.
"Rather than face up to our inability to give 'content and meaning' to British citizenship, the issue becomes one of their inability to understand our ways.
This explains the immense difficulty the government has with drawing up guidelines for immigrants. The exercise of trying to tell immigrants how to be British is becoming an embarrassing demonstration of the fact that the elite doesn't know itself."
I can see the future British identity, as the Native Brit percentage of the population continues to decline. The Fabians should be studying the recent history of Fiji, where the population is split 50-50 between native Fijians and the descendants of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent.
Friday, January 13, 2006
David Aaronovitch Blog ...
One of those Times-type blogs with pre-moderated comments, but nonetheless a welcome sight.
Great comment by Matt Murrell (who blogs here).
"Most blogs by professional writers tend to give up on them in the end - there's just too many people out there who view it as a chance to exercise (my emboldening - LT) their own personal demons."
Picture of man taking one of Satan's little imps for a morning stroll.
Matt is an English graduate. I wonder if he thinks that standards aren't declining ?
Great comment by Matt Murrell (who blogs here).
"Most blogs by professional writers tend to give up on them in the end - there's just too many people out there who view it as a chance to exercise (my emboldening - LT) their own personal demons."
Picture of man taking one of Satan's little imps for a morning stroll.
Matt is an English graduate. I wonder if he thinks that standards aren't declining ?
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Lib Dem Leadership - Decisions, Decisions
I don't know who I want to win, now that the wheels (RealAudio) have fallen off Ming The Clueless.
Do I cheer on Simon 'Let The Burglars Out' Hughes ?
Mark 'Give Ian Huntley The Vote ?' Oaten ? Or his punitive twin, Mark 'Give Car Thieves Go-Karting Lessons' Oaten ?
Or is Don 'Hot Sixteen-Year-Old Action' Foster the coming man ?
Little-known millionairess Lynne "Alcohol is bad - lower the drinking age" Featherstone ?
North West MEP Chris 'Legalise Heroin' Davies ?
Perhaps Baroness Tonge might explode onto the scene.
My money's on Paul 'Captured Forever' Marsden to switch sides again. If Blair starts talking about Iran and WMDs he'll be off like a flash.
Do I cheer on Simon 'Let The Burglars Out' Hughes ?
Mark 'Give Ian Huntley The Vote ?' Oaten ? Or his punitive twin, Mark 'Give Car Thieves Go-Karting Lessons' Oaten ?
Or is Don 'Hot Sixteen-Year-Old Action' Foster the coming man ?
Little-known millionairess Lynne "Alcohol is bad - lower the drinking age" Featherstone ?
North West MEP Chris 'Legalise Heroin' Davies ?
Perhaps Baroness Tonge might explode onto the scene.
My money's on Paul 'Captured Forever' Marsden to switch sides again. If Blair starts talking about Iran and WMDs he'll be off like a flash.
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
A Ding-Dong Battle
A strike by bustling centre-forward Andy Armitage in the 15th minute put the Pinks ahead, but the Greens equalised straight away and Armitage was carried off after a heavy challenge.
Soon the visitors were two-one ahead through Sacranie, with a fine volley as Tatchell appealed in vain for offside. But the Aussie striker spotted a gap in the Green defence and slipped through to score as Sacranie went in the book for dissent.
And we're only midway through the first half. What a battle !
(see also this earlier post)
Soon the visitors were two-one ahead through Sacranie, with a fine volley as Tatchell appealed in vain for offside. But the Aussie striker spotted a gap in the Green defence and slipped through to score as Sacranie went in the book for dissent.
And we're only midway through the first half. What a battle !
(see also this earlier post)
Superb 1-2 For Scots Judge
A straight right to the victim, then a magnificent left to the bereaved.
Lady Leeona Dorrian, a civilised type of judge, fond of skiing and French wine, raised the odd eyebrow last year when she sentenced a woman to three years probation for kicking a grandmother to death in a row over a parking space.
The sentence caused outrage in Scotland. 30,000 people signed a petition condemning the sentence. The Crown appealed and the killer was sentenced to four years.
Judge Dorrian has been known to jail killers for as much as five years - if they're drunk drivers involved in a crash which kills their passenger.
The victim's husband had also been assaulted by the killer's partner.
“I was getting beaten until another man pulled him off me. Then I looked over and saw Ann slumped beside a fence at the side of the road.
“She was purple with bruises and I couldn’t find her pulse so I yelled, ‘You’ve killed my wife’. But he just sneered, ‘That’ll be right’ and walked away.”
Judge Dorrian deferred sentence on this charming chap for six months. The full majesty of the law has now descended. Judge Dorrian has 'admonished' him. After all, he hasn't beaten anyone up for six months that they know of.
Lady Leeona Dorrian, a civilised type of judge, fond of skiing and French wine, raised the odd eyebrow last year when she sentenced a woman to three years probation for kicking a grandmother to death in a row over a parking space.
The sentence caused outrage in Scotland. 30,000 people signed a petition condemning the sentence. The Crown appealed and the killer was sentenced to four years.
Judge Dorrian has been known to jail killers for as much as five years - if they're drunk drivers involved in a crash which kills their passenger.
The victim's husband had also been assaulted by the killer's partner.
“I was getting beaten until another man pulled him off me. Then I looked over and saw Ann slumped beside a fence at the side of the road.
“She was purple with bruises and I couldn’t find her pulse so I yelled, ‘You’ve killed my wife’. But he just sneered, ‘That’ll be right’ and walked away.”
Judge Dorrian deferred sentence on this charming chap for six months. The full majesty of the law has now descended. Judge Dorrian has 'admonished' him. After all, he hasn't beaten anyone up for six months that they know of.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Quote Of The Day
Former hip young gunslinger Tony Parsons :
"Charles Kennedy's drinks cabinet was a better friend to him than his shadow cabinet"
"Charles Kennedy's drinks cabinet was a better friend to him than his shadow cabinet"
Yes, It's "Faith-based Homophobia" !
Coming to a police station near you.
"The Gay Police Association (GPA) reports that there has been a 75 per cent increase in calls on its 24-hour action line and gives warning of a rise in “faith-based homophobia” from Christian and Muslim officers.
Vic Codling, the national co-ordinator of the GPA, writes in the latest edition of Police Review that there were 14 cases last year involving homophobia based on religion. They included officers who had refused to work with gay officers or were withdrawn from groups discussing equality within forces."
I'm getting old. I just can't keep up with these new trends.
"The Gay Police Association (GPA) reports that there has been a 75 per cent increase in calls on its 24-hour action line and gives warning of a rise in “faith-based homophobia” from Christian and Muslim officers.
Vic Codling, the national co-ordinator of the GPA, writes in the latest edition of Police Review that there were 14 cases last year involving homophobia based on religion. They included officers who had refused to work with gay officers or were withdrawn from groups discussing equality within forces."
I'm getting old. I just can't keep up with these new trends.
Yes, It's Crackdown Time !
Here we are again ...
"We need a radical new approach if we are to restore the liberty of the law-abiding citizen. My view is very clear: their freedom to be safe from fear has to come first. Yes, in theory, that is what is supposed to happen through the traditional court processes. In practice it doesn't."
"The real choice, the choice on the street, is not between a criminal law process that protects the accused and one that doesn't; it is between a criminal law process that puts protection of the accused in all circumstances above and before that of protecting the public."
The stopped clock is right twice a day.
Actually, the more I look at Blair's speech the more uneasy I become for British liberty - and the more angry at his dishonesty. More later.
"We need a radical new approach if we are to restore the liberty of the law-abiding citizen. My view is very clear: their freedom to be safe from fear has to come first. Yes, in theory, that is what is supposed to happen through the traditional court processes. In practice it doesn't."
"The real choice, the choice on the street, is not between a criminal law process that protects the accused and one that doesn't; it is between a criminal law process that puts protection of the accused in all circumstances above and before that of protecting the public."
The stopped clock is right twice a day.
Actually, the more I look at Blair's speech the more uneasy I become for British liberty - and the more angry at his dishonesty. More later.
It's That Time Of Year ...
There are some conferences and enquiries that you just know are going to be totally useless and achieve nothing - like Helena Kennedy's enquiry into political disengagement. I wrote at the time :
I think it unlikely that she'll register the truth - that the high levels of disengagement are due to the fact that people like Baroness Kennedy have been running the country for the last 30 years.
Fabian conferences are always good for a (hollow) laugh - one look at the speakers and you'll see that if the guests are part of the problem, solutions will be thin on the ground. Can you take seriously any organisation that organises conferences on 'Mainstreaming Social Justice for the 21st Century' ?
Last year the theme was 'The State And Human Happiness". Here's my take on it - you can probably get an idea of my views if I tell you that the Richard Littlejohn link no longer works.
This year will be a hoot.
"Who do we want to be? The future of Britishness"
Featuring a gallery of true Brits - Yazza, Madeleine Bunting, Iqbal Sacranie, Tariq Ramadan, Nick Cohen, Trevor Phillips, Tristram Hunt, Shami Chakrabarti, Stephen Twigg.
Not forgetting of course Mr England (except those who should be duffed up) himself - Billy Bragg.
We know what the trouble is, of course. Forty years of cultural destruction have done a pretty good job on 'social cohesion' - to the point that signs on buildings proclaiming 'Community Centre' or 'Community School' are a sure indicator that the area is certainly uncontaminated by community.
But the ruling class are pretty easy about lumpen natives - they keep social workers employed and they only make other poor people's lives a misery. Besides, we can stamp on them if we have to. Look at the passport and other controls on football fans - nary a protest on restrictions which would have been an outrage applied to, say, murderous Irish republicans.
But 7/7 has just awakened one or two people. Just the odd chap thinks that :
"One of the things that makes this country work is a deep-felt respect for a democratic way of life. I'm not sure some recent immigrant groups have absorbed that ethos."
Although for many speakers the only problem on the horizon is some 'backlash' from those evil natives, I'm prepared to accept that some of them are actually coming to the realisation that some kind of national identity is a good thing. For 'British' of course, not English.
Too late, mate. The solutions will be the entertaining bit. Having knocked down Britishness over 40 years, they're arrogant enough to believe they can rebuild it with a few citizenship lessons, a rebuild of the history curriculum and some media pressure. They'll find destruction is much easier than construction.
On the broad and pleasant road that leads to hell, this conference is a delightful wayside hostelry.
UPDATE - I'm not against the teaching of 'black history' per se, as part of British history. Children should be taught about the Indian divisions in the WWI trenches, even more so the gallant havildars and sepoys of Victorian Empire. These soldiers fought for Britain, or the Queen-Empress. That is their historical importance. But our liberal rulers are incapable of teaching that. To Yazza or Iqbal Sacranie, those soldiers fought on the wrong side. The children will be taught that what is historically important was their skin colour. Not a recipe for cohesion.
And as for the native Brit kids, especially the English ?
As Misty In Roots used to sing :
"Teach the youth the truth"
"Let them know their history"
"Let them know their culture"
White working class Brits, once heirs to one of the great cultures of history, have been the main victims of the triumph of 60s counterculture and the rise of the polytechnocracy. The social pathologies of the UK underclass, as described by Dalrymple and logged at this site, are characteristic of any society that's lost its culture and been offered welfare payment in compensation. An anthropologist coming to study the UK underclass would be best advised to read about Native Americans, Inuit, Aborigines first.
I think it unlikely that she'll register the truth - that the high levels of disengagement are due to the fact that people like Baroness Kennedy have been running the country for the last 30 years.
Fabian conferences are always good for a (hollow) laugh - one look at the speakers and you'll see that if the guests are part of the problem, solutions will be thin on the ground. Can you take seriously any organisation that organises conferences on 'Mainstreaming Social Justice for the 21st Century' ?
Last year the theme was 'The State And Human Happiness". Here's my take on it - you can probably get an idea of my views if I tell you that the Richard Littlejohn link no longer works.
This year will be a hoot.
"Who do we want to be? The future of Britishness"
Featuring a gallery of true Brits - Yazza, Madeleine Bunting, Iqbal Sacranie, Tariq Ramadan, Nick Cohen, Trevor Phillips, Tristram Hunt, Shami Chakrabarti, Stephen Twigg.
Not forgetting of course Mr England (except those who should be duffed up) himself - Billy Bragg.
We know what the trouble is, of course. Forty years of cultural destruction have done a pretty good job on 'social cohesion' - to the point that signs on buildings proclaiming 'Community Centre' or 'Community School' are a sure indicator that the area is certainly uncontaminated by community.
But the ruling class are pretty easy about lumpen natives - they keep social workers employed and they only make other poor people's lives a misery. Besides, we can stamp on them if we have to. Look at the passport and other controls on football fans - nary a protest on restrictions which would have been an outrage applied to, say, murderous Irish republicans.
But 7/7 has just awakened one or two people. Just the odd chap thinks that :
"One of the things that makes this country work is a deep-felt respect for a democratic way of life. I'm not sure some recent immigrant groups have absorbed that ethos."
Although for many speakers the only problem on the horizon is some 'backlash' from those evil natives, I'm prepared to accept that some of them are actually coming to the realisation that some kind of national identity is a good thing. For 'British' of course, not English.
Too late, mate. The solutions will be the entertaining bit. Having knocked down Britishness over 40 years, they're arrogant enough to believe they can rebuild it with a few citizenship lessons, a rebuild of the history curriculum and some media pressure. They'll find destruction is much easier than construction.
On the broad and pleasant road that leads to hell, this conference is a delightful wayside hostelry.
UPDATE - I'm not against the teaching of 'black history' per se, as part of British history. Children should be taught about the Indian divisions in the WWI trenches, even more so the gallant havildars and sepoys of Victorian Empire. These soldiers fought for Britain, or the Queen-Empress. That is their historical importance. But our liberal rulers are incapable of teaching that. To Yazza or Iqbal Sacranie, those soldiers fought on the wrong side. The children will be taught that what is historically important was their skin colour. Not a recipe for cohesion.
And as for the native Brit kids, especially the English ?
As Misty In Roots used to sing :
"Teach the youth the truth"
"Let them know their history"
"Let them know their culture"
White working class Brits, once heirs to one of the great cultures of history, have been the main victims of the triumph of 60s counterculture and the rise of the polytechnocracy. The social pathologies of the UK underclass, as described by Dalrymple and logged at this site, are characteristic of any society that's lost its culture and been offered welfare payment in compensation. An anthropologist coming to study the UK underclass would be best advised to read about Native Americans, Inuit, Aborigines first.
Monday, January 09, 2006
A Neat Blog
Face Right is a thoughtful blog. Although politically distant from people like Eric (who seems to blog mostly here these days) or Mick Hartley, like them he has an unerring eye for interesting stuff.
From this post :
"4th Generation warfare is not novel but a return, specifically a return to the way war worked before the rise of the state. Now, as then, many different entities, not just governments of states, will wage war. They will wage war for many different reasons, not just "the extension of politics by other means." And they will use many different tools to fight war, not restricting themselves to what we recognize as military forces. When I am asked to recommend a good book describing what a Fourth Generation world will be like, I usually suggest Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century."
"More broadly, the nation-state is losing its monopoly on war, and its hold on its citizens loyalty, in a growing portion of the world. The two are closely related. One of the most important roles of the state is to protect its people. When it loses the ability (or perceived ability) to do that, it will lose the loyalty of the people. People's loyalties will transfer to whatever organizations can protect them.
In much of the world, the nation-state's hold was never strong. A creation of the West, the nation-state never became the primary loyalty in much of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East; in fact, many countries in those regions, while states, were never nation states. Most of their citizens continued to see themselves as members of a clan or tribe or religious grouping, not a nation. As Western power recedes, the old loyalties are reasserting themselves."
Read the whole thing - and the links. Lots to think about, whether you agree with all of it or not.
From this post :
"4th Generation warfare is not novel but a return, specifically a return to the way war worked before the rise of the state. Now, as then, many different entities, not just governments of states, will wage war. They will wage war for many different reasons, not just "the extension of politics by other means." And they will use many different tools to fight war, not restricting themselves to what we recognize as military forces. When I am asked to recommend a good book describing what a Fourth Generation world will be like, I usually suggest Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century."
"More broadly, the nation-state is losing its monopoly on war, and its hold on its citizens loyalty, in a growing portion of the world. The two are closely related. One of the most important roles of the state is to protect its people. When it loses the ability (or perceived ability) to do that, it will lose the loyalty of the people. People's loyalties will transfer to whatever organizations can protect them.
In much of the world, the nation-state's hold was never strong. A creation of the West, the nation-state never became the primary loyalty in much of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East; in fact, many countries in those regions, while states, were never nation states. Most of their citizens continued to see themselves as members of a clan or tribe or religious grouping, not a nation. As Western power recedes, the old loyalties are reasserting themselves."
Read the whole thing - and the links. Lots to think about, whether you agree with all of it or not.
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Sharp Wit
The BBC celebrate the late Labour MP Tony Banks, "known for acid tongue and sharp wit", who "will be remembered for his hilarious insults"
"Tory MP, Terry Dicks, was dismissed as "living proof that a pig's bladder on the end of a stick can be elected to Parliament".
The former sports minister, who became Lord Stratford last year, showed reputations did not intimidate him when he accused Lady Thatcher of having "the sensitivity of a sex-starved boa-constrictor" during a Commons debate.
He added to that by calling the former Prime Minister a "half mad old bag lady" on another occasion.
Former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke was "a pot-bellied old soak" while another former Prime Minister John Major was "so unpopular, if he became a funeral director people would stop dying".
Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats were "woolly-hatted, muesli-eating, Tory lick-spittles"."
Just let me pick myself up off the floor - that is so funny.
First Ronnie Barker. Then Richard Pryor.
Now another comic genius has left us.
UPDATE - perfect comment on the BBC 'Have Your Say' page.
"He had the courage of his prejudices, and he tolerated that of which he approved".
"Tory MP, Terry Dicks, was dismissed as "living proof that a pig's bladder on the end of a stick can be elected to Parliament".
The former sports minister, who became Lord Stratford last year, showed reputations did not intimidate him when he accused Lady Thatcher of having "the sensitivity of a sex-starved boa-constrictor" during a Commons debate.
He added to that by calling the former Prime Minister a "half mad old bag lady" on another occasion.
Former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke was "a pot-bellied old soak" while another former Prime Minister John Major was "so unpopular, if he became a funeral director people would stop dying".
Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats were "woolly-hatted, muesli-eating, Tory lick-spittles"."
Just let me pick myself up off the floor - that is so funny.
First Ronnie Barker. Then Richard Pryor.
Now another comic genius has left us.
UPDATE - perfect comment on the BBC 'Have Your Say' page.
"He had the courage of his prejudices, and he tolerated that of which he approved".
Two Adventurers
Norman Vaughan was the last surviving member of Byrd's 1928-30 Antartctic expedition. A lifelong teetotaller, Vaughan first drank champagne on his 100th birthday. He died six days later. Whether these facts are connected I do not know.
What a life.
"By this stage Vaughan had fallen out with a fellow dog-driver, Arthur Walden, who felt that the young man had usurped his position on the expedition; so sure was Vaughan that Walden would do him harm that he took to sleeping in secret locations outside, despite the freezing temperatures."
"In the summer of 1942 two B-17 bombers and six P-38 Lightning fighters made emergency landings on the Greenland Ice Cap, having received a false compass heading from a German U-boat and having run out of fuel. The crews were supplied by air-drop until Vaughan and others were able to bring them out by dog-sledge.
He was later sent back to retrieve a top-secret bombsight, which could have fallen into the hands of the Germans, who maintained a wartime weather station on the east coast of Greenland."
"The following summer, Vaughan returned to the Heritage range to be flown into the Queen Maud mountains where, supported by a party of nine, he reached the summit of "his" mountain, Mount Vaughan (10,320 ft high) on December 14 1994, two days before his 89th birthday.
On six occasions after he reached the age of 70, Vaughan completed the 1,100-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race; and when he was 96 he carried the Olympic torch in Juneau, passing the flame from a wheelchair."
And Heinrich Harrer has died aged 93. A famous pre-war Alpinist and Olympic skier, he was climbing in the Himalayas when WWII broke out. His escape from a British internment camp and trek to Lhasa, where he remained as the Dalai Lama's tutor until the Chinese invasion, is the subject of his wonderful book 'Seven Years In Tibet'. Unlike modern trekkers, Harrer was penniless and a wanted man. He arrived in Lhasa ragged, exhausted but indomitable, speaking Tibetan with a rustic accent which greatly amused the Lhasa nobility who took him in.
What a life.
"By this stage Vaughan had fallen out with a fellow dog-driver, Arthur Walden, who felt that the young man had usurped his position on the expedition; so sure was Vaughan that Walden would do him harm that he took to sleeping in secret locations outside, despite the freezing temperatures."
"In the summer of 1942 two B-17 bombers and six P-38 Lightning fighters made emergency landings on the Greenland Ice Cap, having received a false compass heading from a German U-boat and having run out of fuel. The crews were supplied by air-drop until Vaughan and others were able to bring them out by dog-sledge.
He was later sent back to retrieve a top-secret bombsight, which could have fallen into the hands of the Germans, who maintained a wartime weather station on the east coast of Greenland."
"The following summer, Vaughan returned to the Heritage range to be flown into the Queen Maud mountains where, supported by a party of nine, he reached the summit of "his" mountain, Mount Vaughan (10,320 ft high) on December 14 1994, two days before his 89th birthday.
On six occasions after he reached the age of 70, Vaughan completed the 1,100-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race; and when he was 96 he carried the Olympic torch in Juneau, passing the flame from a wheelchair."
And Heinrich Harrer has died aged 93. A famous pre-war Alpinist and Olympic skier, he was climbing in the Himalayas when WWII broke out. His escape from a British internment camp and trek to Lhasa, where he remained as the Dalai Lama's tutor until the Chinese invasion, is the subject of his wonderful book 'Seven Years In Tibet'. Unlike modern trekkers, Harrer was penniless and a wanted man. He arrived in Lhasa ragged, exhausted but indomitable, speaking Tibetan with a rustic accent which greatly amused the Lhasa nobility who took him in.
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