Bad Boys, Good Mothers

Posted by: DNT WATCH DAT, ENDZ INIT on 5:23pm Fri 4 Jul 08

I KNEW BUGZ AKA DIS UTE...HE DONT DESERVE TO DIE BUT WHENEVER SOMEONE GETS KILLED THE MEIDA AND BLACK PEOPLE LIKE TO BE BLAME THE RACE. I AM BLACK AND A SINGLE DAD, I WOKE A FULL TIME JOB TO PROVIDE A BETTER LIFE FOR MY KIDS. WHATS NOT HELPING THE KIDS IS PEOPLE MAKING EXCUSES ABOUT THE RACE. IN SOME CASES INFACT MOST IT MIGHT BE HARDER BECAUSE YOUR BLACK BUT THEY ARENT GOING TO BE DETERMINED TO SUCSEED IF THE ROLE MODELS THEY LOOK UP TO ARE SAYING THIS AND THAT CAN HAPPEN BECAUSE YOUR BLACK. SHAK HAD ROBBED ALOT OF PEOPLE AND WAS A MEMBER OF A GANG...FACT....NOW LIKE I SAID NO1 DESERVES THIS BUT HIS VICTIMS DIDNT DESERVE WHAT THEY GOT. RIP BUGZ. MY THOUGHTS ARE WITH YOUR FAMILY. ITS SUCH ASHAME YOULL BE FORGOTTEN ABOUT IN A FEW YEARS WHEN IF YOU WAS ALIVE YOU COULD OF TURND YOUR LIFE AROUND AND BEEN A HAPPY PERSON.[bold]bold[/bold]

I KNEW BUGZ AKA DIS UTE...HE DONT DESERVE TO DIE BUT WHENEVER SOMEONE GETS KILLED THE MEIDA AND BLACK PEOPLE LIKE TO BE BLAME THE RACE. I AM BLACK AND A SINGLE DAD, I WOKE A FULL TIME JOB TO PROVIDE A BETTER LIFE FOR MY KIDS.

WHATS NOT HELPING THE KIDS IS PEOPLE MAKING EXCUSES ABOUT THE RACE. IN SOME CASES INFACT MOST IT MIGHT BE HARDER BECAUSE YOUR BLACK BUT THEY ARENT GOING TO BE DETERMINED TO SUCSEED IF THE ROLE MODELS THEY LOOK UP TO ARE SAYING THIS AND THAT CAN HAPPEN BECAUSE YOUR BLACK.

SHAK HAD ROBBED ALOT OF PEOPLE AND WAS A MEMBER OF A GANG...FACT....NOW LIKE I SAID NO1 DESERVES THIS BUT HIS VICTIMS DIDNT DESERVE WHAT THEY GOT.

RIP BUGZ. MY THOUGHTS ARE WITH YOUR FAMILY. ITS SUCH ASHAME YOULL BE FORGOTTEN ABOUT IN A FEW YEARS WHEN IF YOU WAS ALIVE YOU COULD OF TURND YOUR LIFE AROUND AND BEEN A HAPPY PERSON.

Posted by: unknown, ldn on 7:02pm Sat 5 Jul 08

the gal dat was with the youth set up shakilas. she was goin to meet him but she brought them boys to beat him up.

the gal dat was with the youth set up shakilas.
she was goin to meet him but she brought them boys to beat him up.

Posted by: me, pettswood on 2:29pm Fri 4 Jul 08
"i am a mum of a 15 year boy ,i cant bear it when he gos out ,i am scared to death."

Posted by: Mother, South East London on 11:16pm Fri 4 Jul 08

I know I'am not the only mother in this country that has a fear every time her child leaves the house.. I don't think Iam the only one who is forever on the phone to check and make sure they are alright. The fear of god goes through me when one of them is late in because they were having a good time.. My children don't lead normal lifes in this country and many other youths do not due to the way the streets are here. I know this sound silly but If I were in control at this moment in time due to the loss of so many young lives, I would put the at risk areas such as the South East on a regional curfew, with youths of up to the ages of 16/18 only allowed on our streets to a set time. We will then see who is controled by parants and who is not, yes It would take alot of man power but we are using or British Army over seas for the same reasons such as civil unrest why not here, For once we need to tell the other Countrys to go to hell and sort out our own so much is happening we need to stop in all areas these sad killings of our youth. It can be done the police seem to be doing all they can, but such as in place's like Northern Ireland we should have the same here, we have got to stop being the good old strong british upper lip, yes i agree it won't look nice but I think if they want to practice their knife and gun skills let them try it on someone who is trained. Please am I the only mother that feels we need this sort of action and soon.

"I know I'am not the only mother in this country that has a fear every time her child leaves the house..
I don't think Iam the only one who is forever on the phone to check and make sure they are alright.
The fear of god goes through me when one of them is late in because they were having a good time..
My children don't lead normal lifes in this country and many other youths do not due to the way the streets are here."

Posted by: A concerned Mum, Orpington on 12:12am Sat 5 Jul 08
" I am also a mum of an 18 year old I hate every weekend not being able to sleep until I hear the door close behind him. "

Posted by: Tracey, Orpington on 11:18am Sat 5 Jul 08

I am a mum of two teenagers. I worry all the time,but one of my sons doesnt realise why I am the way I am. When he goes out the door,will he back? Will he get hurt? Its not fair on us parents and the responsible teens to feel so scared about the way this sountry has turned into. I cant even let my youngest son out due to the outside world. We need to do something now before the brats take over.

"I am a mum of two teenagers. I worry all the time,but one of my sons doesnt realise why I am the way I am. When he goes out the door,will he back? Will he get hurt? Its not fair on us parents and the responsible teens to feel so scared about the way this sountry has turned into. I cant even let my youngest son out due to the outside world."

Posted by: anita, dartford on 9:58pm Sat 5 Jul 08

I am also a mum of an 18 year old boy, and I bet there are many mothers out there that when their child goes up the pub or clubbing they lie awake until they hear that key in the door. It scares me rigid when they go out and yes I invariably ring them to make sure they are safe, and I have been known to pay for a cab whereever they are instead of getting a night bus. We parents shouldn't be made to feel like this.

"I am also a mum of an 18 year old boy, and I bet there are many mothers out there that when their child goes up the pub or clubbing they lie awake until they hear that key in the door. It scares me rigid when they go out and yes I invariably ring them to make sure they are safe, and I have been known to pay for a cab whereever they are instead of getting a night bus. We parents shouldn't be made to feel like this."

Posted by: Bag Lady, Bromley on 10:08pm Sat 5 Jul 08

I agree with you. Its like the good youngsters are under curfew. None of them (or even middle-aged me) would dare to walk the streets round here at night. These scumbags rule our streets, make us live in fear of going out at night, and our government and the courts are doing nothing to help us.

"I agree with you. Its like the good youngsters are under curfew. None of them (or even middle-aged me) would dare to walk the streets round here at night. These scumbags rule our streets, make us live in fear of going out at night, and our government and the courts are doing nothing to help us."

Murder map here. SW London looks the safest. See also this post.

Professor David Canter

He's the media head from Liverpool Uni who recommends leaving presents out for burglars and hiding your school uniform while walking home in London.

Here he takes a page to say about the dreadful torture/murder of two French students what John le Carre could say in two short sentences.

Professor Canter's personal anti-crime initiative doesn't consist of not crossing estates or leaving out presents for burglars. Like Sir Ian "people in Haringey leave their doors unlocked" Blair, who commutes to his Met job from a large house in an Oxfordshire village, he finds a small village in the monocultural sticks is a pretty good solution.

"I've always loved the Welsh countryside and when I started working in Liverpool I felt it would be much more pleasant to live in Clawddnewydd," he said.

Prof Canter now spends most of his time working from home ...

God and Reason

Flying Rodent (parental advisory - swearing and moderate verbal violence) on atheism. While he's a man without religion aka Godless infidel, he doesn't think the ills of the world are going to vanish if only enough people read Richard Dorkins - far from it.

He's knocking out some good stuff at the moment - this is enjoyable too.

I posted Churchill's views on God and Reason for him - and I think they're worth sharing. From his My Early Life.

My various readings during the next two years led me to ask myself questions about religion. Hitherto I had dutifully accepted everything I had been told. Even in the holidays I always had to go once a week to Church, and at Harrow there were three services every Sunday, besides morning and evening prayers throughout the week. All this was very good. I accumulated in those years so fine a surplus in the Bank of Observance that I have been drawing confidently upon it ever since. Weddings, christenings, and funerals have brought in a steady annual income, and I have never made too close enquiries about the state of my account. It might well even be that I should find an overdraft. But now in these bright days of youth my attendances were well ahead of the Sundays. In the Army too there were regular church parades, and sometimes I marched the Roman Catholics to church, and sometimes the Protestants. Religious toleration in the British Army had spread till it overlapped the regions of indifference. No one was ever hampered or prejudiced on account of his religion. Everyone had the regulation facilities for its observance. In India the deities of a hundred creeds were placed by respectful routine in the Imperial Pantheon.

In the regiment we sometimes used to argue questions like 'Whether we should live again in another world after this was over?' 'Whether we have ever lived before?' 'Whether we remember and meet each other after Death or merely start again like the Buddhists?' 'Whether some high intelligence is looking after the world or whether things are just drifting on anyhow?' There was general agreement that if you tried your best to live an honourable life and did your duty and were faithful to friends and not unkind to the weak and poor, it did not matter much what you believed or disbelieved. All. would come out right. This is what would nowadays I suppose be called 'The Religion of Healthy Mindedness.'

Some of the senior officers also dwelt upon the value of the Christian religion to women ('It helps to keep them straight'); and also generally to the lower orders ('Nothing can give them a good time here, but it makes them more contented to think they will get one hereafter'). Christianity, it appeared, had also a disciplinary value, especially when presented through the Church of England. It made people want to be respectable, to keep up appearances, and so saved lots of scandals. From this standpoint ceremonies and ritual ceased to be of importance. They were merely the same idea translated into different languages to suit different races and temperaments. Too much religion of any kind, however, was a bad thing. Among natives especially, fanaticism was highly dangerous and roused them to murder, mutiny or rebellion. Such is, I think, a fair gauging of the climate of opinion in which I dwelt.

I now begin to read a number of books which challenged the whole religious education I had received at Harrow. The first of these books was The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade. This was Colonel Brabazon's great book. He had read it many times over and regarded it as a sort of Bible. It is in fact a concise and well-written universal history of mankind, dealing in harsh terms with the mysteries of all religions and leading to the depressing conclusion that we simply go out like candles. I was much startled and indeed offended by what I read. But then I found that Gibbon evidently held the same view; and finally Mr. Lecky, in his Rise and Influence of Rationalism and History of European Morals, both of which I read this winter, established in my mind a predominantly secular view, For a time I was indignant at having been told so many untruths, as I then regarded them, by the schoolmasters and clergy who had guided my youth. Of course if I had been at a University my difficulties might have been resolved by the eminent professors and divines who are gathered there. At any rate, they would have shown me equally convincing books putting the opposite point of view. As it was I passed through a violent and aggressive anti-religious phase which, had it lasted, might easily have made me a nuisance. My poise was restored during the next few years by frequent contact with danger. I found that whatever I might think and argue, I did not hesitate to ask for special protection when about to come under the fire of the enemy: nor to feel sincerely grateful when I got home safe to tea. I even asked for lesser things than not to be killed too soon, and nearly always in these years, and indeed throughout my life, I got what I wanted. This practice seemed perfectly natural, and just as strong and real as the reasoning process which contradicted it so sharply. Moreover the practice was comforting and the reasoning led nowhere. I therefore acted in accordance with my feelings without troubling to square such conduct with the conclusions of thought.

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more. In this or some other similar book I came across a French saying which seemed singularly opposite. 'Le coeur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connait pas.' It seemed to me that it would be very foolish to discard the reasons of the heart for those of the head. Indeed I could not see why I should not enjoy them both. I did not worry about the inconsistency of thinking one way and believing the other. It seemed good to let the mind explore so far as it could the paths of thought and logic, and also good to pray for help and succour, and be thankful when they came. I could not feel that the Supreme Creator who gave us our minds as well as our souls would be offended if they did not always run smoothly together in double harness. After all He must have foreseen this from the beginning and of course He would understand it all.

Accordingly I have always been surprised to see some of our Bishops and clergy making such heavy weather about reconciling the Bible story with modern scientific and historical knowledge. Why do they want to reconcile them? If you are the recipient of a message which cheers your heart and fortifies your soul, which promises you reunion with those you have loved in a world of larger opportunity and wider sympathies, why should you worry about the shape or colour of the travel-stained envelope; whether it is duly stamped, whether the date on the postmark is right or wrong? These matters may be puzzling, but they are certainly not important. What is important is the message and the benefits to you of receiving it. Close reasoning can conduct one to the precise conclusion that miracles are impossible: that 'it is much more likely that human testimony should err, than that the laws of nature should be violated'; and at the same time one may rejoice to read how Christ turned the water into wine in Cana of Galilee or walked on the lake or rose from the dead. The human brain cannot comprehend infinity, but the discovery of mathematics enables it to be handled quite easily. The idea that nothing is true except what we comprehend is silly, and that ideas which our minds cannot reconcile are mutually destructive, sillier still.

Certainly nothing could be more repulsive both to our minds and feelings than the spectacle of thousands of millions of universes—for that is what they say it comes to now—all knocking about together for ever without any rational or good purpose behind them. I therefore adopted quite early in life a system of believing whatever I wanted to believe, while at the same time leaving reason to pursue unfettered whatever paths she was capable of treading.

Maybe that's why people rate him ...

Not a great deal of time for Will Self, but this affectionate father's day piece is really rather good.

As we come to resemble our fathers, so we re-encounter the individual who reared us. I turned 42 four years after my father died. Since then, with each succeeding year I feel I’ve come to know him better and better: I feel him in my habits of mind and my physical quirks.

It's true that many of us, after a youth spent trying to be as little like our parents as possible, come to accept, even to celebrate, the similarity. But it seems that parenthood is a necessary condition for this process. Suddenly you become much more aware of the struggles they'll have had - and much more sympathetic to them. (But in my case, my father having left when I was three, it was my mother who was the influence. The influence of my father was that on becoming a dad myself I was determined not to do what he did.)

"Just you wait 'til you have children of your own" said my mother. And would you believe it, she was right.

I noted during a comment debate at Philobiblon "it’s only when I became a father that I realised just how many of my mother’s attitudes and ideas I’d absorbed". I would imagine that if you don't have children, it's possible to forever remain disconnected and even to celebrate that deficiency - like Janet Street Porter.

Anyone Got A Horsewhip ?

Adrian Chiles has split from the very wonderful Jane Garvey.

"Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe."

"He is not a gora belayeti"

No, he's one of us (albeit with non-existent Nepali). Dewsbury MP Shahid Malik visits Nepal.

"Al Qaeda Organisation of Rotherham"

More comedy capers from the New Wave of British Jihad (© Laban Tall 2007).

A white Muslim convert planted a hoax bomb on a bus full of people with a note saying that 'Britain must be punished', a court was told today. Nicholas Roddis, 22, is thought to have disguised himself with a long black beard before planting the fake home-made nailbomb on a crowded bus in Rotherham, in May last year.

Leeds Crown Court was told Roddis, of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, had recently learnt the teachings of Islam in a move to convert over to the religion and had even recorded the preachings of disgraced cleric Abu Hamza. Prosecutor Edward Brown QC told Leeds Crown Court Roddis's conversion had been noted by work colleagues and he had alienated a childhood friend by talking about bomb-making.

On May 8 last year, a man disguised with a long black beard boarded a bus with two carrier bags, he told the jury. Not long after he disembarked, leaving one bag behind. A passenger checked inside and saw three packages with nails, wire, a working clock and a note with foreign writing on it. The writing on the piece of paper was in Arabic and read "There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is the messenger of Allah. God is great, god is great, god is great. Britain must be punished." It was signed Al Qaeda Organisation of Iraq.

Hmm. This report isn't quite so funny. But be fair. The mobile, computer, diary, acetone and nails could all be found somewhere chez Laban. Perhaps the acetone is to get varnish off nails.

There are also 11 counts of possessing an article for a terrorist purpose, on July 11 2007. They relate to containers of hydrogen peroxide and acetone, a mobile phone and a computer, a quantity of nails, railway detonators, a bomb-making recipe, a diary, and a list "which included the particulars of terrorist acts".

Big Thoughts ...

Floating around at the back of Laban's brain are three embryonic posts which he'll get round to one of these days (not today).

One is on corruption. We're importing people from a fair few countries where corruption is endemic without any attempt at integration. We're simultaneously beating ourselves up that, say, 39% of the population of Trumpton are from minority x, yet only 2% of the local magistrates are. I don't know what magic the soil of the UK posesses, but our rulers are apparently convinced that the moment you set foot on it all the 'bad' practices of the old country fall off you, leaving only the good bits - you know, the ones that enrich us.

Absent such magical soil, I'd expect that as more magistrates/tax officials/police whatever are appointed from (unintegrated) minority x, so levels of corruption/violence/whatever will depart from those we've experienced in the last 150 years, and move closer to those in country x.

This thought was inspired by the news that apparently 7,500 people have died in police or prison custody in India in the last 5 years.

Post 2 will be on religion, how we got where we are, and whether, as Shuggy asks, the decline of Christianity isn't a bit of a conservative myth (as you'd imagine, I don't agree).

Post 3 will have to wait till I've read Arnold Toynbee's 'A Study of History'. At a glance, it seems to fit the bill pretty well.

He argues that the breakdown of civilizations is not caused by loss of control over the environment, over the human environment, or attacks from outside. Rather, it comes from the deterioration of the "Creative Minority," which eventually ceases to be creative and degenerates into merely a "Dominant Minority" (who forces the majority to obey without meriting obedience). He argues that creative minorities deteriorate due to a worship of their "former self," by which they become prideful, and fail to adequately address the next challenge they face.

Blimey. That seems pretty spot-on for our rulers - right down to the worship of the former self (see the BBC '1968' retrospectives for details).

Somebody - I thought Martin Kelly or David Duff but I may be wrong - blogged about this book a week or two back, but I can't find the post. If thou art that blogger, then identify yourself and receive credit where due.

UPDATE - Martin Kelly's posts were here and here.

On corruption - the BBC - and Pickled Politics for that matter - often report some of the bad things happening in India, which makes for an easy link. But the very existence of such reports show that it's taken seriously - and some fairly senior people get nailed - although some don't. But at least the slew of reports show someone's taking an interest - or more to the point, is able to take an interest without ending up shot dead at the side of the road. It's the countries where you don't get a lot coming out from that are probably worse.

During the agitation (I signed the Downing Street petition) to free Mirza Tahir Hussain, Guardianistas, the Muslim Council of Britain and Uncle Tom Cobley queued up to tell us how corrupt Pakistan was. Yet by some miracle any corruption in Pakistani culture apparently falls off that country's people somewhere on the way to Karachi airport. The same, of course, applies to the good people of Russia - another place where investigative journalists end up dead - but for some reason the only Russians who come here are successful large-scale plunderers of Soviet assets - who want to hang onto their ill-gotten gains.

Doomed ...

Jackie Ashley :

Talking to ministers over the past few weeks, I have been struck by how fatalistic they have become. They do not seem, in the main, to be rebellious, angry or even despairing. Despair is too energetic a word. They seem clinically depressed, tired and flat.

H.P. Lovecraft :

There was something of stolid resignation about them all, as if they walked half in another world between lines of nameless guards to a certain and familiar doom.

A Couple Of Moorhens in the Curate's Paddock

Rather nice little things they are, too. They should be having their chicks any time now. I recently bought a second-hand camera with a hefty optical zoom - 10x or 12x - I'll try to get some pictures.

Well, when I posted this morning, I'd not heard the news of the latest Labour by-election disaster. Pretty impressive.

The comments, again, are more telling than the commentary.

"I can see Labour getting utterly obliterated at the next general election."

"Anyway, it's all fiddling while Rome burns for Labour. Come election time, he's a goner, I'm afraid, as is the whole New Labour project. They've had 11 years to get it right, and they have comprehensively blown it."

"Can he turn things around in the next 12 months? Sunder, he couldn't turn things around if he had another 12 years. NuLab have lost most of their support, I am genuinely surprised that there are still a few apologists out there. Maintaining the current discontent and not increasing it further is the best he can hope for over the next 12 months, funnily enough, if he manages that it will be his finest achievement."

"Public opinion has turned. They have decided that time is up for Labour. It does not matter what Brown does - he is finished."

"As many have stated above, New Labour are finished. A party that once stood for fairness abandoned that principle a long time ago. The executive is in thrall to the City and the ultra-wealthy, and a truly pitiful band of supine lobby-fodder backbenchers will not challenge them, in fear of damaging their careers. Too late, many of them are realising that after the next election they won't have careers, and with Labour's funding problems, many of those career politicians might have to actually find a proper job for the first time in their lives.Tied in with the relentless assault on personal and civic freedoms under the catch-all banner of security, they have managed to inflict massive damage to this country. But after all this, they still don't understand what they have done and why they are now despised. "

"Like virtually everybody else I forsee a Labour meltdown at the next election."

"This isn't about policy really anymore. Its about the hate of an ignored people for those who have lorded it irresponsibly and contemptuously over us for too long.

I listened to Harman yesterday, it wasn't necessarily what substantively she was saying (even though her statement was worryingly woolly) it was her wretched suburban nannyish tone, her condescension and sense of automatic superiority that upset me.

Red rag to a bull really, Labour are beyond the pale. At the next general election the people are going to administer a good kicking to Labour that will make 1997 look like a picnic."

"Sunder, your article explains exactly why labour is in danger of extinction as a national political movement. As I grew up on an innercity estate surrounded by trade unionists I was told I had to support labour because they were 'our' party.

This is no longer true, taxes on the poor and lower middle incomes are at record levels. The last three big policies have been, banging people up, which will disproportionately affect labour's core as they can't afford lawyers and are no longer eligible for legal aid.

Then there was changes to planning, a vast use of political capital that will benefit corporates and nobody else. Finally, yesterday Harman says its ok to discriminate against white men. You probably think this is great, but most of labour's heartlands are white and regretably I expect the BNP to exploit Harman's bill to the full.

Sunder, you and Harman represent the Elite NUS policy wonks that are destroying the labour movement. As a tory you might think I would cheer, but the vacuum that is being rapidly created is exploited by racists, separatists, fanatics and will lead to trouble ahead here on this humble estate of mine."

So we're seeing the total disconnection of Labour from its grassroots. At the same time, while people are willing to vote for Cameron, there are no deep currents flowing to the Tories. Cameron's USP is that he's not Gordon Brown. His support is wide but shallow - indeed, I wonder if the more traditional the Tory, the less they'd trust him - the way Old Labour felt about Blair.

It took eleven years - and a change of leader - to take Labour from the heights to the despised depths, during which time the grass roots withered. I have a feeling it could take David Cameron much less time.

UPDATE - I forget where - article, comments or Polly Toynbee's Damascus moment - more great comments - but someone pointed out that saying you support Labour is becoming unfashionable the same way that it was unfashionable to be a Tory in the 90s. Now in one sense it's a tragedy that UK politics is now a matter of fashion - but it's been like that for ten years or more. And it's necessary that both the main parties suffer the same treatment before politics can be rebuilt. Have I Got News For You, Ben Elton and the 'alternative' (now establishment) comedians, Spitting Image, and long before them stuff like TW3 - they were all basically anti-Tory - but they builded better than they knew.

I've said before that Cameron's 'de-toxification' of the Tory brand (aka 'removing anything conservative') must be reckoned an achievement - a marketing achievement, mind, but an achievement nonetheless.

Brown keeps up the line that Cameron is just a good salesman. Doesn't he realise what a compliment that is in the new age of politics ?

Blogging Continues To be Light ....

Apologies. Still, there's a lot of good stuff out there. Mr Tarran's writing gets better by the month, Ross and the Dumb One continue to inform, Martin Kelly is posting some great stuff (one of his great points is that you can never be sure what view he'll take on an issue - not a predictable blogger although he does sail by a moral compass).

Must dash. Blogging resumes tonight - when the hedges are cut.

Abortion Deaths Pre-Legalisation

I posted on the Ann Furedi thread: "Oh, that question. These untold thousands who died from back-street abortions in the bad old days. Is there any factual evidence for this, or numbers of any kind, or is it just another left-wing myth ?"


ChooChoo answered as follows :

@LabanTell:

I'd hesitate to say 'myth'. But there are problems with some figures and, of course, this is further problematised by the polemical contexts of inveterate debates. The US is interesting because abortion remains a livewire political debate: not just because of social dynamics, but also because of the legal context there. Unlike here, the (from one view) judicial fiat by which abortion was legalised in the states generates tensions beyond the usual ones in this debate.

In Planned Parenthood vs. Casey (Bob, a lifelong Democrat incidentally), the figure of 5,000-10,000 pre-legalisation deaths was mentioned. This figure, a common one in the US context, goes back to attempted extrapolations from studies from the 1930s, for instance, by one Frederick Taussig (published in '36). He used figures for the abortion rate (not the abortion mortality rate) from NY and Iowa birth control clinics, combined with his own estimates for the mortality rate to come up with the figures. (There were others which used similar techniques).

In reality, these figures are dubious and not least because of their use in polemical contexts. In 'Induced termination of pregnancy before and after Roe v. Wade', in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 208.22 (1992) pp.3231-3239, the authors use pre-legalisation figures for abortion mortality from National Center [sic] for Health Statistics:

1940 - c.1400

1945 - c.750

1950 - c.250

1955 - c.225

1960 - c.250

1970 - c.125

(The exact figure for pre-legalisation 1972 is 39. Abortion mortality figures still do exist post-legalisation, and the figure hovered around c.20 post-legalisation before dropping further in the 80s or 90s, I forget which).

These figures can hardly settle the question. First, they don't show how many total abortions there were. Second, they do not, in themselves, get into the difficulty of arriving at such figures. This difficulty, incidentally, is not just for finding reliable pre-legalisation figures, but also reliable post-legalisation figures. (Assigning abortion as cause of death is not as simple as it may sound). Third, these do not get into all sorts of social factors (was there a change in the public acceptability of treating women who had had abortions?). (These figures, per se, are far more reliable than, say, Taussig's).

Fundamentally, however, and this occurs in other contexts too, the large reduction in abortion mortality correlates to (and is no doubt caused by) medical provisions: most importantly, the diffusion of antibiotics. Medical provisions are more important in bringing down abortion mortality than legality. (This is not to deny that legality cannot or does not have an effect of safety: it does, but this relation is heightened where the safety, even where legal, would not be so good. Conversely, where medical provisions are good - not just supplies, but access - legality cannot have a strong effect on abortion mortality). In a first-world context, the notion that illegality will result in the death of scores of women is not tenable. (Another important aspect to this is that pre-legality abortion, certainly in the states, was largely - c.90% - carried out by physicians: this is what emerges from works on the reality of abortion by the likes of Mary Claderone - erstwhile medical director of Planned Parenthood - in the 60s). This is not to deny the total legitimacy of being worried about this, or of valuing women's lives. (Of course not). I'm just trying to write a little about the figures for abortion mortality.

I'm most grateful to him or her for this - the only information I've ever seen on the subject. If anyone's got any info on Britain I'd be interested.

Coppersblog ...

.. celebrates two million hits. Even with PC Copperfield having jumped ship to the land of the not-so-free, absolutely required reading for anyone interested in the sharp end of the law and order debate.

Others have barged through the door he kicked down - Inspector Gadget, Nightjack, MetCountyMounty, PC Bloggs, Sergeant Simon and others on the blogroll - but Dave started the ball rolling.

(Declaration of interest - I was a fan anyway, but was chuffed to find myself described in his links as a 'superior conservative blog'. I noted in his book a P J O'Rourke quote - to be fair, I think PJ was quoting someone else - which I like to think he got from here)

Massacre of the Comments

Abortion promoter Ann Furedi was writing in the Guardian yesterday on how 200,00 abortions a year (compared with around 693,000 live births) are really quite a Good Thing. There were some interesting comments - 50-odd, so Laban chipped in with his four penn'orth.

This morning there was only one comment - mine - and now even that has gone. Hardly any on the whole site now. Comment is Free seems to have turned into Comment-Free. Even Herod only deleted the first-born.

When I was writing my post on abortion, sex-education and demographic change I'd forgotten a conversation I'd had a couple of weeks back with a Catholic educator and committted Labour Party man, who was still active in education in a large Northern city. A decent sort. Two things he told me that stuck - one being that the area where he'd been a head for umpteen years was bedevilled by white flight - parents applying to out-of-area schools, the other being the increasing pressure from Muslim parents for single-sex secondary education.

I can completely understand that - they look at the native girls and think - "I don't want my daughter growing up like that".

Just so would a Victorian father have felt, could he have seen the future. Victorian secondary schools were nearly all single-sex. In those cities where the old buildings survive, you may still see schools with entrances marked 'Girls' and 'Boys'.

The 2006 ONS Birth stats (pdf) are the latest available series - and more than ever they show the demographic transformation of our great cities. Children born to foreign-born mothers make up 22% of babies born in England and Wales (Table 9.2) but it's the city figures which are telling.

Newcastle 23%
Blackburn 27%
Manchester 38%
Sheffield 21%
Bradford 32%
Leiester 41%
Nottingham 24%
Northampton 25%
Birmingham 36%
Coventry 29%
Luton 48%
Cambridge 41%
Peterborough 30%
Watford 36%
Inner London 59%
Outer London 48%
Milton Keynes 30%
Reading 36%
Slough 53%
Oxford 42%

Table 9.5 gives us total fertility rates by country of birth of mother. While they differ somewhat from Richard Berthoud's 2001 calcs, which were I believe based on ethnicity rather than country of birth, the pattern is clear.

United Kingdom 1.6
India 2.3
Pakistan 4.7
Bangladesh 3.9
East Africa 1.6
Rest of Africa 2.0
Other New Commonwealth 2.2
Rest of World 1.8



I think, given these stats, that

a) demographic change is likely to bring about a lowering of the abortion rate, just as it's already seen a raising of the birth rate. I expect to see the number of abortions start to fall in the next few years, as the number of young people from non-aborting cultures rises, and the number from aborting cultures falls. Truly the sexual revolution contains the aborted seeds of its own destruction.

b) this lowering of the abortion rate will doubtless be hailed as a triumph by Ann Furedi and the rest of the sex-ed/abortion industry.

c) but it'll be a very short-lived triumph. In our major cities the pressure for single-sex secondary schools will become irresistible as more and more voters call for them. Those single-sex schools will NOT have a Furedi-style sex-ed policy - the policy is far more likely to be a Victorian-style - 'don't even talk about it, let alone do it' policy - especially in girls schools. Of course single-sex schools and Victorian sex ed worked pretty well for the natives once - before they learned better.

England - Special Training Regime For Second Test

No Poo, Sherlock !

The BBC tell it like it is :

Prison had 'criminal subculture'

Next week : "Body found in cemetery"

I Believe That Children Aren't Our Future ...

New record abortion figures :

The number of abortions in all women rose by 2.5% to reach an all time high of almost 200,000.

Big increases in children killing children - to be fair, this only parallels what's happening outside on the streets.

The number of abortions among girls aged under 16 rose by 10% to 4,376 in 2007, official figures for England and Wales show. In the under 14s, abortions rose by 21% from 135 in 2006 to 163 last year.



I wonder what the solutions to this great problem are. They wouldn't by any chance involve more, earlier and compulsory sex education ? There are a whole lot of tax-funded types just itching to get the message across to younger and younger kids. After all, that's the classic liberal solution.

"Whatever you did before that didn't work, do more of it"

Let the BBC tell us about a few :

Gill Frances, chair of the Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group, said: "We know what works to reduce abortion amongst teenagers. We need high quality sex and relationships education at school and at home and effective contraception."

Ah, the old 'what works' mantra !

Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, said: "Much more needs to be done to equip young people to deal with the complexities of their personal relationships and to empower them to ask for high quality, user-friendly forms of contraception without embarrassment.

Quite right, Ann. Double doses of empowerment to be issued to all schools, and a rolling programme of upgrades to the equipment needed to deal with the complexities of their personal relationships !

(I digress - but surely the relationships between young males and young females are some of the least complex relationships on the planet - at least as far as the young men are concerned ? Ann's mum obviously never told her that 'they're only after one thing !')

Julie Bentley, chief executive at the FPA (Family Planning Association) said sex and relationship education should be compulsory in every school. "Younger women are making different choices about their lives and choosing abortion over motherhood, but education and contraceptive services will stop them becoming pregnant in the first place."

"Choosing abortion over motherhood", eh ? Just like some young men choose rape over temporary celibacy ? I guess its just a "different choice", after all ... for the person doing the choosing.

The strange thing is that all this nonsense is contradicted by the evidence of one UK community. They are characterised by what Ann Furedi and Gill Francis would doubtless consider extremely low quality sex and relationships education - namely "don't do it" - the sort of sex education that worked remarkably well for the British for the last 500 years, even when contraception was almost non-existent. Somehow around the early 70s we decided that Gill Francis had the right idea after all - and bastardy, sexually transmitted infections and abortions have been rising ever since, in tandem with a falling birth rate.

What would be interesting to see is the way in which the changing pattern of numbers of abortions in a given age group compares with the changing patterns of numbers of young women in said age group. After all, if the numbers of abortions in U14s rises by 21% but the number of U14s rises by 25%, that would be a fall in the 'per 1,000 U14 females' figure. (that's an example - I think it unlikely that the numbers of U14 females could change so rapidly).

What would also be interesting would be a breakdown by ethnic group. We know that more than 23% of schoolchildren are ethnic minority. We know that the Indian and particularly the Bangladeshi/Pakistani communities have low rates of sexually transmitted disease and high rates of fertility. I think it highly unlikely that they're having many abortions - although their (native) girlfriends might.

We can probably expect more episodes like this as the desires of the people (whose children get STIs and have abortions) for more and more sex education clash with the desires of those (whose children don't - and they want to keep it that way) for less or none.

So it appears that the shrinking native population is having ever more abortions while the incomers are having ever more babies. Keith Ajegbo's "British Lessons For English Children" report tells us that "in 10 years time, 15% of the workforce will be Muslim".

Some marketing geek at Lloyds TSB has been looking at the data and drawing his conclusions. These guys are paid a lot of money to do the figures. Double click to see it full size.

Hallelujah !

Guardianistas see sense ...




Say not the struggle naught availeth, Laban.

"Continual dropping will wear away a Stone--ay, more--a Diamond"

Calm Down ...

How not to lose a game of rugby ... Wales v France in the U20 World Cup last weekend.



Wales are playing New Zealand at Rodney Parade even as as I type ... NZ are hot favourites but hope springs eternal. England play SA at Cardiff - another tough one. Lets hope the only things being roasted tonight are a few chestnuts, eh ?

A Chink of Light In the Gloom ....

My youngest son played cricket this evening (they lost quite heavily), came back at gone nine, ate, watched the last few minutes of the footy, then teeth and bed. Someone mentioned Greenwich Mean Time - I can't remember why or in what context.

"Dad ?"

"Yes ?"

"How did they know what the centre of the world is - I mean going round - how did they know it was Greenwich ?"

A longish discussion/lecture followed, taking in how to reckon noon time (when the shadows are shortest), why there are sixty minutes in an hour and sixty seconds in a minute, the formation of the Royal Society and the Greenwich Observatory ...

"Where did language come from ? How is it we say 'wood' for wood ?"

"Who invented numbers ?"

"How was electricity discovered ? Who thought of it ?"


My middle son used to throw this kind of stuff at me when it was bedtime and he didn't want to go up - he knew that I could never resist an answer (and he's doing maths and science A-levels after his GCSEs) - and I can't. I'm delighted when they ask questions - especially largeish ones.

I try in answering to emphasise that there are very few giant leaps (the mp3 player did not appear out of nowhere), that each new step is usually based on what went before, that simple things which make other things possible - the wire, the screw - could only be invented given the work of predecessors. You can't invent wire before you've got metal.

It's asking questions and trying new things that's taken us this far. In the days when we were bashing animals (and each other) on the head with flint axes, who had the idea of crushing two types of rock together, mixing with sand, heating the lot then blowing air through the hot rocks ? Yet it's a good job someone did.

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.