That's a new one on me ...

Susan has just received the Progesterex email hoax from an unwitting acquaintance.

Signs Of The Times

"When walking in the street, don't flash your Ipod, mobile or credit card. Stay safe"

Advert I've just heard on Severn Sound Radio, courtesy of Gloucestershire Police.

Liberal Democrat - Because of immigration, there is no England

"Now we see the violence inherent in the system."

According to Newcastle Liberal Democrat councillor Peter Arnold, the other countries of these islands are homogenous, with their own cultures, and so merit national Parliaments. England, on the other hand, has too many immigrants to be considered a nation at all.

Let's have the full horror :

England needs no parliament

Sir: Mary Dejevsky is wrong ("Why we need an English parliament", 14 March). There is no need for an English parliament because there is no England.

Scotland, Wales and Ireland are fairly homogeneous nations, each with its own clearly defined character and culture. That is why devolution (or independence) has been quite successful in all three. In England, the picture is far more complex. There are millions of Scots, Welsh and Irish living in England. The overwhelming majority of non-white migrants also live in England, along with many hundreds of thousands of other Europeans and people from other parts of the world. England is the genuine mongrel nation, and I welcome that. This fact however, makes identity far more complex and difficult than in the other British nations.

For example, I regard myself first and foremost as a Northumbrian, then as British, and finally as European. Here in the north-east we only began to be part of the nation after 1603. Before that, the independent kingdoms of England and Scotland played havoc with the area, and used it (and abused us) for their own dynastic ends. I have no loyalty to England. For me, the British state has meaning and relevance precisely because it has little connection with a brutal past based on ignorance and exploitation.

The answer to the West Lothian question is the creation of a fully federal United Kingdom, based on Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the regions of England. There would still be disparities of size, but these would be far less than a separate English parliament would create. The failure of the referendum in the North-east in 2004 doesn't invalidate the concept. Devolution is working in Scotland and Wales; and independence has given most of Ireland a new lease of life. We just need to expand that successful formula to the rest of the United Kingdom.

PETER ARNOLD

NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE

I wonder if Mr Arnold realises what he's saying. He seems to be pretty much in agreement with Nick Griffin that nationhood is based round race ("homogenous nations") and culture.

England has successfully integrated many races and cultures in the past - including my family on both sides - and my wife's family. Yet my children are English, despite my attempts to convert them to Welsh rugby. I think of Nasser Hussain as an Englishman - and does anyone want to say that Colin Charvis isn't Welsh ?

The problem today is twofold - the collapse of English cultural self-confidence (exemplified by Mr Arnold - how about "England is the genuine mongrel nation, and I welcome that" - followed by "I have no loyalty to England" ?) and immigration on a scale which defies integration. These two things are faces of the same coin, of course. A self-confident nation could integrate many more immigrants (most immigrants now do not integrate) - but a self-confident nation would not allow mass immigration.

It looks as if poor old England gets it from all sides. As I've noted before, they've had to put up wih the Scots and Welsh, with their tiny immigrant populations, telling the English what hideous racists they are. Now, not only are they racist for not loving their multicultural Nirvana enough, but it turns out they haven't got a country any more - because they've allowed too many Scots, Welsh and Irish - and others - in.

Does the Liberal Democrat leadership agree with their councillor's view - that a nation can't exist without racial purity ?

And will Labour (who, you'll remember, lost the English vote) use this idea as the strapline for the Balkanisation strategy of Regional Assemblies ?

"You need a Regional Assembly - because England doesn't exist"





PS - re-reading the letter, you can only be amazed that the Indie published it. Imagine a Tory arguing in the Telegraph that a nation was based on ethnic homogeneity. It would be all over the BBC before you could say 'John Townend'. It looks as if you can get away with this sort of stuff - if you're attacking England.

Quite Right Too

Concorde has been voted the number one design icon of the 20th Century by viewers of BBC2's The Culture Show and visitors to London's Design Museum.

This subject was the only one on which I've ever disagreed with a post of the Blessed Oliver's.

Government, Hospital Find Financial Holy Grail

The miracle of Stoke-on-Trent.

"A spokesman for the NHS trust said the hospital needed to reduce its workforce of 7,000 by the equivalent of 1,000 posts. Staff have been told about 750 compulsory redundancies may be needed."

The Department of Health said the hospital was being helped to control finances without adversely affecting patient care. In a statement it said: "We are reassured that the trust has made it clear that they plan to improve efficiency without cutting patient services and that they are consulting on any possible redundancies"

This really is fantastic news, which will doubtless bring thousands of business executives and management consultants from all over the world to Stoke, seeking to discover the secret. To be able to cut staff by 15% while still offering the same service to customers - in a labour-intensive industry - is a monumental achievement.

Or it could be a load of lies. Or, alternatively, it could be true, if the trust was grossly overstaffed and wasting public money.

But these alternatives will never be explored by the BBC, which seems to have a natural bias in favour of large tax-funded organisations. Can't imagine why.

Christians ! Take The BBC Bible Test !

Do you believe that the Israelite King David (yes, the one who killed Goliath - and also the one who effectively murdered a man in order to marry his wife) had a homosexual relationship with his good mate Jonathan ?

If you don't - you're 'anti-gay'.

Good to know the TV tax is being spent on such rigorous Biblical scholarship.




(see also this post).

It's like deja vu all over again ...

Public sector workers to strike ... bizarre compensation claims (what then should the family of the late Colin Bloomfield receive ?) ... education knacked ... IRA killers invited to Parliament ... the punk revival can't be far off.

And We're Off Again ...

Chalk up another victim for our glorious Probation 'Service' ...


"His killer, Yusuf Bouhaddaou, 28, had been released early from jail for other burglaries and would have known capture meant a long sentence, jurors heard.

Bouhaddaou, from west London, admitted burglary but had denied murder.

He had been released from prison on licence five weeks earlier ..."


At least the Prison Service are doing a good job.

Damn Foreigners ...

Coming over here and eating our women ...

not to mention their own ...





Elsewhere another hard-working professional comes to England to do the jobs the locals don't want to do ...

"Victor Dembovskis raped and stabbed to death Jeshma Raithatha in Sudbury Hill, west London, jurors heard.

The court heard he had twice been convicted of raping women at knifepoint in Latvia in 1990 and 1999."

I wonder if he used the same application form as Andrezej Kunowski ?

I Assumed

That the strange reporting, as covered in this Biased BBC post, of the Salford shootings was due to non-judgementalism.

Maybe there's more to it than that.

Looks like the Brass Handles could be a bit of a lively place over the next few months.

Fight ! Fight ! Fight !

Handbags at dawn as Gary Younge and Aaro roll around on the floor.

Gazza : "A couple of years ago a British journalist won a major award for columns supporting the Iraq war on the grounds that to do so was "brave". Whether the award was deserved is irrelevant; the judges' adjective is the issue. What, after all, is "brave" about supporting the policies of both your government and the sole global superpower against a country that posed no threat?"

Aaro : "In other words, he is the brave one. It is in challenging "prevailing hierarchies and orthodoxies" that true bravery lies. Propping them up takes no courage. This line is full of unwitting irony, as any person who has attended a Guardian editorial mass meeting would know. But look, a writer needs his image."

But the real gems come in Aaro's comments, via Aaro fanatic bruschettaboy.

"I am on the point of starting a crusade against this meaningless phrase "speak truth to power". I would be much happier if the media made even a cursory effort to speak truth to me".

I am really interested in inside dirt from Guardian story conferences? Did it all kick off? Were punches thrown? I can just see Madeleine Bunting screaming "leave it Gary he's not worth it" as Timothy Garton Ash throws his chips at Seumas Milne.

What an image.

St Jean Slandered ?

Via new blog Bye Bye Britain, by a London teacher married to a copper and preparing to leave Britain, the story that Jean de Menezes is under investigation as a potential rapist.

"According to the Sunday Mirror, the woman, in her early 20s, contacted police in the capital last month after seeing Mr de Menezes' photograph in the media.

She told officers he bore a striking resemblance to the man who raped her in a hotel room after she became separated from her friends while celebrating New Year's Eve 2002 in West London.

She apparently also gave police a DNA sample at the time which could be compared to genetic material from Mr de Menezes' body.

The de Menezes' solicitor Harriet Wistrich said the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is handling the probe into the 27-year-old's shooting, asked her several weeks ago whether a DNA sample could be taken for the rape investigation."

Interesting blog. I didn't realise UK TB rates are now so high (you'd never guess why) that Oz teachers have to have chest X-rays on return if theyve worked in a UK school for more than two years.

The Evil of Capitalism

In 1968 hippiedom was in its first full flush. The singer Donovan Leitch bought an island off Skye and announced an artistic commune. Beautiful hippie-chick singer/songwriter and art-student boyfriend are invited.

Naturally, the way to get from Sidcup to Skye was by horse-drawn caravan - a journey that took them more than a year, by which time the artistic commune had collapsed and everyone was leaving. But from the journey came one vinyl LP released in 1970 and almost the defining musical document of a certain strand of the hippy culture - fey, childlike, twee and IMHO absolutely charming.

It sank without trace. The singer, the delightfully named Vashti Bunyan, stayed in Scotland, raised kids. I first heard it on a tape copied from a tape copied from a tape in the early 80s - passed around the rainbow sweater, wool-carding, circle-dancing and spinning wheel set. Her fans were Type 2 people, as was Vashti herself.

Fell in love with it, passed on copies to friends. Imagine my delight when 'Just Another Diamond Day' was released on CD in 2000.

And imagine my horror when I heard the title song last night on a T-Mobile advert.

Ah well. I suppose the money's useful.

Free The Bromyard Three !

From This is Worcestershire, featuring guest appearance by 'political correctness gone mad'.

PROTESTERS picketed outside Bromyard Police Station this week demanding freedom for the gollies nicknamed the "Bromyard three".

The soft toys were confiscated from Donald Reynolds' shop, A & E Pettifers, under section 5 of the Public Order Act, after a complaint was made about them being displayed in the window.

Following national interest in the plight of the gollies, local businessmen now want to keep the town in the public eye by bringing out a Bromyard Golly, complete with criminal record, and a range of themed merchandise.

Local businesses also joined the campaign, displaying posters in the shop windows.

Mr Reynolds said: "The police have been very good about the protest, taking it in a light-hearted way. I'm amazed at the support I've received."

However, there was a serious note to the protest, with some people believing police should spend more time patrolling the streets not `arresting' soft toys. Beryl Badley said: "It's political correctness gone mad."

Sgt Nick Semper said gollies were offensive to some people. However, John Phillips, who described himself as "one of the few coloured people in Bromyard", disagreed and was happy to join in Monday's protest.

"I don't think it's an issue," he said. "There are more important things to worry about in the world. At the end of the day, everyone wants to live in racial harmony."

Like many residents, Mr Phillips said he was concerned about the level of crime and lack of a police presence.

Since the Malvern Gazette & Ledbury Reporter broke the gollies' story, Mr Reynolds has had orders for more than 400 and the Bromyard three will be auctioned for charity when they are returned.

That Unelected Bum Falconer

Says that having "two tiers of MPs" at Westminster would "promote separation".

What the hell does he think we've got now ? Welsh and Scots MPs vote on English education and health. What influence do English MPs have over Welsh or Scottish education and health ?

Lord Falconer agreed there was a "distinctive English agenda" in some policy areas but said it was "critical" to preserve the United Kingdom.

"The argument for devolution was that the Scots and the Welsh felt policies could be imposed upon them for which there was little or no support in Scotland or Wales. That's why devolution was popular," Lord Falconer said.

On point 1 - maybe you should have thought of that before you created the white elephants at Holyrood and Cardiff. If Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland can have their own legislatures, why not England ?

Point 2 - England didn't vote Labour - yet we've got a Labour government.


Awa' we' ye ! And tak Lord Irvine alang as well !

More Links ...

Tottenham Lad - born and bred in North London and one of the shrinking band of surviving natives.

The Lone Voice - from that fair city on the Usk. Not what you'd call a bleeding heart liberal - makes Dumb Jon look like Antonia Bance.

He links to this story. Iraq sounds like it should have a lower crime rate than the UK in a few years.

""The competent authorities have today carried out the death sentences of 13 terrorists," the Cabinet announcement said.

Farid had "confessed that foreigners recruited him to spread the fear through killings and abductions," the government said.

A judicial official said the death sentences were handed down in separate trials and were carried out in Baghdad.

"The 13 terrorists were tried in different courts and their trials began in 2005 and ended earlier this year," an official of the Supreme Judiciary Council said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he feared reprisal from insurgents.

In September, Iraq hanged three convicted murderers, the first executions of any convicts since Saddam's ouster in April 2003. The men, considered common criminals rather than insurgents, were convicted of killing three police officers, kidnapping and rape.

Capital punishment was suspended during the formal U.S. occupation, which ended in June 2004, and the Iraqis reinstated the penalty two months later for those found guilty of murder, endangering national security and distributing drugs, saying it was necessary to help put down the persistent insurgency.

The authorities also wanted to have the option of executing Saddam if he is convicted of crimes committed by his regime. Under the former dictator, 114 offenses were punishable by death. "

Bawbags. I haven't dared ask what it means in the local Clydebank dialect.

BBC - Propaganda as Truth

The time has come to strip the BBC of its status as a public service broadcaster

So say the Civitas think-tank, in a report on a BBC 'documentary' which turns out to be a bit of a travesty of the truth.

"A programme broadcast on 5 October 2005 called 'Little Kinsey' manifested such a distortion of its source material that we can no longer depend upon the integrity of the BBC's factual programmes."

'Little Kinsey' was part of the 'Lost Decade' season, focusing on issues relevant to the period 1945-55. Its central argument was that the restrained attitudes towards sexual activity which would have been considered as typical of the era were hypocritical, that men and women were commonly adulterous, that family life was frequently unhappy, that many men used prostitutes and that homosexual activity was common. In fact, the archive, now housed at the University of Sussex, showed no such thing: it showed a society in which most people were still very conservative in their attitudes. Nor do official statistics back up the lurid picture painted by the BBC.

The Civitas press release is here, the full report (pdf file) here.

This is par for the liberal course - what I call the "Myth of the Myth of the Golden Age". The present must always be better than, or the same as, the past - so on crime, for example, we have the absurd claims over the last thirty years that crime hasn't risen - we're just suffering from 'moral panic' (see this post, which also links to other works of the report's author, the great Norman Dennis, sociologist of the respectable working class), or that we report crimes now that we'd have tolerated once.

Similarly with sexual conduct. Faced with the obvious outward evidence of changes in sexual morality over the last sixty years, the progressive has two (contradictory) options.

Option A - yes, things were different then. Marriages did last longer, children were brought up by both parents. But this came at a cost - the huge cost of domestic spousal and child abuse. The stability of society was paid for by the misery of milllions of individual women and children (the liberal is then faced with the interesting task of also claiming that 'domestic abuse' is increasing in today's world).

Option B - no, things weren't really different at all. Our forebears did just the things we did, only they were hypocritical and secretive about them. Usually due to the dreaded 'Victorian morality' - as if fidelity was discounted and bastardy tolerated in any other era of the last thousand-plus years (and the Restoration doesn't count - that was for the elite only).

With this programme (and the responses) we see option B in full effect.

Telegraph Bows To Political/Police Pressure ? Or Not

A couple of weeks ago the Telegraph published an interview by Alasdair Palmer with Patrick Sookhdeo, a Muslim convert to Christianity who among other things runs the Barnabas Fund, campaigning against the oppression of Christians in many countries.

The piece was titled "The day is coming when British Muslims form a state within a state" and was published here.

The Pub Philosopher among others quoted it.

I can't find the reason why it's been removed and the Telegraph don't seem to be saying. You can find links to it here and here, but I'd better post it while it exists (I disagree with his ideas about faith schools and accepting Britain's secular nature. Britain was until very recently in practice, and is still in theory, a Christian society).

UPDATE - the reason appears to be here. Mr Cock-Up once again triumphs over Ms Conspiracy.

"The Sunday Telegraph acknowledges that Dr Sookhdeo's remarks did not refer to The Noble Qur'an, A Rendering of its Meaning in English, but to a completely different translation. The Sunday Telegraph apologises for this mistake and for any offence caused by it."

As regular readers will know, I have a great deal of time for Islam and am quite a fan of the late Sayyid Qutb. I have therefore excised the incorrect name. It does not detract from the force of the argument, although it's always nice to get one's facts right. So I've been told.

Could I offer a warm welcome to readers from Conservative Home.



The day is coming when British Muslims form a state within a state By Alasdair Palmer (Filed: 19/02/2006)


© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2006.


For the past two weeks, Patrick Sookhdeo has been canvassing the opinions of Muslim clerics in Britain on the row over the cartoons featuring images of Mohammed that were first published in Denmark and then reprinted in several other European countries.


"They think they have won the debate," he says with a sigh. "They believe that the British Government has capitulated to them, because it feared the consequences if it did not.


"The cartoons, you see, have not been published in this country, and the Government has been very critical of those countries in which they were published. To many of the Islamic clerics, that's a clear victory.


"It's confirmation of what they believe to be a familiar pattern: if spokesmen for British Muslims threaten what they call 'adverse consequences' - violence to the rest of us - then the British Government will cave in. I think it is a very dangerous precedent."


Dr Sookhdeo adds that he believes that "in a decade, you will see parts of English cities which are controlled by Muslim clerics and which follow, not the common law, but aspects of Muslim sharia law.


"It is already starting to happen - and unless the Government changes the way it treats the so-called leaders of the Islamic community, it will continue."


For someone with such strong and uncompromising views, Dr Sookhdeo is a surprisingly gentle and easy-going man. He speaks with authority on Islam, as it was his first faith: he was brought up as a Muslim in Guyana, the only English colony in South America, and attended a madrassa there.


"But Islamic instruction was very different in the 1950s, when I was at school," he says. "There was no talk of suicide bombing or indeed of violence of any kind. Islam was very peaceful."


Dr Sookhdeo's family emigrated to England when he was 10. In his early twenties, when he was at university, he converted to Christianity. "I had simply seen it as the white man's religion, the religion of the colonialists and the oppressors - in a very similar way, in fact, to the way that many Muslims see Christianity today.


" Leaving Islam was not easy. According to the literal interpretation of the Koran, the punishment for apostasy is death - and it actually is punished by death in some Middle Eastern states. "It wasn't quite like that here," he says, "although it was traumatic in some ways."


Dr Sookhdeo continued to study Islam, doing a PhD at London University on the religion. He is currently director of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity. He also advises the Army on security issues related to Islam.


Several years ago, Dr Sookhdeo insisted that the next wave of radical Islam in Britain would involve suicide bombings in this country. His prediction was depressingly confirmed on 7/7 last year.


So his claim that, in the next decade, the Muslim community in Britain will not be integrated into mainstream British society, but will isolate itself to a much greater extent, carries weight behind it. Dr Sookhdeo has proved his prescience.


"The Government, and Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, are fundamentally deluded about the nature of Islam," he insists. "Tony Blair unintentionally revealed his ignorance when he said, in an effort to conciliate Muslims, that he had 'read through the Koran twice' and that he kept it by his bedside.


"He thought he was saying something which showed how seriously he took Islam. But most Muslims thought it was a joke, if not an insult. Because, of course, every Muslim knows that you cannot read the Koran through from cover to cover and understand it.


The chapters are not written to be read in that way. Indeed, after the first chapter, the chapters of the Koran are ordered according to their length, not according to their content or chronology: the longest chapters are first, the shorter ones are at the end.


"You need to know which passage was revealed at what period and in what time in order to be able to understand it - you cannot simply read it from beginning to end and expect to learn anything at all.


"That is one reason why it takes so long to be able to read and understand the Koran: the meaning of any part of it depends on a knowledge of its context - a context that is not in the Koran itself."


The Prime Minister's ignorance of Islam, Dr Sookhdeo contends, is of a piece with his unsuccessful attempts to conciliate it. And it does indeed seem as if the Government's policy towards radical Islam is based on the hope that if it makes concessions to its leaders, they will reciprocate and relations between fundamentalist Muslims and Tony Blair's Government will then turn into something resembling an ecumenical prayer meeting.


Dr Sookhdeo nods in vigorous agreement with that. "Yes - and it is a very big mistake. Look at what happened in the 1990s. The security services knew about Abu Hamza and the preachers like him. They knew that London was becoming the centre for Islamic terrorists. The police knew. The Government knew. Yet nothing was done.


"The whole approach towards Muslim militants was based on appeasement. 7/7 proved that that approach does not work - yet it is still being followed. For example, there is a book, [excised - LT] which is openly available in Muslim bookshops.


"It calls for the killing of Jews and Christians, and it sets out a strategy for killing the infidels and for warfare against them. The Government has done nothing whatever to interfere with the sale of that book.


"Why not? Government ministers have promised to punish religious hatred, to criminalise the glorification of terrorism, yet they do nothing about this book, which blatantly does both."


Perhaps the explanation is just that they do not take it seriously. "I fear that is exactly the problem," says Dr Sookhdeo. "The trouble is that Tony Blair and other ministers see Islam through the prism of their own secular outlook.


They simply do not realise how seriously Muslims take their religion. Islamic clerics regard themselves as locked in mortal combat with secularism.


"For example, one of the fundamental notions of a secular society is the moral importance of freedom, of individual choice. But in Islam, choice is not allowable: there cannot be free choice about whether to choose or reject any of the fundamental aspects of the religion, because they are all divinely ordained. God has laid down the law, and man must obey.


'Islamic clerics do not believe in a society in which Islam is one religion among others in a society ruled by basically non-religious laws. They believe it must be the dominant religion - and it is their aim to achieve this.


"That is why they do not believe in integration. In 1980, the Islamic Council of Europe laid out their strategy for the future - and the fundamental rule was never dilute your presence. That is to say, do not integrate.


"Rather, concentrate Muslim presence in a particular area until you are a majority in that area, so that the institutions of the local community come to reflect Islamic structures. The education system will be Islamic, the shops will serve only halal food, there will be no advertisements showing naked or semi-naked women, and so on."


That plan, says Dr Sookhdeo, is being followed in Britain. "That is why you are seeing areas which are now almost totally Muslim. The next step will be pushing the Government to recognise sharia law for Muslim communities - which will be backed up by the claim that it is "racist" or "Islamophobic" or "violating the rights of Muslims" to deny them sharia law.


"There's already a Sharia Law Council for the UK. The Government has already started making concessions: it has changed the law so that there are sharia-compliant mortgages and sharia pensions.


"Some Muslims are now pressing to be allowed four wives: they say it is part of their religion. They claim that not being allowed four wives is a denial of their religious liberty. There are Muslim men in Britain who marry and divorce three women, then marry a fourth time - and stay married, in sharia law, to all four.


"The more fundamentalist clerics think that it is only a matter of time before they will persuade the Government to concede on the issue of sharia law. Given the Government's record of capitulating, you can see why they believe that."


Dr Sookhdeo's vision of a relentless battle between secular and Islamic Britain seems hard to reconcile with the co-operation that seems to mark the vast majority of the interactions between the two communities.


"Well, it isn't me who says Islam is at war with secularisation," he says. "That's how Islamic clerics describe the situation."


But isn't it true that most Muslims who live in theocratic states want to get out of them as quickly as possible and live in a secular country such as Britain or America? And that most Muslims who come to Britain adopt the values of a liberal, democratic, tolerant society, rather than insisting on the inflexible rules of their religion?


"You have to distinguish between ordinary Muslims and their self-appointed leaders," explains Dr Sookhdeo. "I agree that the best hope for our collective future is that the majority of Muslims who have grown up here have accepted the secular nature of the British state and society, the division between religion and politics, and the importance of allowing people to choose freely how they will live.


"But that is not how most of the clerics talk. And, more significantly, it is not how the 'community leaders' whom the Government has decided represent the Muslim community think either.


"Take, for example, Tariq Ramadan, whom the Government has appointed as an adviser because ministers think he is a 'community leader'. Ramadan sounds, in public, very moderate. But in reality, he has some very extreme views. He attacks liberal Muslims as 'Muslims without Islam'. He is affiliated to the violent and uncompromising Muslim Brotherhood.


"He calls the education in the state schools of the West 'aggression against the Islamic personality of the child'. He has said that 'the Muslim respects the laws of the country only if they do not contradict any Islamic principle'. He has added that 'compromising on principles is a sign of fear and weakness'."


So what's the answer? What should the Government be doing? "First, it should try to engage with the real Muslim majority, not with the self-appointed 'community leaders' who don't actually represent anyone: they have not been elected, and the vast majority of ordinary Muslims have nothing to do with them.


"Second, the Government should say no to faith-based schools, because they are a block to integration. There should be no compromise over education, or over English as the language of education. The policy of political multiculturalism should be reversed.




"The hope was that it would to ensure separate communities would soften at the edges and integrate. But the opposite has in fact happened: Islamic communities have hardened. There is much less integration than there was for the generation that arrived when I did. There will be much less in the future if the present trend continues.


"Finally, the Government should make it absolutely clear: we welcome diversity, we welcome different religions - but all of them have to accept the secular basis of British law and society. That is a non-negotiable condition of being here.


"If the Government does not do all of those things then I fear for the future, because Islamic communities within Britain will form a state within a state. Religion will occupy an ever-larger place in our collective political life. And, speaking as a religious man myself, I fear that outcome."


© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2006.

Welsh Assembly Building In Attempt To Match Scotland

Well, it's been open all of a week. The architects may not have considered the possibility of rain in Wales.

Too Good To Miss

From Eskimo Fox in the comments :

Baa baa rainbow sheep
Have you any wool ?
Yes sir and/or madam
Sixteen kilos full

One for the ethnic minorities,
One for the differently abled,
And the rest for the persons of unknown status
Who should not, at present, be labelled.



Relating to this story about this charity with this idiotic mission statement.