Police Impound Koranic Toilet Seat Covers

And it's not even April.

The imam of the mosque in the town of Latina in the central Italian region of Lazio, Sheikh Yusuf, on 26 October heckled interior minister Giuliano Amato about the toilet seat as he presented Italy's new 'Charter of values, citizenship and integration' for immigrants' at Rome's Grand Mosque.

"This is an insult to the Muslim faith that we must react to," Yusuf called out to Amato, who reassured Yusuf, saying: "I would like to tell our friends from Latina that we have been informed of this matter and are taking action because it is offensive."

Frustrated by the Italian authorities' apparent inability to ban the offending toilet cover from stores in southern Lazio following complaints from local Muslims, Yusuf and other Muslims took their protest to the Arabic media.

Al-Quds al-Arabi reported that local Muslims are planning further non-violent protests against the toilet seat until it is removed from stores.

Imported from China and sold in Italy by the Orizzonte group, it is still in sale in six towns in the region, including Latina and Frosinone, many of them in local markets, according to the Arabic paper.

But according to local Italian media, a special investigative unit of the police had already begun probing the issue several days before Yusuf's verbal protest to Amato in Rome last month and seized 212 'Koranic' toilet seats from five supermarkets in the area, where they were on sale at 15 euros a piece.

A Couple of Jackdaws In the Curate's Chimney

The Shahid Malik libel trial, which I blogged here, has opened.

"Britain's first Muslim Government minister has launched a libel battle in the High Court over claims that he organised "gangs of Asian thugs" to intimidate voters in a local election. International Development Minister Shahid Malik is said to have "overseen and directed" up to 200 Asian Labour activists to help secure victory for a Muslim councillor.

Former Conservative councillor Jonathan Scott made the allegations in a letter to the Dewsbury Press newspaper after he was unseated as a local councillor. It describes how "Malik's ethnic entourage behaved no better than BNP thugs" on polling day in the Dewsbury South ward of Kirklees Council. The letter went on to claim that, "Malik convinced local Asian voters to vote for Labour candidates... on the grounds that those candidates were 'Muslim brothers'".

Malik said the letter was "his worst nightmare", and added: "In my line of work, if your integrity is damaged you have nothing left. "

Malik's lawyer Adam Wolanksi said the allegations were untrue and caused the 39-year-old MP for Dewsbury to be seen as "a racist and dangerous extremist who is unfit to hold public office"."

And Nigel "Enoch" Hastilow's contituency association has refused to accept his resignation. But he's doing the decent thing.

The former newspaper editor, who maintains his original comments were not racist, said: "I am very grateful for all the support I have received from my friends in the Halesowen and Rowley Regis constituency. Their backing has meant a great deal to me. However, I have no wish to be responsible for the constituency association finding itself at odds with the Conservative Party nationally. If an accommodation can be reached, then I would be delighted. But that is for others to determine. The constituency association must make its decisions in the best interests of the party locally and nationally. Halesowen and Rowley Regis is a crucial marginal constituency and what matters most is ensuring General Election victory here for the Conservative Party."

There's no way Cameron will compromise on this one, and no way Hastilow will embarrass him by clinging on. The constituency will have to either knuckle under or go it alone without him. We shall see.

There's A Small Postette

at Biased BBC.

Comet Holmes

Well, took a look last night and tonight - which is a beautiful clear night - but it's not a patch on the magnificent Hale-Bopp, which we drove to the Welsh Borders to look at ten years back, when it covered about a third of the horizon-zenith angle in a dark sky.

Comet Holmes looks with the naked eye like a small fuzzy round blob in the sky. With binoculars it looks like a fuzzy round blob in the sky, and with my mighty 130PM it looks like a fuzzy round blob with a centre. No tail, alas, because it's pointing away from us.


Photo - Sky and Telescope. At this time of night Cassiopeia is pretty much overhead with Perseus to the west of it.

Did You Know ...

Habeas corpus doesn't apply in Scotland ?

Recessional

Poets are prophets. There's no way Kipling could have predicted the British cultural collapse, or the Imperial retreat that accompanied it. Yet he foresaw it.



God of our fathers, known of old--
Lord of our far-flung battle line
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine--
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies;
The captains and the kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe--
Such boasting as the Gentiles use
Or lesser breeds without the law--
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard--
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee to guard--
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord!

We're Not Having Kids Part 382 - Susan Greenfield

All the above she has done while remaining childless, which she does not appear to regret in the slightest. In 2004 she told an interviewer: “I told him [Atkins] that I did not want children.” Today she says: “My then husband made it very clear he didn’t want them.” Perhaps it’s irrelevant who didn’t want what. As Greenfield had been put off motherhood years before by another man: “My brother. He’s 13 years younger than me. I was shocked at the horror of having babies and the smelly nappies and the sleepless nights. All that came as something truly horrible. Although we get on very well now, it came at a time in my life when I could neither be a little mum nor a playmate.”

Another intelligent, creative woman whose creativity and intelligence won't be passed on. Not having children certainly does wonders for the marriage - it appears to have been a question of dumping a stock when it fails to outperform the market.

Occasionally she has reason to drop people, notably her former husband. Peter Atkins, a millionaire chemist, believes that he was abruptly dumped in 2003 because, in his words, he had been “declared redundant”. She rebutted with the claim that, at the age of 52, she had “begun to question marriage as a necessary institution in the 21st century. It is important for all women to use their time in the best way they can, and when I thought about how busy I was with my public life, marriage to Peter no longer seemed the best way to spend any free time I had.”

OK, so her personality won't be passed on. But neither will her honesty.

I Wonder ...

Could the Hilary Beach, Labour Mayor of Chepstow, who asked if the Rifles could possibly leave their rifles behind ("I am very much against guns and think they are awful things") for the Remembrance Day parade, be the Hilary Beach who "currently works with and is known to the Gypsy Traveller families living on the local authority sites in South Gloucestershire."

If so, no wonder she doesn't like guns.

What's The Hebrew For "Chutzpah" ?

This story made me smile. Magnificent.

Lord Levy, the man who was at the centre of "cash-for-honours" allegations, has called for a change in the way political parties are funded.

In a speech at Cambridge University, former PM Tony Blair's fundraiser said he wanted a £50,000 cap on donations.



















































































(Yes, I know. But that made me smile too.)

Hmm ...

Ekklesia, the Christian-lite Guardian-at-prayer outfit, note Trevor Phillips' co-option of the Rev Joel Edwards, head of the Evangelical Alliance, onto the board of his super-equality quango, calling it "a historic opportunity for evangelicals to shift toward full acceptance of the equalities agenda."

I'd hope it was "a historic opportunity for soi-disant 'equality' campaigners to shift toward full acceptance of the evangelical agenda", myself. But there you go.

What's more worrying is if it's an attempt to get the good Reverend on board the Boat of Sin for a trip down the Tunnel of Debauchery, with optional excursions to yodel down the Valley of Love. Dr Edwards is a chap who talks an inordinate amount of good sense.

"Politicians are happy to embrace the pragmatic benefits of Britain’s faith communities who now have a seat at every conceivable table of policy making in Britain. But this is happening precisely at a time when the volume of legislation is going against the values of religious communities on a whole range of moral issues from abortion and human sexuality to family life and education. Public servants want our goods but not necessarily our gods."


Are they attempting to "stop his mouth with (taxpayer) gold", in the style which has been so effective with ex-firebrand Lee Jasper, once never off the radio as representative of this or that two-men-and-a-fax anti-racist organisation, now grown fat and somnolent on a rich diet of taxpayer dosh courtesy of Ken Livingstone ?

Will the Reverend stick to his guns or be bought off ? We shall see. Pray for him.

More Torture In The Community

Torturers and murderers - Craig Dodd (left), aged 17 and Ryan Palin, aged 15



Victim - David Atherton

That's the third trial this year in England of people for torturing and killing "vulnerable individuals". The other two are here.

The court heard Ryan Palin, of Grasmere Avenue, Orford, and Craig Dodd, of Lisguard Close, Runcorn spent months systematically abusing the victim, who had severe learning difficulties, in a process they nicknamed 'terroring'.

They regularly broke into his council flat on St Katherine's Way, Howley, where they wrote graffiti on the walls, burnt his hair and daubed his face with paint. On the night of his death in May 2006, the boys were seen by neighbours beating him with planks of wood until he bled. Days later his body was discovered floating in the River Mersey in Westy, Warrington.

Nice chaps. Originally sentenced to "life", whatever that means, Judge Rix (must be Brian Rix, although apparently his name is Bernard. His decisions are certainly farcial enough) reduced them to a minimum of three and three and a half years.

You can see a whole pageful of the cretins who take such decisions here. Curse them, and may they pay for their crimes - for such they are.

They're reserving the long sentences for the really dangerous guys.


via Martin Kelly

A Couple of Cold Gusts From The North

We've already seen primary age kids on speed, heroin and methadone.

Now cocaine ?

A police investigation has been launched after a five-year-old boy was rushed to hospital having swallowed a cocktail of illegal Class-A drugs. The boy, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was taken to Dundee's Ninewells Hospital on Saturday night after he was feared to have eaten cocaine and amphetamines at a property in the city. The drugs had allegedly been lying around in the flat in Dundee where he lives with his parents. He was released from hospital the same night after treatment. A police spokeswoman confirmed a criminal investigation was under way.

In other news, "prescriptions issued in Scotland for anti-depressants have risen more than four-fold in less than 15 years". No word on the number of kids who end up taking them, although a friend who works in a Glasgow practice can tell terrible tales of temazepam.

South of the Border there are also a few health problems. What amazes me about this story is that it doesn't seem to be big news any more. 116 deaths in three years from C. difficile and MRSA. And what about this statement ?

Mr Astley said: "Through monitoring mortality, we have been able to report death rates which other hospitals may not have had available. Our rates are comparable with the national average where C. difficile is known to have a mortality rate of between 6% and 12%. Through keeping a watchful eye on this we can take quick and appropriate action should rates begin to rise, but also learn from what we are doing well to help bring the rates down further."

Is he saying that between 1 in 19 and 1 in 8 NHS inpatients will die of a hospital-contracted infection ? Or does that mortality figure apply to people who get C. difficile ? I hope so.

Si Con Chavez !

If you know what's good for you.

Gunmen in Venezuela have opened fire on students returning from a peaceful march in Caracas against President Hugo Chavez's planned consitutional reforms.

Suicidal Scots

Double the English rate of homicide. Getting on for that in suicide, too (pdf) - 50% higher for men and almost double for women.

While the rate is high in some crime hotspots like Glasgow, there are whole swathes of rural Scotland (as well as Wales and rural England) where the rates are high. Agricultural policy ? Easily available 12-bores ?

The Ghost Remains

I dreamed I saw Enoch last night

Alive as you and me

Said I, "Enoch, you're nine years dead"

"I never died", said he

"I never died", said he

"a whiff of the lynch mob"

In such understated tones doth the BBC's Jon Dymond (21:39 in, RealAudio) report from Italy this morning on expulsions of Romanians, mostly gypsy Roma, from Italy.

I paraphrase : "none of the men have jobs - the women make a living by begging".

Just the kind of work the Italians won't do ... though in fairness he does visit a construction firm with lots of Romanian employees.

EU officials say Italy is acting within its rights provided it respects the union's criteria for expulsion of EU citizens and does not target a group. Under European law, EU countries can expel EU citizens who pose a public threat or who lack sufficient income. Italy is deporting some Romanians under a new decree aimed at tackling crime.

"It is possible to expel citizens of another [EU] state if they don't fulfil the [residency] criteria or represent a threat to public safety or public health," EU justice affairs spokesman Friso Roscam Abbing said on Monday.

Funny - in the UK, our judges decide that we can't deport Italians convicted of murder - or any other criminals from within the EU. They must have a different EU law over there - or could they have different judges.

Back to the banks of the Tiber :

The situation, already tense, reached a critical point in late October, when Nicolae Romulus Mailat, a Romanian citizen, was charged with the murder in Rome of Giovanna Reggiani.

Romanian authorities describe Mailat as an ethnic Roma (Gypsy). He had been living in an illegal shanty town at Tor di Quinto on the edge of Rome, inhabited mainly by Roma. Italy demolished the shacks there at the weekend.

At the time of EU enlargement Migrationwatch worried about how many of Eastern Europe's I.5 million Roma would turn up here. Expect a concerted Guardian campaign to entice this demonised and oppressed people to a country which has already shown it can deliver a warm welcome.

A Berkshire town has been struggling to cope with nearly 90 children who have arrived unaccompanied from Eastern Europe. The Roma children, one as young as ten, have apparently paid someone in Romania to send them to Slough. The Borough Council does not know why it has been singled out but has been forced to set up a special team and spend £150,000 helping the children. It has called for more government help to offset the strain on other services.

"What gets you respect over there is disgrace over here"

I've heard of parents sending the kids back to Jamaica or India for schooling, now Africa beckons :

Isaac, 17, from Norwood, in southeast London, said he became involved in gangs and stealing before his parents sent him to Ghana. After four years at school in Accra he is softly spoken and articulate and hopes to sit international GCSEs at the end of this academic year before returning to Britain for A-levels.

When they first arrive the teen-agers are often “a lot wilder”, said Amoo-Gottfried, but with time and discipline they become “domesticated”. He puts the troubles of the British pupils down to a lack of good role models - a reason many West Indian families cite for sending their children to school back home.

“In London father has run off to work early in the morning, mother the same. So you find the children left to themselves and, as they say, the devil finds work for idle hands. Here they see professional people – lawyers, doctors – whereas in the UK most of the Ghanaians are blue-collar workers.”

The list of consistent A, B and C grades on a results sheet pinned to the notice board is a source of pride and several of Amoo-Gottfried’s former pupils are now at British universities.

Michelle Asante, 23, attended Archbishop Porter girls’ school in Takoradi, Ghana, and went on to complete a sociology degree at Sheffield University before going to drama school.

“The school I was attending in Plumstead [southeast London] wasn’t great and my mum felt I wasn’t being challenged. There was a lot of fighting,” said Asante, who is now an actress. “Education is so important in Ghana – people take it as their only means of escaping poverty. With education you can do anything, no matter how poor you are.”

The pupils at Faith Montessori agree discipline in Africa can be tough but also see their lives changing for the better. Abena and “the London boys”, which includes James, 16, from Edmonton Green, north London, also admit that while they are benefiting from a Ghanaian education, they miss home and look forward to going back to A-levels and university.The years of mischief are behind them, Isaac said: “What gets you respect over there is disgrace over here.”

What gets you respect over there is disgrace over here. It used to get you disgrace here, too - before we learned better.

"This says nothing about the neighborhood"

"This says nothing about the neighborhood," said Noreen McClendon, executive director of Concerned Citizens of South Central Los Angeles.

We'll let you be the judge.

Unique Kiana Bishop has been convicted twice of burglary and once of petty theft in the last two years, police said. Her latest conviction came after a July 26 arrest for burglary in South Los Angeles. She spent 14 days in jail and was placed on probation after being convicted in the Norwalk branch of Los Angeles County Superior Court.

Meanwhile, close to where the brawl started, friends and family of the dead woman gathered at a makeshift memorial Tuesday. The mourners said it was unlike the 22-year-old to be involved in a violent dispute. "If she would've had any idea what she was getting into, she wouldn't have come," said Brenda Rowry, Shontae Treniece Blanche's aunt.

At her childhood home in a neighborhood about three miles northwest of the fatal confrontation, Blanche's grandmother and cousin remembered her as a popular girl and bank worker who was determined to avoid trouble. "She would tell me, 'I'm not going to be like my mom,' " said Helen Hayes, 60, who raised her granddaughter.

According to Hayes, both of Blanche's parents had been in and out of prison since Blanche was a young child. Blanche, who was five months' pregnant and married to a man in prison, was looking forward to a future as a mother and to graduating from Cal State Northridge.

(via)

More Canaries ...

OPne always has to be wary of stuff in the CiF comments boxes. How do you know they're not just invented ? Of course the same can apply to some of the CiF articles ... in the end you just have to trust the instincts - which means the danger of picking the stuff that fits in with your theories/prejudices and ignoring the rest.

In which spirit, this comment from yet another 'root cause' debate.

Back in 1999 I was working with homeless young people, and a number of them converted to what seemed to me to be a fairly radical form of Islam. These were not young people from Muslim families, but white kids from Christian/ atheist backgrounds, mostly girls who then adopted veils ranging from headdresses to burkas or niqabs. I thought at the time the appeal was twofold. Firstly, they were being offered moral certainty and clarity for the first time in their lives. For many of the girls, they welcomed the veil because it gave them a chance to think of themselves as being defined by something other than their sexual attractiveness. The other appeal, however, was simply that it became fashionable. Those that were "in" formed an exclusive club, and those that weren,t felt they were missing out.

My point is that we can't address this issue until we recognise how little our desperately vacuous, morally empty, celebs'n'shopping culture offers to all our young people, and the powerful sense of importance and belonging conveyed by involvement in "jihad". By all means stop the hatemongers from preaching, but we also need to take a good look at our society, and the world we are making for our children.

I'm just remembering a couple I met twenty years back, hippy travellers who left a convoy to live in the sticks in their decorated caravan. Nice people, and she was a pretty girl who used to drive the local bikers crazy by turning up at the pub in a purple string vest top which made looking her in the eye during conversation a real test of will power.

One day they went off, pretty much on a whim, thirty-odd miles north to visit a Krishna community living in a stately home near Worcester. One of the other bikers had visited and said it was an interesting Sunday out. Next thing I know they're living there, and she's in a sari up to the neck, explaining to me why women are so much less spiritual than men, and her duty to serve her husband.

"I'm Not Having It"

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

Via the Reactionary Snob, this :

A LOTTERY scratchcard has been withdrawn from sale by Camelot - because players couldn't understand it. The Cool Cash game - launched on Monday - was taken out of shops yesterday after some players failed to grasp whether or not they had won.

To qualify for a prize, users had to scratch away a window to reveal a temperature lower than the figure displayed on each card. As the game had a winter theme, the temperature was usually below freezing. But the concept of comparing negative numbers proved too difficult for some Camelot received dozens of complaints on the first day from players who could not understand how, for example, -5 is higher than -6.

Tina Farrell, from Levenshulme, called Camelot after failing to win with several cards. The 23-year-old, who said she had left school without a maths GCSE, said: "On one of my cards it said I had to find temperatures lower than -8. The numbers I uncovered were -6 and -7 so I thought I had won, and so did the woman in the shop. But when she scanned the card the machine said I hadn't.

"I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher - not lower - than -8 but I'm not having it. I think Camelot are giving people the wrong impression - the card doesn't say to look for a colder or warmer temperature, it says to look for a higher or lower number. Six is a lower number than 8. Imagine how many people have been misled."

A Camelot spokeswoman said the game was withdrawn after reports that some players had not understood the concept. She said: "The instructions for playing the Cool Cash scratchcard are clear - and are printed on each individual card and in the game procedures available at each retailer. However, because of the potential for player confusion we have decided to withdraw the game."

More than 15m adults in Britain have poor numeracy - the equivalent of a G or below at GCSE maths. Almost three times as many UK adults (15.1m) have poor numeracy - the equivalent of a G or below at GCSE maths - than with poor literacy skills, according to the government's Skills for Life survey.

Peter Hall, of the Association of Teachers of Mathematics, said: "The concept of minus numbers is something we would cover with 11 or 12 year olds, and we would expect them to have come across it before".