Cameron - New Diplomatic Offensive

South Asia

28 July 2010 Last updated at 18:57

Cameron - 'Oi, **** - whose ******** side are you on ?'

British Prime Minister David Cameron has warned Pakistan not to have any relationship with groups of "r**heads" that "want to blow up our bloody Tube trains".

"We should be very, very clear with those ***** in Islamabad that we want to see them pull their fingers out", Mr Cameron told reporters after a speech in the southern Indian city of Bangalore. His remarks were greeted with warm applause by his Indian audience.

"Whose side are these P**** on, anyway ?"

Earlier, in Turkey, he had addressed the Palestinian issue, calling for 'those sodding front-wheelers to give Hamas a break'. His remarks were greeted with warm applause by his Turkish audience.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague, who is travelling with the prime minister, sought to further clarify Mr Cameron's remarks.

"He wasn't accusing anybody of double dealing, or criticising Israel" Mr Hague said."He was just giving his audience what they wanted to hear. In this he is following the tradition of other great British statesmen, such as Mr Blair."

Tomorrow David Cameron returns to Britain and domestic politics. In a speech to Carlisle Chamber of Commerce on devolution, he is expected to call for reduced central government funding to"those sponging, drunken Jocks". Later in the evening he will address the Welsh Assembly on "the Saxon Serpent", and point out to a delegation from Sinn Fein that "England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity".

• Candid Cameron ruffles diplomatic feathers 28 JULY 2010, POLITICS
• Cameron pitch to Indian business 27 JULY 2010, POLITICS
• Cameron denies immigration rift 28 JULY 2010, POLITICS
• Can Cameron win friends in India? 27 JULY 2010, POLITICS
• Should Britain forge closer ties with India? 28 JULY 2010, UK

"Payback Time"

David Cameron has arrived in India for a visit he hopes will inject new energy into Anglo-Indian relations and help build trade links between the nations. The prime minister, on his first visit to Asia since taking office, is being accompanied by several senior Cabinet colleagues and UK business leaders.

The government regards India as a vital regional and economic partner in the drive to boost exports and investment.

If India's a 'partner', why are we giving her foreign aid, especially when she has a space program and nuclear weapons ?

Mr Cameron travelled from Turkey where he pledged to help its EU entry bid.

Ah, yes. Doubtless driven by that grass-roots Tory pressure for a few million Turks to come to the UK.

Cameron can talk of partnership as much as he likes. Indian businessmen aren't stupid.

"Recently there was speculation that Anil Ambani, one of the richest men in India, might buy Liverpool football club. There was much debate on Indian television of the merits of owing a Premier League club. One participant suggested it was payback time to the British for the East India Company. The presenter cut in sharply, saying: "We paid them back a long time ago. I thought the Indians owned most of the British businesses worth having. We don't need to buy a football club to demonstrate that."

The rest of the panel roared with laughter.."

As Churchill put it in a slightly different context : "It makes one flush to read the comments which were made behind the scenes about our country and its representatives."

Shouldn't The Label Be Covered With Blood?

(On the other hand, the nightmare of the last 50 years has pretty much been off the radar of the UK consumer. Maybe the name summons up dappled sunlight through a leafy tropical canopy to the average Brit - just not to this one).

Strike One For The Revolutionary Communist Group

Once upon a time an asylum seeker arrived in the UK from Nigeria with her son, and had her application turned down. Her story was that her husband, chairman of 'a local youth organisation', and daughter had disappeared, and her house had been burned down twice, because of his political views. "The Home Office disbelieved them, advised them to try ‘other parts of Nigeria’ and locked them up at Oakington Detention Centre."

There must be a gap in the story - and she seems to have been a good networker, because she was soon making useful contacts with the asylum industry in Manchester. At a (tax-funded - by the AHRC) performance of a play about asylum (by members of the tax-funded University of Manchester department of Applied Theatre) she met a 25-year old American student :

"I sent a letter to the Home Office on her behalf, urging them to let her and her son stay in the UK in safety."

The main backers of her campaign, however, seem to have been a bunch calling themselves the Revolutionary Communist Group, a smallish spin-off from the old International Socialists most noted for their picketing of Jewish-owned shops.

Now the Revolutionary Communist Group are perfectly entitled to call for the abolition of all immigration controls, and to that end support any and every asylum seeker. After all, their political forebears, Revolutionary Communists of various stripes, slaughtered tens of millions of people in their pursuit of a fairer society. Compared to that, building the New Jerusalem by moving half the population of Africa and the Middle East to the UK seems positively benign.

But what sticks in the craw is when the (then-Guardian owned) Manchester Evening News and the BBC describe such people as 'campaigners' without even mentioning the extreme-left agenda driving the 'campaign'.

Eucharia said: "A lot of my family members have been killed. I do no want to die or lose my son. I want to live here with my son where I will be free from fear."

Campaigners supporting Eucharia and Timeyi held a day of action on Market Street in Manchester city centre and earlier this month staged a campaign meeting at St George's Church, Abbey Hey, to rally local support.

You can see from this link the power of support from St George's, Abbey Hey. It's closed and up for sale.

The good news was that, 900 letters, from how many people is not known, and 2,250 signatures (ditto) later, the Government relented :

Under all this pressure, driven by Eucharia’s determination to fight for her and her son’s life and their right to stay in Britain, the Home Office have given in and granted them indefinite leave to remain. Without this campaign, Eucharia and Timeyi would have been deported long ago, facing the same fate as the 18,280 asylum seekers deported last year.

Throughout, Eucharia and Manchester RCG insisted that the campaign should be political, emphasising the link between racism in Britain and British imperialist exploitation abroad such as in Nigeria.

Can't say the RCG are exactly hiding their agenda, can you ?

And there it may have ended. Ms Jakpa, whose husband and daughter apparently disappeared in Nigeria, gave birth to another child in the UK, and was pregnant with yet another, when she decided to go for a drive.

A woman saved from deportation by a high-profile campaign has been jailed for ten months after killing a child while driving without a licence. Four-year-old Caitlan Fitzhugh, of Coronation Street, Openshaw, was walking hand-in-hand on the pavement with her mum Stacey Strutt when she was hit by a Ford Transit van which mounted the kerb. The van careered into the youngster after being hit by a Ford Focus driven by heavily pregnant Eucharia Jakpa, who had no licence.

Not that a little dead child can remove the aura of saintliness, mind :

Andrew Nuttall, defending, said Mrs Jakpa felt ‘real and heartfelt remorse’, but had originally struggled ‘getting to grips’ with the fact she had taken a life. He admitted she had ‘behaved badly’ by seeking to blame the other driver. But he maintained that the ‘committed Christian’ had understanding of the ‘enormous pain’ felt by Caitlan’s family, since her husband and daughter had been killed in Nigeria.

I don't understand. If she's a 'committed Christian', where have the other child and the pregnancy come from, given that her husband is no longer to be found ? And why did she lie and try to blame the other driver ? Maybe she's not quite as committed as all that - or maybe Andrew Nuttall is just doing for her what Holbein attempted to do for Anne of Cleves.

And most of all, why has she kept schtum about the other people in the car, who ran off at the scene ?

Jakpa was only a provisional licence holder at the time of the crash and police say she has never provided details for her supervising driver. Two passengers who were in the car at the time ran off after the collision and have never been traced.

Sgt Jeff Hollick, from Greater Manchester Police, said: "Stacey may eventually recover from the physical injuries she suffered but there is no doubt the emotional scars left by the loss of her daughter will remain. Jakpa has never revealed to us whether she had a full licence holder guiding her and nor have the two passengers come forward of their own accord to explain their role, so Jakpa carries the full consequences of that collision on her shoulders."

Just an idea. The two who ran off couldn't have been the long-lost husband and daughter, could they ?

Cognitive Dissonance Alert

Manchester Evening News :

Officers have received 23 calls from concerned parents since the first incident was reported less than a fortnight ago. The abduction bids have all taken place in Stockport. Most of the remaining calls were to report men acting suspiciously – such as driving slowly down streets where children were playing.

I could have sworn that driving slowly in streets where children are playing is what you're supposed to do.

Friday Night Music

With this audio quality (from a 20 year old cassette), no wonder they call him Scratch.




Somewhat more melodic but very very sad - I've only just found out that 80's lovers rock queen Jean Adebambo killed herself last year. What a great pity. Gorgeous music, gorgeous voice.

A Diversity Tax ?

This blog, way back.

One of my hobby-horses is the question of culture. For some reason UK liberals believe (or claim to) that, no matter whence you hail, the moment you set foot on UK soil the mystic properties of Old Albion (or Cymru or Alba or Erin) flow up through your shoes and make you just like the natives - in terms of your propensity to evil. But in the case of your propensity to good, all the good bits of your culture magically stay, enriching the poor natives by the power of diversity.

My car insurance, which includes a 20 year old and an 18 year old, has gone up by about 25% this year.

The cost of car insurance has grown at its fastest rate, in large part due to a rise in fraudulent claims, according to data released today.

Cases of insurance fraud have been on the rise since the recession began. Figures to be published by the Association of British Insurers (ABI) later this week are expected to show that these are still on the rise. As it is, the ABI puts the total cost to the industry of undetected general insurance claims fraud at £2bn per year. This adds around £40 a year to the insurance premiums paid by all policyholders.

The most common and costly form of general insurance claims fraud is "opportunistic retail fraud". This is where individuals exaggerate or inflate genuine claims to increase the value of a payout.

But there has also been a big rise in organised fraud, where criminal gangs work to systematically defraud insurers. The most common way of doing this is via a "cash for crash" scam, where criminals stage accidents, typically at roundabouts, by slamming their brakes on suddenly causing the car behind to crash into them. The fraudsters then claim for the cost of repair or replacement of their vehicle on the innocent driver's insurance. At a high court case in February, an organised ring of "cash for crash" insurance fraudsters was ordered to pay its victims almost £400,000 after seven insurers joined together and successfully sued the fraud ring.

The Insurance Fraud Bureau estimated in 2008 (pdf) that "Such payouts are potentially costing the average policy holder an extra 5 percent on their premium every year."

I wonder if it's gone up since then ?

I've been looking at "cash for crash" since 2006.

The "cash for crash" number one hotspot was Blackburn, where there have been 1,710 incidents over the last seven years, according to figures from the recently-formed Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB).

The next worst locations were Bradford (1,669 incidents), Birmingham (1,510), Oldham (1,034), Bolton (986) and Manchester (979). The scam was first spotted in North West of England but had now spread to London and the South East, said the IFB.

In May 2010 Direct Line released the Top Ten cfc hotspots by physical location :

1. Centenary Way, Trafford Park, Manchester
2. Haslingden roundabout, Junction 5, M65
3. Scotland Road roundabout, Junction 13, M65
4. Gannow Top roundabout, Cavalry Way, Burnley
5. Eden Point roundabout, A34, Stockport
6. Denham roundabout, M40
7. Jarman Park, A414, Hemel Hempstead
8. Parkway Uxbridge Road A312 / A4020
9. Port Way / Strand Road junction , Preston
10. Junction 24 roundabout, M25

Still heavily biased towards Preston/Blackburn/Burnley. I see Southall, Slough (Denham - or is that an unwarranted assumption and it's people from Gerrards Cross ?) and Luton in the mix, too.

I trust when our rulers calculate "the enormous economic benefits of immigration" (pdf) that such factors are being taken into account.

Being able to count on a basic standard of honesty is a great economic good - because it means there's no requirement for a huge compliance overhead (to be fair, honesty among the Native Brits has also declined rapidly over the last 50 years, if the crime figures are anything to go by). The same applies even more in voting, and in spades when it comes to the administration of justice :

A Crown Prosecutor and barrister has admitted dropping cases for cash.
I am not one who is easily shocked, but this is something that I would have found incredible at first sight. This man has betrayed so much that our society values that I can only expect the judge to hand down the most severe sentence when the time comes.

None so blind as those that will not see, eh ?

Journolist - a Real Liberal Conspiracy

via Ed West at the Telegraph, this story :

In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.

The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public – to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”

Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists.

And they didn't like it - so did something about it.

According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — call them racists.”

Michael Tomasky, a writer for the Guardian [my emphasis] also tried to rally his fellow members of Journolist: “Listen folks–in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn’t about defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people.”

Calling a political opponent a racist ? Hmm, worth a try. Not been done before.

"Discourse that serves the people". Very Soviet. But as Andrew Breitbart puts it : 'the reporters at Pravda weren't such insufferable ******* !"

A Dodgy Decision

Here.

According to the complaint filed by the woman, the two met in a Jerusalem street in 2008 and had sex that day. When she discovered he was not Jewish, but an Arab, she went to the police. Kashur was arrested and charged with rape and indecent assault, but the charges were later replaced by a different charge of "rape by deception".

Hmm. I thought it was a truism that a young man will say pretty much anything to get a woman into bed.

The inventive and resourceful Syrian Fadi Sbano was acquitted of rape by a UK court for a lot more than that. Not sure he'd have got that verdict in Israel.

UPDATE

In the verdict, deputy president of the Jerusalem district court Tzvi Segal, along with fellow judges Moshe Drori and Yoram Noam, wrote that although this wasn't "a classical rape by force," and the sex was consensual, the consent itself was obtained through deception and under false pretenses. "If she hadn't thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have cooperated," the judges wrote.

I see. They'd been together for months before he had his wicked way ?

According to the indictment, Kashur met the complainant in September 2008 in downtown Jerusalem.. the couple then went to a nearby building and had sex, after which Kashur left the building without waiting for the woman to get dressed.

Hmm. Not a gentleman, then. But didn't exactly take a lot of persuasion, did she ?

"The court is obliged to protect the public interest from sophisticated, smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbearable price - the sanctity of their bodies and souls," Segal wrote.

Hmm.

Noah Fence

At the beginning of the meeting, David Cameron said "this is a national issue of the highest importance; it has both demographic and humanitarian aspects. In effect, we are the only western country that lacks a clear immigration policy. Today, we will start the discussion in order to correct this."

The prime minister added that the new law, drafted by Minister of Justice Ken Clarke, "should conform to our national interests, first and foremost providing security and ensuring the British and democratic character of the country."

"Illegal immigrants are endangering Britain's existence," he said. "The south of England has fallen under siege."

Foreign Minister William Hague and Home Secretary Theresa May discussed the possibility of sending some of the thousands of illegal African immigrants in London to African and European countries that are willing to accept them. Hague said he is talking to his European counterparts, but that it is unlikely that such a plan will succeed.

Gosh ... can this be real ?

The government held a special session this morning on various issues connected with illegal immigration.

What ... where am I ? Oh no ! It was all a dream !



"The government held a special session this morning on various issues connected with illegal immigration. Disappointment, directed mainly at Defense Minister Ehud Barak, was expressed at the fact that construction of the fence between Egypt and Israel would begin only in November.

The purpose of the fence is to block African infiltrators making their way into Israel via the Sinai Desert. Public Security Minister Yitzchak Aharonovitch says there are some 150,000 illegal infiltrators, only 16 percent of whom are registered and known to the authorities."



Good fences make good neighbours, said Robert Frost's neigbour, and India seems to agree. They finished their fence across Kashmir ages ago.

The barrier itself consists of double-row of fencing and concertina wire eight to twelve feet (2.4–3.7 m) in height, and is electrified and connected to a network of motion sensors, thermal imaging devices and alarms in stretches where power supply is available. The small stretch of land between the rows of fencing is mined.

The Bangladesh barrier is proceeding apace :

The barrier is just under three meters high with the aim to stop infiltration of terrorists, prevent smuggling, and to prevent large scale illegal immigration from Bangladesh into neighbouring states. Under the former government of Khaleda Zia and the Islamic extremist Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh troops clashed with the Indian Border Security Force in an attempt to prevent fencing. Some indigenous Assamese fear that they, as a people, will be reduced to a minority if unabated infiltration continues.

Poor Assamese. Imagine how English people would feel if that happened to them.

"We Don't Need No Piece of Paper From The City Hall"

Raoul Moate's brother (by a different father) speaks. Nature, nurture, or what ? He's a tax officer with a Masters degree.

The brothers had different fathers, but neither was told who they were. Raoul made it very clear ('I haven't got a Dad' - LT), in his last stand in Rothbury, that this was something he cared a great deal about, and, even though Angus understands that the 70s were different, that there was far more stigma about babies born out of wedlock, his fury at the situation arrives almost on the same breath.

"I feel very strongly that a child has a right to know who his father is. I don't think a selfish woman has a right to have a baby as her own plaything. I think there are massive indications there for somebody's identity in adult life. We weren't given the opportunity, for what I believe to be very selfish reasons." He has since discovered who his own father is, though he has no intention of contacting him; apparently, after all the publicity, someone has turned up claiming to be Raoul's. "I think it's a crying shame he's only turned up now Raoul's dead. It's a bit late in the day."

On Nature vs Nurture, I'm a more-or-less rather than either/or type, as in so many other things. In Steven Pinker's the Blank Slate, he posits a rough guide to how your kids will turn out, given 3 approximately* equal factors - with (I think) upbringing being the least of the three - depressing information for well-meaning daddy :

a) natural inheritance (genes)
b) upbringing
c) post-adolescence peer group

If the third be true, it may be that yet another Sixties liberal myth (albeit one still being pumped out by our educators) is exploded - although there is a difference between childhood and adolescence, maybe being kept away from the rough boys then makes you less likely to hang with them later. Many times I've listened to or read of some successful figure describing his childhood and taking an affectionate but condescending pop at parents who wouldn't let them hang out with the rough boys down the road. Maybe that parental decision is why they're on Desert Island Discs.

When the academic Moat brother was doing politics at Nottingham, the other had discovered the society of the gym and its steroid subculture.

I don't think Raoul's background (more here) fits by any means the classic underclass scenario. But, as study after study shows, fatherless children, even after controlling for the lower income of single parents, do worse on pretty much every measure of human achievement.

As A.H. Halsey puts it in his foreword to "Families Without Fatherhood":

“The children of parents who do not follow the traditional norm (i.e. taking on personal, active and long-term responsibility for the social upbringing of the children they generate) are thereby disadvantaged in many major aspects of their chances of living a successful life. On the evidence available such children tend to die earlier, to have more mental illness, to do less well at school, to exist at a lower level of nutrition, comfort and conviviality, to suffer more unemployment, to be more prone to deviance and crime, and finally to repeat the cycle of unstable parenting from which they themselves have suffered.”

There's nothing we can do about it, though. As Sunny so perceptively pointed out a month or so back, people who have children and don't get married wouldn't be any more likely to stay together if they DID marry each other. His conclusion is that people who don't marry are just the kind of people with low commitment to the relationship, who are more likely to split (aka desert the kids), married or not !




* I think those three factors stand provided the upbringing is not 'extreme' - in which bets may be off. Obviously an infancy or childhood of torture or abuse will have a hefty effect - as will, say, being brought up in a closed religious community, or selected for the Janissaries (in both these instances your peer-group gets chosen for you as well, securing two out of three factors).

French Rioting Season Commences

"Youths" were (relatively) quiet in France last summer, although seasonal traditions such as the New Year car-burnings are still well-supported.

Every summer, like King Arthur's men at the feast of Pentecost, the youths await a sign - some strange portent or happening after the schools break up which means that the car-burning season may commence. That sign has now been given :

Karim Boudouda, 27, was one of two men believed to have held up a casino, escaping with more than 20,000 euros (£17,000). He was killed in a shoot-out with police following the robbery. Violence flared after his memorial service. Mr Boudouda, 27, had three previous convictions for armed robbery. The other suspect escaped and is still on the run.

And the season commences :

The incident begun in the early hours of Saturday morning when rampaging youths stoned a tramway and attacked it with baseball bats and iron bars. The gangs then set cars on fire and opened fire against officers. The officers returned fire.

Shooting at the police is fast becoming as integral a part of the season as a flambéed Renault :

Four young men found guilty of shooting at the police during riots on the outskirts of Paris in 2007 were jailed for between three and 15 years early Sunday. Defence lawyers denounced the sentences as “extremely harsh” and claimed that political considerations had influenced the cases.

Great White Defendant ?

In Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities, the (white) state prosecutors, watching the stream of poor black and Hispanic defendants being processed by the courts, long for the appearance of The Great White Defendant, someone whose prosecution will publicly prove that the law makes no distinction of colour or class, and privately assuage the nagging guilt of the prosecutors.

"Every assistant D.A. in the Bronx ... shared Captain Ahab's mania for the Great White Defendant . For a start, it was not pleasant to go through life telling yourself "What I do for a living is, I pack blacks and Latins off to jail" .. it made the boys uneasy, this eternal prosecution of the blacks and Latins."

As the forces of the law closed around the late Thomas Moat last Friday, the Magistrate pondered from the peaceful seclusion of West London whether the seemingly inexplicable recent tendency to violence of the North Countryman was just coincidence :

Murderous rampages are mercifully rare, but perhaps it is no more than chance that the two recent killing sprees took place a long way from my patch.

While I don't attempt to minimise the vileness of Moat's crimes, one death doth not a killing spree make. By strange chance, as the Magistrate was writing, only a couple of miles up the road, police were arresting someone in relation to the murders of two people, and the shooting of a third, in the previous few days - after Moat's attacks.

The post mortem of the man killed by mystery gunmen in rush hour traffic outside his Cricklewood home yesterday is set to happen this afternoon. Neighbours said the victim was an Eastern European builder, aged in his 50s, who lived in Garth Road, next to the A41 Hendon Way. He was shot “multiple times”through the window of his black van as he pulled out of the road onto the busy 6-lane artery and pronounced dead at the scene.

Nasty.

The third alleged victim of a man arrested over the shooting in Cricklewood on Thursday has been named. The man, 58, was found dead on Friday and named as Osman Grbic. He was found in a flat in Milton Avenue, East Ham with gunshot wounds. The suspect is also wanted over the shooting of two other men: Nezir Golaj, 45, of Garth Road, Cricklewood, who died of multiple gunshot wounds last Thursday, and the non fatal shooting of a 43-year-old man in Haringey.

Hmm. Two in two days and a third injured.

A Kosovan man is set to appear in court today charged with three shootings in north and East London, including the murder of a Cricklewood builder. Hajdar Kasumaj, 50, of Firs Lane, Winchmore Hill will attend Westminster Magistrates Court today charged with murdering Nezir Golaj, 45, near his home in Garth Way on Thursday. He is also accused of murdering Osman Grbic, 58, in East Ham on Friday evening and the attempted murder of a 43-year-old in Wightman Road, Hornsey, the same day. Mr Kasumai is also charged with three counts of possessing a firearm, possessing a prohibited weapon, a silencer and ammunition without a license.

I'm just reading Misha Glenny's McMafia, on the vast corruption and gangsterism of the post-Soviet world and how globalisation has facilitated ever-expanding criminal networks.

Behar Dika, from Cheyne Walk, Hendon, was last month found guilty of conspiracy to supply class A drugs and money laundering. Kingston Crown Court heard during the trial that Dika was the leader of a network that was supplying cocaine from three addresses, including in Second Avenue, Hendon, and laundering the cash through a bureaux de change in west London. False companies were established by two co-defendants and over a period of time they were able to take nearly £10million in cash to a legitimate bureau de change and trade the sterling for Euros in 500 denomination notes A statement from Scotland Yard said the bulk of this laundered money has never been traced, despite “extensive enquires”.

Following earlier information, police raided the home of Besnik Alla, 31, of Princes Parade, Golders Green Road, Golders Green, and uncovered more cocaine and cash. Albanian national Dika, 35, and his brother Elton Dika, 27, of no fixed address, were found to be directly linked to the drugs factories controlled by the network and to the money laundering operation. The older brother was found guilty last month of supplying cocaine and money laundering. He was jailed yesterday for a total of 18 years. Alla pleaded guilty at Kingston Crown Court on January 11 to conspiracy to supply a controlled class A drug and was sentenced to six years.

Elton Dika pleaded guilty on April 21 to conspiracy to launder the proceeds of a conspiracy to supply class A drugs and received five years imprisonment.

The other gang members sentenced yesterday are as follows: Xhovan Gripshi, 31, from Wembley, pleaded guilty at Kingston Crown Court on April 22 to allowing a premises to be used for the supply of class A drugs. Sentenced to two years nine months imprisonment. Fabiol Beqiri, 23, from Wembley, pleaded guilty at Kingston Crown Court on April 22 to conspiracy to launder the proceeds of a conspiracy to supply class A drugs. Sentenced to two years imprisonment. Abu Tarab Raja, 27, from Hounslow, pleaded guilty at Kingston Crown Court on January 29 to conspiracy to launder the proceeds of a conspiracy to supply class A drugs. Sentenced to six years imprisonment. Kanwaldeep Deol, 40, from Hayes, pleaded guilty at Kingston Crown Court on November 20, 2009, to conspiracy to supply a controlled class A drug. Sentenced to six years imprisonment. Jaspreet Singh Gill, 27, Hayes, pleaded guilty at Kingston Crown Court on the same date to conspiracy to supply controlled class A drugs and conspiracy to launder the proceeds of a conspiracy to supply class A drugs. Sentenced to a total of nine years. Emiljan Shega, 19, from Wembley, pleaded guilty at Kingston Crown Court, on the same date to conspiracy to supply a controlled class A drug. Sentenced to ten years imprisonment

North London seems as bad as Sarf these days. I'll leave you to read all about the dismembered love-triangle pensioner and the drug dealer's girlfriend.

Five Years On

Listening to the BBC on Wednesday, July 7th, 5th anniversary of the 7/7 attacks, was an odd experience.

'Nikki' Campbell's morning programme treated the events as you would a flood or other natural disaster - tales of coping and survival. People were interviewed about how they escaped, how they treated the wounded, how they first heard the news. Not a mention of the perpetrators, still less the M- or I- words. Hitler got a mention, the IRA - none of 'them' could break the spirit of Londoners and neither would 'this'. You'd think the attacks were just a thing that happened.

In the PM and World Tonight programmes the perpetrators were still only mentioned obliquely - in one interview after another, a kind of conversational tapestry was woven all around them without ever actually alighting on them, so that their image was marked by a hole, an absence. What we did get in the heavyweight programmes was warning after warning that anti-terrorist activity and legislation not be 'counter-productive' - that it not upset the (still un-named) 'community' and create more terrorists. Our ruling class are 'frit', as Mrs Thatcher would put it.

And with perfect timing for the anniversary, we were treated to Jeremy Hardy on 'How To Confront The Vexed Issue Of British Identity Without Getting In The Most Fearful Bate About The Whole Thing', a 30-minute lecture on how 'they' are in fact just like 'us', that there is absolutely nothing to worry about and the sooner we realise that fact the happier we'll all be.

The anniversary 'refocused attention on Islamist terrorism' according to the Guardian. Not on the BBC it didn't.

Friday Night Dixie - Money Talks

I think this is quite a way better than the original.

Sunny Hundal "Two Great Truths" Shocker

Now that Labour are consigned to the privatised council dustcart (rubbish/recyclables alternate weeks) of history, its adherents seem able to speak a few previously un-nameable truths.

First of all, a little aside in a Lib Con piece by one Adam Ramsey :

"Tony Blair seemed to believe that if you sound like a Tory, you can sneak through some Labour policies. So he switched from “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” to announcing initiatives to march ‘hoodies’ to cash machines.

And while these statements were Daily Mail fodder which never actually happened, a whole generation of people began to believe that attacking those who commit crime is the appropriate response ..."

I've been pointing that out for five years at least.



And here's the Sunster himself telling it like it is - or was :

The war on social issues has broadly been won by the left.

Can't argue with that, can you ? Nor with this (other than the word 'great') :

" ... expanding the size of the welfare state and making it central to people’s lives, despite Thatcher’s best attempts to destroy it, was one of New Labour’s greatest achievements ..."

He's not too sound on his history - given that the Thatcher years saw the explosion of the British underclass and the fatherless family*, and some fairly hefty public spending. But his point about trying to create as many welfare recipients as possible is a valid one. This struck me when I realised that an income of 48K entitled one to Child Tax Credit. The Gord giveth and the Gord taketh away. Welcome to the Benefits Big Tent !





* as Charles Murray put it :

When I wrote (in 1989) in the Sunday Times Magazine that Britain did indeed have an underclass, small but growing, the news had no natural constituency. Conservative politicians were embarrassed that crime, unemployment, and illegitimacy had soared conspicuously on their watch, and would just as soon have ignored the whole thing. The Left, ordinarily delighted to blame anything on Margaret Thatcher, couldn’t admit that crime really was rising and large numbers of people were exploiting the dole without sounding like lower-case conservatives. As for unmarried women having babies, it was a good sign, not a bad one, that women were no longer forced into marriage just because they got pregnant. From Left and Right alike, the notion of a British underclass was generally dismissed as an attempt to impose an American paradigm on British problems that weren’t really so terrible anyway.

It's a delicate suggestion - nothing more ...

A feminist classic of Edwardian times, recorded in 1932 by the Spanish mezzo-soprano Conchita Supervia.

I once walked with her by the Arno, in Florence, where navvies engaged in road work put down their picks and stared in frank admiration as she passed. Supervia, without even a glance in their direction, sensed their admiration and visibly preened herself.

"You surely don’t enjoy men looking at you like that?" I asked.

"I do," she replied, amused at such a very Anglo-Saxon question. "I don’t find it unpleasant to think that they are all saying to themselves, “If I was a rich man, that’s what I’d want.”"

If you want to learn a lesson with the fan,
I'm quite prepared to teach you all I can
So ladies, every one, pray observe how it is done,
It's a simple little lesson with the fan.

If you chance to be invited to a ball,
And meet someone that you don't expect at all,
And you want him close beside you,
While a dozen friends divide you,
Well of course, it's most unladylike to call,

So you look at him a minute - nothing more
And you cast your eyes demurely on the floor,
And you wave your fan just so,
Well, towards you, don't you know,
It's a delicate suggestion - nothing more ...

When you see him coming to you, simple you,
Oh be very, very careful what you do
With your fan just kindly play,
And look down as if to say
It's a matter of indifference to you,

Then you flutter and you fidget with it so,
And you hide your little nose behind it so,
And when he begins to speak
You just lay it on your cheek,
In that fascinating manner that you know,

And when he tells the old tale o'er and o'er,
And vows that he will love you evermore,
Gather up your little fan
And secure him while you can,
It's a delicate suggestion - nothing more ...

(When she takes a crack at an English song the results are quite charming.)

Today's Early Release Murderer - Strike One For Ken Clarke

Ken Clarke is so right - prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse.

Take Raoul Moat for example - an ordinary bouncer from Gateshead who inadvertantly 'got caught up in crime' and assaulted someone.

Some idiot magistrate who probably read in the Mail that 'prison works' sent him down - and what happened ? He comes straight out and murders someone !

Armed officers are seeking Moat, 38, who is believed to have fired on the young victim, named locally as Samantha Stobbart, through the living room window. A man believed to be in his late 20s or early 30s was also shot dead outside the property in Birtley, Gateshead. He has not yet been named by police. Miss Stobbart, 22, who has a young daughter named Chanel, is thought to have been shot in the stomach and is now in a critical condition in hospital. Moat has previously worked as a nightclub doorman and was released from jail on Thursday after serving time for assault.

So our criminal justice system turns a man into a murderer with one short sentence ! Nobody gets a long sentence for a little thing like assault nowadays, do they ?

As Rob Allen of the Centre For Crime But No Justice Studies puts it :

His recognition in today's speech at King's College London that there are more people in prison than necessary is as welcome as it is overdue. His description of prison as often costly and ineffectual marks a return to late 1980s Conservative policy under Douglas Hurd, which saw that far from working, "imprisonment can often be an expensive way of making bad people worse."

UPDATE - that short sentence has done even more damage than we thought.

Police said the uniformed motor patrol officer was carrying out a "static patrol" on a roundabout joining the A1 and A69 when he was attacked. He suffered a gun shot wound and was taken to Newcastle General Hospital.

I suppose it's no surprise that Rob Allen is on board. I've just taken a look at Ian Duncan-Smith's Centre for Social Justice site. Who's on the Working Groups ?

Aslyum - Bob Holman, the holy fool of Easterhouse. Did they really ever send asylum seekers there ? That is what I call cruelty. And an asylum seeker, of course.

Courts and Sentencing - well, there's the chair of the Prisoners Education Trust, anti-prison activist Enver Solomon, deputy dawg at the anti-prison 'charity' based at King's College London. And who's this 'advisor' - no less than Rob Allen, director of same 'charity' !

Social Cohesion don't look too promising, either, given the presence of a Peace Studies lecturer whose book has 'a foreword by Jon Snow'.

Economic dependency looks a bit 50-50, Early Years seems full of pointy-heads .. only the Police Reform working group looks sound - Ray Mallon, Norman Dennis, David Green, Ken Pease (possibly the only non-Guardianista criminologist in existence). Even they have Steve Green, former head of Notts Police and the guy who in August 2005 issued his force with green ribbons "to show solidarity with the Muslim community after a series of racist attacks".

Prison reform - uber-liberal Rod "The Master" Morgan and James Monahan, the double murderer who writes for the Guardian - the CJS give him his pen-name. He also features (with Rob Allen again and some NACRO guy) in the Youth Justice area.

What we're seeing in Ken Clarke's "Back To The 80's" initiative is a toxic synergy between the desire of the Tories to cut government spending and the desire of the liberal establishment to bang no man up except racists and smokers. They pretend that a few more social workers and probation officer chats will cut crime and he pretends to believe them.

This is cost centre management at its very worst. Ken will save on the headline costs while passing on even more of the cost of crime, financial, social, moral, psychological, to individuals, families and communities.


















Looks like the Cameroon honeymoon is the shortest on record.

Support The Bangladeshi Garment Workers!

AFP -

DHAKA — Garment manufacturers in Bangladesh said they would reopen all factories closed Tuesday in the country's major industrial hub after authorities pledged to protect key plants from protests. Tens of thousands of Bangladeshi garment workers, employees at some 700 factories that supply top names in Western retail, have been on strike since Saturday, demanding higher pay and forcing the closure some 700 factories.

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), which represents factory owners, said the factories would be reopened Wednesday following a government pledge to put down the protests.

The decision marked a dramatic about face by factory owners, who earlier Tuesday declared that all factories in the affected area, Ashulia, which make clothing for global retailers like Wal-Mart, Tesco, H & M and Carrefour, would be closed indefinitely.

About 800,000 workers are employed in the 700 factories in the area and "tens of thousands" have taken their grievances to the streets, forcing the shuttering of businesses, Dhaka's deputy police chief Monowar Hosain told AFP.

"We've stepped up security, brought in reinforcements but the problem is there are too many protesting workers," Hosain said. The workers are demanding wages of at least 5,000 taka (70 dollars) per month. The current minimum wage, set in 2006, is just 25 dollars.

70 dollars a month would definitely be an improvement, and would hasten the day when the average wage in Bangladesh becomes comparable with that in the UK - and we can make a few things again. Mind, the skills will have been long lost. But maybe they'll outsource some of the less skilled stuff to us.

Dumb Britain Part 628

not to mention de-Christianised Britain.

In a Mail piece about an Islamic private school, a staff member says :

‘Our Koran teaches us to respect the earlier prophets and the earlier revelations of the Bible and Torah,’ he told me. ‘If you do not believe in Jesus or Moses, you cannot be a true Muslim.’

To which a commenter responds :

Yes, you may believe in Jesus, but if your faith is merely in Him as a prophet, your faith is totally in vain. Only His shed blood can possibly wash away our sins. All other vehicles of faith are human vanity.
A proud Pakistani.

- Daoud Mohamed Ul-Haq, Peshawar

Now you may wonder if it's a wind-up, but the theology seems pretty sound to me.

Comment rating : -706. Did they see "proud Pakistani" and turn brain off ?