Is anti-Semitism the new anti-Semitism ?

White attackers were responsible for anti-Semitic incidents in fewer than half of those where the colour or racial background of the perpetrator was identified. More than a third, 37 per cent, of attackers whose background was known were Asian or Arab.

Since 1984, when the recording of anti-Semitic incidents by the trust began, white attackers have been in a minority only last year and in 2004.

The report said a disprortionate number of the attacks were carried out by people from ethnic minorities. It said: "The percentage overall is clearly not contiguous with the ethnic breakdown of the general population of the UK."

Its findings were challenged by officials working for London Mayor Ken Livingstone - whose own battle against suspension from office over an alleged antisemitic remark is recorded by the report as one of the "trigger events" that was followed by a number of anti-Semitic attacks.

I'm never sure about this 'trigger event' theory, which in its Charles Kennedy variant postulated that every time Michael Howard spoke about immigration a black youth had his car set alight. I think the people who carry out attacks should be held responsible, not someone who may or may not have said something that may or may not have "contributed to a climate" which may or may not have influenced some racist attacker or other. Apparently every time a BNP councillor is elected a little fairy dies.

But it is entertaining to see Ken Livingstone hoist with this particular left petard.

In the meantime, as Natalie reports, Guardian readers and Livingstone voters will continue to march chanting "Khaibar, Khaibar, Oh Jew, the army of Mohammed will return!"

"The woman, who is white ..."

No word on her attackers.

When Susan was training at Barts she lived in Peckham, and would cycle the five or six miles to Smithfield and back each day. I'm not sure I'd want my daughter to do that run now.

Seventeen Year Olds - The Guardian Guide...

A seventeen year old is ...

A 'child' to be protected, if fighting for his country.

A 'man' if being sodomised.

A 'child' if engaging in prostitution. As the Association of Chief Police Officers point out "The Children’s Act makes it clear that young people are children if seventeen years or under".

A full adult capable of voting (but not of taking on any other adult responsibilities such as being imprisoned with adults if convicted of a crime, supporting oneself etc).

A child to be protected from the dreadful consequences of smoking.

I think there's some kind of pattern here. I just can't quite work out what it is.





UPDATE - and you can be a "youth" if you're 25 ! There was a time in our history when you could be a General at that age.

In 2003, Mr Westbury, who is based at Aberystwyth, received an award from then Home Secretary David Blunkett for his work in the community.

But he said he felt compelled to resign following the council's decision.

"This is a recipe for disaster," said Mr Westbury.

"A youth club is just that - a club for young people. There's a case for a club for 16-20-year-olds, but not those aged up to 25.

"I feel that people aged up to 25 would have a negative influence on impressionable younger people.

Sack The Dancer !

There's no way that a state-funded dancer should be allowed to perpetrate 'hate dance' against a nation which suffered the first genocide of the 20th century.

Plus, Hasmik Poghosyan, Armenian Minister of Culture, should be invited to become British culture minister.

She declared: “It is unacceptable for us that someone who is considered a national treasure in Britain would bring such low-quality art to Armenia.

“We honour the high art of British theatre and are sure that from the Queen to ordinary Britons the greatest pride and treasure is Shakespeare. It appears that the English perception of treasures has been drastically devalued and Nigel Charnock is its best evidence.”

Charnock is an exponent of physical, transgressive, challenging etc etc DV8-style modern dance - the kind that gets Guardian reviewers all hot under the studded collar.

Ms Ghulyan acknowledged that some in the audience had been offended by sexually suggestive movements during the performance. Charnock had wrapped a Union Jack around his loins and then draped the Armenian tricolor over his naked torso.

So far, so Arts Council. But cultural sensitivity - nul points. Charnock was apparently unaware that treading on the Armenian flag is a criminal offence.

Charnock, on his first vist to the country, had placed Armenian and British flags on the stage and danced on them before an audience at the Stanislavsky State Theatre, in Yerevan, on Wednesday.

Mrs Poghoysan, 46, who was not at the performance, ordered a second show to be cancelled and accused Charnock of committing a criminal offence punishable by up to a year in prison.

Mrs Poghosyan said that she was not censoring artistic expression but acting to prevent disrespectful treatment of Armenia’s flag.

“Charnock may treat the British flag as he likes. He can drop it on the floor, step on it, chew it or swallow it, but it is unacceptable and punishable by law to treat the Armenian flag that way,” she said.

At a press conference called swiftly by the British Council, a chastened Charnock, 45, offered his “unconditional apologies”. He told reporters: “All I’m trying to do is communicate love.”

Peace Off

Overheard on BBC radio news as I drove home this evening :

"As the Fatah team left the peace negotiations they came under fire. Two bodyguards were wounded."

I think you could describe a truce as 'fragile' when you've just signed one and the other side are shooting at you as you leave the building.

"an excellent model of friction"

An Englishman in Brum ponders community cohesion after the Birmingham arrests.

(and the Birmingham Post illustrates some reactions - if those three are female I'll eat my hijab)


UPDATE -



Cartoon by Matt from the Telegraph. Thanks to Blognor Regis.

*Sigh*

A chip-shop owner thought he was doing his public duty when he carried out a citizen’s arrest on a 12-year-old delinquent who spat at his customers and smashed a window.

But overzealous police officers turned the tables on Nicholas Tyers, 46, and his son Lee, 20, treating them as criminals and taking their fingerprints after the boy complained.

Mr Tyers and his Royal Marine son were charged with kidnap for holding the boy for up to six minutes and told the maximum sentence was life in prison. During the six months that followed, Mr Tyers was forced to sell his shop and lost his faith in justice.

OK, so the Judge John Dowse (pbuh) chucked the case out. But what sort of signal does the arrest and investigation send ?

What was it Peter Hitchens said ? The criminal justice system now enforces 'the letter of a bureaucratic law rather then the spirit of an agreed and respected moral code'.

"All the elements of sexual crime"

Both sides agreed that the woman, referred to as H, who was finishing her army service, asked to be photographed hugging Ramon. According to the indictment, she then tried to leave, but “the defendant continued to embrace her body with one hand and drew her near.

“With the other hand, he grasped her cheeks, turned her face toward him and pressed his lips to her lips, while inserting his tongue into her mouth, all without her consent.”

Haim Ramon, 56, faces up to three years in prison after a court rejected his defence that his kiss with the 21-year-old was consensual.

Now let's face it, that's not the act of a gentleman. He should have had his face slapped. But isn't this a bit OTT ? I know one or two chaps who got more than they bargained for when an older (and chardonnay-soaked) female colleague gave them a Christmas kiss, but you have to weave the coarse thread into life's rich tapestry somehow.

Scary

A British Muslim soldier is thought to have been singled out as the target of a terror cell in Birmingham.

Security sources say the gang was going to video him pleading with Tony Blair to pull troops out of Iraq before beheading him. The serviceman, in his twenties, is now under police guard.

Not very nice, is it ? Still, if lots of religious bookshops are flogging DVDs of Russians having their throats cut by the Glorious Chechen Resistance, I suppose it's only a matter of time before someone in Brum or Dewsbury decides that home video is where it's at.

What would worry me even more would be if the victims were random natives. Quite apart from the victim's sufferings, you'd have an exodus of the few remaining Brummies from the Sparkhills and Small Heaths of this world. Instant segregation.

Is He Mad, Or Am I ?

A lot of Evidence-Based Research into Institutional Racism in Medicine is solidly based around the foundational premise that the General Medical Council (GMC) remains largely unaccountable for its Racist Practices in relation to the manner in which it fundamentally controls entry into the Medical Profession , the way that it effectively modulates Clinical Career Progression for Medical Undergraduates and Postgraduates, the Powerful Apparatus it wields and Clandestine Modus Operandi which it formidably calls into play during the handling of certain Statutory Professional Complaints against certain Medical Doctors from certain Ethnic Backgrounds - and the utterly despicable way in which it devilishly rewards most of those of its Senior White Doctors (including Medical Association Topdogs and Medical Journal Editors) who are gracious enough to turn an absolutely unseeing eye to any substantiated hard evidence of it's (Gobsmackingly Flabberghasting) , Wanton Regulatory Corruption.

And there's a whole lot more, some I would have thought potentially libellous, at Abolish The GMC.

A glance at the BBC news pages is enough to reveal the hideous sexism and racism of the medical profession - against white males, as it happens.

Researchers at Oxford University say white men, who make up 44% of the UK population, accounted for 26% of new medical students in 2001.

They said medicine is increasingly dominated by white women and people from ethnic minorities, particularly those from the Asian community.

Tomorrow Belongs To Me

Chavez becomes dictator of Venezuela.

He wants to scrap presidential term limits and rewrite the constitution to build what he calls "socialism for the 21st Century". Officials say he has no intention of turning Venezuela into a communist state, arguing that freedom of speech and religion will all be safe.

Ah, yes. Freedom of speech will be as free as it can be in a country where there's no freedom of property.

Fic(tion)

Way back when, some of us started an interactive novel on the Evening Standard notice boards.

Sophie's romantic(?) boys-meet-girl 'fic' isn't interactive, but she's up to Chapter 208 as I write.

I must admit I hadn't heard of this 'fic' thing ? Is it 'hot on the street (man)' ?. Are there thousands of fics ? Would Soph's work be 'chick-fic' ?

Anyone read the whole thing ?

You Can Run, But You Can't Hide

Some highlights from the Audit Commission's new report on why council tax payers should pay for more 'migrant workers' to learn English.


"Overall, international migration is now the main driver of population change in the UK."


"The enlargement of the European Union (EU) in 2004 led to a greater than anticipated increase in the number of migrant workers. This came on top of a steady rise in the number and the diversity of foreign nationals coming to the UK to work, including many foreign students. While future numbers are inherently hard to predict, economic and demographic trends make it likely that a high level of migration for work and for study will continue for the foreseeable future."


"In all national and local surveys, employers are very positive about their economic contribution (Refs. 6, 7, 8 and 9). Recent macroeconomic studies consider that migrant workers are net contributors to the economy (Refs. 10 and 11) and have helped to keep wage inflation down in areas of skill shortage."


Doing a skilled job ? Pay more tax so that the council can train people to undercut you !


"The arrival of migrant workers has been welcomed by the government, the Confederation of British Industry and the Trades Union Congress."


How about these two statements ?


"There is little evidence that the increased numbers of migrant workers have caused significant or systematic problems in respect of community safety or cohesion."


"Police forces are usually the first local services to notice and respond to change."


I wonder why that could be ?


"Local media can influence the tone of the debate by selecting particular stories and letters and writing editorials. Building good relationships with local editors, involving relevant media in discussions and identifying and promoting positive stories to local media can help ensure a more balanced tone."


It's handy that local government is a major advertiser in local papers then, isn't it ?


This line pretty much sums it up :


The unexpected speed and scale of change since 2004 means that migrant workers will continue to be an issue in an increasing number of areas, including those with little recent history of ethnic diversity or rapid population change.


Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

They're Not Just Racist ...

We know already that Democrat voters are more racist than Republicans.

It seems they're less charitable, too.

A Syracuse University professor who studied economics at the famously demanding Rand Graduate School, Brooks has exhaustively reviewed a wide range of nonpartisan survey research, much of it university-based, to demonstrate the existence of a charitable divide between liberals and conservatives. He has determined, for instance, that the average conservative-headed household gives 30 percent more money to charity than the average liberal-headed one ($1,600 compared with $1,227), despite earning 6 percent less annually. Moreover, Brooks has found that of the 25 states where charitable giving was above average, George W. Bush won 24 in the 2004 presidential race. Perhaps there really are, to borrow John Edwards’s glib phrase, two Americas: one charitable, the other miserly.

Interesting to see that, as in the UK, the rich are more likely to be left-wing. Pretty much shows you where the People's Party gets its support from.

Brooks adeptly correlates charitable giving with four characteristics, all of which favor conservatives. They are religiousness, by far the most potent predictor of charity; employment (those on public assistance do not give to charity, in contrast to the working poor, who are especially supportive of churches); “strong families,” especially traditional two-parent families; and skepticism about government’s role in redistributing income. Those who favor governmental redistributive programs give less to charity and have, moreover, effectively used public discourse to equate their view with compassion.

Those are impressive figures though - Democrat or Republican. The average Dem's still giving £600 a year. I wonder what the UK figures would look like ?

Here We Go ...

Following the homosexual adoption brouhaha, the Sally Army are being told that their Inverness homeless hostel will lose funding - unless they allow people to get drunk on the premises. At present the hostels are dry.

Huntly House has received local authority funding since 1984.

However, councillor Peter Corbett said the council was under pressure to provide "wet" hostels where rules on alcohol are less strict.

Mr Corbett, councillor for Merkinch, said council officials have warned that the authority cannot continue funding Huntly House in its present form.

He said Highland was under increasing pressure to ensure care for all homeless people - including those who are disruptive because they may have addiction problems.

Mr Corbett said: "Huntly House will have to take that on board.

"They do have highly trained, highly qualified staff who work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so they do know how to deal with clients such as these."

So a home which tries to create a peaceful and safe environment will have to take disruptive p***heads - because hey, their lifestyle is as valid as anyone else's.

A few years back Robert Whelan of Civitas wrote The Corrosion of Charity, on how :

The emergence in the late twentieth century of a rights-based, universal welfare state has posed a dilemma for the voluntary sector. Unable to compete with the state in terms of resources or coverage, many charities have become little more than government sub-contractors, charging fees to provide services. As a result, charities have lost some of their independence, their capacity to be innovative, and their special significance as primary institutions of civil society, providing training grounds for good citizenship.

The Sally Army are still a lot more than Government subbies - for the moment. But they're supping with the Devil, and will need a lang spoon.

Catholic Tastes

We gave him asylum and a council flat. He sexually assaulted a 55-year old woman and was jailed for four years. Let out after two. And deported ? Don't be silly.

He's just been convicted again, after he abducted and assaulted a seven year old.

I wonder what he'll do next time he's let out early ?

Commenting on why Sadiq Mohammed had not been deported, a Home Office spokesman said: "The government has made clear that public protection is the overarching priority of the Home Office.

"As part of this we have made clear that we will seek to deport foreign national prisoners who have committed a serious crime as early as possible in their sentence."

I do like their deadpan humour. The only asylum seekers who go back to Somalia are those wanted for murder - who leave of their own accord.

Paris Paradise ?

Whereas about 1,500 new apartments were built per year prior to the new system, that number is now about 4,000, says Helen Schwoerer, OPAC’s head of public housing architecture. Two-thirds of OPAC’s work is infill, and the rest is new construction.

The city has also distributed projects over a much wider area of Paris. Officials from OPAC and other city agencies are working to ensure that all quarters contain 20 percent public housing, and they have announced that all new buildings in wealthier quarters must include at least 25 percent affordable housing in their programs.

During last year's Paris riots a deal of attention was paid to the rings of isolated estates surrounding the city. It look as though they're going to try and distribute the inhabitants around the posh bits. An innovative strategy.

Architectural Record, perhaps unsurprisingly, seem to think the riots were caused by the "heavy, blocky, and still insensitively scaled" nature of "faceless, block-style" social housing.

Five Years

For killing someone after falling asleep at the wheel.

Donald Pearce, 49, a pub landlord, had slept only three hours in the previous 24 as he drove from Stansted Airport after a night flight from Turkey in October, 2005.

On the A11 near Wymondham, Norfolk, Pearce fell asleep and his car drifted into a layby at 60 mph, hitting Zak Carr, 30, a champion UK time trials cyclist, as he cycled to his job on a building site. Pearce had denied causing death by dangerous driving but was found guilty at Norwich Crown Court earlier this month.

Banning Pearce from driving for seven years and ordering him to pay more than £2,000 costs, Judge Simon Barham told him that he should have been aware that he was likely to fall asleep at the wheel.

Now it's true it was a foolish thing to do. But five years ?

What do you get four years (you're eligible for release after two) for nowadays ?

Stabbing your husband to death, a neighbour to death, dropping heavy objects onto strangers from a motorway bridge, shaking a baby to death, smuggling dope for paramilitaries, locking a child in a skip and burning him to death (reduced to three years on appeal), killing a woman rather unpleasantly with a golf umbrella.

Obviously lesser offences than Mr Pearce's. Words fail me.

"Kafir, you have our promise, and may proceed"

“Mashallah! what is the kafir afraid of? What crimes hath he committed, that he would have his pardon granted before he tells his story?” said the pacha to Mustapha.

“No crime toward your state, your sublime highness; but when in another country, I was unfortunate,” continued the man; “I cannot tell my story, unless your highness will condescend to give your promise.”

“May it please your highness,” observed Mustapha, “he asserts his crime to have been committed in another state. It may be heavy, and I suspect ’tis murder;—but although we watch the flowers which ornament our gardens, and would punish those who cull them, yet we care not who intrudes and robs our neighbour—and thus, it appears to me, your highness, that it is with states, and sufficient for the ruler of each to watch over the lives of his own subjects.”

“Very true, Mustapha,” rejoined the pacha; “besides, we might lose the story. Kafir, you have our promise, and may proceed.”

The Story Of The Greek Slave, from Captain Marryat's The Pacha Of Many Tales. Whether the depiction of the status of Jewry under Islam (among other things) is accurate, or whether it reflects the assumptions and prejudices of the writer, I do not know. The whole thing may be the most appalling stereotyping. But it's a right riveting read.

Quote Of The Day

From Dumb Jon in the comments here :

Liberal world view is based upon the idea that we are at a unique moment in human history when now, for the first time ever, a civilisation can get by without the family, a shared narrative, a code of honour, objective truth, a sense of consequences or, well, any of the other 871 things the Left sneers at whenever traditional values are mentioned. Apparently, every civilisation that has existed in the past 5000 years has been a ghastly mistake.

Well, now we've got a chance to test that hypothesis.