Taxpayer-Funded Jihad

We've known for decades that left-wing causes are financed with taxpayers money - the pro-criminal, anti-punishment Centre For Crime and Justice Studies at Kings College London being just the latest example (see Ross F and Pommygranate).

You didn't think that radical Islam would fail to pick up on this, did you ?

Public libraries serving the densest population of Muslims in London have been inundated with extremist literature, according to a report. Multiple copies of books were found in Tower Hamlets that would feature on any jihadist reading list, the report obtained by the BBC said. Tower Hamlets Council said their Islamic collections had been imbalanced, but they were improving.

The report is available here (pdf).

By 'inundated' they don't mean someone's leaving leaflets on the tables. We're paying for this stuff.

It is to be expected – and indeed applauded – that public libraries in areas with large Muslim populations should be receptive and responsive to the interests of local people. However it now appears that because of mistakes by library staff, or the presence of ideologues in the library system, a number of publicly-funded libraries – in Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, Birmingham and Blackburn – now stock excessively large collections of certain Islamic texts designed to incite hatred and violence.
In the opinion of the authors of this report, there is no harm in libraries stocking a small number of radical Islamic texts alongside a larger number of mainstream Islamic works and critical texts – just as a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf could be legitimately stocked in sections dealing critically with the Third Reich. However if the Second World War section of a library was stocked largely with books by Hitler and his followers, or if such books were stocked in a libraries’ ‘spirituality’ or ‘selfhelp’ section, questions would rightly be asked. Equally it is unhelpful for libraries to present books by radical authors such as Maududi, Qutb and ibn Abdul Wahhab as neutral guides to Islamic practices and beliefs.

It is not the aim of this study to point fingers and ask how so many libraries, including eight council-run libraries in the heart of Tower Hamlets (one of the UK’s most Muslim areas), have became saturated with extreme Islamist books. Certainly negligence has played a role; maybe senior library staff are unaware of the content of books in Arabic, Bengali and Urdu. However, the huge number of such books, in all languages, makes it unlikely that so many intolerant, and often violent, texts could have been acquired purely by accident. Whatever the cause, it is time that the UK’s library services regained control of their collections.

More On Stephen Sedley

I'm presuming this is papa - someone tell me if I'm wrong :

Bill Sedley

Born in 1910 in London of a Jewish immigrant family, Bill Sedley became a graduate in economics and law. He operated a legal advice service in the East End of London in the 1930s. Sedley was especially known for his defence of tenants’ rights in 1938-9 and for providing support for squatters’ rights and mortgage strikes after the war.

He founded the firm of lawyers of Seifert and Sedley in the 1940s with Sigmund Seifert and was a life-long Communist and supporter of the Morning Star even until his last days; he died in 1985.

Morning Star July 7th 1985

Stephen Sedley doesn't like George Orwell.

According to this Staggers piece on radical lawyers young Stephen was indeed a communist. They also say :

Some of the radical lawyers, though not all, had a grounding in Marxist politics. The chambers Cloisters was known as the Kremlin, the firm Seifert Sedley generally regarded as communist.

While not quite making the connection twixt Seifert Sedley and Stephen Sedley. But if you google "Seifert stephen sedley" you find quite a few cases where Seifert Sedley's man in court is one Stephen Sedley. This one, for instance, where "Stephen Sedley QC" is representing the plaintiff, the late Blair Peach, on behalf of Seifert Sedley.



(comments off on this post to prevent the Global Zionist Conspiracy getting its daily constitutional airing)

New Government Announcement

Be it enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—

Protection of the People Act 2007

1 In all legislation which has received the Royal Assent at the time of passing this bill -

(1) The following changes to such legislation shall take effect as from this date -

(a) remove the word 'subject', inasmuch as it refers to an individual person, likewise the word 'citizen', and

(b) replace with the word 'suspect'

Justice Sedley - Totalitarian

Didn't he used to be a member of the Communist Party ? Looks like you can take the man out of the Party, but it's harder to get the Party out of the man.

The whole population and every UK visitor should be added to the national DNA database, a senior judge has said. Lord Justice Sedley said the current database, which holds DNA from crime suspects and scenes, was "indefensible" because it was unfair and inconsistent.

Why's it unfair ? Because some ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented. Whitey - and the Chinese - and the Jews - and Koreans - and Indians) just doesn't commit enough crime.

Sir Stephen Sedley, who is one of England's most experienced appeal court judges, said: "Where we are at the moment is indefensible. We have a situation where if you happen to have been in the hands of the police then your DNA is on permanent record. If you haven't, it isn't... that's broadly the picture. It means that people who have been arrested but acquitted, some of them because they are innocent, some of them because they are just lucky, all stay on the database. It means where there is ethnic profiling going on disproportionate numbers of ethnic minorities get onto the database. It also means that a great many people who are walking the streets and whose DNA would show them guilty of crimes, go free."

I'm not sure we should be keeping the DNA of those arrested but not convicted, but let it pass. The suggestion that we should all be on the resgister just to keep some minorities company, so to speak, is outrageous. My contempt for this cretin knows no bounds.


UPDATE - I'd spit in his face if I didn't think he'd take a swab.

Money, men and women

Interview at Gene Expression with economic historian Greg Clark.

"I came to economics as an undergraduate expecting, as is the central view of economics, that the explanation for wealth and poverty would ultimately be located in social institutions and that people everywhere have basically the same aspirations and abilities.

But unlike most of my colleagues in economics I have always been interested in the mechanisms, and the fine details, of how things actually function. Much of modern economics is entirely theoretical, and even most empirical work in economics involves just looking at very high level correlations between variables such as income per person and education, or democracy, or the openness of trade.

When I set out in my PhD thesis to try and explain differences in income internationally in 1910 I found that asking simple questions like "Why could Indian textile mills not make much profit even though they were in a free trade association with England which had wages five times as high?" led to completely unexpected conclusions. You could show that the standard institutional explanation made no sense when you assembled detailed evidence from trade journals, factory reports, and the accounts of observers. Instead it was the puzzling behavior of the workers inside the factories that was the key."

Clark came to the conclusion that it's differences between the British and Indian workers themselves - maybe their culture, maybe their genes - that explained the difference. Naturally Laban will be on the side of the culture club. Some say that the recipe for economic success and productivity lies in the rule of law, limited government, property rights and sound currency - and Clark points out that these things existed in Britain for a long time before the Industrial Revolution.

They certainly didn't of themselves produce free markets - think of the guilds and the monopolies. And it's not genes that make the difference between 14th and 18th century Britain, unless the history books are missing something out. The culture must have changed between Edward I and Adam Smith.

I wonder how much sea trade, unregulated by guilds and monopolies and often exposed to competition (often decided by firepower rather than price, I admit - like some forms of competition today), although with its own complications of letters patent and financing, contributed to the idea of a free market - an idea that didn't seem at all obvious to many of our mediaeval forebears.

In a related big-human-theme vein (via), Professor Roy Baumeister on Men and Women.

The first big, basic difference has to do with what I consider to be the most underappreciated fact about gender. Consider this question: What percent of our ancestors were women?

It’s not a trick question, and it’s not 50%. True, about half the people who ever lived were women, but that’s not the question. We’re asking about all the people who ever lived who have a descendant living today. Or, put another way, yes, every baby has both a mother and a father, but some of those parents had multiple children.

Recent research using DNA analysis answered this question about two years ago. Today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men.

I think this difference is the single most underappreciated fact about gender. To get that kind of difference, you had to have something like, throughout the entire history of the human race, maybe 80% of women but only 40% of men reproduced.

Right now our field is having a lively debate about how much behavior can be explained by evolutionary theory. But if evolution explains anything at all, it explains things related to reproduction, because reproduction is at the heart of natural selection. Basically, the traits that were most effective for reproduction would be at the center of evolutionary psychology. It would be shocking if these vastly different reproductive odds for men and women failed to produce some personality differences.

For women throughout history (and prehistory), the odds of reproducing have been pretty good. Later in this talk we will ponder things like, why was it so rare for a hundred women to get together and build a ship and sail off to explore unknown regions, whereas men have fairly regularly done such things? But taking chances like that would be stupid, from the perspective of a biological organism seeking to reproduce. They might drown or be killed by savages or catch a disease. For women, the optimal thing to do is go along with the crowd, be nice, play it safe. The odds are good that men will come along and offer sex and you’ll be able to have babies. All that matters is choosing the best offer. We’re descended from women who played it safe.

For men, the outlook was radically different. If you go along with the crowd and play it safe, the odds are you won’t have children. Most men who ever lived did not have descendants who are alive today. Their lines were dead ends. Hence it was necessary to take chances, try new things, be creative, explore other possibilities. Sailing off into the unknown may be risky, and you might drown or be killed or whatever, but then again if you stay home you won’t reproduce anyway. We’re most descended from the type of men who made the risky voyage and managed to come back rich. In that case he would finally get a good chance to pass on his genes. We’re descended from men who took chances (and were lucky).

So the men went out to try risky things, while the women played safe and waited for the best offer. In the words of a famous evolutionary biologist :

"You are just like all women. They are ever content to build their lives on any incidental position that offers itself; whilst men would fain make a globe to suit them."

Thomas Hardy, The Return Of The Native

But hold on - WHY did the men have to build ships and go off, or do other things to differentiate themselves ? Why couldn't they just stay put like the women and have one mate each ?

"For men, however, it was more a matter of beating out lots of other men even to have a chance for a mate" - that surely implies a lot of men wanted all the women (or as many as they could) for themselves - and presumably were willing to kill for them. We're back in Lawrence Keeley country, where warfare was endemic and a large percentage of males died violently before they could reproduce - but the women survived. At the prehistoric massacre site of Crow Creek, the bones of young women are under-represented. No prizes for guessing their fate.


So all of that culture and sex difference comes from our need to reproduce. And those novels and movies where the heroine prefers the bad lad to the steady guy, Heathcliffe to Linton, those complaints that 'women go for bastards' or that 'every woman loves a fascist' - there is or was some evolutionary truth there. Zar, zan, zamin - gold, women and land - that's apparently what the chaps really really want.

This makes me wonder again - because after all, we're (we being the native Brits) stopping reproduction - and a group generally considered to be the poorest and most deprived in the UK are, in reproductive terms, by far the most successful.

Just A Thought ...

The exit from Basra isn't a clearing the decks operation, is it ? On the grounds that the Shias are going to be pretty cross if/when Iranian nuclear plants get clobbered ?

Probably not. Probably just Gordon showing he's not Tony.

The Poisoned Wells of Bangladesh

I've been aware of this dreadful story for a few years now - how aid projects dug (literally) millions of deep wells for Bangladeshi villagers - protecting them from the diseases associated with surface water, but exposing them to deadly levels of arsenic in what the World Health Organisation called "the largest mass poisoning of a population in history". (They went on to say "... the scale of this environmental disaster is greater than any seen before ...beyond the accidents at Bhopal ...and Chernobyl").

Dalrymple as usual makes some valid points.


Let us suppose that a commercial mining company had, in the course of its operations, poisoned the water supply of 70,000,000 people in this quite specific way. Would that have been regarded as "a sad irony", an unintended consequence of its search for profit, or perhaps as something rather more sinister and indeed typical of the way such companies operate? Would there not have been large demonstrations, probably turning soon to violence, against that company by those in the developed world who habitually express their solidarity with the impoverished victims of exploitation by their own nations' multinationals? It is unlikely that we would ever hear the end of the matter - in such a case, quite rightly.

When people buy their UNICEF Christmas cards, how many of them know what the organisation, and others like it, have wrought in Bangladesh?

I have a few friends who are aid workers - brave, adventurous types - just the kind of people who would have made terrific District Officers in the days of Empire. It's an interesting irony that they're nearly all left wing.

As I quickly discovered in Tanzania and elsewhere, foreign aid offers a lucrative career in good working conditions to middle class people of the developed world who want a little adventure in their lives, and who would once have been colonial officers; and it offers tempting opportunities for malversation of funds to their bureaucratic counterparts in the Third World. This symbiosis is the natural consequence of asking precisely the wrong question: not where wealth comes from, but where poverty comes from.

Separated At Birth

Sharif Gawad, cheerful right-wing ideologue.


Sunny Hundal, cheerful left-wing ideologue, blogger and Guardianista.


(It's not just the beard. The photos both have that lost-sixpence-found-a-fiver look - or as my late mother would say, "ten bob each-way on themselves !" I'm sure they're not really like that).

A Few Old Paint Tins From The Curate's Skip

Michael Portillo, born-again liberal, on immigration :

The biggest single change in postwar Britain is the transformation in who the British are.

The new diversity of races and religions makes a big difference to life in the UK. Some places have changed their appearance and norms of behaviour entirely. Many people will applaud the transformation for the diversity and enrichment that it has brought. But if the alteration of Britain can be presented in such positive terms, then it is all the more remarkable that it has occurred without the British people’s consent being sought.

There are many things in life that are commendable in small quantities, but pernicious in large ones. Why should immigration be any less debatable than tax? If one quarter of the UK’s new babies now have a foreign parent, is it fine to argue that it would be preferable if it were one in two, but disgraceful to suggest that one in eight would be better ?

His conclusion ? it's probably not good that the subject's pretty much off limits, but the Tories lost the last two elections, so there you are.

More on Open Britain - health tourism :

A confidential internal report on health tourism estimates that the bill for treating foreign patients amounts to at least £62 million a year, The Times has learnt.

The figure is “bound to be an underestimate” since new rules intended to prevent the abuse of the NHS by foreign patients are being ignored, according to the report.

Surprise surprise - maternity and HIV seem to be big targets. Does maternity also feature a 'free citizenship' bonus, which with extra 'right to family life' has the possibility of opening up residence to the parents as well ?


As we leave Basra, is the surge working in Baghdad ?

Peter Oborne on the corruption of the British political class.

I learned to swim late in life, in my mid-twenties, and having done so learned to dive here - they had a 10 metre platform in those days, the height Olympic divers use. Now it's 5m - and there are only six 10m platforms left in the whole UK, with the obvious effect upon the sport. Our old friend health and safety seems to be the culprit.

Luvvie Laughs

Great new comedy writing in the Observer, when somebody calling herself "Julie Delpy" creates a hilarious caricature of a wealthy liberal actress who really, really cares about 'the poor' :

Of course, Sarkozy thinks he's a little American, looking busy all the time. Maybe he should come over to the States and see how the poor are getting on ...

Though my home is now Los Angeles ...

Shame

I wonder how many of us raised in poor working-class communities, who became the first generation to go to university, recognise this picture, from John Lloyd's review of Andrew Anthony's The Fallout ? Not necessarily in relation to racism. I can remember being uneasy (a student with a full grant and some scholarship money), when I talked with my uncles, steelworkers who would rise at 5.30 am to go to their shifts. They just didn't have much sympathy, to put it mildly, for people who lived for years on benefits. At Uni the Claimants Union movement was in full swing, and 'ripping off the State' was in theory bringing the Revolution that much closer. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa ...

Anthony uses an account of his early years as a vivid, emotively charged account of a working class-born, council house-raised and comprehensive school-educated boy who came to question his parents' outlook. In one instance cited, his mother asked her local councillor why it was that she, a model tenant for many years, had become a much lower priority for rehousing than a newly arrived immigrant family. The councillor to whom Mrs Anthony complained was Tessa Jowell, until recently Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport; she gave her complaining constituent 'a brusque lecture on racism'.

This vignette recalls progressive, especially London, politics of the Seventies and Eighties, where largely middle-class politicians of the left did do good, did keep the local machines going, but with an overlay of moralising political correctness which assumed prejudice on the part of a white working class and innocence on the part of those with darker skins. In a comment which must be a painful memory, Anthony observes that at university, his 'enlightened concern was that she [his mother] didn't do or say anything that could be construed as racist ... I was now outside, like an anthropologist, looking in'.

With a similar, if rural, experience of growing up, getting out and looking back with contempt, I was hugely impressed and moved by the sad delicacy of his recreation of his mother, the regret that she should have been a victim of his newly adopted radical disapproval.

"Now he has suffered the consequences hasn't he?"

Anop Singh seems to have more of a grasp of what works and what doesn't than "Deborah Glass, IPCC commissioner for London and the South East". The consquences of his bad behaviour - he trousers 4K of our money courtesy of the Met - for the officers who tackled it, innovatively and with humour, written warnings on their records.

If you want less of something, don't subsidise it.

(via PC Bloggs)

Ian McKellen - Bible-Basher

"Yes it is true," responded McKellen in even tones. "Its Leviticus 18:22 that I object to, or is it 22:18, I've always got to look it up. Thou shalt not lie with a man as with a woman, it is an abomination. And they, I think the punishment for an abomination was being stoned to death," he said.

McKellen added, "I think it's rather obscene and pornographic, and shouldn't be there, so I remove it."

Asked how many bibles he has vandalized, McKellen replied, "I have no idea, but other people do it as well, people send me evidence that they have been removing that."

McKellen has been vandalizing bibles in the same fashion for at least a few years. He first admitted publicly to the activity in 2004 in an interview with the UK Telegraph.

I'm presuming Mr McKellen doesn't stay at Malaysian hotels.


(via iFeminists)

Council By-Elections

24dash :

Analysis of 11 comparable contests over August suggests a projected nationwide Tory lead over Labour of 12.5%, a bleak message for the Prime Minister as he ponders whether to face the voters in the autumn. This week's by-elections saw Tories defend two marginals - against Labour in Newport North, Isle of Wight, and the Green Party at Nailsworth, Stroud District, Gloucestershire. In a third contest at Epping Forest District, Essex, the BNP narrowly defended a seat at Loughton Alderton against a challenge from a residents' candidate. Out of the 11 comparable by-elections this month, only one produced a Labour performance sufficient at a General Election to see it narrowly retain power.

So that's three - two Tories and a BNP. Results via John Hemming.

Epping Forest DC, Loughton Alderton
BNP 393 (32.2; -5.4), Residents 367 (30.1; +1.0), Con 163 (13.3; -3.1), LD
Neil Woollcott 172 (14.1; +10.5), Lab 98 (8.0; -5.2), UKIP 28 (2.3; +2.3).
Majority 26. Turnout 36.7%. BNP hold. Last fought 2006.

Isle of Wight UA, Newport North
Con 207 (35.5; -3.0), LD Liam Verstraeten 189 (32.4; +3.9), Lab 137
(23.5; -9.5), UKIP 25 (4.3; +4.3), Ind 23 (3.9; +3.9), Ind 2 (0.3; +0.3).
Majority 18. Turnout 30.0%. Con hold. Last fought 2005.

Stroud DC, Nailsworth
Con 857 (44.5; +6.1), Green 810 (42.0; +4.1), Lab 261 (13.5; +0.2), [LD
(0.0; -5.1)], [UKIP (0.0; -5.3)].
Majority 47. Turnout 38.0%. Con hold. Last fought 2007

UKIP's absence saved the Tories in Stroud, their presence nearly did for the BNP in Essex. Cliff-hanger in Newport. Two more from John Hemming again :

Suffolk CC, Thedwastre South
LD Penny Otton 927 (41.8; +7.5), Con 833 (37.5; -9.4), Green 287 (12.9;
+12.9), Lab 88 (4.0; -14.8), UKIP 85 (3.8; +3.8).
Majority 94. Turnout 32.4%. LD gain from Con. Last fought 2005

Havering, Squirrels Heath:
Conservative 1828
Havering Residents Association 310
Labour 210
National Liberal Party, the Third Way 170
UKIP 134


No surprise in Havering, but UKIP and Greens take Tory votes, and tactical Labour defections give an LD gain in Suffolk. Four more :

Blaenau Gwent County Borough - Blaina: Ind 381, Lab 315, Ind 310, No description 49. (June 2004 - Three seats Lab 860, Ind 777, Ind 661, Lab 595, Lab 404, Ind 342). Ind hold.

Gloucestershire County - Lansdown, Park and Warden Hill: C 2208, Lib Dem 1605, Lab 226, Green 184. (May 2005 - Two seats C 3812, 2962, Lib Dem 2561, 2343, Lab 998, Green 968, Lab 832). C hold. Swing 1.1% Lib Dem to C.

Portsmouth City - Fratton: Lib Dem 1196, C 496, Lab 144, English Democrats 131, Green 56, Ind 17. (May 2007 - Lib Dem 1391, C 571, Lab 310, English Democrats 212). Lib Dem hold. Swing 0.6% C to Lib Dem.

Ryedale District - Sheriff Hutton: C 348, Ind 299. (May 2007 - C 386, Ind 367). C hold.

Blimey - those old tribal loyalties are sure breaking down. The Blaina and Fratton votes would have Ernie Bevin or Nye Bevan rotating in their graves if they were alive today. Last but by no means least - Shadwell and Elmbridge :

Elmbridge Borough - Walton Ambleside: Con 310, Walton Society 252, Lab 60, Ukip 33, Lib Dem 26. (May 2007 - Con 431, Walton Society 281, Lib Dem 94, Lab 90). Con hold. Swing 0.7% Con to Lab.

Tower Hamlets Borough - Shadwell: Respect 1512, Lab 1415, Con 476, Lib Dem 98. (May 2006 - Three seats Respect 1851, 1789, 1707, Lab 1287, 1141, 1054, C 723, 670, 605, Lib Dem 226). Respect hold. Swing 6.7% Respect to Lab.



Apparently "Delirious party members and supporters then marched down Brick Lane, the heartland of Respect's East End power base, cheering their way to a celebration meal well into the night.

(Nulab candidate) Keith may have been badly damaged by his gaffe earlier this week when he falsely accused the Tories of wanting to 'burn down' Shadwell's Sonali Gardens Asian elders day centre.

For Respect, their victory was crucial. Defeat could have meant disaster, an end to their East End power base.

But having beaten a massive Labour campaigning operation with sheer legwork, the boost to its morale is now huge.

The turnout at Shadwell was almost 40 per cent, well down from 46.2 per cent at last year's local elections, and included 504 postal votes, mostly for Labour."

There was some fuss about an alleged assault on Respect activist Carol Swords. From the bruising in the picture someone has grabbed her by the arms very firmly, as it appears you'd need to if you wanted either to stop her or move her. Lenin's comments say her fingers were broken. Tsk tsk.

As I wrote two years back :

Traditionally Labour has been the party of immigrants, but a point will be reached at which they (Labour) are not needed any more and with a cry of 'so long and thanks for all the outreach workers' the Muslim vote will depart. The divorce will be messy.

"The immigrant trickle that became a flood"

Graham Stewart in the Times :

A century hence, what will historians consider the most significant social change to Britain during the Blair years? Quite possibly they will conclude it was how immigration transformed the country. One in four children born in Britain last year had a foreign parent. This changing ethnicity has been further accentuated by a growing flight of British citizens, almost 200,000 of whom emigrated last year.

From a historical perspective, the emigration of this many native Britons is not so remarkable. Paradoxically, the greater Victorian Britain became, the more its workforce sought opportunities abroad — not just in the empire but also in the United States.

By contrast, today’s rate of immigration is producing the most significant change in the national make-up in 900 years. Indeed, it is noteworthy how relatively small waves of immigration nonetheless perturbed the natives. To his eternal shame, Edward I expelled England’s Jews even although they numbered much more than 5,000 very useful subjects. By the mid-15th century there were perhaps fewer than 16,000 foreigners living among England’s 2.5 million inhabitants.

And it is unclear why Elizabeth I felt the need to complain about there being “of late divers blackmoores brought into this realme, of which kinde of people there are already here to manie”. Even when their numbers peaked in 1770, it is estimated that there were only 14,000 black people, or 0.2 per cent of the population. In the first decades of the 20th century, the entire nonwhite population of Britain may not have greatly exceeded 10,000.

As for asylum-seekers, they hardly swamped England. About 50,000 French Huguenots fleeing Louis XIV’s crackdown on Protestantism settled and formed a distinct community in East London. However, they were only about 0.7 per cent of the population in 1700. A similar influx did not follow until the end of the 19th century when about 120,000 Jews fled Tsarist persecution. About 70,000 sought refuge from Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Again, this represented a fraction of 1 per cent of the national population.

In between, there had been a big mid-19th-century flow of Irish to the mainland, but this was a population shift within the UK. There were also modest increases in the number of Europeans seeking work here. But the proportion of German and Italian-born residents in Britain in 1911 still comprised less than 0.2 per cent of the population.

Eastern European migrants filled skill shortages after the Second World War and “mass” Commonwealth immigration took hold in the 1950s. But even these changes are dwarfed by the inflow of the past decade, with official net immigration running at about 300,000 a year. In historical terms, it is quite an experiment.

I'm sure this will turn out to be Blair's great legacy, although he only accelerated an existing trend.

Compare And Contrast

Three years probation for a series of sexual assaults.

A £500 fine for slapping in the face and racially abusing a man who had damaged her car in an unprovoked attack.


(thanks to anon in the comments)

Two Stories

White people living in the UK's second biggest city are likely to find themselves in a minority in 20 years' time, according to researchers. A team of demographers from Manchester University has claimed that the number of white people living in Birmingham will be overtaken by the number of those with other ethnic origins by 2027. The news came as it emerged that 35 towns and cities in Britain have at least one ward which is "minority white". And experts have already forecast that Leicester could become the first city in which white people are a minority in four years' time.

The work is that of one Dr Steven 'Ludi' Simpson, so it comes with obligatory 'nothing to do with immigration' spin. For which see here.

Whites are now in the minority in one third of America's most populous counties and, overall, outnumbered in nearly one in 10 of the nation's 3,141 counties, according to new analysis of census data. The shift reflects the increasing diversity of the US, the result of immigration particularly from Central and South America and the higher birth rate among blacks and Hispanics.

The one thing I'm a little leery of is Dr Simpson's use of 'whites'. Given the million-odd Eastern Europeans in the UK, that particular category won't tell us how quickly the Native Brits are being replaced.

The Usual Suspects

Howard League, NAPO, Pauline Campbell and some new pro-criminal bunch called SmartJustice write to the Guardian to say 'don't lock them up'.

Unemployment Claimants By Constituency

Here (pdf).

Top of the list for Jobseekers Allowance is Clare Short's Ladywood, with 24.5% of males and 10% of females claiming. Of the top 25, all are Labour except for one Sinn Fein and one Respect.

The bottom 25 are all Tory or Lib Dem, with Lib Dem Gordon and West Aberdeenshire having the lowest percentage of claimants.

Now if only I could find the equivalent for incapacity benefit, that Glasgow and Liverpool could take their rightful places !

Hmmm...

From the Normblog profile of writer Elizabeth Baines :

Do you think you could ever be married to, or in a long-term relationship with, someone with radically different political views from your own? > No way.

What do you consider the most important personal quality? > The ability to see others' points of view.