School Value Added

Mike Ion in the Guardian extols the inner-city school.

The present league tables inevitably puts schools in leafy suburbs at the top and struggling inner-city ones at the bottom. The challenge is to persuade a cynical media, as well as parents and the general public, that CVA is the real measure of school effectiveness.

CVA was invented to try and pull off precisely the trick Mr Ion is attempting.

"OK, the results are dire, but given the raw material they've done a fantastic job"

In practice I believe that private schools also come top in CVA measurement, but let it pass. Anyway, I was moved by Mr Ion's argument to post the following :

Mike Ion is quite right.

Let's take two schools - say St Cuthberts CoE Secondary in the small Somerset market town of Marston Bigot, and the Learco Chindamo Community College in Maida Vale.

St Cuthberts has a catchment area of mostly well-off middle class Bristol commuters, with a few farmers and agricultural workers, a largish contingent of young Poles who are rapidly replacing the native agricultural workers, and a small number of benefit-dependent natives concentrated on a single 'social housing' estate.

The children reflect this mix (although there are fewer young Poles - they're still in nursery). 71% of year 11s get 5 A-Cs including Maths and English.

At Learco Chindamo Community College, over 950 languages are spoken - remarkable in a school of 800 children. There are large numbers of children from Somalia, Angola, Kurdistan and Afghanistan. There is a fully manned police station in the school. Security guards patrol the corridors. There is a significant gang problem - one Somali pupil was knifed to death outside the gates last year. 31% of Year 11s get 5 A-Cs including Maths and English.

Yet considering that many of the children arrriving in Year 7 have significant language disabilities, learning and conduct disorders, and low levels of educational attainment, this 31% represents a significant achievement by dedicated staff. In CVA terms, the school adds twice as much value between years 7 and 11 as does St Cuthberts.

Well, given the choice, any parent would be crazy not to choose Learco Chindamo Community College over St Cuthberts.

Wouldn't they ?

Here We Are Again ...

Nursing home staff slapped and punched pensioners in their care because they wanted to get their work done as quickly as possible. Zonke Nzimande, 35, and Wimon Hill, 29, treated elderly residents of Cornelia Lodge Nursing Home in Southsea, Hampshire, as if they were on a cattle farm, Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court was told.

Mqobile Mavuso, a carer at the home, said that in September, 2006, she saw Nzimande punch an 80-year-old man and slap three elderly women, one of whom was 93. Another carer, Sandra Joseph, said that she witnessed Hill dragging a blind woman of 90 from her chair and “frog-marching” her to the toilet.

We've been here before. As I wrote last year in relation to the treatment of Lucy Neal :

I posted ages ago on the discrepancy between our rulers atttitudes to police and NHS recruitment. It's a Bad Thing for an ethnic minority population to be policed by people of a different race or culture, but a Good Thing, to be celebrated, for the natives to be nursed and doctored by people of a different race or culture.

The elderly population of this country are predominantly natives. I'm not sure why it's any less important to have people of your own culture nurse you when you're frail or dying than it is to have people of your own culture arrest you when you're young and fit.

I know its unlikely that the care homes are NHS-run, but I think the principle still applies. Minorities will be over-represented as carers, as they are as nurses. Six months ago I noted the revelations from the Craegmoor Nursing Home in Islington :

A care home boss whose staff goaded disabled patients into attacking each other was warned she faces jail yesterday. Diane Butler, 47, was in charge of carers who hurled racist and cruel taunts at defenceless residents with physical and mental difficulties.

A year-long reign of terror included one disabled woman being urged to kick and beat a Down’s Syndrome sufferer. Margaret Burdfield, 49, was also called a ‘white bitch’ and ‘ugly bitch’ at Craegmoor Residential Care Home, North London.

The three abusive staff were shopped to police by carer Basil Hanson who secretly filmed their taunts on a mobile phone.

To know whether such attacks are occurring disproportionately you'd have to know the distribution of staff/patient ethnicities in English care homes, as well as the number of such inter-racial assaults compared to intra-racial ones. I somehow doubt that such research will get Home Office funding. But I argued in my previous posts that white self-loathing may be playing a part in fuelling non-white racism.

It's an article of faith on the political Left that saying bad things about asylum-seekers or immigrants will lead to racist attacks and murders. Yet the corollary to this theorem, that saying bad things about the natives will lead to attacks on them, is never put forward, despite the fact that saying bad things about the natives is more common, perfectly socially acceptable and actually state-sponsored.

More Human Rights

(moved due to updated news)

The killer who knifed headmaster Philip Lawrence to death is expected to win his appeal to stay in Britain because deporting him would breach his human rights, according to a Home Office official. The Asylum and Immigration Tribunal will rule this week that Italian-born Learco Chindamo cannot be deported as this would deprive him of his right to family life, the official said.

Chindamo, now 26, stabbed Mr Lawrence in the heart outside the gates of St George's School in Maida Vale, west London, in 1995 when he was just 15. Mr Lawrence, 48, the school's headmaster, had been trying to defend a 13-year-old boy who was being attacked.

I think we can file this one under "Home Office Strategy Overturned By The Courts".

Last year the then home secretary, John Reid, pledged that foreign prisoners convicted of serious offences would be deported automatically, after his predecessor Charles Clarke was found to have presided over a system in which more than 1,000 foreigners were freed when they were meant to be considered for deportation.

However, this has proved difficult to implement. Besides a prisoner's human rights, which have been enshrined in British law since 2000, there is also European Union law to consider.

UPDATE - Ian Dale laments the predictable decision, but a blogger previously unknown to me, one Wrinkled Weasel, posts this in the comments. One for the sidebar I think, when I get it fixed.

Mr Lawrence intervened to "save" a 13 year old (William Njoh), who has since specialised in petty crime, leading to robbery, leading to a firearms offence, for which he was jailed this week. Lawrence was stabbed to death in the original attack.

His widow has succumbed to the dilemma of the liberal middle classes in that she cannot figure out who the bad guys are any more and is reported to have "blown a kiss" to William Njoh as he went down for four and a half years.

As for Chindamo, her moral compass spins wildy as ever:

"Forgiveness is such a complex issue or maybe such a simple one and I don't think I really understand it yet, and I'm not sure what it is that I'm meant to do.

"This is really difficult but I think I've probably always forgiven Chindamo but it's the dealing with it - that's so difficult."

No dear, you don't have to forgive the scumbag and the problem is not yours to deal with. He took away a life that was precious to you, a life you will never have.

He deserves to hang, but we don't do that anymore, but at the very least he should spend the rest of his life either behind bars. Whether here or in Italy is irrelevant.

What makes me angry is that we are having a debate about this. As far as I am concerned, Chindamo gave up his rights to everything but food and water when he joined a violent gang, carried a ten inch knife and stabbed somebody who worked for crap money doing something useful.

While Mrs Lawrence, as a Christian, is enjoined by her faith to attempt forgiveness, I can't say the moral compass of Telegraph crime reporter John Steele is in terribly good order.

Njoh was 13, in 1995, when Mr Lawrence was stabbed outside St George's Roman Catholic School in Maida Vale, west London, trying to protect Njoh, one of his pupils, from a teenage gang.

The incident left Njoh traumatised. He had to give evidence in the murder trial and, after threats were made against him, he went into hiding. His education was disrupted and he drifted into crime, committing several offences, including robbery.

"He drifted into crime". How to describe a dying civilisation in four words.

UPDATE 2 - I Am An Englishman, a blogger who I think can be reasonably described as far right and with whom I'm sure I'd disagree on many topics, has a lot of factual detail on Chindamo's gang.

UPDATE3 - guess who's behind the decision to keep Chindamo here - Mr Margaret Hodge !

The panel which granted Learco Chindamo the right to live freely in the UK is headed by Sir Henry Hodge - a human rights campaigner who is married to Culture Minister Margaret Hodge. Sir Henry's Asylum and Immigration Tribunal has ruled that deporting Chindamo would breach his right to a family life. Sir Henry is the former chairman of the National Council for Civil Liberties - now known as Liberty. He bears public responsibility for the tribunal's decisions, which are taken either by an individual immigration judge or - in controversial cases such as this - a three-person panel. The Chindamo panel was headed by senior immigration judge David Allen, a barrister and product of grammar school and Oxford University. He began working part-time as an immigration adjudicator in 1989 and moved into the field full-time when appointed as a senior immigration judge in 2000. He was backed by Jonathan Lewis, who has worked as a solicitor for 30 years. Mr Lewis is also the author of an official guide to immigration law. Chindamo's panel also contained a lay member, Adrian Smith, who has worked in the field since 1993. The judicial communications service yesterday refused to provide any more information about him.

Another day ...

Another Home Office initiative overturned by the courts.

A flagship Government law and order policy is facing crisis after a judge warned that thousands of potentially dangerous offenders might be freed from prison because of "truly disastrous" planning. When ministers introduced a new open-ended sentence for serious criminals they failed to set up a proper structure for determining a release date.

On Monday, Mr Justice Collins ordered that an offender jailed for a serious assault should be freed because he had not been given a chance to put his case to the Parole Board. The ruling follows a similar decision by the High Court earlier this month to order the release of two other prisoners serving IPPs - indeterminate sentences for public protection.

All the offenders will remain in jail pending an appeal by the Ministry of Justice but if the Government loses thousands of IPP inmates could be freed immediately.

You won't be terribly suprised to learn that Andrew Collins was educated at Eton.

Vixy

Is a neat site that cunningly converts Flash Video / FLV file (YouTube video etc) to MPEG4 (AVI/MOV/MP4/MP3/3GP - take your pick) files online, so you can put the video on your phone or rip an mp3.

I think I'll start with Sean Kingston's "Beautiful Girl". Sean looks much too young to have served time back in 99, as he's only 17 now. I hope he's making it all up. But apparently Mom and Sis have both done time. Tsk tsk.

The music has a wonderfully elderly feel - I was reminded of "Stand By Me". Turns out the backing and bassline is pretty much an exact clone of Ben E King's 1961 classic.

(via my children)

Poor Girly

You have to have sympathy for all concerned here, I think.

The parents of a Teesside Sikh girl say they will convert her to Catholicism in order to get her into the best school in the area. Maya Kaur, four, has attended a nursery at St Paul's RC School at Wolviston, near Billingham, for two years. But her parents have been told there is no place for her at the school when she starts primary education next month.

Now her father, Bal Singh, says he is prepared to change her religion, if it helps his daughter stay at St Paul's.

I don't think you can just swap little Maya Kaur (all Sikh women are Kaur - princess, just as all Sikh men are Singh - lion) like that.

A diocesan spokesman said it welcomed adults who wanted to become followers of Christ's teachings, but that children were "another matter". He said only parents who are themselves Catholic Christians could make such a commitment for their child.

"Ian Smith was right"

In 1990, on the eve of the tenth anniversary of Zimbabwe's independence, when the country's outlook was still quite rosy, I drove through Harare's leafy northern suburbs to interview Ian Smith, the leader of the white minority rebels who declared unilateral independence in the 1960s rather than accept black majority rule.

After a few minutes listening to a self-justifying diatribe about the evils of black government by "communist terrorists" I switched off my tape recorder and politely made my excuses, shaking my white liberal head in amazement at his antedeluvian views.

Today I find it extremely painful to read the daily news from Zimbabwe and realise that perhaps "good old Smithy" had a point. Mugabe has managed in those 17 years since my interview to make the case for something utterly inconceivable - that Ian Smith was right all along in saying that black rule would lead to chaos.

John Morrison on the Zimbabwe disasters and the amazing fact that Mugabe is still an African hero. Ex-Zambian president Kaunda thinks it's all our fault.

"Leaders of the surrounding African nations today greeted Robert Mugabe with cheers, applause and laughter as he arrived at a regional summit"

Stereotyping

According to Casualty sources, senior BBC drama executives had supported starting the new series with a two-part special in which a young Muslim runs into a bus station and blows himself up.

But the plotline was blocked by guideline staff, who oversee the corporation's editorial and ethical standards. They were said to have been worried that the episode would perpetuate the stereotype of young British Muslims.

You do have to wonder what mental interiors these people have got and whether they're in fact bigger racists/"islamophobes" than the evil Righties. What's in the brain of a person who believes that the stereotypical young British Muslim is a suicide bomber ?

"best-educated generation in our history"

More than half of employers say school leavers often cannot function in the workplace due to a lack of basic maths and literacy, a survey suggests.



The "Blair generation" will be the best educated in history, the school standards minister, David Miliband, promised yesterday.

UPDATE - the proof from www.inthenews.co.uk

BAA: Protest has not effected operations

Monday, 20 Aug 2007 11:15

British airport operator BAA has insisted that a climate change protest at Heathrow airport has had "no effect" on operations.

Environmental campaigners have been demonstrating outside BAA's headquarters at Heathrow in protest at plans to build a third runway at Britain's largest airport.

The Personal Is Political, What ?

Demographic patterns themselves reflect social and cultural shifts. Europe has not lost its physical ability to reproduce; it is not naturally less fecund than other cultures. Rather, many European societies seem simply to have lost interest in producing children. It is possible that Europe’s estrangement from the act of reproduction reflects a mood of moral uncertainty and fear of the future. Yet the stabilisation of Europe’s population levels or even a further fall in its birth rates need not be discussed in apocalyptic terms. In our hi-tech era, societies are less dependent on the size of their populations than they have ever been. A reduction in the size of a country’s population does not necessarily lead to a loss of power or influence.

In any case, the trend towards declining fertility rates in Europe is unlikely to be reversed in the long run. Pro-natal policies have little impact on European people’s choices or behaviour. In fact, as Heinsohn suggests, such policies will probably benefit immigrant couples who wish to have a large family ...

State-funded academic Frank Furedi in Spiked. His wife Ann is chief exec of BPAS, the state-funded abortion service which makes such a hefty contribution to the annual 200,000-odd UK abortion cull, and which has such extremely dodgy practices.

The chat around the Furedi breakfast bar must be interesting.

(Mr Furedi's state-funded colleague Ellie 'cut the umbilical cord, then kill them' Lee seems a scary woman. I bet she gets on well with her Pro-Choice Forum colleague Dr Stuart 'post-natal termination' Derbyshire.)

Wikipedia - Vatican Computer Airbrushes Gerry Adams

Thanks to a new online tool for interrogating the Wikipedia amendments log, it was revealed that BBC computers have been the source of over 7,000 Wikipedia edits.

Sam Tarran has picked up the story that allegations of Adams' involvement in murder have been removed from Wikipedia by someone using a Vatican computer.

Tsk tsk.

I Cleared Myself, I Sacrificed My Blues ...

In the end I reached the conclusion that 11 September had already brutally confirmed: there were other forces, far more malign than America, that lay in wait in the world. But having faced up to the basic issue of comparative international threats, could I stop the political reassessment there? If I had been wrong about the relative danger of America, could I be wrong about all the other things I previously held to be true ?

I tried hard to suppress this thought, to ring-fence the global situation, grant it exceptional status and keep it in a separate part of my mind. I had too much vested in my image of myself as a 'liberal'. I had bought into the idea, for instance, that all social ills stemmed from inequality and racism. I knew that crime was solely a function of poverty. That to be British was cause for shame, never pride. And to be white was to bear an unshakable burden of guilt. I held the view, or at least was unprepared to challenge it, that it was wrong to single out any culture for censure, except, of course, Western culture, which should be admonished at every opportunity. I was confident, too, that Israel was the source of most of the troubles in the Middle East. These were non-negotiables for any right-thinking decent person. I couldn't question these received wisdoms without questioning my own identity. And I had grown too comfortable with seeing myself as one of the good guys, the well-meaning people, to want to do anything that upset that image. I viewed myself as understanding, and to maintain that self-perception it was imperative that I didn't try to understand myself.

Guardianista Andrew Anthony follows the path of righteousness which many a good leftie has trod before him - another sinner on the road to redemption. Part 2 and part 3 also.

Predictably, it's controversial.






(the post title is from Joni Mitchell's song Court and Spark.

"All the guilty people," he said
"They've all seen the stain
On their daily bread
On their Christian names
I cleared myself
I sacrificed my blues ...")

Home Again, Home Again ...

Well that was nice - our house was within a shortish walk of this beach - though the tribe preferred the (biggish) waves at Caswell for bodyboarding. They spotted a wetsuited Ospreys and Wales star James Hook there on Thursday, two days before his fine game against Argentina.

The house had a wonderful library - lots on India and Africa - and I wished I could have stayed longer, only getting through Wilfred Thesiger's The Life Of My Choice and Charles Allen's Tales From The Dark Continent. Quite a few characters - like Angus Gillan and Hugh Boustead - feature in both.

More when the brain's back in gear.

That's Very Decent Of Them

"Portuguese press drive McCanns home"

Old Swansea Town Once More ...

blogging will be light to non-existent till next weekend.

NHS Direct ...

I got a call today from Susan, who's with her mother and the children in Gower. My in-law had left her tablets behind, but her GP said he'd fax a prescription if she could find a chemist that's open late tonight or tomorrow. Could I take a look on the Web ?

A quick Google gave me a list of pharmacies, but which were open out of hours ?

The Swansea Council website had a helpful link.

www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk

NHS Direct operates a 24-hour nurse advice and health information service, providing confidential information on what to do if you or your family are feeling ill, particular health conditions, local healthcare services, such as doctors, dentists or late night opening pharmacies, self help and support organisations.

Looked useful - followed the link. And look - there's a place at the bottom of the page to look for pharmacies by postcode.

Enter a postcode, check the pharmacy box and you end up here.

I don't know if any of you can get any results from that page, but I couldn't. I hadn't noticed the bit underneath saying :

This service is provided for people in England only. For local services information in other parts of UK please visit the NHS in Northern Ireland, the NHS in Scotland or the NHS in Wales.

Not to worry - I found another link to here.

"Enter a valid postcode or place name" - OK, "Swansea".

Apparently that's not a valid placename - after all, it's only a city of some 250,000 people.

It appears that the "National" Health Service is in practice "The NHS in England" - only unlike the Scots and Welsh, the name of the English nation is verboten. If you enter "SA3 2BT" on this page you're told :

This postcode can be classed within Wales.
Please visit the http://www.wales.nhs.uk/ for more information outside England.

Follow the link and you do indeed get a list of pharmacies - but no information on late opening.

With a sigh I dialled NHS Direct Wales - which turns out to be the same number as NHS Direct England . Fifteen minutes later I sat listening to a staff member typing in the same details on the same web pages.

"I'm sorry, I'm afraid I can't help you"

If you want information on out of hours pharmacies in Swansea, it seems the thing to do is to ring your 80-year-old aunt there. She walks up to the local shops, where a list of out-of-hours pharmacies is displayed in the chemist's window, copies them down and rings back.

I explained my problems with NHS Direct.

"I could have told you not to bother. Everybody knows they're a waste of time".

Free Up Mi Ganga

" ... 'tis called by the Moors, Gange, by the Chingalese, Comsa, and by the Portugals, Bangue ... (it) doth in a short Time, quite take away the Memory and Understanding, so that the patient understands not, nor remembereth any thing that he seeth, heareth, or doth, in that Exstasie, but becomes, as it were, a mere Natural, being unable to speak a Word of Sense; yet he is very merry, and laughs, and sings, and speaks Words without any Coherence, nor knowing what he saith or doth; yet he is not giddy, or drunk, but walks and dances, and sheweth many odd Tricks; after a little time he falls asleep, and sleepeth very soundly and quietly; and when he wakes, he finds himself mightily refresh'd, and exceeding hungry ...

'tis commonly made Use of, by the Heathen Priests, or rambling Mendicant Heathen Friars, who will many of them meet together, and every of them dose themselves with this Medicine, and then ramble several Ways, talking they know not what, pretending after that, they were inspired."

Robert Hooke, describing the effects of cannabis to a meeting of the Royal Society in London, 18th December 1689. (from Stephen Inwood's Hooke biography The Man Who Knew Too Much).


(The Chingalese are the Ceylonese, and the charming and sympathetic expression 'a natural' was used until the early twentieth century to describe a simpleton or mentally backward person. There's an echo there of the concept that the afflicted one was in some way sacred or touched by God. Today a natural would be described as having severe learning difficulties.)

Compare And Contrast

The BBC hand over a secretly recorded tape to the police. It shows senior BNP guys saying things like 'Islam is a wicked, vicious faith' and 'let's show these ethnics the door in 2004'.

The police and CPS prosecute. One trial fails to reach a verdict, so there's a second trial.




Channel 4 hand over a secretly recorded tape to the police. It shows senior Muslim clerics saying things like 'Christians and Jews are enemies of Muslims' and 'Take the homosexual man and throw him off the mountain'.

West Midland Police investigate the film - then investigate the film-makers and ask the CPS to consider prosecuting them for stirring up racial hatred.

The CPS was also asked by the police to consider whether a prosecution under the Public Order Act 1986 should be brought against Channel 4 for broadcasting a programme including material likely to stir up racial hatred. Miss David advised West Midlands Police that on the evidence available, there was insufficient evidence that racial hatred had been stirred up as a direct consequence of the programme. It would also be necessary to identify a key individual responsible for doing this together with an intent to stir up racial hatred, which was not possible.

West Midlands Police have taken account of this advice and explored options available to them and has now referred the matter to the broadcasting regulators Ofcom as a formal complaint.

Boom Bang-A-Bang

At last. Sky News reports on the "largest haul (of explosive chemical precursors) ever found at a house in this country".

Four containers of sulphur - gunpowder
A packet of magnesium ribbon - flares, incendiaries
A container of aluminium powder - improves the bang of most explosives. Churchill was very cross when in WW2 he discovered we weren't putting it in our bombs. Used by PIRA.
A container of magnesium powder - flares, incendiaries
Three containers of magnesium shreds - ditto
A bottle of nitric acid - can be used with toluene and sulphuric acid to make TNT. Generally useful if you want to make things go bang.
A bottle of hydrochloric acid - pass.
A bottle of phosphoric acid - pass
A bottle of acetic acid - eh ? Maybe he knows more about bangs than I do. Diluted and coloured with caramel, it is sometimes sold in chippies as a disgusting vinegar-substitute called euphemistically 'Non-Brewed Condiment'
Four containers of potassium nitrate - aka saltpetre. Gunpowder
A container of potassium perchlorate - useful oxidiser
A bottle of dimethyl sulfoxide - pass. Good solvent.
A bottle of chloroform - for the lovely Kerena ? Deadly if overdone, of course. Not heard of it going bang.
A container of sodium hydroxide - cleaning the drains.
A bottle of acetone - TATP ? Or Kerena's nail varnish ?
A bottle of toluene - see above
A bottle of methanol - not to be confused with big sister ethanol.
A bottle of ethanol - mix with water and lime juice. Very little hangover.
Two bottles of hydrogen peroxide - useful oxidiser, once used in rockets
Five bottles of hydrogen peroxide - ditto
Two bottles of potassium Iodide supplements - in case of nuclear strikes ?
A bottle of potassium permanganate - peroxide dissociates violently in the presence of pot permang, liberating lots of heat and oxygen, also steam which is not so useful.
A bottle of ammonia - for cleaning the windows
An ampoule of methadone chloride - no comment
Three containers of iodine crystals - surely he wouldn't try nitrogen tri-iodide ?
A bottle of hydrogen peroxide hair product - see above

As far as I know it's not illegal to possess any of the above.

The alleged rocket launchers vanished from press reports quite a while ago, seemingly now followed by the nuclear protection suits.

Robert Cottage got two and a half years after admitting possessing explosives. I find that slightly odd as he didn't actually possess any. But his sentence certainly bears out my observation that "a desire to make improvised explosive devices, when mixed with right-wing politics, can be extremely hazardous to your liberty." Compare his sentence with that of Edward Mattison, who not only made but detonated some quite large devices. He got less than half Cottage's sentence.

Mr Cottage at first glance wouldn't appear to have a great deal in common with Irfan Raja and his co-defendants, jailed for "possessing material for terrorist purposes" or "having articles for terrorism" - the BBC reporter can't make up his mind. But like Mr Cottage (and unlike Mr Mattison), they hadn't actually done anything.

Among the items found was a film showing atrocities against Muslims around the world, aimed at encouraging martyrdom, the Old Bailey was told.

We seem to be in the same territory where people who report on (true) crimes committed by one or other ethnic group are accused of 'stirring up racial hatred' - the truth or otherwise of their claims being apparently immaterial. Whether a film of atrocities is 'encouraging martyrdom' is surely a subjective judgement - and in any event, English culture and the Christian faith have venerated martyrs from Samson, whose pulling down of the Temple of Dagon would surely qualify as an act of terrorism, through John Wall and the Catholic Martyrs to the names once known to every English child through Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

These prosecutions seem to lie in a strange half-world - but closer to the political offence than the criminal act.


The defendants denied having extremist views and some said they were researching ideology and other matters.

Hang on. In a matter of criminal law why should their views count one way or the other ? Why's it so important for them not to be 'extremists' ?

Because motivation is all. Possessing items "likely to be of use for terrorism" is such a broad concept that in practice the 'likeliness' is decided not by what the items are, but what the accused may have wanted to do with them. The 9/11 murderers used Stanley knives and Microsoft Flight Simulator, but those of us who possess both are unlikely to get arrested at 5 am unless we start posting on jihadi websites while simultaneously researching flight deck door locking mechanisms and when the stewards bring the pilots coffee.

Similarly Omar Altimimi got nine years despite the police admitting that "we will never know exactly what Altimimi was preparing to do". He had built up a library of terror-related literature - but on those grounds Professor Paul Wilkinson should be inside.

The sad thing for Mr Cottage is that if gunpowder was all he wanted, why not just buy some fireworks and dismantle them ? Although the banger and the fearsome mortar are now banned, you can buy multi-shot cakes at very reasonable prices these days - enough I would have thought to construct the mother of all thunderflashes. (Not that I would encourage such things, as it's almost certainly illegal under some law or other). I guess Mr C just wanted to do it himself - to be self-sufficient. Just goes to show how British initiative is being stifled ... in the Land of the Free people still play here.

Other posts on the Great BNP Bomb Horror :

Not With A Bang But A Whimper

Half A Ton Of BNP Rice

Huge BNP Bomb War Horror Shock Apocalypse

It's Tin-Foil Hat Time ...

Tsk Tsk

Frog Almost Boiled

Brits during WW2 were horrified at the segregation of the US armed forces and were sympathetic to the black G.I.s - as recounted in this novel.

Churchill looked at the English outrage and pronounced :

"In countries where there is only one race, broad and lofty views are taken of the colour problem."

Newly released archives show Churchill's 1951 administration worrying about the Windrush generation and social cohesion. The Guardian story is written by a David Ward to make it appear that cabinet secretary Norman Brook considered them 'riff-raff', whereas the case "for excluding riff-raff" related to the Metropolitan Police finding that 40% of those convicted for pimping in London were "coloured". But you wouldn't expect the Guardian to do a straight report, would you ?

Churchill :

"Problems which will arise if many coloured people settle here. Are we to saddle ourselves with colour problems in UK ? Attracted by Welfare State. Public opinion in UK won't tolerate it once it gets beyond certain limits."

Let's just revisit the 'nation of immigrants', shall we ?

"David Maxwell-Fyfe, the home secretary, reported that the total of "coloured people" in Britain had risen from 7,000 before the second world war to 40,000 at the time of writing, with 3,666 of those unemployed, and 1,870 on national assistance, or benefits."

Home Secretary David Maxwell-Fyfe uttered a variation on Churchill's theme which still applies today :

"The col(onial) populations are resented in Liverpool, Paddington & other areas, by those who come into contact with them. But those who don't are apt to take Liberal view."

And those who didn't were many and influential. Maxwell-Fyfe was cautious :

" ... politically it would be represented & discussed on basis of a colour limitation. That would. offend the floating vote viz., the old Liberals. We should be reversing age-long tradition that British subjects have right of entry to mother-country of Empire. We should offend Liberals, also sentimentalists."

"Public opinion in UK won't tolerate it once it gets beyond certain limits". Even a great man doesn't get everything right.

The strategy for years and years was 'the immigrant population is a tiny minority of the total. Anyone feeling threatened by such a tiny minority must be an evil racist'. The water temperature rose slowly and the frog stayed put.

But that's changing. Trevor Phillips' "since the migrant and ethnic minority populations are still below 10%, we have a way to go before Britons feel threatened by pure numbers" may prove to be the last sighting outside of the Guardian comments. We're more into comments like these :

Immigration to Britain today is fundamentally different from previous settlements because it is changing the composition of the nation, the head of the Commission for Racial Equality said last night.

I think the real problem is that community cohesion ends the idea that a diverse society can be built without the white majority having to change very much.

A view of multiculturalism where no single group is perceived as dominant is needed to prevent a repeat of the inner city riots of the 1980s, communities minister David Miliband argued this week.

Now you used to have to be a swivel-eyed loon to pick this stuff up. It seems to be spreading to the MSM at last. Maybe the fact that the new incomers are white has reduced the liberal guilt and fear of being called a racist.

Britain's face is changing. More than half of all babies born in London last year were the children of foreign-born mothers. Across England and Wales, the figure was approaching a quarter. The biggest winners, apart from the migrants themselves, are the farmers and hoteliers who employ them at minimum-wage rates. The losers are the British craftsmen and cleaners, farm labourers and semi-skilled workers whose wages have been forced down as they compete in the labour market.

The most remarkable impact of recent migration is shown in birth statistics, calculated by the Office for National Statistics and revealed today.

These show that out of 669,000 babies born last year in England and Wales, 147,000, or 22 per cent, were the children of foreign-born mothers. A further six per cent had British-born mothers but foreign-born fathers. Among the foreign mothers, roughly a quarter were Asian, a quarter European, a quarter from Africa or the Caribbean, and a quarter from elsewhere.

The figures also show that British-born women have, on average, 1.6 children - less than the "replacement rate" needed to keep the population stable. Foreign-born women living in Britain have, on average, 2.2 children. The highest fertility rate is among women born in Pakistan but living in Britain, who have an average of 4.7 children.

The Government Actuary predicts that by 2031, Britain's population will have risen from 60 million to 67 million, with most of the growth due to net immigration. The increase is the equivalent of six new cities the size of Birmingham.



Hmmm. 22% + 6% - nearly 1 baby in three in 2006. And from an in-depth study of the Gloucestershire and Wiltshire stores of Poundland and Lidl, I think the Poles are only just starting to sprog seriously. The frog may find it a bit late to jump out of the pot.