Gardjola

It's a Maltese blog, the cut of whose jib I like.

But then I've been a fan of the Maltese ever since reading as a teenager Ernle Bradford's The Great Siege.

Malta is one of the oldest Christian nations on Earth - Christianity dating from St. Paul's shipwreck on the Island. Although under Arab rule for 200 years (the Maltese language is Arabic-influenced - for example, the old capital was Mdina, 'the city'), the excellently named Count Roger the Norman restored the old faith.

The Siege of 1565, when the Maltese under the leadership of the Knights of St John defeated the much larger Ottoman force of Soleyman the Magnificent, was one of the key moments in European history, as this, along with the siege of Vienna, marked the limit of Ottoman expansion into Europe.

(I like to think that Peter Briffa is related to Luqa Briffa, a member of the Maltese cavalry at the time of the Great Siege, mentioned as having shown exceptional skill as a horseman and inordinate bravery).



The Gurdjola site also links to the Gutenberg project, who have made available the complete poetry of Sir Thomas Moore.

Moore, most famous for romantic Irish poems like The Minstrel Boy, was an Orientalist. His long poem sequence Lalla Rookh contains a description of a religiously-motivated killer which seems relevant today to the Zarquawi school of head-chopping.


One of that saintly, murderous brood,
To carnage and the Koran given,
Who think thro' unbelievers' blood
Lies their directest path to heaven

2 + 2 = ???

It's a Scottish hat-trick of posts from the Peter Lovenkrands of blogging.

These two stories were top of the BBC Scotland news page at lunchtime today. I wonder if by any chance they could be related ?

GP cover 'worst in poorer areas'

People who live in deprived areas get less help from the health service, a study has warned. Glasgow University researchers found the poorest parts of Scotland's towns and cities had 11% fewer GPs and less access to health promotion programmes.

This was despite evidence of a far higher rate of ill health.

I like that 'despite' - as if sick people magically attract medics. Perhaps the poor health is a consequence of the shortage of health staff.

But perhaps not. Next on the page :

Assaults on NHS staff increasing

More than 20,000 assaults were carried out on NHS staff in Scotland in the past year, figures have revealed. Statistics from health authorities given to BBC Scotland show continuing high levels of physical attacks, aggressive behaviour and verbal abuse.

The Royal College of Nursing said, despite zero tolerance campaigns, assaults were becoming more frequent and more violent.

The Scottish Executive said violence against NHS staff was "unacceptable".




I wonder which areas have the highest rate of assaults ? Would they by any chance be the poorer ones that Glasgow University researchers are so worried about ?

"There were 11% more GPs in the more affluent areas compared with the more deprived half of the population.

The researchers said that although they found larger numbers of practices in the most rural and deprived areas, this reflected the higher proportion of single-handed and small practices in these areas.

They also found that these practices tended to have younger doctors, fewer female doctors and less involvement by GPs in extra voluntary activities compared with affluent areas."

I see. Older doctors and female doctors tend to avoid these areas - and the doctors who do go there don't seem to want to do extra voluntary activities. Why could this be ? Let's see what Professor Graham Watt has to say :

"Practices serving the most deprived areas are less likely to volunteer, possibly because they are so consumed by dealing with increased levels of morbidity, without increased levels of medical manpower, that they are unable or unwilling to take on additional activities"

The poor medics are just so busy laying out the bodies and treating the sick that they just don't have any time for all those extra goodies. And the absence of the old and the female ? Er ...

I guess the important bit is "without increased levels of medical manpower", otherwise known as 'more money please'. I do like the way publicly funded organisations call for more money for each other. Glasgow Uni, BBC, NHS in a little virtuous circle. We all know how little money is spent on the NHS.

Makes you wonder if they left the 'T' off the good professor's surname.



Still, never mind. Where the great brains of Glasgow have struggled and failed, this blog can bring you a scientific and medical breakthrough.

After minutes of intensive research by a dedicated team of one, looking at that same BBC Scotland news page, I can reveal the dramatic discovery of a link betwen poverty, poor health and assaults on NHS staff, hitherto entirely unknown.

Alcohol takes toll on Scots NHS

Scotland's drink problem is worsening with a significant rise in emergency admissions to hospitals over the past eight years, a report shows.
In some cases the figures have more than doubled, according to NHS Quality Improvement Scotland.

Deputy Health Minister Lewis Macdonald said Scotland's culture of heavy drinking was placing an increasing burden on the NHS.

Apparently high rates of alcohol consumption are indicative of both a high level of violence and a high level of ill health. I think this could be just what Scotland's politicians are waiting for. I can almost see the strategies being rolled out.

"Mum, don't do that"

Writing about Scotland yesterday brought something back to me.

It was February 2000, and we were in the Central Belt, driving between Glasgow and Stirling, on our way for a week in Glenlivet. We like the Highlands and Islands, spending a week there most winters and summers.

The football coverage had finished, the kids were half asleep and we had another 200-odd miles to cover. Nearly time for 'Take The Floor' - Scottish country dance music on BBC Scotland. Give the kids a taste of the vanishing culture of Scotland - whether they like it or not. On a long journey I claim 'droit de driveur' over the stereo.

Time for the seven o'clock news - which brought me straight back to present day Scotland.

"A mother has appeared in court charged with throwing her six year old son to his death from the fourteenth floor of a Glasgow tower block"

Apparently she'd woken the kids up in the middle of the night then thrown one off the balcony. She was said to have 'drug and alcohol problems'.

This cheerful item was followed by the story of two 'security guards' who had tortured one of their colleagues to death in a Leith flat over a three day period - apparently for amusement.

Well, I thought - who needs Irvine Welsh when you can just pick up the local paper ? At the time I think I'd just finished reading 'Filth' - the heroic tale of an ordinary copper fighting the neds of Edinburgh in his own idiosyncratic style.

The car was warm, children sleepy, on our way to hills, snow, air, a little house by a church (and a distillery) in a Catholic valley - a different world from the schemes we could see from the M8. The contrast between the Scotland of our destination and the Scotland we were driving through was striking.



I looked up the story this evening. The mother, 26 year old Allison Campbell, got five years. She must have been free for two years now, given that you only serve half your sentence.

FIVE YEARS ? Is it just me that finds the sentence unbelievable ? Jeffrey Archer got four. You can get five years for smacking your child. Or possessing a firearm with no intention to use it. Apparently those offences are on a par with picking up a sleepy little boy and throwing him from the fourteenth floor. Worse than throwing, if possible. There was only a small gap in the security netting. She must have forced the child through. 2 am. Fourteen floors. Six years old.

"Mum, don't do that"



Ms Campbell is doubtless a disturbed person - 'vulnerable' in social-workese. But I think I'll reserve my sorrow and pity for that poor child rather than the person who so cruelly killed him. So she's got problems ? Since when did being a drinker and drug abuser count as mitigating circumstances for someone having charge of children ? Shouldn't they be aggravating ones ?


Walking free around Glasgow, going to the shops, on the buses, maybe out for a drink, is a woman, not yet 30, who chucks little kids off balconies.



We've seen plenty of recent murders by killers or other criminals let out early. I see Anthony Walker's killers were also on early release.

Watch this space for Ms Campbell. The Scots would have known what to do with her once.


UPDATE - what is it with Scottish mothers called Alison ?

A mother has pleaded guilty to beating her young son to death with a golf club on Christmas Day.
Alison Gorrie, 36, bludgeoned her five-year-old son Brendan and then threw herself out of the window of her Edinburgh flat, falling onto the courtyard 30ft below.

Thank God this Alison's got no kids.

No wonder they're worried about a falling population.

Poor Brendan Gorrie and Derek Campbell had something else in common apart from their murderous mums. Neither lived with a father. Good to see that "the Scottish Parliament has backed plans to speed up divorce following a Holyrood chamber debate."

Stephen Twigg "Incapable"

Took them a long time to work that one out.

Whae's Like Us ?

We have to congratulate the Scots on breaking all records - for homicide. With 134 a year in a population of five million-odd, compared with around 858 in 2001/2 for England and Wales with their 55 million population. I make that around half the rate south of the Border, at 16 per million compared to Scotland's mighty 27 per million. Is it just coincidence that Labour have held power there uninterrupted for the last forty years, creating an underclass of considerable dimensions ?

Glasgow manages a rate of 55 per million.

What's so impressive about these figures is that, despite some notorious cases, they've been achieved with little help from their ethnic minority population, who contribute nearly 20% of the homicide suspects for England and Wales (out of 2,605 homicides (table 3.6) committed over a three year period, 495 were cases where the principal suspect was described as black, Asian or 'other'). When we remember that the 'white' population will include Albanians and others from parts of Eastern Europe with a cultural bias towards violence, the native English and Welsh, while still much too murderous for my liking, are positive angels compared with the natives of the Land O'Cakes.

Still, fret ye not. New Improved Scottish Labour have a cunning plan, involving giving homicidal teenagers free housing in an unsuspecting community - sorry, involving a new strategy to "challenge the culture of violence" in Scotland.

She (Scottish Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson) said that, among other measures, Strathclyde Police's Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) would be expanded to create a national "centre of excellence" to share violence prevention best practice across Scotland.

Rolling out initiatives, sharing best practice, centre of excellence, build on the approach - bingo ! All we need is an 'evidence-based' 'homicide Czar' to 'move us forward into the new millennium' and I'll have a full set of managerial buzzwords.

Cathy Jamieson may be totally crap at actually doing anything but she's got the language off brilliantly.

I think this photograph bears a reprint.



Scots Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson successfully launching a campaign against anti-social behaviour.

No Wonder They Hate Us

New outrage for the BBC to report.

In other news - murders, stabbings etc.

Elsewhere - as ever, Mick Hartley is your one-stop shop for the latest on Lebanon, Darfur and China. Apparently the next AU (African Union) summit is to be held in Sudan - next month.

Hypocrites

"My least favourite radical chic interviewee: the talented but humourless Ute Lemper. Ensconced in a luxury suite at the Savoy, she embarked on a lecture about the downtrodden masses, and was so busy talking about how East German workers were exploited that she forgot to even acknowledge the existence of the maid who'd put a tray of tea in front of her." - Clive Davis

In the immortal words of Linus - "I love mankind - it's people I can't stand !"

And by the silence of Poll Pot, a lady who is usually pretty good at returning emails, it appears she did indeed send her kids to private school. What a hypocrite. As they say in the Black Country - "she's as two-faced as my a*** !"

Light Blogging

Due to pressure of work and tonight's school play.

Just a couple of BBC snippets. I haven't followed events in Sydney closely (try Tim Blair) but I caught a BBC TV news report last night which described the beach bums as 'neo-Nazis and white supremacists'. I wouldn't have thought there were that many such in the whole of Oz - they looked pretty ordinary youth to me. Looked like the sort of thing that in India or Aston would be called 'intercommunal' - with the big difference that nobody's dead.



The execution of Tookie Williams (loads of commentary at Cobb) has been all over the BBC - where murders of Britons rarely make the headlines. I'm still waiting for any of the BBC descriptions ('reformed gang leader and author' seems to be the favourite) to mention the four dead people of whose murders he was convicted.

UPDATE - sorry - he's a 'former gang member' i.e. ever since his arrest, and a 'peace campaigner'. Main item on R5 news.

UPDATE 2 - when the sentence was carried out, Radio Five news did actually mention the people he'd killed. Not their names or anything like that - just the number four.

UPDATE 3 - I see from the Englishman that the Royal Marine who got kicked in the head during their attempt to win the Turner prize has said his assailant is a 'good mate'.

One For Aged Hippies

Are The Polyphonic Spree a Principal Edwards Magic Theatre for the Noughties ?

"The Beginning Stages Of ..." is very 1970. The Asmoto Running Band go to Abbey Road.

Blogging the BBC on Buncefield

08.45 : The boys got up at 7.40 to watch 'Match of the Day' - the only time the telly ever goes on in the morning. Ten minutes later they're back upstairs.

'It's not on, Dad - there's been an explosion in a refinery near London'.

So I got up, fearing a terrorist attack, and have been watching off and on, in between lighting the fire, cooking breakfast and feeding hens. Susan and two of the kids are in London.

They may as well have put MOTD on with occasional scrolling news subtitles . There's little hard information coming out of the scene, so apart from the admittedly spectacular pictures BBC TV are reduced to saying the same things over and over again. Occasionally a new snippet emerges (Total oil spokesman - 'I can confirm that all our employees are accounted for' - How many is that ?' - 'Two') and is added to the mix. Otherwise, big plume, heard as far as Guildford, not an aeroplane (as in 'power surge on the tube'), there have been casualties.

They can't leave the story to develop, so they use what creative talent they have to find new ways of telling us the same thing.

UPDATE - the England Project were there.

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 ?