I'm most grateful to him or her for this - the only information I've ever seen on the subject. If anyone's got any info on Britain I'd be interested.@LabanTell:
I'd hesitate to say 'myth'. But there are problems with some figures and, of course, this is further problematised by the polemical contexts of inveterate debates. The US is interesting because abortion remains a livewire political debate: not just because of social dynamics, but also because of the legal context there. Unlike here, the (from one view) judicial fiat by which abortion was legalised in the states generates tensions beyond the usual ones in this debate.
In Planned Parenthood vs. Casey (Bob, a lifelong Democrat incidentally), the figure of 5,000-10,000 pre-legalisation deaths was mentioned. This figure, a common one in the US context, goes back to attempted extrapolations from studies from the 1930s, for instance, by one Frederick Taussig (published in '36). He used figures for the abortion rate (not the abortion mortality rate) from NY and Iowa birth control clinics, combined with his own estimates for the mortality rate to come up with the figures. (There were others which used similar techniques).
In reality, these figures are dubious and not least because of their use in polemical contexts. In 'Induced termination of pregnancy before and after Roe v. Wade', in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 208.22 (1992) pp.3231-3239, the authors use pre-legalisation figures for abortion mortality from National Center [sic] for Health Statistics:
1940 - c.1400
1945 - c.750
1950 - c.250
1955 - c.225
1960 - c.250
1970 - c.125
(The exact figure for pre-legalisation 1972 is 39. Abortion mortality figures still do exist post-legalisation, and the figure hovered around c.20 post-legalisation before dropping further in the 80s or 90s, I forget which).
These figures can hardly settle the question. First, they don't show how many total abortions there were. Second, they do not, in themselves, get into the difficulty of arriving at such figures. This difficulty, incidentally, is not just for finding reliable pre-legalisation figures, but also reliable post-legalisation figures. (Assigning abortion as cause of death is not as simple as it may sound). Third, these do not get into all sorts of social factors (was there a change in the public acceptability of treating women who had had abortions?). (These figures, per se, are far more reliable than, say, Taussig's).
Fundamentally, however, and this occurs in other contexts too, the large reduction in abortion mortality correlates to (and is no doubt caused by) medical provisions: most importantly, the diffusion of antibiotics. Medical provisions are more important in bringing down abortion mortality than legality. (This is not to deny that legality cannot or does not have an effect of safety: it does, but this relation is heightened where the safety, even where legal, would not be so good. Conversely, where medical provisions are good - not just supplies, but access - legality cannot have a strong effect on abortion mortality). In a first-world context, the notion that illegality will result in the death of scores of women is not tenable. (Another important aspect to this is that pre-legality abortion, certainly in the states, was largely - c.90% - carried out by physicians: this is what emerges from works on the reality of abortion by the likes of Mary Claderone - erstwhile medical director of Planned Parenthood - in the 60s). This is not to deny the total legitimacy of being worried about this, or of valuing women's lives. (Of course not). I'm just trying to write a little about the figures for abortion mortality.
Others have barged through the door he kicked down - Inspector Gadget, Nightjack, MetCountyMounty, PC Bloggs, Sergeant Simon and others on the blogroll - but Dave started the ball rolling.(Declaration of interest - I was a fan anyway, but was chuffed to find myself described in his links as a 'superior conservative blog'. I noted in his book a P J O'Rourke quote - to be fair, I think PJ was quoting someone else - which I like to think he got from here)
"Whatever you did before that didn't work, do more of it"
Gill Frances, chair of the Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group, said: "We know what works to reduce abortion amongst teenagers. We need high quality sex and relationships education at school and at home and effective contraception."
Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, said: "Much more needs to be done to equip young people to deal with the complexities of their personal relationships and to empower them to ask for high quality, user-friendly forms of contraception without embarrassment.
Julie Bentley, chief executive at the FPA (Family Planning Association) said sex and relationship education should be compulsory in every school. "Younger women are making different choices about their lives and choosing abortion over motherhood, but education and contraceptive services will stop them becoming pregnant in the first place."
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
Gangs of violent men from Sri Lanka are "constantly tooled up" and "ready to go", according to police.There have been a number of violent clashes involving groups of Tamil men in Croydon and other parts of south London in recent years. They culminated in the murder of 28-year-old Prabaskaran Kannan in Tooting last year. He was chased by a group of four men from Croydon who stabbed and slashed their terrified victim 31 times outside a fried chicken takeaway shop.
The chief investigator in the case which became known as the "Chicken Cottage murder" said Croydon's Tamil gangs were causing concern among officers. Detective Sergeant Mick Snowdon spoke out about the problems surrounding Tamil gangs after five men were convicted of Mr Kannan's murder at the Old Bailey. The court was told Mr Kannan was heard shouting "It wasn't me, it wasn't me" shortly before he was brutally set upon and killed. On Monday this week homeless Vabeesan Sivarajah, 22, Aziz Miah, 20, of Sumner Road, Croydon, Asif Kumbay, 20, of Grasmere Road, Purley, and Kirush Nathankumar, 18, of Purley Way, Croydon, were all convicted of murder by an Old Bailey jury. They all denied the charges. The four were also convicted of causing grievous bodily harm and actual bodily harm to two gang members who were with Mr Kannan that night. Another defendant, Mayuran Srivinayagam of Greyhound Terrace, Streatham, was cleared of murder and manslaughter but found guilty of assault. Earlier in the trial a sixth gang member, Mahitharn Ratnasingham, of Lesley Grove, Croydon, was cleared of murder and manslaughter. He admitted assault. The men are due to be sentenced on July 7.
After the men were convicted Det Sgt Snowdon told the Croydon Guardian: "They the gangs are very violent. They are constantly tooled up and ready to go. It is almost like the level of violence is ad hoc. Whatever happens for them happens, and it depends on what weapons they have around." A businessman who runs a shop in Croydon said Sri Lankan Tamil gangs controlled most of the crime and had the town centre on "lockdown." Police have always in the past denied there was a problem with the gangs in Croydon, but have now admitted there was a specialist officer dealing with Tamil gang activity in the borough.
Here at this moment I have great news for you and the whole country. Early this morning the Yugoslav nation found its soul. A revolution has taken place in Belgrade, and the Ministers who but yesterday signed away the honour and freedom of the country are reported to be under arrest. This patriotic movement arises from the wrath of a valiant and warlike race at the betrayal of their country by the weakest of their rulers and the foul intriguers of the Axis Powers.
The Supreme Court has ruled that any EU treaty that substantially alters the character of the Union must be approved by a constitutional amendment.
Any part of the constitution may be amended but only by referendum.
"we must be far clearer in speaking up for the common ground upon which we stand - the shared British values of liberty, civic duty and fairness to all"
Drug users are to be offered vouchers for things such as gym membership and to pay utility bills to encourage them to comply with treatment programmes.The first time, eh ? That's not what Mark Easton was reporting last year (when the incentives - wait for it - were vouchers or drugs), but no matter. Nor does it matter that the anonymous BBC editor seems to be rehashing the NTA press release.
The National Treatment Agency in England is piloting the incentive scheme at 15 sites starting this week.
It will be the first time incentives have been used in such a way.
"The scheme follows the psychological principle of rewarding good behaviour"
All : "No it doesn't ! It rewards STOPPING bad behaviour !"
Middle : "Where's the reward for OUR good behaviour ?"
Youngest : "Dad ! Why don't you do heroin for a while, then stop ?"
Be fair. Galloway's core constituency are very un-keen on abortion (I'm suprised there's not been an NHS campaign to encourage greater take-up of the State's termination services among the Muslim community).
And that's where the votes are. The 'revolutionary left', for want of a better word, don't reproduce much - and, not by coincidence, haven't come near to Parliamentary representation in the last 50 years - until GG, supported by the most rapidly growing demographic since perhaps the Irish in the nineteenth century, stepped up to the plate.
The Irish Catholics had an impact on Labour politics which lasted more than a century (and working class Catholic Labour MPs like the Mahon brothers were at the forefront of opposition to Roy Jenkins' abortion reforms). The cultural influences were also great - and although most Catholics have integrated, they still have more kids then the native English.
But when the Irish arrived, with their families of five, six or more, they were arriving into a society which also had a high birthrate. The immigrants from East and West Pakistan arrived in a country where the birthrate was collapsing as the Pill and the cultural revolution took hold. Their demographic, political and cultural impact will be at least as great as that of the Catholic Irish, and IMHO probably much greater.
GG, for all he is an opportunistic bum, is not a stupid man. He knows which side of his chapati has ghee on it.
How many divisions has the Pope ? asked Stalin. GG might well ask how many voters - and future voters - the SWP has.
"It competes with many other male visions of the good life" - not just male visions, either. I know more than a few couples, now in their fifties, still toned and honed from the gym and swimming, leading a good life - the million-pound house, the boat, skiing three or four times a year - and no children. Lucky nephews and nieces, that's all I can say - unless the Cats Protection League gets the lot.Throughout the broad sweep of human history, there are many examples of people, or classes of people, who chose to avoid the costs of parenthood. Indeed, falling fertility is a recurring tendency of human civilization. Why then did humans not become extinct long ago? The short answer is patriarchy.
Patriarchy does not simply mean that men rule. Indeed, it is a particular value system that not only requires men to marry but to marry a woman of proper station. It competes with many other male visions of the good life, and for that reason alone is prone to come in cycles. Yet before it degenerates, it is a cultural regime that serves to keep birthrates high among the affluent, while also maximizing parents' investments in their children. No advanced civilization has yet learned how to endure without it.
Through a process of cultural evolution, societies that adopted this particular social system -- which involves far more than simple male domination -- maximized their population and therefore their power, whereas those that didn't were either overrun or absorbed. This cycle in human history may be obnoxious to the enlightened, but it is set to make a comeback.
The long-term financing of social security schemes, private pension plans, and healthcare systems has little to do with people living longer. Gains in life expectancy at older ages have actually been quite modest, and the rate of improvement in the United States has diminished for each of the last three decades. Instead, the falling ratio of workers to retirees is overwhelmingly caused by workers who were never born. As governments raise taxes on a dwindling working-age population to cover the growing burdens of supporting the elderly, young couples may conclude they are even less able to afford children than their parents were, thereby setting off a new cycle of population aging and decline.
While I'm continually bemoaning the malign influence of Sixties culture on our children, the point is that the influence, while real, was almost wholly negative - destructive of the existing culture. We aren't bringing up a race of young hippie Aquarians, if the assault, knife crime and mental illness stats tell us anything at all.
the percentage of women born in the late 1930s who remained childless was near 10 percent. By comparison, nearly 20 percent of women born in the late 1950s are reaching the end of their reproductive lives without having had children. The greatly expanded childless segment of contemporary society, whose members are drawn disproportionately from the feminist and countercultural movements of the 1960s and 70s, will leave no genetic legacy. Nor will their emotional or psychological influence on the next generation compare with that of their parents.
Nearly a quarter of the children of baby boomers descend from the mere 11 percent of baby boomer women who had four or more children. These circumstances are leading to the emergence of a new society whose members will disproportionately be descended from parents who rejected the social tendencies that once made childlessness and small families the norm. These values include an adherence to traditional, patriarchal religion, and a strong identification with one's own folk or nation. This dynamic helps explain, for example, the gradual drift of American culture away from secular individualism and toward religious fundamentalism. Among states that voted for President George W. Bush in 2004, fertility rates are 12 percent higher than in states that voted for Sen. John Kerry.
white 1.8
Afro-Caribbean 1.8
Indian 2.3
Pakistani 4.0
Bangladeshi 4.7
In almost all the hunter-gatherer societies that survived long enough to be studied by anthropologists, such as the Eskimos and Tasmanian Bushmen, one finds customs that in one way or another discouraged population growth. In various combinations, these have included late marriage, genital mutilation, abortion, and infanticide. Some early hunter-gatherer societies may have also limited population growth by giving women high-status positions. Allowing at least some number of females to take on roles such as priestess, sorcerer, oracle, artist, and even warrior would have provided meaningful alternatives to motherhood and thereby reduced overall fertility to within sustainable limits.During the eons before agriculture emerged, there was little or no military reason to promote high fertility. War and conquests could bring little advantage to society. There were no granaries to raid, no livestock to steal, no use for slaves except rape. But with the coming of the Neolithic agricultural revolution, starting about 11,000 years ago, everything changed. The domestication of plants and animals led to vastly increased food supplies. Surplus food allowed cities to emerge, and freed more people to work on projects such as building pyramids and developing a written language to record history. But the most fateful change rendered by the agricultural revolution was the way it turned population into power. Because of the relative abundance of food, more and more societies discovered that the greatest demographic threat to their survival was no longer overpopulation, but underpopulation.
Interesting - this is almost a parallel to - and explanation for - the otherwise ahistorical feminist/hippie theory that we were much more matriarchal until a few thousand years back. "And we've got to get ourselves back to the Garden" as One-Child Joni sang.
Patriarchal societies come in many varieties and evolve through different stages. What they have in common are customs and attitudes that collectively serve to maximize fertility and parental investment in the next generation. Of these, among the most important is the stigmatization of "illegitimate" children. One measure of the degree to which patriarchy has diminished in advanced societies is the growing acceptance of out-of-wedlock births, which have now become the norm in Scandinavian countries, for example.
Under patriarchy, "bastards" and single mothers cannot be tolerated because they undermine male investment in the next generation. Illegitimate children do not take their fathers' name, and so their fathers, even if known, tend not to take any responsibility for them. By contrast, "legitimate" children become a source of either honor or shame to their fathers and the family line. The notion that legitimate children belong to their fathers' family, and not to their mothers', which has no basis in biology, gives many men powerful emotional reasons to want children, and to want their children to succeed in passing on their legacy. Patriarchy also leads men to keep having children until they produce at least one son.
Another key to patriarchy's evolutionary advantage is the way it penalizes women who do not marry and have children. Just decades ago in the English-speaking world, such women were referred to, even by their own mothers, as spinsters or old maids, to be pitied for their barrenness or condemned for their selfishness. Patriarchy made the incentive of taking a husband and becoming a full-time mother very high because it offered women few desirable alternatives ...
Under patriarchy, maternal investment in children also increases. As feminist economist Nancy Folbre has observed, "Patriarchal control over women tends to increase their specialization in reproductive labor, with important consequences for both the quantity and the quality of their investments in the next generation." Those consequences arguably include: more children receiving more attention from their mothers, who, having few other ways of finding meaning in their lives, become more skilled at keeping their children safe and healthy. Without implying any endorsement for the strategy, one must observe that a society that presents women with essentially three options -- be a nun, be a prostitute, or marry a man and bear children -- has stumbled upon a highly effective way to reduce the risk of demographic decline.
Another Laban theme - the normalisation of bastardy. However, far from not being encouraged, the production of bastards is one of the most heavily taxpayer-subsidised industries in the UK - and contrary to received libertarian economic theory, production has increased something like eight-fold in the last 40 years, making bastards a real British success story. I'm not sure Prof Longman has taken this into account - but on the other hand, underclass males are the storm-troopers of patriarchy (parental advisory) in their relationships with the tender sex. In Robert Whelan's words :
"We have created the classic conditions for the emergence of a warrior class: separation of economic activity from family maintenance; children reared apart from fathers; wealth subject to predation; and male status determined by combat and sexual conquest."
Often, all that sustains the patriarchal family is the idea that its members are upholding the honor of a long and noble line. Yet, once a society grows cosmopolitan, fast-paced, and filled with new ideas, new peoples, and new luxuries, this sense of honor and connection to one's ancestors begins to fade, and with it, any sense of the necessity of reproduction. "When the ordinary thought of a highly cultivated people begins to regard 'having children' as a question of pro's and con's," Oswald Spengler, the German historian and philosopher, once observed, "the great turning point has come."
Yet that turning point does not necessarily mean the death of a civilization, only its transformation. Eventually, for example, the sterile, secular, noble families of imperial Rome died off, and with them, their ancestors' idea of Rome. But what was once the Roman Empire remained populated. Only the composition of the population changed. Nearly by default, it became composed of new, highly patriarchal family units, hostile to the secular world and enjoined by faith either to go forth and multiply or join a monastery. With these changes came a feudal Europe, but not the end of Europe, nor the end of Western Civilization.
This is where the whole thing gets a bit too optimistic.
In Europe today, for example, how many children different people have, and under what circumstances, correlates strongly with their beliefs on a wide range of political and cultural attitudes. For instance, do you distrust the army? Then, according to polling data assembled by demographers Ronny Lesthaeghe and Johan Surkyn, you are less likely to be married and have kids-or ever to get married and have kids-than those who say they have no objection to the military. Or again, do you find soft drugs, homosexuality, and euthanasia acceptable? Do you seldom, if ever, attend church? For whatever reason, people answering affirmatively to such questions are far more likely to live alone, or in childless, cohabitating unions, than those who answer negatively.
The great difference in fertility rates between secular individualists and religious or cultural conservatives augurs a vast, demographically driven change in modern societies. Consider the demographics of France, for example. Among French women born in the early 1960s, less than a third have three or more children. But this distinct minority of French women (most of them presumably practicing Catholics and Muslims) produced more than 50 percent of all children born to their generation, in large measure because so many of their contemporaries had one child or none at all.
Many childless, middle-aged people may regret the life choices that are leading to the extinction of their family lines, and yet they have no sons or daughters with whom to share their newfound wisdom. The plurality of citizens who have only one child may be able to invest lavishly in that child's education, but a single child will only replace one parent, not both. Meanwhile, the descendants of parents who have three or more children will be hugely overrepresented in subsequent generations, and so will the values and ideas that led their parents to have large families.
Yes.. but .. in Europe lets say you have the nice liberal Guardianista/feminists and those good-timers who can't be fagged with the whole children thing - no kids, the religious natives and the native underclass - 3 kids - and the religious incomers - 4 kids. Given that natives are in the UK currently nearly 90% of the population (but less than 77% of the children), the die-off of the childless baby boomers is going to leave a different landscape, in which (IMHO) the religious incomers will make a far more cohesive group, and probably a larger one, than the religious natives.
Tomorrow's children, therefore, unlike members of the postwar baby boom generation, will be for the most part descendants of a comparatively narrow and culturally conservative segment of society. To be sure, some members of the rising generation may reject their parents' values, as always happens. But when they look around for fellow secularists and counterculturalists with whom to make common cause, they will find that most of their wouldbe fellow travelers were quite literally never born.I agree. I'm just not sure that the "narrow and culturally conservative segment of society" will be crusty Laban-style Christians.
The rollback of the welfare state forced by population aging and decline will give these elements an additional survival advantage, and therefore spur even higher fertility. As governments hand back functions they once appropriated from the family, notably support in old age, people will find that they need more children to insure their golden years, and they will seek to bind their children to them through inculcating traditional religious values akin to the Bible's injunction to honor thy mother and father.That's the rub. How will people who've paid taxes all their lives respond when they're told that the old social contract has been torn up ? But I still see that people with a living tradition of family self-help are likely to cope better with such a scenario than those who've been conditioned to wait for 'someone' to 'do something'. The Lord does indeed help those who help themselves.
Societies that are today the most secular and the most generous with their underfunded welfare states will be the most prone to religious revivals and a rebirth of the patriarchal family.
"On this Memorial Day, as our nation honours its unbroken line of fallen heroes - and I see many of them in the audience here today ..."
Prosecutor Peter Wright QC said Mr Ali had been planning to "reek carnage" in the skies on the orders of al-Qaeda.
Two teenage boys have been arrested by police investigating allegations that a fellow pupil was repeatedly raped at their school in Birmingham, it emerged today. The 14 and 15-year-olds were quizzed by police earlier this month after the sex assault allegations came to light.
The alleged attacks on a 15-year-old girl are understood to have happened at the city school between January and April this year. However, officers were only called in recently when the youngster reported the matter to police. Detectives from Rose Road police station detained the boys on May 13. They were questioned and later released on police bail pending further inquiries. The alleged victim and the two boys all go to the same school in central Birmingham.
Desperate to flaunt their "bravery" with their controversial depictions of Jews suffering in concentration camps and highly sexualised images of children, the artists Jake and Dinos Chapman have admitted to Mandrake that there is one subject area that remains off-limits.
Jake says they would not be prepared to touch Islam.
"It’s a very difficult and sensitive issue and we wouldn’t see it in our remit," he said at the private view of If Hitler Had Been a Hippy How Happy Would We Be at the White Cube gallery.
Four Birmingham teenagers who police claimed were part of a notorious gang have been banned from wearing bandanas in the colours of the city's Slash Crew. They were given two year ASBOs after the gang carried out a string of robberies on school-children across the city and attacked bystanders at Star City in a six-month reign of terror.
Micah Bailey, 17, of Porchester Drive, Newtown, Neon Stewart, 16, of Hawkesyard Road, Erdington and Remaine Dixon, 15, of Bennetts Street, Lozells, appeared at Birmingham Magistrates' Court yesterday. They were told they couldn't wear a mask or other garment that held "street currency". District Judge Neil Davison, also ordered them, along with the absent Anthony Harris, 17, of Wheeler Street, Newtown, not to meet in public or commit further anti-social behaviour acts.
At a hearing in January, PC Gary Ellis said: "It is believed they are part of the B19 Slash gang, which is a sub-section of the Slash Crew - a large organisation supported by groups of gangs that also associate themselves with the notorious Johnson Crew."
"Go for that early election, Gordon, this is as good as the economy is going to get"
Editor Alan Rusbridger (Cranleigh); political editor Patrick Wintour (Westminster); leader writer Madeleine Bunting (Queen Mary's, Yorkshire); policy editor Jonathan Freedland (University College School); columnist Polly Toynbee (Badminton), sent the kids to Westminster; executive editor Ian Katz (University College School); security affairs editor Richard Norton Taylor (King's School, Canterbury); arts editor-in-chief Clare Margetson (Marlborough College); literary editor Clare Armitstead (Bedales); public services editor David Brindle (Bablake); city editor Julia Finch (King's High, Warwick).; environment editor John Vidal (St Bees); fashion editor Jess Cartner-Morley (City of london School for Girls); G3 editor Janine Gibson (Walthamstow Hall); northern editor Martin Wainwright (Shreswbury); and industrial editor David Gow (St Peter's, York), Seumas Milne (Winchester College), the Observer's Andrew Rawnsley - Rugby School and Cambridge University, columnist Zoe Williams (Godolphin and Latymer).
The 42-year-old woman, who has asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, said: "I was driving through the centre of Heckmondwike and I saw a gang of about 15 to 20 youths chasing a man. Suddenly he jumped into my car and said 'drive', but as he did I took my foot off the clutch and stalled. It's a diesel so it takes a while to get it started again, but then the youths came and surrounded the car. They threw bricks through the front and back windscreens and side windows, started kicking it and tore both of the wing mirrors off. I was scared. I didn't know anything about what had happened to provoke this and I thought, 'what have I done, I've just pulled up at the lights'!"
She said the group came from the direction of Firth Park towards the Northgate traffic lights. The woman was on her way to collect her son from Ravensthorpe when the incident happened at about 8pm on Monday May 5. Mechanics said the six-and-a-half year old red Saxo was not economically viable to repair.
The woman, who lives in Heckmondwike, said: "I thought the gang were going to beat the guy up and I'd never want to see anyone get hurt, so I'm glad that didn't happen. But he's fine and I've been left without a car and am £350 down."
“I am very concerned about the spate of anti-semitic graffiti in the Hackney area,” Abbott told the Jewish News on Tuesday. “This is very threatening and disturbing for the whole community. Sadly we’ve recently seen a member of the BNP elected onto the Greater London Assembly. This proves the need to fight back against racism and anti-semitism.”
“Jihad to Israel” was among the messages left on walls, paving stones, phone boxes and dustbin lids in a spate of attacks last week. The Community Security Trust believes there were at least 20 separate incidents, including eight reported in Stamford Hill, home to a large community of Orthodox Jews. Graffiti was also reported in Clapton Common, Bethnal Green, Walthamstow and Forest Gate.
Italy’s statistics agency, ISTAT, fanned the fires of anti-immigrant feeling yesterday by releasing numbers showing that immigrants are responsible for more than a third of the murders committed last year.
ISTAT said foreigners had committed 70 per cent of all petty theft, 39 per cent of the sexual offences and 36 per cent of the murders.
The damning figures confirmed the opinion of almost half the country that immigrants are “dishonest”. However, ISTAT also noted that many of the crimes committed by foreigners were against other foreigners.
Cambridgeshire police has paid for 50 of its staff to attend language schools because dealing with foreign suspects takes up to three times longer than dealing with British cases. The trend is further evidence of mounting pressure placed on the police by the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants since the European Union expanded four years ago.
Last month Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, was told by senior officers that the bill for police translators alone had soared from £14m to £24m from 2004-6.
Julie Spence, chief constable of Cambridgeshire, warned last week that the arrival of hundreds of thousands of eastern Europeans in the county, mainly for agricultural work, had left her own force underresourced and could spark “civil unrest” as the economic slowdown bites.
Arresting and processing a British suspect takes four to five hours. “With a foreign national you may have to bring in an interpreter and have documents translated – that clogs everything up,” Spence said. “As a result, it can take an officer the whole shift plus overtime to get it done. That means you don’t have your policemen out on the streets doing what they were four years ago.”
Progressives are expected, indeed required, to deride and detest the old crone, and I duly do so here. But I also sense a weakening of the old certainty that we were absolutely right and that she was a wholly malevolent force. The new film, Filth, is, according to Robertson, "an amusing reminder of that age when 'you've got to admit Mrs Whitehouse is right about some things' briefly entered the language."
Have I got news for him. In liberal circles today, that same sentiment is expressed, and without embarrassment. Julie Walters, who plays Mrs W in the drama, is one of the self-doubters: "I think we should have understood her better. She did have a point ... much as I support freedom of expression, I believe children should be protected from things they are not emotionally equipped to deal with. And it was Mary Whitehouse who first campaigned against child pornography."
No one is more intolerant of dissent than the prophets of free speech. Whitehouse dared to take them on and, even though I find many of her views utterly objectionable, she was right to do so and right too to warn of the chaos and bedlam to come.
In the UK, for instance, Conservatives read the Daily Telegraph, which is tailor-made for them, news, editorials and all. The Guardian, on the other hand, is far to the left of not just the Tories but also of New Labour, the paper's constituency seemingly that of the 'Londonistan' of mullahs and minarets. The Guardian used to be called the Manchester Guardian; today it might well be called, by fans and foes alike, the Madrassa Guardian.
I remember thinking how many CCTV cameras there are in Bradford (the killers of PC Sharon Beshenivsky were being tracked within minutes of her shooting) and that therefore someone must have taken a decision not to go after uninsured drivers, doubtless for reasons of "community cohesion".
The BD8 area, which covers Girlington, Manningham and Lower Grange, is the second worst in West Yorkshire, with 42.7 per cent of vehicles uninsured.
Banned driver Imran Khan was at the wheel of a Vauxhall Astra when it hit 79-year-old grandmother Rita Turner, from Idle, on Drewton Road between Westgate and Manningham Lane, at 2.40pm on May 23 last year.
Mrs Turner, a grandmother and mother of two sons, died at the scene from her injuries and the usually busy road between Westgate and Manningham Lane was cordoned off for several hours. Police launched a hunt for the car, using footage from Bradford's "ring of steel" CCTV system, and appealed for witnesses to help them in their search.
The vehicle was eventually found in Manningham and subjected to forensic testing. It had suffered extensive damage to the windscreen and front end.
Khan, 21, who was uninsured, failed to stop at the scene of the collision and, at an earlier hearing, he and a co-accused admitted a charge of perverting the course of justice by concealing the Astra and throwing away the keys.
A teenager has been charged with attempted murder following a disturbance in which another 17-year-old boy received head injuries in Rochdale.
Police were called to Denehurst Park in Greave after reports of a disturbance involving two groups of youths at about 9pm on Friday 23 May.
Police believe a group of about 12 white youths were attacked by a group of seven or eight Asian youths.
During the disturbance, a 17-year-old white boy was assaulted and sustained head injuries resulting in bleeding on the brain that required emergency surgery. He was taken to Hope Hospital where his condition is currently described as comfortable.
Extra patrols were placed in the Greave area over the bank holiday weekend to provide extra reassurance to residents (i.e. to prevent reprisal and counter-reprisal - LT).
A 17-year-old boy from Rochdale was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and subsequently charged. He appeared before Rochdale magistrates today (Wednesday) , where he was remanded in custody until next Wednesday (4 June).
The arrest and subsequent charge was the result of detailed information provided by witnesses and inquiries are on-going.
