Caring For The Vulnerable

It was only the other day I noted how "a serial rapist from Cornwall has been awarded £5,000 in legal aid to find out what made him commit his crimes."

Whereas the Pullar family, whose mother was accidentally given a fatal overdose of insulin last year, didn't qualify.

"The court heard that Mrs Pullar's prescription chart had been deliberately altered after the overdose was given, but that it was impossible to tell who had altered it. "

Don'tcha just love those dedicated staff, who can't write a prescription but can alter one ?

I imagine the £2.8 million is in the post.

Mrs Pullar's bereaved husband was kicked to death by three teenagers a year later, and once again the State was there to help. Exemplary sentences of three years each - and one detention in a mental health institution, doubtless to be released quietly later.

Oh, and the local CID failed to secure the crime scene. The report paints a rosy picture of the close-knit, caring community of Cumbernauld, as exemplified by the McAllister brothers.

Earlier Joseph McAllister, 29, who lived across the road from the Swan Inn, said he saw a set of legs lying in the car park late on the evening of 23 March. He did not go to investigate.
His brother Kevin, 18, said he heard someone shouting at about 2300 BST.
He told the court: "I saw two boys standing at the planter. One of them was in the planter stamping his foot up and down."
He said he saw legs hanging out of the planter as he walked his girlfriend to her car, but did not go over or phone for an ambulance.

"Has there ever been a white victim of a racist murder in this country?”

I rarely link to a story on the BNP website. And Allen and Garvey are my two favourite Radio five presenters - a great double act.

I'll make an exception for this.

Jane Garvey : “Has there ever been a white victim of a racist murder in this country?”

This is the Drive show's email address.

Tin Foil Hat Alert

This arived a month or so ago - after I'd signed an online anti-war petition as 'Anne T. C. Myte' a few years back, she finally got a reply.

It's difficult to know where to begin with people who can put out such stuff. It's like a teenager calling Dad a Nazi for insisting that he tidy his room - while outside in the streets real Nazis are marching. These people have lived in safety and security for so long that they can't imagine anything outside their own country could possibly be a danger to them.

There are many Brits like that too - who have less reason. Twice America crossed the Atlantic to dig Europe out of the pooey stuff last century. But in those days, while we couldn't (as it transpired) win in Europe without help, we were capable of defending our own Island.

We could do other things too. I'm surprised at Harold Pinter getting so het up about Iraq. When he was a schoolboy we took the country over with a couple of spare divisions in 1943 - then took over Iran (Persia as was) in a highly illegal fashion a few months later. Never seemed to bother him.

If America vanished off the map tomorrow we'd be a lonely little island. Yet the Indie and Guardian are objectively on the side of the head-choppers in Iraq - and so are the BBC and half the 'human rights' lawyers in the UK.

They'll live to regret it. Meanwhile here's the 'Dad's a fascist' email. Read and wonder.


The World Can't Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime!
Mobilize for November 2, 2005
Your government, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights.

Your government is openly torturing people, and justifying it.

Your government puts people in jail on the merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night.

Your government is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule.

Your government suppresses the science that doesn't fit its religious, political and economic agenda, forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price.

Your government is moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion.

Your government enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance.

People look at all this and think of Hitler --and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come. We must act now; the future is in the balance.

Millions and millions are deeply disturbed and outraged by this. They recognize the need for a vehicle to express this outrage, yet they cannot find it; politics as usual cannot meet the enormity of the challenge, and people sense this.
There is not going to be some magical "pendulum swing." People who steal elections and believe they're on a "mission from God" will not go without a fight.

There is not going to be some savior from the Democratic Party. This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies into "leaders" who tell us to seek common ground with fascists and religious fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually serves to demobilize people.

But silence and paralysis are NOT acceptable. That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn -- or be forced -- to accept. There is no escaping it: the whole disastrous course of this Bush regime must be STOPPED. And we must take the responsibility to do it.

And there is a way. We are talking about something on a scale that can really make a huge change in this country and in the world. We need more than fighting Bush's outrages one at a time, constantly losing ground to the whole onslaught. We must, and can, aim to create a political situation where the Bush regime's program is repudiated, where Bush himself is driven from office, and where the whole direction he has been taking society is reversed. We, in our millions, must and can take responsibility to change the course of history.

To that end, on November 2, the first anniversary of Bush's "re-election", we will take the first major step in this by organizing a truly massive day of resistance all over this country. People everywhere will walk out of school, they will take off work, they will come to the downtowns and town squares and set out from there, going through the streets and calling on many more to JOIN US. They will repudiate this criminal regime, making a powerful statement: "NO! THIS REGIME DOES NOT REPRESENT US! AND WE WILL DRIVE IT OUT!"

November 2 must be a massive and public proclamation that WE REFUSE TO BE RULED IN THIS WAY. November 2 must call out to the tens of millions more who are now agonizing and disgusted. November 2 will be the beginning -- a giant first step in forcing Bush to step down, and a powerful announcement that we will not stop until he does so -- and it will join with and give support and heart to people all over the globe who so urgently need and want this regime to be stopped.

This will not be easy. If we speak the truth, they will try to silence us. If we act, they will try to stop us. But we speak for the majority, here and around the world, and as we get this going we are going to reach out to the people who have been so badly fooled by Bush and we are NOT going to stop.

The point is this: history is full of examples where people who had right on their side fought against tremendous odds and were victorious. And it is also full of examples of people passively hoping to wait it out, only to get swallowed up by a horror beyond what they ever imagined. The future is unwritten. WHICH ONE WE GET IS UP TO US.

A Few Muntjac On The Curate's Lawn

I'm surprised Reynolds hasn't blogged about this. In my limited experience ambulance men are notoriously unsympathetic to overdosers.

"A mother who took an overdose while suffering from post-natal depression has won £2.8 million from the ambulance service which, she claims, arrived too late to save her from permanent brain damage."

The BBC remembers the martyrdom of St John of Imagine, patron saint of Guardianistas everywhere.

"Imagine there's no country ..." - that's an easy one.

"Imagine no religion ..." - well, no Christian religion, anyway. But nature abhors a vacuum ...

"Imagine no possessions ..." - sung at the window of his stately home.


Alhough the 'militants' holding the 'peace activists' in Iraq don't seem to realise that those guys are on their side, plenty of others do. Everyone from Hamas to Abu Qatada is saying so.

The trial of the Scally voyeurs opens.

And "A serial rapist from Cornwall has been awarded £5,000 in legal aid to find out what made him commit his crimes."

The County Nets

My son, just turned sixteen, improved his batting sufficiently this summer to be invited to the county youth trials, held over several weeks at a local sports centre. Proud Papa took him down on Saturday morning.

We get in the car, heavy bag of kit in the back, batting gloves borrowed from a neighbour’s son, battered but expensive running shoes borrowed from his father (too lazy to swap the metal spikes on his boots) and drive a few miles towards town.

"(Sniff) - are those your socks ? Something smells in this car."

"No - they're clean"

"There's something mouldy"

"(Sniff) - it's these trousers ! I got them out of the cupboard - they've been there since last season"

"Were they clean ?"

"Yes. They must have still been a bit damp when mum put them away"

"Got any others ?"

"No"

Oh Lordy. At close quarters they're dodgy enough to necessitate opening the car windows. It's too late to go back for some trackie bottoms.

We arrive. The car park is filling up with Beemers and Mercs. I have a neighbour half a mile away, a club player for nearly thirty years, who has a son in the under fourteens (with a pair of batting gloves). His words come back to me.

"All the public school and fee-paying lot - they play twice a week and train twice a week. You watch their mums and dads at the trials, sucking up to the coaches to get their kids in. Some of what goes on you wouldn't believe. It's not as bad as it was though - at one stage you couldn't get in at all from a state school. The kids know the county coaches because half of them are employed by the schools - and they all know each other because they play each other so much."

Gulp. My son's (state) school team was disbanded last season after the games teacher announced an after-school match at two hours notice. When my son (the captain) said he already had a club game that afternoon, the teacher cancelled the fixture - and all the rest of the season's fixtures - in a fit of pique. My son was playing club cricket three times a week - but what of the other kids ? The neighbour's son thought it a blessing in disguise, as the school pitch was so bad you ended up not knowing how to bat on a good pitch.

He gets the bag out. The zip on the bat compartment is broken, so he has to carry the bat and the heavy bag. He looks nervous.

"Do you want me to come down with you ?"

"I'll be alright"

He's tall, but thin, still coltish as I watch him disappear through the hall doors.

A couple of strapping, self-assured young men come by, laughing and chatting as they haul their large 'wheelie' bags, like the ones the professionals use.

Another one with a wheelie bag. Daddy has blazer and tie on, Mummy is still yummy.

"Shall we come down with you, Benedict ?"

"I'll be alright, mater"

I'm starting to get worried as I think of my son, standing around in his stinky flannels and not knowing anyone.

"I say ! Jasper ! This chav's bags are rank!"

"I expect you'll find his batting's the same !"

"Where are you from ? ASBO Comprehensive ?"

The next arrival has a motorised wheelie bag which he controls with a button on the handle.

The one after that also has a motorised bag, which precedes him. He controls it from a small handset. His friends find this highly entertaining.

At least they're not all wealthy. A shabbily dressed man in his late fifties is lugging a huge holdall down towards the hall, accompanied by a tall, muscular, Head-of-the-School-and-Captain-of-Everything type. Amazing how a father like that has a son like that.

"Just put it inside in a corner, would you, Perkins ? Careful, man, that bat cost £500 ! I'm going to have a chat with old Fubsy"

Now three Asian guys arrive - for some reason carrying the cricket bags on their backs and walking one behind the other. Then another - and another. And another. Two more self-confident chaps in cricket whites are walking with them, chatting to the sirdar. I've never seen Hunza porters this far north of the Karakoram.



I get into the 1984 Toyota and drive away.

Monbiot -"It's better to shoplift than to run a supermarket"

George Monbiot's father is a successful businessman and Deputy Chairman of the Conservative party. His mother is a Conservative County councillor. Mater and pater have a large house in the country. I presume they didn't send George to the local comprehensive.

Their son presumably thinks that the person who robs them is better than they are.

"Author and campaigner George Monbiot said: “When you step into a superstore, you are faced with a choice of two crimes: joining the poor in stealing from the rich, or helping the rich to steal from the poor.

“Both are wrong, but one crime is surely more heinous than the other.” "

Of course, George has a point. Before supermarkets came along, food was much cheaper. They raised prices to rob the poor - and somehow took all the customers away from the traditional, cheaper shops, where food was presented in recyclable brown paper bags. The more the supermarkets stole from the poor, the more people used the supermarkets.

Tam o'shanter tip - David Farrer, in whose comments I also found The G-Gnome Rides Out. To the blogroll with it. Sample :

"Galloway is a member of that section of the British public born between 1945 and 1955. Some call them 'the luckiest generation'; I would call them the greediest. There are, of course, many exceptions to this observation - but as time passes the more easily my conclusion comes to mind.
They were mostly born in clean, brand-new NHS hospitals. Their parents never had to pay for healthcare. Mostly, they received excellent educations in selective grammar schools for no charge. They either went to university to gain a meaningful degree or learned a trade and could go straight into stable long-term employment. The state made no demands upon them to perform National Service. They rebelled against their parents, avidly embracing drug culture, sexual licence and the permissive society, sowing the seeds of the present pensions crisis by campaigning for the legalisation of abortion in 1967."

I do love a good we're-all-going-tothe-dogsblog ...

Lightish Blogging

And, as the UK Government allows couples in a loving relationship to register for 'civil partnerships' (as long as they have sex of couse - wouldn't want an elderly brother and sister, or a caring relative, to take advantage), in Iran ...

The day grows closer when it'll be legal for sixteen-year old boys to be given one of these (link deleted), but not one of these. Smoking, you see, is much more dangerous than uphill gardening.

BBC Feeling The Heat

"In hindsight, it was a mistake not to report the case of Ross Parker more extensively."

One name glares from this report by its absence - Kriss Donald. Doubtless there were some other, more interesting cases that week of fifteen-year-olds being kidnapped, tortured, stabbed and burned alive because of their race.

Hat-tip - the Dumb One.

"Most Racist Murder Victims Are White"

Slowly, the MSM (always excepting the BBC of course), are waking to the possibility that racism may not be a disease only affecting people with white skin.

Sean O'Neill in today's Times.

A Home Office report reveals that of the 22 homicides classified as racially motivated between 2001-04, the majority of victims (12 cases) were white.

When you consider that a non-white killer practically has to sign a confession of racism witnessed by a bishop, a magistrate and a GP before the police or courts will accept it, those figures are remarkable. Christopher Yates' attackers weren't racist, were they ? After all, a white judge has said so.

The similarities between the two murder cases (of Anthony Walker and Christopher Yates - LT), and the differences in their outcomes, has left the Yates family feeling that it has been treated unequally. “I understand what Mrs Walker and her family are going through. We are going through exactly the same thing,” Rose Yates, Mr Yates’s mother, told The Times.

“But it appears to me that we have experienced a different measure of justice than they have experienced.”


O'Neill's report considers the possibility that the gentrification of East London is leading to attacks on whites 'moving into Bengali neighbourhoods'. I'm pretty sure we used to call such people racist thugs - when they were white, that is. It also mentions Kriss Donald, Ross Parker, and the almost unknown Gavin Hopley, a lad who got lost in Oldham after a night out (he was not from Oldham) and was killed when he looked for a taxi in the wrong area of town.

Killer (le mot juste) quote :

The Commission for Racial Equality, asked about anti-white racism, said that there was little, if any, research on the issue. The London Borough of Barking & Dagenham, where Mr Yates lived, said its community cohesion unit did not want to comment.

UPDATE - compare the police and local authority response to the murders of Johnny Delaney and Peter Stone.

Soggy Puddles From The Curate's Paddock

Broadband still bust - seems to be the router or cabling rather than the connection, so I'll be at Gloucester Screwfix (that well known networking supplies store) for some patch cables come 8 am tomorrow.

As a result I haven't browsed the Web much and am out of touch with what's going on, having only BBC news to listen to - most of which has been seemingly devoted to the Anthony Walker verdict. The contrast between the coverage and that given to Kriss Donald (see this First Post piece) is so infuriating that I have to keep reminding myself that Anthony Walker was a decent guy, foully killed by evil men, that his family are better Christians by far than I am (I'd be happy for the killers to be executed whereas his mum's forgiving them) - and that it isn't the Walkers' fault that the BBC don't cover white victims the same way - or even black victims who aren't killed by whites. Isiah Young-Sam was a young black Christian killed in a racist attack - but we didn't get live coverage of his memorial service. The wrong guys killed him.

Incidentally I note the murder weapon (ice-axe) had been stolen by our Scally killers from a mountain shop in Snowdonia, in line with the great Scouse tradition in which the A55 is full of Transits taking heroin in one direction and returning with antiques and garden statuary in the other.



Elsewhere ... Fiona Pinto flags up an interesting event.

On December 6, at 6.30 in Committee Room 11, in the Palace of Westminster, Gianna Jessen, a young American woman who survived saline abortion at 7 plus months, and now campaigns against abortion, will be the guest speaker at an event hosted by Mr Joe Benton MP, on behalf of our own new campaign Alive and Kicking (of which CORE is a member).

Gianna will be running the London Marathon next April for S.O.S ;a charity which supports children born with cerebral palsy. Gianna herself suffers from this condition as a result of her traumatic and premature birth.

The day before (Monday 5th December), get down to the LSE if you're in London.


The Big Debate
National Security vs. Political Expression: Where do we draw the line?
London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
6.30pm 5th December, 2005
Room D602

ALL WELCOME!!!

Chair
Professor Lord Robert Skidelsky, Baron of Tilton (Warwick)

Panellists
Peter Hitchens (Mail on Sunday)
Brendan O'Neill (Deputy Editor, spiked)
Alasdair Palmer (Public Policy Editor, Sunday Telegraph)

There is no doubt a line must be drawn since a shift too far in either direction imperils the other position; however the precise position is clearly a matter of contention.

Prime Minister Blair's first 'whipped-vote' defeat in the Commons on Bill 55 - The Terrorism Bill 2005 (despite the support of The Sun Newspaper) highlighted a deep and divisive faultline in British politics about how to deal with an entirely new security paradigm.

With the gruesome and horrific London bombings of 7/7 fresh in our hearts and minds the nature of the threat must be addressed so that together we may plot the way forward.

Some questions are procedural (i.e. what rights should a potential terrorist have, 28 days or 90?) but others go far deeper into the collective British psyche. Should support for resistance movements be criminalized? Should non-violent political parties be banned? Is habeas corpus dispensable? Shoot-to-kill? Does it truly matter that we will have to impinge on the right to protest to save lives? What should be the role of the judiciary in this new environment? Does Western civilisation face an existential threat from Al-Qaida cells or is that assessment overblown? Have British Muslims integrated?

These are in addition to more pivotal philosophical questions. How central is the right to political expression in a secular, liberal democracy? Do the needs of the many outweigh the rights of the few? What is it we truly value: life or liberty? Does there really have to be a trade-off between the two?

As the War on Terror continues to escalate from Bagram to Bali, Grozny to Gaza City, Tashkent to Tal Afar, once again the LSE SU Comparative Ideologies Society takes on the complex issues and tackles the tougher questions. Join us…

Sounds like a belter and I hope a few people will be blogging it.



I can't believe the naivety of the Christian 'Peace Activists' who thought Iraq was a good place to hang out in. Having spent their time campaigning for the release of detainees in Iraq, they are now detainees in Iraq themselves. "Committed to reducing violence by getting in the way" is their motto. They must be thanking their lucky stars that they're not in Nazi Bush's Gulag but in the hands of the struggling and oppressed Iraqi people.

The only cheerful thing about this whole sorry story is that the 'resistance' don't seem to be that media-savvy, if the desire to kill Westerners is greater than their need for good publicity from useful idiots. Nothing like attacking people who are on your side.

Interesting story on the Belgian bomber oin the Guardian. I thought only the Sun wrote about immigrants claiming benefits and driving expensive cars.

Three years ago she married Hissam Goris who took his new wife to Morocco, though they were careful to return home so they would not lose unemployment benefits. The couple eventually settled in in the rundown area around the Gare du Midi in Brussels where many Muslims live.

Muriel's parents spoke of the cultural gulf which strained relations on the rare occasions that their daughter was driven to their house by her husband in his Mercedes.

Stereotyping or what ?

No Blogging Today ...

Broadband lost all yesterday ... so take a look at the worthy (and wordy) Curmudgeon Joy.

"Christian Doctor Forced Out By Muslims"

Egyptian doctor Joseph Erian, a Christian, "has accepted undisclosed damages after claiming that he was forced out of his job by Muslim colleagues."

It seems to be getting bad in Egypt, what with the church attacks and all.



Oh - sorry. He didn't work in Egypt. He worked in Lincolnshire.




Keffiyeh-tip - Irene Adler.

Ugh ! Those Nasty Men !

Strange how sophisticated metropolitan liberals often turn out to be astonishingly naive. I noted Tracey Emin's little-girl outrage that anyone could make fun of her art being destroyed, and John Humphrys' genuine bewilderment at the thought that the Lady Chatterley trial might have led to Big Brother contestants discussing "my f*****g stiffy".

Step forward one Deborah Orr, Indie journalist. I did wonder if this was a joke.

My disillusionment with the British Army

Call me a mug, but I really went for that stuff about the British Armed Forces being the best in the world.

Here's a knotty moral conundrum. Is the Royal Marine who shopped 42 Commando the sort of person we want in the British Armed Forces? I suppose that depends on whether we want our fighting people first and foremost to have a strong sense of justice, and the courage to act on their convictions, or first and foremost to be able to put up with whatever physical and emotional privations may be thrown at them, because they understand that their own discomfort and suffering is not important, compared to staying loyal to the team and obeying their superiors.

und so weiter. Deborah is of course talking about the Royal Marines little soiree of the other evening.

Three points here. One is that whether the Royal Marine Commandos are nice chaps to get drunk with has nothing to do with whether or not we have the best Armed Forces in the world. We do not employ them to be nice. Far from it. Probably the finest fighting soldiers of the last hundred years were the Waffen SS - and they wouldn't win anybody's nice guys contest. I think it was Alexander who said at Cassino "unfortunately we are fighting against the best troops in the world - what men !"

Secondly, your conundrum, Deb. Strong sense of justice ? Nice to have, but first and foremost to be able to put up with whatever physical and emotional privations may be thrown at them, because they understand that their own discomfort and suffering is not important, compared to staying loyal to the team and obeying their superiors ?

Yes please. That alone, that above all, that all the time. Because unless your soldiers can win battles it doesn't matter how highly developed their sense of justice is - it'll be rotting in a ditch somewhere.

Deb's horrified that no one has been sacked or demoted over the video. But no-one's complained, woman ! Can't the lads indulge in a bit of horseplay ?

If the commandos want to keep Guardianistas off their backs and Deb onside, I suggest they announce that the party was a bonding event for gay S&M aficionados - and sue for invasion of privacy. Deb will be denouncing the homophobic tabloids in no time.

Thirdly, not only are rough boys rough boys now, it was ever thus. What would Deb say about a young boy soldier, leader of a platoon known and feared as 'Bloody B', who bullies an unpopular cadet and then sets fire to him, causing him to be admitted to hospital ? Straight out of the army, I imagine.

The authorities were wiser, and the young cadet lost his stripes, but went on to become quite a useful soldier.

Mysterious Deepcut-style deaths are not new, either. Charles Allen's Soldier Sahibs tells of the great John 'Nikal Seyn', but he had three other brothers who died in India. Seventeen year old Alexander, killed, stripped and mutilated by the Shinwari tribesmen of the Khyber Pass, Charles, who died young after losing an arm, and William, who "was found one morning in 1840 delirious in his bed, two of his ribs broken and his body a mass of bruises. The cause of his death was never properly established - it was put out that he had fallen into a ravine while sleepwalking".

As you do. Sometimes bad things happen when you get a lot of people together whose profession is violence.

Deb's also worried that the army recruits some rough boys from rough places, "concentrating their efforts on deprived areas and young adults coming out of care".

There you go. I happen to think, as did the Duke of Wellington, that that's a good thing.

“People talk of their enlisting from their fine military feeling — all stuff — no such thing,” he said. “Some of our men enlist from having got bastard children — some for minor offences — many more for drink; but you can hardly conceive such a set brought together, and it really is wonderful that we should have made them the fine fellows they are.”

In a moving essay, Shaun Bailey explains why he thinks its a good thing too.

I am Shaun Bailey. I come from a black working class environment. I was born and brought up by my single mother on the North Kensington Estates. Where I live, the peer pressure to offend surrounds you. Crime is everywhere. Education on the estates is not an issue. The teenage pregnancy rate is well above the national average. There is a teenage drugs epidemic. There are significant mental health and disability issues. There is little mobility out of the area. The number of people in contact with social services is way above the national average.

Yet just a few yards away on the other side of Ladbroke Grove, you can find houses worth millions of pounds where bankers, celebrities and media stars discuss being attacked and the threat of burglary rather than the problems of today’s youth.

I am one of the lucky ones. That I escaped my destiny I put down to three things: being part of a close-knit family; having a determined mother; and being enrolled with the Army Cadet Force (ACF) when I was 12 years old.

Most of the essay is not about the Cadets but about the estates within walking distance of Paddington Station. Read the whole thing.

Told You

I have a feeling that in years to come this email may hang round the neck of the Labour Party is a dead albatross stylee.

It should certainly make Gordon Brown's leadership more interesting. It'll be like James VI of Scotland all over again.

The Soaraway Sun is on the case.

A Labour spokesman said: “We cannot condone these comments and they in no way represent the views of the Party. We apologise unreservedly for any offence caused.”

Translated as "For God's sake, White ! We all hate England, but you're not supposed to say so !"

Gloating at the Cross Of St George.

Wonderment across the border.

It will damn well serve Labour right if our English friends say that they've had enough of this nonsense and declare independence, sending Brown and co. homeward to think again. Hopefully, we'll lock 'em up when they get to Gretna.

The Ten Commandments Of Political Correctness

Given by Victims. To Oppressors. Through the inspiration of Andrew Zalotocky.

A School Play

My son's primary proudly present "The Lost Rainbow" - an environmental drama in three acts.

Act One opens with the Rainbow, personated by a charming and articulate young lady, bewailing the destruction of the environment through Man's greed and selfishness. A succession of mini-rainbows then tell of the felling of the rainforest, the destruction of the ozone layer, the pollution of pristine lakes and rivers. Children look up but cannot see the stars because of light pollution. The beaver has no clean river in which to fish, or trees to build his dam. The Lords of the Jungle find their habitat shrinking, their posterity failing. The oceans are swept clear of life and the birds of the air have nowhere to lay their heads - or their eggs. In any case, the eggs' shells will be too thin, because of toxic chemicals in the food chain. And as for the radiation in the seas ...

Act Two finds us at the headquarters of an anonymous Corporation, where three sharp-suited capitalists in shades are attempting to destroy what little remains of the natural world, partly out of greed and partly because the end of Nature will mean the demise of the Rainbow, who has spiritual powers of growth, rebirth and healing potentially fatal to the Corporation's plans (you can see why we send our children to a Catholic school).

In case there's any doubt as to who the goodies and baddies are, the capitalists are made up as rats, with hollow cheeks and painted whiskers. My son got enthusiastically into character, barking 'cut', 'burn', 'buy', 'sell', 'destroy' into his mobile like a natural.

We then move to Egypt or similar desert location, where an all-American family are on vacation. Moronic Mum, dimwit Dad, whining and obnoxious children, Hawaiian shirts, check pants, camera bouncing off gut - even the Independent might consider the stereotyping a tad overdone. The family wander around the untouched desert, chucking litter and half-empty plastic bottles of precious water in all directions, Junior whinging and asking Pop where the theme parks are, until he wearily agrees to head into town for a burger or three.

Exit stage left, leaving the large sand-coloured cloth of the 'desert' looking like a second class Paddington-Cheltenham compartment on a Friday night when the train has reached, say, Gloucester.

I couldn't but wonder, as I watched this personification of greed and thoughtlessness, if any other nation on earth could be portrayed this way in an English primary school. A lot of the big corporations demolishing the forests of Sumatra and New Guinea are Japanese, but the likelihood of the Headmaster sanctioning a play where comedy slant-eyed chaps said 'Ah so !' while ripping out a forest - well, this likelihood is not a large number.


Act Three was somewhat confused, but suffice it to say that the Spirit of the Rainbow triumphed over the forces of evil, the capitalist rats were routed, and the Rainbow and all her little helpers took several bows to sustainable and sustained applause.

Then the lights went up, coats were put on, the cast retrieved, and little Chloe and James were belted safely into the back seats of the 4x4 for the long half-mile drive back to the gas-fired, centrally-heated warmth of the executive detatched, with its hardwood doors, conservatory and double glazing, garden illumination which comes on automatically at dusk and halogen security lighting, built six years ago on the floodplain where the old allotments used to be.

Separated At Birth ?

No woman safe - notorious Home Secretary.



No woman safe - notorious dictator.

Yes, It's Sick-Bag Time !

And next time I hear someone say:- "He'll come out of prison one day - it's us that are serving a life sentence", I shall throw up. - The Magistrate's Blog.

Speaking after the verdict, Mrs Ross's husband Michael, a hairdresser, described the defendant as a "low life".

He said: "I am serving a life sentence and my boys are serving a life sentence that means they will never see Jacqui.

It's strange. When an private sector employee or a manager makes a mistake or cuts a corner, and the result is the death of an employee or member of the public, Guardianistas are the first to call for heads to roll, courts to convene, and corporate manslaughter charges to be brought.

How come that doesn't apply to the deaths of innocents killed by the decisions of probation officers ? After all, I'd reckon that more people are killed each year by early release prisoners than died in the Hatfield train crash.

He had been on an all-night drinking session to celebrate his release from prison after serving just under two years of a four-and-a-half-year sentence for attempted armed robbery and possession of an imitation firearm.

A spokeswoman for the Probation Service said they were satisfied the supervision of Redfern-Edwards following his release had been of a "high standard".

She added: "He had committed previous acts of violence and because of this his supervision requirements were stringent.

"Whilst this gave cause for concern, there was nothing to suggest he would carry out an offence of this gravity."

So three days after release he's drinking all night then attempting a sexual assault. Sir, I don't see any "supervision".

If that's a "high standard" and "stringent supervision" what would they consider a low standard to be ?


UPDATE - once a teacher or school governor seeing a double-barreled name like Ben Redfern-Edwards would think 'posh kid' or possibly 'pretentious mum'.

These days you think 'uh-oh - trouble'. Ben's daddy didn't quite love him enough to marry his mother, but you can't say he wasn't ready to help him out.

His father Paul Edwards, who has already been convicted of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and assisting an offender, helped him dispose of his clothes - which were covered in mud and blood - and then drove him away from the house.

Experimental Comments ....

Testing .. testing ...

The Glorious Resistance

As Gorgeous George so rightly says :

"These poor Iraqis - ragged people, with their sandals, with their Kalashnikovs, with the lightest and most basic of weapons - are writing the names of their cities and towns in the stars, with 145 military operations every day against Muslims from my neighbouring constituencies"