Another Innocent Woman Jailed

Poor Joanne Hussey - a tragic victim of Brown's insistence that the English pay their care-home fees, while the Scots have theirs subsidised by general taxation.

A young woman who battered her grandmother to death with a spade has been found guilty of murder. Joanne Hussey had admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. But a jury at Leeds Crown Court took just over an hour to decide the 33-year-old had murdered Annie Garbutt at her Mirfield home last May.A police chief said later that greed had sparked Hussey into killing her 76-year-old grandmother. Worried that her gran’s money might be spent on nursing care, she repeatedly struck Annie Garbutt as she slept.

The two-week trial heard that Hussey, from Yeadon, had a history of violence, once stabbing a former partner. She had been worried about the financial implications of Mrs Garbutt going into a nursing home. Mrs Garbutt, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, was said to have had considerable savings.

If Mrs Garbutt had been fortunate enough to live in Scotland, she'd be alive today. I blame Gordon Brown.

Oops !

Sunny's having a pop at Bishop Nazir Ali and the massed ranks of Christian fundamentalists like, er, Melanie Phillips.

I’m writing a longer article on how crap Nazir Ali’s article in Standpoint is, but there’s no surprise that the usual suspects on the right are getting a hard-on over it. The thing is, Nazir Ali’s point was actually made by Melanie Phillips ages ago and it was taken apart then. After all, it wasn’t long when she asked in all seriousness: “How long will it be before Christianity becomes illegal in Britain?”

A good question ...

A police community support officer ordered two Christian preachers to stop handing out gospel leaflets in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham.
The evangelists say they were threatened with arrest for committing a "hate crime" and were told they risked being beaten up if they returned. The incident will fuel fears that "no-go areas" for Christians are emerging in British towns and cities, as the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, claimed in The Sunday Telegraph this year. Arthur Cunningham, 48, and Joseph Abraham, 65, both full-time evangelical ministers, have launched legal action against West Midlands Police, claiming the officer infringed their right to profess their religion.

Mr Abraham said: "I couldn't believe this was happening in Britain. The Bishop of Rochester was criticised by the Church of England recently when he said there were no-go areas in Britain but he was right; there are certainly no-go areas for Christians who want to share the gospel." Last night, Christian campaigners described the officer's behaviour as "deeply alarming".

The preachers, both ministers in Birmingham, were handing out leaflets on Alum Rock Road in February when they started talking to four Asian youths. A police community support officer (PCSO) interrupted the conversation and began questioning the ministers about their beliefs. They said when the officer realised they were American, although both have lived in Britain for many years, he launched a tirade against President Bush and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr Cunningham said: "I told him that this had nothing to do with the gospel we were preaching but he became very aggressive. He said we were in a Muslim area and were not allowed to spread our Christian message. He said we were committing a hate crime by telling the youths to leave Islam and said that he was going to take us to the police station."

The preacher refused to give the PCSO his address because he felt the officer's manner was "threatening and intimidating". The ministers claim he also advised them not to return to the area. As he walked away, the PCSO said: "You have been warned. If you come back here and get beaten up, well you have been warned".

West Midlands Police, who refused to apologise, said the incident had been "fully investigated" and the officer would be given training in understanding hate crime and communication.

Not that I think Christianity will be made illegal. It'll still be OK to "be" a Christian - as long as you don't "live" like one.


(see also this)

Church of England showing traces of Christianity shock

From last week's editorial in the Church of England newspaper :

If recent reports of trends in religious observance prove to be correct, then in some 30 years the mosque will be able to claim that, religiously speaking, the UK is an Islamic nation, and therefore needs a share in any religious establishment to reflect this. The progress of conservative Islam in the UK has been amazing, and it has come at a time of prolonged decline in church attendance that seems likely to continue.

This progress has been enthusiastically assisted by this government in particular with its hard-line multi-cultural dogma and willingness to concede to virtually every demand made by Muslims.

At all levels of national life Islam has gained state funding, protection from any criticism, and the insertion of advisors and experts in government departs national and local. A Muslim Home Office adviser, for example, was responsible for Baroness Scotland’s aborting of the legislation against honour killings, arguing that informal methods would be better. In the police we hear of girls under police protection having the addresses of their safe houses disclosed to their parents by Muslim officers who think they are doing their religious duty.

While men-only gentlemen’s clubs are now being dubbed unlawful, we hear of municipal swimming baths encouraging ‘Muslim women only’ sessions and in Dewsbury Hospitals staff waste time by turning beds to face Mecca five times a day — a Monty Pythonesque scenario of lunacy, but astonishingly true. Prisons are replete with imams who are keen to inculcate conservative Islam in any inmates who are deemed to be culturally ‘Muslim’: the Prison service in effect treats such prisoners as a cultural block to be preached to by imams at will. Would the Prison service send all those with ‘C of E’ on their papers to confirmation classes with the chaplain?! We could go on.

The point is that Islam is being institutionalised, incarnated, into national structures amazingly fast, at the same time as demography is showing very high birthrates. Charles Taylor’s new and classic work on the Secular Age charts the rise of the secular mindset and what he calls the ‘excarnation’ of Christianity as it is levered out of state policy and structures. Christianity is now regarded as bad news, the liberal elite’s attack developed in the 1960s took root in the educationalist empire, and to some extent even in areas of the church.

Today the Christian story is fading from public imagination, while Islam grows apace.

I've been saying for ages that nature abhors a spiritual or cultural vacuum.

The decline of Christian values is destroying Britishness and has created a "moral vacuum" which radical Islam is filling, one of the Church of England's leading bishops has warned. The Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, claimed the "social and sexual" revolution of the 1960s had led to a steep decline in the influence of Christianity over society which church leaders had failed to resist. He said that in its place, Britain had become gripped by the doctrine of "endless self-indulgence" which had led to the destruction of family life, rising levels of drug abuse and drunkenness and mindless violence on the streets.

The bishop warns that the modern politicians' catchphrases of respect and tolerance will not be strong enough to prevent this collapse of traditional virtues, and said radical Islam is now moving in to fill the void created by the decline of Christianity.

His claims, in an article published in the new political magazine Standpoint, come just days after he accused the Church of England of failing in its duty to convert British Muslims to Christianity.

Dr Nazir-Ali claims in the new article that Britain, previously a "rabble of mutually hostile tribes", would never have become a global empire without the arrival of Christianity. But he said the Church's influence began to wane during the 1960s, and quotes an academic who blames the loss of "faith and piety among women" for the steep decline in Christian worship. He says Marxist students encouraged a "social and sexual revolution" to which liberal theologians and Church leaders "all but capitulated". "It is this situation that has created the moral and spiritual vacuum in which we now find ourselves. While the Christian consensus was dissolved, nothing else, except perhaps endless self-indulgence, was put in its place."

Yup. The cultural revolution did a great job on the old culture, but forgot to replace it with a new one.

The bishop, who faced death threats earlier this year when he said some parts of Britain had become "no-go areas" for non-Muslims, said Marxism has been exposed as a nonsense but went on: "We are now confronted by another equally serious ideology, that of radical Islamism, which also claims to be comprehensive in scope." Asking what weapons are available to fight this new "ideological battle", the bishop said the values trumpeted by modern politicians such as "respect, tolerance and good behaviour" are "hardly adequate for the task before us".

You've got it. No-one's going to the barricades for "tolerance".

"The consequences of the loss of this discourse are there for all to see: the destruction of the family because of the alleged parity of different forms of life together; the loss of a father figure, especially for boys, because the role of fathers is deemed otiose; the abuse of substances (including alcohol); the loss of respect for the human person leading to horrendous and mindless attacks on people."

The bishop added that Christian hospitality has been replaced by the "newfangled and insecurely founded" doctrine of multiculturalism, which has led to immigrants creating "segregated communities and parallel lives".

He said many values respected by society, such as the dignity of human life, equality and freedom, are based on Christian ones. But he warned that without their Christian backbone they cannot exist for ever, and that new belief systems may be based on different values.

"Radical Islamism, for example, will emphasise the solidarity of the umma (worldwide community of the Muslim faithful) against the freedom of the individual. Instead of the Christian virtues of humility, service and sacrifice, there may be honour, piety and the importance of 'saving face'."

In an implicit criticism of the Archbishop of Canterbury's recent claim that the adoption of some parts of Islamic law is unavoidable, Dr Nazir-Ali said: "Recognising its jurisdiction in terms of public law is fraught with difficulties precisely because it arises from a different set of assumptions from the tradition of law here." He said that the Church of England must retain its importance in public life even if it does not remain privileged as the established church.

"It is necessary to understand where we have come from, to guide us to where we are going, and to bring us back when we wander too far from the path of national destiny."

It's funny how immigrants like the good Bishop, his colleague John Sentamu and Joel Edwards seem to have a better handle on what's happening than native Churchmen.

Parliament of Whores

Plans to eliminate Eurosceptics as an organised opposition within the European Parliament are expected to be agreed by a majority of MEPs this summer. They will vote to change the rules governing the political groupings formed by MEPs, which can be eligible for lavish funding. Current rules allow 20 MEPs from a fifth of the EU's member states to form a grouping, giving them a say in the parliament's administration and power structure. Under the changes, the threshold would become 30 MEPs from one quarter of the EU's member states.

Richard Corbett, a British Labour MEP, is leading the campaign to cut the number of groups in the Parliament next year.

The move would dissolve the pan-European Eurosceptic "Independence and Democracy" grouping, which includes the UK Independence Party. The result would be that the largest and pro-EU groups would tighten their grip on the parliament's political agenda. "It would prevent single-issue politicians from being given undue support from the public purse," said Mr Corbett. His proposals would also give the president of the parliament sweeping powers to approve or reject parliamentary questions.

Nigel Farage, the leader of the UKIP, said that the move went hand in hand with the denial of popular votes on the new EU Treaty. "Welcome to your future. This shows an EU mindset that is arrogant, anti-democratic and frankly scary," he said.

The Liberal Democrats, Greens, the far Left, Eurosceptics and other groupings have vowed to oppose the plans during a vote scheduled for July 9. But the proposals are expected to be passed with the backing of the parliament's centre-Left and Right groupings, which account for 64 per cent of MEPs, including British Conservative and Labour members.

The taxpayer money saved from the clutches of the Eurosceptics will then be available to fund more stuff like this :

Lipdub Europe United par les Jeunes Européens - France
by JeunesEuropeensFrance

To think our young men died in the hundreds of thousands for these people. I think a quote from A.G. MacDonnell's "England Their England" is in order. Our hero is in a country pub in the late Twenties :

"That war didn't do any of us any any good" said Mr Stillaway. "Nothing's been the same since."
"Yes, and what did we gain by it ?" asked Mr Young.
"Nothing" said Mr Davis.

Donald made a halting remark about Belgium and national honour and treaties, which the semicircle listened to attentively. Then Mr Stillaway, the impartial voter, replied :
"But can you tell me,sir, what national honour does for me ? I've worked on the land all my life, and the least I've ever earned is four-and-six a week and the most is twenty-nine shillings. It isn't a fortune, either of them. In 1914 a man comes down to the green here, and he makes a speech about just that national honour that you've been talking about. Mind you,sir, in 1914 the nation and all its honour was giving me twenty-two shillings a week and I was working seventy-eight hours a week for it. But I had to give three sons and eight grandsons to fight for the national honour. And three were killed and two lost legs. And what good did that do to them or to me or Mr Davis here or Mr Darley ? Cost of living is higher. Beer is more expensive and so is tobacco. And my grandsons, the ones that weren't killed, can't get work. And all that for what you call national honour."

"That's right." "Mr Stillaway's hit it." "That's as true as I'm sitting here." came as muttered applause.

Ancient Darley raised his venerable head once more.

"We fought on the wrong side," he whispered strongly. "Those Frenchies were never any use to us. My father saw the beacons on the downs of Sussex when Boney was on the other side. The Germans never did us any harm. It's all they Frenchies."

"Ah ! Thats right," echoed every antique voice in the parlour.

Muslims Fear Backlash Part 39287

Following the latest comedy caper of the New Wave of British Jihad (© Laban Tall 2007), the BBC have terrible news :

Police have appealed to ethnic communities to work together following a bomb blast in Exeter. The Devon Racial Equality Council has said some local Muslims have reported instances of racial harassment.

Police said while there was no specific evidence of an increase in actual incidents, they were aware of emerging tensions in local communities.

Can't say the BBC don't get the big stories. The good news is that the police don't think there was any connection between the explosion and 'any one religion'.

Ch Supt Jim Webster said some local communities were "naturally concerned" and felt they were "under the spotlight. Additional patrols have been put on the streets of Plymouth to reassure local residents.

Mr Webster, who has been meeting MPs, councillors and community leaders to discuss the situation, said the investigation into the Exeter explosion in Exeter would be a "long inquiry". He added: "Terrorism isn't the product of any one religion or community - it is a crime."

It sure is a crime, Super. Although in this case not a very serious one. Your crimes against truth may be more serious for your nation than a poorly assembled weedkiller cocktail could ever be. Although most Muslims aren't terrorist (this chap - another slightly loopy convert - seems to have been shopped by a Muslim), there can be no doubt that in the UK, the vast majority of terrorist activity is alas motivated by the name of Islam. As the latest Europol terror survey (pdf - and is an EU publication) says :

The UK reported a 30 percent increase in arrested suspects. Although no affiliation could be assigned, UK authorities estimate that, out of the 203 persons arrested in 2007, the vast majority were in relation to Islamist terrorism.

(The EU police survey divides terrorists into the following categories - Islamist/separatist/Left Wing/Right Wing/Single Issue (e.g. animal rights). In terms of arrests, the Basque separatists, with 500+ arrests, keep the police busiest, although this is concentrated in just two countries - France and Spain. The Brit police don't categorise, but if we assume 75% as "the vast majority", the UK turns out to be the primary focus of Islamist terror in Europe, as measured by arrests.)

Doubtless our heroic police politico is following guidance from above. Our rulers are afraid. They are afraid. Fear is a very poor foundation for negotiation or action - especially in a situation where your strength is failing and your opponent's strength is increasing. If they cannot look the truth in the face now, for fear of 'the community', demographically heavy with fighting-age males, what will they not overlook when that community has doubled in size, only a few years from now ?

In the shorter term, the good news is that the NWOBJ seems to be keeping up the comedy competence of its illustrious predecessors :

A prisoner has pleaded guilty to making threats to blow up one of Europe's largest shopping centres with three limousines packed with explosives. Saeed Ghafoor, 33, of Southampton, made the threat to a prison officer while at HMP Haverigg in Cumbria on 7 February.

The former English teacher appeared via video-link at the Old Bailey charged with threatening to cause criminal damage at Bluewater in Kent. The court was told Ghafoor thought the shopping centre was in Exeter.

(For other BBC backlash fears, see here and here.)

Redditch ...

I was visiting the sick yesterday, and revisiting old haunts- up the M5 to Bromsgrove and along the old main road (now replaced by a hideous dual carriageway) through Finstall to Redditch, over the canal at Tardebigge. The Alexandra Hospital is where my mother was subject to unpleasant nursing care - not by all her nurses but a significant minority of the night shift - in her final months.

Parking's now £2.50 a throw - bad news if you're a pensioner visiting twice a day. It was about 80p five years back. The English NHS may not be able to afford drugs, but there's a new automated ticketing and barrier system for parking.

"Of course we don't pay at home" said my Welsh aunts.

On the way back I called in at Redditch's giant B&Q, built on the former site of a battery factory. There was a new construction on the roundabout. I wonder where the idea of naming the road after the founder of Pakistan came from ?



"Looks like a mosque" thought I. And it is. I don't know whether the application for lottery funding was successful, but it still needs a bit of money to make it look like this :



Well blow me down. The old place has certainly changed a lot since the early 60s. Prior to the building of the New Town it was a little market town, dominated by its church, and famed for its carnival - an annual childhood treat.

Which brings me, by a roundabout route, to this :

Prison officers at one of Britain's maximum security jails are losing control to Muslim gangs, according to a confidential report obtained by The Observer. An internal review of Whitemoor in Cambridgeshire warns that staff believe a 'serious incident is imminent' as several wings become dominated by Muslim prisoners.

The report, written by the Prison Service's Directorate of High Security, says there is an 'ongoing theme of fear and instability' among staff at Whitemoor, where just under a third of the 500 prisoners are Muslim.

It claims: 'There was much talk around the establishment about "the Muslims". Some staff perceived the situation at Whitemoor had resulted in Muslim prisoners becoming more of a gang than a religious group. The sheer numbers, coupled with a lack of awareness among staff, appeared to be engendering fear and handing control to the prisoners.' The situation has become so acute that white prisoners are routinely warned about the Muslim gangs by staff on arrival.

Now what we're seeing here isn't some great Islamic conspiracy. It's just what happens when a self-confident, expanding culture meets a cultural vacuum. Most prisons are already run by the forbearance of the prisoners. The addition of a strong bond between some of the prisoners simply ups that pressure and gives them extra clout.

Did I say a cultural vacuum ? Can a vacuum cringe ?

The report says that apprehension about Muslim prisoners has potentially damaging consequences and is in danger of 'leading to hostility and Islamophobia'.

You have to smile at that point. Apparently the problem is not the gangs, but the potential reaction of the evil natives. We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

"a useful tool of cultural dismantlement"

Dalrymple on mass immigration, multicult, and the differences between the Muslims of France and the UK. France has its national myth, which the 68ers were unable (indeed they mostly did not wish) to destroy. In the UK, by contrast, the deconstruction of Britishness has been triumphantly successful :

Muslims in France also are much less distinguishable from the rest of the population by their mode of dress than is the case with their counterparts in Britain. In the Muslim areas in France, you may notice something different about the people, but you do not think, as increasingly you do in Britain, that the population of the North-West Frontier has moved en masse to the inner cities or suburbs. And this greater cultural assimilation is true notwithstanding the fact that Muslim areas in France, unlike those in Britain, are as physically separate from many of the towns and cities as the black townships were from the white cities of South Africa. There is another major difference between the Muslim areas of France and Britain, however: this time, to Britain’s advantage. The relative ease of starting a business in Britain by comparison with heavily regulated France means that small businesses dominate Britain’s Muslim neighborhoods, whereas there are none in the banlieues of France—unless you count open drug dealing as a business.

Yet the UK's liberal economics, while detested by the left, have enabled immigrants to succeed economically :

In France, the children of Muslim immigrants may not be as alienated from mainstream culture as are those in Britain; but the inflexibility of the French labor market results in a long-term unemployment that embitters them. In Britain, by contrast, relative economic success has not led to cultural integration: so you have riots in France and terrorism in Britain.

while remaining culturally separate :

The British notion that economic opportunity without a shared culture will result in a flourishing society is whistling in the wind; while the French idea that it is enough to teach Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity while obstructing the possibility of real economic advancement is asking for trouble.

Of course, the separation may not matter if not integration, but colonisation, is the outcome :

Migration figures for the country as a whole—emigration and immigration—suggest that its population is undergoing swift replacement. Many of the newcomers are from Pakistan, India, and Africa; others are from Eastern Europe and China. If present trends continue, experts predict, in 20 years’ time, between a quarter and a third of the British population will have been born outside it, and at least a fifth of the native population will have emigrated. Britain has always had immigrants—from the French Huguenots after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes to Germans fleeing Prussian repression, from Jews escaping czarist oppression to Italian prisoners of war who stayed on after World War II—and absorbed them. But never so many, or so quickly.

Which brings me to this, from Birmingham :

More than £40 million is to be spent on ensuring a "brighter future" for Birmingham's growing population of children and young adults.

The city is looking to provide greater investment in support for children at an early age and in preventative work to reduce the number of young people getting into trouble or developing more complex needs later on.

The initiative which goes before councillors on the cabinet procurement committee on Wednesday, aims to transform services for young people and families across the city.

The proposal to invest £41.7 million in redesigning children's services follows the approval of a Brighter Futures strategy earlier this year, developed by all agencies working with children in the city.

Outcomes were agreed around the areas of physical health, behaviour, emotional health, social skills, numeracy and literacy, and preparation for adulthood.

Coun Lawrence added: "If we can get these things right then our youngsters will achieve high standards in school which will prepare them for adult life.

"We have agreed on the most important aims for our children, such as being happy, intelligent, healthy, sociable and skilled for employment.

"The idea is to invest heavily now in order to reduce demand for services later."

Ah yes - the Danegeld theory of crime again. Spend enough money on them, and they won't be criminals. And the idea that you can improve levels of happiness or intelligence by spending cash on social workers ... remember, Brum is not Labour-controlled - it's a Con-Lib Dem coalition. But it's this bit - remember Birmingham is Britain's second city :

This is in anticipation of future pressures resulting from Birmingham's population already being the youngest of any major European city.

Already some 37 per cent of the city's population is under 25 and the average age is continuing to fall. The number of under 19 year olds is expected to reach almost 300,000 within the next decade.

Coun Les Lawrence, cabinet member for children, young people and families, said: "We want Birmingham to be the best place for children to grow up in. That means thinking ahead and not being afraid of some radical changes."

37% under 25 ! There really will be no need for integration at this rate, any more than a modern arrival in Australia needs to integrate to Aboriginal culture.

Great News for Cameron

Senior Labour figures have rallied around Gordon Brown following the party's crushing defeat in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election.

The agony will be long drawn. I listened to Brown on the radio yesterday. He simply hasn't got what it takes. It's tragic, but given what he's done I have to repress the urge to feel sorry for him.

It is always a bad sign when your opponents regard your leader as their greatest propaganda weapon.

Soggy Trimmings From The Curate's Hedge

(Thank heaven I got the grass done yesterday ...) .. a few snippets from Brum this wet Sunday morning.

Yet more allegations of postal vote fraud.

The West Midlands Police economic crime unit is in the middle of a bitter postal vote fraud row between Liberal Democrat and Labour rivals in the Aston ward. The row surrounds allegations of intimidation of voters, candidates handling ballot papers and impersonation of voters in the hotly contested Aston ward.

The Liberal Democrat Cabinet member Coun Ayoub Khan successfully defended his seat with a 352 vote majority. In a tit-for-tat row both sides are hurling accusations of vote rigging and smear campaigns and each has referred cases to police. There is a history of controversy in Aston going back to the 2004 election when two Labour councillors were sacked for their part in the fraud.

You come to Britain from Somalia to claim asylum. You discover that the Government will give you millions of pounds to look after other asylum seekers. But even in Eden there was a serpent.

A Birmingham charity which is the biggest in the country for providing housing to asylum seekers is facing closure after losing Government contracts worth £11 million in the wake of a fraud inquiry. Astonbrook Housing Association based on Moseley Road, Highgate, is being investigated by police following allegations of misuse of public funds. The Charity Commission - a watchdog that regulates UK charities - put the association under the interim management of Birmingham accountants Baker Tilly last year. On Wednesday, 15 people were dismissed by the accountancy firm which also terminated Astonbrook’s lucrative five-year contract with the Home Office this week, effectively cutting off its income.

Last night the Astonbrook - most of whose 150 staff are Somalian - hit back claiming it had been victimised by the Charity Commission because it was a black-run charity.

Always a useful card, the old racism claim (inter alia, white working class Brummies feel that "the availability of social housing now favours new immigrants, especially Somalis, at the expense of people who were born and brought up in the UK"). Mind, I have more sympathy for their other complaint.

It also accused Baker Tilly of siphoning off £1 million in fees while overseeing its destruction and stressed no charges had been brought despite a year-long investigation.

Saeed Omar, director of Astonbrook, said: "It is the biggest charity to be run by black and ethnic minorities. We have been discriminated against. We feel the Charity Commission took our charity and gave it to someone who sucked out our money.

"They sucked out our money without doing anything. Baker Tilly ran the company for a year. Their duty was to look after the charity and preserve it until new trustees were appointed. They have destroyed the charity and nobody will speak about the £1 million they have taken".

It's a well-known phenomenon, the receiver who makes more money from the company than the creditors get. Only a million in fees ? Frankly, I stand amazed at their moderation.

“The police have become an extension of the government.”

Harriet Sergeant on law and disorder.

Violent crime carried out by children and teenagers, for example, has increased by one-third over three years. At the trial of the five teenagers accused of her husband’s murder, Helen Newlove described how police failed to do anything about local gangs despite numerous complaints from residents.

The police are clear why this is happening. Rather than concentrating on persistent and violent youth offenders, they are busy creating crime to government orders. Minor crime, a retired inspector explained, is going on all the time. Police merely “pluck something out of the air”, searching the pockets of a student for cannabis, for example, in order to detect a crime and so fulfil targets. Another officer said: “We are bringing more and more people to justice - but they are the wrong people.”

Targets also miss the point of what the public want. The Home Office judges each police force by how many crimes it detects and clears up. The public want something different. They do not want crimes happening in the first place. They believe, like Sir Robert Peel, the founder of the Metropolitan police, that “the test of police efficiency” is “the absence of crime and disorder”. It is not “the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them”.

I would be interested to know the figures for under-18s convicted of homicide each decade from say, the 1950s to the Noughties. I would guess that it's risen at a much higher rate than the general homicide rate.

I can't understand it. It must be because of Labour's punitive policies, banging up so many poor misunderstood youth when they could be spending the money on social workers. At least that's the view of former social work professor Rod 'The Master' Morgan, as expressed on the Today programme (RealAudio, 11'52" in) and the anti-punishment crusaders at the taxpayer funded Centre for Crime and Justice Studies.

Yet vast streams of dosh are targeted at poor urban yoof.

Thousands of Birmingham teenagers are set to benefit from a £6.38 million cash package for a wide range of activities from car building to sports facilities. The cash, delivered over the next three years, is aimed at increasing things for teenagers to do in a bid to keep boredom at bay and cut problems with anti-social behaviour.

The Youth Opportunity and Youth Capital funds will pay for one-off activities such as trips to museums or activity holidays.It will also fund projects such as anti-bullying schemes and car maintenance courses and even sports equipment and minibuses.

This extends a scheme which was launched in April 2006 and has already funded a total of 1,110 youth projects. Teenagers themselves are being involved in the crucial decisions, such as how and on what to spend the money.

City cabinet member for children, young people and families Coun Les Lawrence said: "The young people of Birmingham have benefited in many ways from the introduction of the Youth Opportunities and Youth Capital Funds. The huge number of supported projects and improvements that have been made to the city’s youth provision are enhancing the lives of young people, while tackling fears of anti-social behaviour."

That'll stop them committing crime ! I don't know about you, but it strikes me that doing things for kids out of fear is always going to be self-defeating. Good deeds are good - but not when motivated by what the youth might do unless ...

The initiative received full support from the city cabinet.

And this, remember, is not a Labour council. Don't expect criminal justice miracles from an incoming Tory administration just as wedded to the Danegeld theory of youth crime as any criminology lecturer.

Not that any of them believe it themselves, in their heart of hearts. After all, if it's lack of "things to do" that causes youth crime, how come only inna-city kids get the moolah ? There's a damn sight less to do out in the sticks. Ah, but they're not poor, say the liberals. Oh yes they are.

Perhaps (whisper it) there might be other factors at work :

More than 30% of the men in our prisons are from care homes, yet only 0.6% of our children have ever been in care.

Stand by for increased council tax bills. Not only are there all those non-contributory, final salary, index-linked pensions to pay for, but the bill for the Male-Female Social Engineering Act is due.

City council bosses could be landed with thousands of employment tribunal cases from staff facing salary cuts under the controversial new pay and grading system. City unions are drawing up legal claims on behalf of those members who have lost money as a result of the Single Status pay deal introduced last month.

Up to five thousand of the council's 40,000 staff have suffered pay cuts under the new contracts designed to comply with equal pay regulations. The tribunal cases are based on unfair dismissal as the unions claim old contracts were ended without consultation and new ones imposed.

Caroline Johnson, branch secretary for Unison, said: "We are preparing legal cases on behalf of those losing out." Meanwhile talks over the controversial pay and grading deal are "inching in the right direction", according to union chiefs. The council has now agreed to discuss the thorny issue of pay progession, increasing salaries with time served, which had previously not been up for negotiation.

This follows the remarkable employment tribunal rulings, since confirmed by the courts, that it's not just sufficient to pay all your carpenters the same, be they male or female, and likewise for your lollipop people. If one set of people get higher wages - lets say carpenters - and are mostly male, while another in equivalent jobs, who are mostly female, get less - then you've got sex discrimination which must be addressed.

So who decides what are 'equivalent jobs' ? Once it was done by a thing called 'the market' - if you couldn't get enough carpenters you increased wages until you filled the posts. Admittedly in council Direct Labour organisations (DLOs) this became institutionally corrupt, some people got more money than ever they'd get from a private employer, and you had to 'know someone' to get a job. Apparently a tribunal or council committee will now decide whether a cook is the same as a plumber.

This led to lots of well-paid ("male") jobs being deemed to be "equivalent" to lots of lower-paid "female" jobs. It would have cost the councils a fortune to implement and the council tax increases would be enormous - so they cut the male wages !

Doomed

A Tory majority of nearly 8,000 in Crewe is pretty much as bad as it could get for Labour. We now have the pleasure of either watching a leadership challenge (which is what they should do) or watching the great ship, fatally holed, sail on with its increasingly isolated captain a sad and lonely figure on the bridge.

I think Bloggers4Labour might be an entertaining read for the next few days.

It could have been worse for NuLab too. I was surprised the BNP had no candidate - Crewe being one of those towns which has seen a massive increase in (mostly Polish) immigration post-EU enlargement. I think it likely they'd have taken some votes which went to the Tories - but they'd have sheared away the Labour core vote even more - perhaps to below 10,000.

I note that the 'respectable' anti-immigration, out-of-Europe party, UKIP, got exactly 922 votes. It's partly that they just don't seem to be able to speak to working-class Brits (being a pretty (old, respectable) middle-class lot themselves, but perhaps its also that the consistently bad press the BNP get makes them uniquely qualified to pick up the 'up yours - all of you' protest vote.

Given current circumstances, it's impressive that 12,000 people still voted Labour - but their share of the vote dropped 18%. Once a tribal vote goes elsewhere, it may return, but it can never be relied on again.

* Edward Timpson (Con) 20,539 (49.49%, +16.93%)
* Tamsin Dunwoody (Lab) 12,679 (30.55%, -18.29%)
* Elizabeth Shenton (Lib Dem) 6,040 (14.55%, -4.03%)
* Mike Nattrass (UKIP) 922 (2.22%)
* Robert Smith (Green) 359 (0.87%)
* David Roberts (Eng Dem) 275 (0.66%)
* The Flying Brick (Monster Raving Loony) 236 (0.57%)
* Mark Walklate (Ind) 217 (0.52%)
* Paul Thorogood (Cut Tax on Diesel and Petrol) 118 (0.28%)
* Gemma Garrett (Ind) 113 (0.27%)

Farewell To The Thirty-Foot Trailer (and the Lamborghini)

Despite the fact that, as everyone knows, travellers are poor people who never have any money, one does find the occasional band of tarmacers or roof-repairers who target old ladies and are then found at the trial to have hundreds of thousands of pounds salted away.

This chap doesn't deal with such small change.

A convicted fraudster who masterminded a huge tax scam has been ordered to pay back almost £7m. Noel Young, who imported and sold luxury cars, was sentenced to 28 months after admitting conspiracy to commit VAT fraud and money laundering. The 32-year-old, from Carlisle, is already serving seven years for causing death by dangerous driving.

The £7m order, granted at Liverpool Crown Court, is thought to be one of the largest ever made. Young, of The Green, Houghton, was found to have benefited by £10,551,747, and was described by Judge David Aubrey QC as "a manipulative and deceitful individual". The fraud involved more than 250 vehicles and the total value of the scam was more than £14m, the court heard.

During proceedings last month, Young claimed that he could barely read or write as he is "a Gypsy" and never had any schooling as his family had travelled around.

Hmmm. He can add up, though, can't he ?

It's the long hours culture I tell you ...

what stops one's blogging ... and the fact that I got back last night and slumped in front of what turned into a cracking match, played at hight speed with 'high commitment' aka tackles flying in all over the place.

With a few minutes of normal time to go .. 'I bet someone'll be sent off in extra time' - but I thought it would be for a late tackle, not a piece of foolishness like Drogba's. Tevez (who seemed to start it off) must have been delighted, but fair play to those from both sides who hauled Vidic away - he's a great player and his battle with Drogba was epic.

Poor John Terry. Remember Beckham's penalty slip ? And poor Avram Grant - I hope he stays.

Meanwhile ... the handcart to hell rattles on its predestined path ... the Fatherless Children Bill is passed, another little black girl dies in suspicious circumstances while the social workers are looking the other way, more feral youths are convicted of murder even as the last-but-five gang of feral youths are granted leave to appeal, and a "Justice Minister" makes soothing noises to the family of the last-but-twenty-three, just like a "Justice Minister" made soothing noises to the family of the last-but-five gang's victim. 'Tis a familiar tale. Still, say not the struggle nought availeth - even if it does look that way.

Victimhood Poker - UK style

In the American version of the game, Muslim trumps transgender. How will it pan out in the UK ?

A sex swap instructor at an all-female driving school was left devastated when the Sheffield husband of one of her pupils threatened to sue her firm - for sending a man to teach his Muslim wife. Emma Sherdley - formerly a married dad of two called Andrew but now legally a woman - has the full support of her boss Joanne Dixon who says she is a popular and respected instructor with 32 female pupils on her books who have no problem with her past.

Emma, aged 42, has a birth certificate and a "gender recognition certificate" to prove her legal status as a woman although she is still waiting for final surgery to make her transition from male to female physically complete. She says she has never had a problem with any of her other pupils and says the complaints made by the man from the Meadowhall area of Sheffield, were: "hurtful, offensive and deeply upsetting".

Joanne, who set up Laugh n Pass with all-female teachers designed to put ladies learning to drive completely at their ease, told The Star: "Emma is a popular and very well-respected instructor.

"That man accused us of being racist, yet his attitude towards Emma showed prejudice of the very worst kind."

The problem began when the man booked a two hour driving lesson for his wife. Emma travelled from her Holmfirth home to Meadowhall and collected the woman from her home and the lesson began. But after the first hour of the lesson she told Emma she would have to cancel the remainder of the lesson because she had to go home to breast feed her baby.

Joanne said: "Then the husband rang me and said he was going to sue us. He was saying, 'You have sent me a man, send me a proper female, how dare you send a man with a deep voice'. Then he claimed we had deliberately sent a man disguised as a woman because he was a Muslim. His attitude and his behaviour was outrageous and has upset me and Emma and everyone else who works here. We are not racist, we are not sexist - if anyone was being so it was that man."

Some feminists would agree that 'they'd sent a chap'. For Julie Bindel, he's just 'a man in a dress'. Turns out gender's not a social construct after all !

Light blogging ...

But I see our masters are trying to change the language again.

Should the term 'asylum' be banned?

Ironic really. They were previously known as "aliens seeking political asylum", but it was decided that had overtones of ... well, difference.

Now apparently they'll be'sanctuary-seekers' or similar.

In the survey of 1,000 people aged over 17, which was conducted by Efeedback, more than 81% of those surveyed felt "sanctuary" had positive connotations.

With its connotations of posh women-only health clubs.

(The Independent Asylum Commission, btw is independent - in the same way that the SWP is independent. It's the usual mix of activist judges and activist lawyers, with the odd leftie cleric thrown in for respectability.)



(Further to my post on African anti-immigration riots, I see the Berbers and Arabs are also kicking up rather than celebrating difference)

Some Baby Jackdaws From The Curate's Chimney

Le Monde conned :

Le Monde devoted a page to a report on “Hiroshima: What the world never saw” last weekend. It recounted the discovery of “ten pictures hidden for more than 60 years by an American soldier which show for the first time the victims of the bomb dropped on the Japanese city on August 6, 1945”. It emerged however that the pictures, from the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, depicted the aftermath of a 1923 earthquake near Tokyo. They were immediately recognised by experts in Japan and the US.

Get digging : coal makes a comeback

If oil prices remain above the critical threshold of $50 per barrel, there's even a good chance we will soon be flying in coal-powered airliners. Indeed, if you have flown from Johannesburg International Airport in the last seven years, your aircraft ran on a mixture of kerosene and liquidised, pulverised coal.

Coal-rich and oil-poor, South Africa became a pioneer of this work during the apartheid era. Sanctions blocked imports of oil, but it required transport fuel at any cost. Now Sasol, the South African chemical firm that leads the world in coal-oil production, is to offer a new version of its aviation fuel, 100% derived from coal, for international approval later this year.

Soaring oil prices now mean the rest of the world is getting interested, too. The US Air Force spends $4.5bn a year on jet fuel, and is already showing interest. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, recognising that many USAF scenarios involve bombing its own traditional oil suppliers in the Middle East, has ordered his forces to explore alternative fuels that don't require foreign oil. In September the USAF will conduct its first test flight with a synthetic fuel derived from natural gas, using technology similar to coal-to-oil.

That name rings a bell :

He came to the attention of Durham Police after he was arrested by officers in Scotland, where he was sending indecent images of children to somebody called “Big Gordy from Kirkcaldy.”

In January last year he was jailed for 14 months by a Scottish court for emailing 10 images of youngsters aged between five and 12 to “Big Gordy.”

Big Gordy from Kirkcaldy ? Hmm.

Black and black unite and fight

The Rainbow Nation seems not to be as inclusive as all that :

The violence in Alexandra started on Sunday evening when an enraged mob marched to a hostel in London Road, targeting foreigners mainly from Zimbabwe whom they accuse of stealing precious jobs and contributing to worsening crime rates.

The crowd beat the immigrants, forced others from their rooms and shot dead two men – one a South African who refused to take part in the attack.

Scores of refugees, many “illegal” immigrants, flocked to Alexandra police station for protection. Despite extra police with riot gear taking up positions across the township, violence again erupted on Monday night, drawing condemnation from politicians and soul-searching on the part of other South Africans.

“Is this the new South Africa?” screamed the front page of the South African Times under a picture of a bloodied Ms Ndlovu. The ruling African National Congress (ANC) has condemned the attacks, but others point to frequent warnings of mounting tensions in townships that the ANC Government has ignored.

Complaints of jobs being taken and a government ignoring tensions ? Sounds familiar. But in the UK the natives don't go in for this sort of stuff. Instead, a Labour leaflet accusing the Tories of not wanting foreigners to carry ID cards is seen by the the massed and hysterical ranks of Guardianistas as one step away from requiring them to wear yellow stars.

For once, I agree with idiot CiF poster tooter, a glass-three-quarters-full kind of chap whose motif is 'surely, comrades, you do not want Mr Jones back ?'. His thesis is that this is all just part of the cut'n'thrust of politics and that the end sometimes has to justify the means. Horrified lefties point out to him that this means using the language of the right and ipso facto conceding that their arguments may have a point.

Both tooter and his critics are right. It's true that Labour are using language that sits better with the right - or with Old Labour. I don't think Bevin or Attlee would have had trouble distinguising Brits from non-Brits. Whereas, as every post-60s leftie knows, foreigners are exactly like "us" - and anyway, who's "us" - we're a nation of immigrants, don'tcha know ?

But the simple fact is that a campaign of 'we welcome immigration and see no upper limit to it', while pretty well describing the de facto Labour position, would lead to an even greater hammering than the one they're going to get. Labour have always been prepared to talk tough on crime and immigration, while letting all the prisoners out and the asylum-seekers in. It's what they do. And it worked pretty well (electorally) for ten years.

I've said before that the Brits don't do fascism.

Can't say that about the Italians. They invented it. I must say I can't imagine scenes like this in the UK, where the travelling community are the ones with the unity, the willingness to use force, and the firepower.

Italian police began a nationwide round-up of nearly 400 illegal immigrants from the Balkans and North Africa yesterday in the midst of a series of arson attacks on Roma gypsy camps in the suburbs of Naples.

The first step in a drive on crime promised by the new centre-right government of Silvio Berlusconi targeted temporary encampments on the outskirts of cities from Naples to northern Italy. Some 118 people held in the operation were ordered to be expelled immediately for offences ranging from drug dealing and robbery to prostitution.

But in Naples local people have anticipated the new policy, taking the law into their own hands.

This week’s assaults on Roma shanty towns by scores of youths on scooters and motorbikes wielding iron bars and throwing Molotov cocktails were sparked off by the capture of a 17-year-old Roma girl who last weekend entered a flat in Ponticelli and tried to steal a 6-year-old girl. Chased by the mother and neighbours, she had to be rescued by police from being lynched.

The city erupted in fury, with local women leading the marches on the Roma camps to the chant of “Fuori, fuori [Out, out]”. Night after night young men — allegedly acting on the orders of powerful local clans of the Camorra, the Naples Mafia — have set the sites ablaze, blocking attempts by the fire brigade to put out the fires, with exploding gas canisters completing the destruction. The women jeered at the firemen, shouting, "You put these fires out, we start them again”.

Plumes of smoke were still rising yesterday from the smouldering, blackened ruins of a Roma gypsy camp attacked and burnt to the ground by local vigilantes in Ponticelli, a rundown industrial suburb in the east of Naples in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius.

The charred remains of the makeshift wooden shacks at the site on Via Malibran crunch underfoot. The only sign of life is dogs scavenging through the neighbouring mountain of uncollected, rotting rubbish.

There are similar scenes of devastation at camps nearby, including one in the incongruously named Via Virginia Woolf. At one squalid “nomad camp” beneath a motorway flyover, intact but deserted, a policeman guarding the site said that the inhabitants had fled during the night to avoid being attacked.

Hmm. I've always thought of Naples as the Scallyland of Italy.

The Naples arson attacks, however, are the result of long-festering anger throughout Italy over rising crime levels and urban degradation, much of it blamed on Roma gypsies and the estimated half a million Romanians who have emigrated to Italy since Romania joined the European Union.

But I can't see even the Scallies going in for this sort of thing. Rising crime levels and urban degradation ? If that were the criterion, Kirkby would have been a heap of smouldering ruins long ago.

To make the punishment fit the space ... the punishment fit the space !

Prison sentences would be set nationally by an independent body depending on the amount of space in jails, under government plans.

Proposals for a Sentencing Commission are in the draft Queen's Speech.

A Justice Ministry spokesman said it could lead to more community sentences - but there would not be shorter jail terms for serious offenders.

For once the Tories have got it right - refusing to join the Parliamentary working group on these disastrous proposals.

Having a national framework for sentencing would make it easier to predict the future size of the prison population and would not be constantly adjusted to reflect fluctuations in capacity, the government argues.

Can't argue with that. It certainly will be easier to predict. And the advantage of that in reducing crime will be .. ?

It's interesting to look at this foolishness in the light of reports from the Youth 'Justice' Board that violent offences by young men and women have risen by 40% in the last three years.

It looks as if the Youth 'Justice' system is working on the 'let the punishment fit the space' principle :

The figures show that robberies committed by youngsters rose by 45 per cent to 6,855, criminal damage increased by 32 per cent to 40,900 and public order crimes increased by 17 per cent to 23,000.

The number of youngsters sent to child jails or other secure accommodation remains stable and is running at about 7,000 a year.

So the offences are rocketing - but it's certainly easy to predict the size of the banged-up youth population. The only bit that falls by the wayside is " there would not be shorter jail terms for serious offenders".

In related news, Pauline Campbell, the mother of Sarah Campbell, has died a pointless and wasteful death of an overdose beside the grave of her daughter, who died a pointless and wasteful death of an overdose in Styal Prison, Cheshire.

Poor Pauline Campbell. I must say that in our one communication she expressed great pity and feeling for the family of the man her daughter killed. It's just that you never saw that in the Guardian. But she responded to the death of her daughter, a smackhead convicted of manslaughter, not by campaigning against smack or for the victims of manslaughter, but by campaigning for more resources to be devoted to caring for imprisoned criminals. She hadn't lost a moral compass - the poor thing never had one to lose. Like one or two other mothers of dead children, she was happy to be used as a weapon by activists. It's a tragedy.

I wonder where Sarah Campbell's dad is ? He's been the dog that didn't bark all the way along.

Oops !

Medics and nurses have been known to make the odd unflattering remark about their patients - but strictly between themselves. Few have gone so far as to leave them on the patient's answerphone.

A hospital has apologised after staff inadvertently left an insulting message on a teenage patient's telephone.

The message said Sharon Roberts, 19, was a "smelly drunk with black teeth".

It was left by staff at the James Cook University Hospital, Middlesbrough, who were reminding her about an appointment - but then carried on talking.

Surprise

I wanted Rangers to win, but win or lose this was a pretty predictable headline. I was in Manchester in 1974 when Rangers played at Old Trafford in a 'friendly'. United supporters were hiding their scarves as they got off the train at Victoria and 'the violence was the worst Old Trafford has ever seen'.

Don't talk to me about Bagel Street