you can't make this stuff up.

Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - Under threat of United Nations Security Council sanctions for its own nuclear program, Iran has been elected to a vice-chair position on the U.N. Disarmament Commission, whose mission includes deliberations on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

ABSURD BRITAIN

Three news items:

Is this Russia or England?

Illegal to criticize the Prime Minister??

A Tory activist who wore a jacket with an offensive slogan about Tony Blair was told to take it off or face arrest. Julia Gobert had been handing out fliers at Earl's Court Tube station, west London, on Tuesday morning, when she was approached by two officers. She was told to remove it or face questioning after a complaint was made, said Tory councillor Barry Phelps.

Labour said it was in bad taste, Greens applauded the sentiment, not the words, and the Lib Dems have yet to comment. Councillor Phelps, who was with Ms Gobert that morning, told the BBC News website: "One Labour gentleman complained to the station staff and so two British Transport Police came along and were clearly embarrassed. "They said a member of the public complained and unless she desisted she will have to be taken in for questioning. "I said to the officer: 'We are not in the business of making life difficult for you - Miss Gobert will take the top off'. "It's not what I would have chosen to wear but there is no doubt that it captured the public mood."

A British Transport Police spokesman said: "People are of course free to wear what they like, but if a police officer receives a complaint about offensive language, they are bound to act upon the complaint." The Public Order Act 1986 prevents the display of words or signs that could cause offence.

Source





The Nanny State even worries about your poo poos

Nothing could be easier than easement. You just sit there, flicking through The Sun, checking that the bathroom door is locked and waiting for nature to do its business. Nanny society though we are, the mature adult does not expect to be told how to eat or to breathe. Up in Dundee, however, the local NHS trust has issued an instruction book on how to do the other thing that all species do; in our case, usually once a day.

Potty training is a near-universal experience of early childhood in civilised societies. That NHS Tayside feels obliged to issue a four-page leaflet entitled Good Defecation Dynamics, complete with a diagram, suggests there may be a gaping cultural black hole in a well-populated part of eastern Scotland. Still, let us not fall into the trap of typical Edinburgh nose-in-the-air superiority; we are always ready to learn, from the bottom up. The advice is sound; while sitting on the throne, it counsels, don’t forget to breathe. And, in a hint rarely taught to two-year-olds, it is apparently a good idea to keep your mouth open.

No reason is given for this; perhaps it is to guard against a potentially damaging build-up of pressure that might blow off one or other end of the digestive tract. No recent cases of any such accident have been reported in Tayside, possibly because the population reaches for the prunes before matters reach such a head. But what matters most is posture: not quite balancing a book on your head, as though you were at modelling school, but at least sitting upright. “Do not slump down but keep the normal curve in your back. Keep your mouth open as you bulge and widen,” the booklet says. “You should aim to do this every time you open your bowels.”

Have you ever, while sitting there in silent contemplation, thought about your feet? No, we thought not, but NHS Tayside has. “When you sit on the toilet make sure your feet are well supported; you may need to use a small footstool.” This cannot apply to the young, whose next stage after the potty is to sit on the real thing with little legs swinging in the air while a yellow labrador puppy steals the toilet roll.

Even though they probably don’t know the meaning of “defecation” in Dundee, preferring a more Anglo-Saxon term pronounced in the Scottish way to rhyme with “bright”, the leaflet has been distributed to clinics and GPs’ surgeries in the region. A spokeswoman for NHS Tayside turned the other cheek to accusations that the leaflet was a waste of money and would be better employed hanging on a nail behind the bathroom door. “One in three people suffers from bowel and bladder dysfunction, and this can be extremely debilitating and distressing for individuals,” she said. “These patient information leaflets contain advice for those people who suffer from this condition, and are based on national guidance from the Association for Continence Advice.” The cost of producing the leaflet, she added, had been minimal.

By the strange vagaries of the internet, the text of the leaflet has appeared on a website in Poland, a country of fine peasant customs that should have no need of such advice and where they would instantly dump it

Source






Lego now "unsafe" in England



A barmy building society has stopped using Lego to keep customers’ children amused — because it says the toy is a health hazard. Bosses at The Saffron Walden, Herts & Essex Building Society told all 13 branches to remove the building bricks. One shocked mum who uses a branch at Ware, Herts, said: “My son always plays with the Lego and went straight for where the toys usually are — but they had been cleared away. “A cashier said they got rid of them all because of health and safety regulations. “I was incensed. The world has gone crackers. I really couldn’t believe what I was hearing.” A building society source said: “They’re worried about somebody tripping over a piece of Lego. It’s just risk assessment gone mad.” The society agreed the Lego had been removed for “health and safety”.

Source


(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and DISSECTING LEFTISM. My Home Page. Email me (John Ray) here.)

CONSERVATIVE AUSTRALIAN LEFTISTS

Three news items:

This prominent Leftist wants tax cuts

There is a lot more economic rationality in the Australian Left than there is in most Leftist parties



Paul Keating has delivered a scathing assessment of the party he led for four years, saying he doubts Labor can ever recover the reformist zeal it once displayed and criticising its failure to offer a reduction in the top tax rate. The former Labor prime minister has revealed he urged Mark Latham to reduce the top income tax rate from 47 per cent to 39per cent as part of his 2004 election platform, saying it "would drive (John) Howard mad". But Mr Latham ignored the advice. In a rare concession to his opponents, Mr Keating says "the Liberals have actually showed more promise in understanding the need to open (the economy) up than the Labor Party does".

But Mr Keating, who as treasurer delivered the last cut in the top income tax rate in the 1980s when he reduced it from 60 to 47per cent, says both Labor and the Coalition lack the "conscientiousness and urgency" to pursue economic reform. Mr Keating's frank comments were given in an extensive interview with The Weekend Australian journalist George Megalogenis and appear in his book, The Longest Decade, to be published on Monday. Mr Keating describes the party he led as "a pretty modest beast" for most of its history. Although he says he supports current leader Kim Beazley, his remarks will be seen as an attack on his approach at a time when he is vulnerable over low approval ratings in the opinion polls.

Mr Keating says that, since he lost office in 1996, Labor "has gone back to the old anvil". "It's walked away from financial innovation, from the opening up of the economy and the whole meritocracy model of widening its own appeal to single traders, to sole operators of business, small business. "And you may say, 'Well, will we see the likes of the 83-to-96 government again?' Well, maybe, maybe not. Institutionally, you could have no confidence that the Labor Party could now breed it. In fact, it probably never bred it; it was more good luck than good management."

Mr Keating says he rang Mr Latham just before the last election to wish him luck. Mr Latham responded that he expected a struggle but he was happy that he had highlighted during the campaign the need to "ease the squeeze" on families. Mr Keating says he responded: "Listen mate, you know what the squeeze on families is in Sydney, how they move up from a two-bedroom apartment to a terrace house, how they trade in their Commodore for an Audi, that's the squeeze on families." Mr Latham had responded: "You're joking."

Mr Keating says economic conditions have been kind to Peter Costello and John Howard. "It's been too easy," he says. "Let's make this point, this treasurer and this prime minister have never had a quarterly set of national accounts which would have been a disappointment to them. They didn't have to find, or fathom, a way to reduce inflation (like I did)."

The Longest Decade also includes an interview with Mr Howard, who says the previously Labor-voting blue-collar workers who had become self-employed as a result of economic deregulation were "a natural fit for me". "A lot of those people are socially conservative. They don't like all this trendy stuff (such as a republic and Aboriginal reconciliation)," he says....

The book reveals that, despite being antagonists throughout their careers, Mr Howard and Mr Keating share some common views, including on economic reform, their distaste for former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad and the republic.

More here







Families: More Left/Right consensus

To a degree

Labor leader Kim Beazley has defended John Howard's tax benefit for stay-at-home mothers, arguing it does not discourage women from working. In the latest in a series of steps to de-Lathamise the Labor Party's policies, Mr Beazley has told The Weekend Australian that lack of childcare was keeping women out of work, rather than government payouts keeping them at home.

"I don't actually think that, while Family Tax Benefit (Part) B is meant to attract women away from the workforce ... compared to the other disincentives it's significant," he said. "If you're going to provide for the next generation you do have to focus on families. There has to be a bias in the system towards families. "The biggest disincentive to women working is access to childcare; that's the biggest problem. The second-biggest problem is reward."

Mr Beazley attacked the Government for allowing millionaire families to get money under the benefit, and called for a $250,000 income limit. "Family tax B ought to have at least the means test applied to it," he said.

Mr Howard accused Labor this month of wanting to take benefits off mothers, in an aggressive speech naming families as the chief tax battleground. The Prime Minister said the ALP in government would dismantle the $13 billion Family Tax Benefit in favour of tax cuts for individuals and said the "people who will suffer most will be Australian women".

Mr Beazley told The Weekend Australian that he did not think the family payments system should be further expanded. "The more effective way of dealing with it may be through reductions in taxation as opposed to increases in family payments," he said.

More here







State Labor leader backs migrant crackdown


More recognition that it is Australian conservatives who now speak for working-class voters

Premier Peter Beattie has backed a Commonwealth proposal for prospective migrants to understand basic English and Australian values before they are allowed into Australia. Mr Beattie said migrants had made a "great contribution" to Australia and the proposal was reasonable to ensure people with the same democratic values entered the country. "I don't think it's unreasonable to expect certain standards . . . I don't think it's unreasonable to ensure that migrants that come here have an ability to understand English . . . Why wouldn't we expect people to be committed to the democratic values that we subscribe."

Federal MP Andrew Robb, parliamentary secretary to Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone, has said he would consider the introduction of a compulsory citizenship test. Prospective immigrants may have to pass an English test as well as learn Australian values, customs, laws and history. Mr Robb said English-speaking migrants were more likely to find work and this helped them to integrate better into the community and possibly combat problems like terrorism.

Source

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and DISSECTING LEFTISM. My Home Page. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Arab psychology

Excerpt from The Autonomist:

Although I'm weak in anthropology, I did get an 'A' in biology years ago, and what I learned has given me insight into these strange organisms we call Middle Eastern Muslims. Every organism alive on the planet is good at something. Each has some sort of defense or capability or behavior that gave them an edge over other organisms of past eras and allowed them to evolve to overcome life's challenges and survive to this day.

Rabbits are fast runners and fast breeders. Tigers are amazingly skilled hunting machines. Elephants are immensely tough and powerful. Monkeys are highly intelligent and adaptable. Frogs have poisonous skin. But Muslims, like the stick bug and the chameleon and the stone fish, have developed, to an amazing extent, the ability to deceive. And it is that ability that confounds their environmental competitors (you and me) the most.

These types of organisms -- "lie-in-wait" predators -- must know the full range of behaviors of the organisms they wish to defeat, so as to position themselves correctly for the strike. They are not necessarily strong or powerful, so they must know what frightens, arouses, lures, relaxes, and weakens that which they intend to destroy. For the Muslim, the idea is to exploit our greatest vulnerability -- PC thinking.

It is no accident that the Muslims chose to openly start attacking the West on their own turf in the '60s and '70s, right around the time when PC ideology in our culture was starting to pick up steam and cloud our collective judgment. Would Muslims have attacked New York while U.S. Grant was president? Or London while King George III was on the throne? How about the Paris riots during Napoleon's time? I don't think so.

The Deceiver picked up on this latest dominant PC, therapeutic, Leftist strain in Western culture, and, patient and shrewd as he is, has successfully exploited it for the last few decades. The only time they seem to have paid any price was when the United States had good old-fashioned cowboys at the tiller -- Bush I and Bush II. They continue to try and deceive by maintaining their false cries of victimhood, blustering lies, and ridiculous charades, for they have internalized and mastered what Sun Tsu's considered the most valuable tactic in warfare: Deception.

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and DISSECTING LEFTISM. My Home Page. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Neo-nazis as government agents

My latest article at Majority Rights exposes the role of British and German intelligence agents in creating the German neo-nazi movement. It's a longish essay, but I urge all AWH readers to read it. There implications of these developments are quite serious.

Another denial-of-service attack:

the following blogs are down:

Instapundit
Power Line
Captain's Quarters
Pundit Guy
Chuck Simmins
Small Dead Animals
Radioblogger
Hugh Hewitt
IMAO
Mountaineer Musings
Say Uncle
Counterterrorism Blog
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Castle Arggh! - John Donovan
She Who Will Be Obeyed - Beth Donovan
Michael Totten
Ticklish Ears
Samizdata
Theodore's World
Patterico
Florida Cracker
Jeff Quinton
Overlawyered
Blogs4Bush

This is a DOS attack originating in Saudi Arabia. An interesting part of the statement released by Hosting Matters:

"Recovery on all segments except that target segment is complete. The target of the attack will not be brought back online and will be removed from the main network in the event they are the target of future attacks, so as not to negatively impact other clients."

(via Michelle Malkin)

How long before those blogs which are offensive to the jihadis start having difficulty finding host networks? And what - if anything - are Western governments doing to bring pressure on the Saudis to take these cyberthugs offline?

Smartcard, dumb journo

The Daily Telgraph's Tory Maguire on the new Smartcard:

"But why are so many sensible people afraid of the Federal Government's proposed new smartcard?"
If she has to ask then she's beyond understanding the answer.

"You don't have to carry it and you won't be compelled to produce it."
Of course not - until some bureaucrat or politician decides you must. It's called incremental implementation.

"The Government estimates the card will save up to $100 million a year in NSW alone in prevented welfare fraud."
The gummint estimates lots of things - almost always wrongly.

"So which particular rights are being trampled on here – the right to defraud Centrelink; or is it the right for drug addicts to doctor shop for Valium prescriptions? In an age in which you practically have to provide a DNA swab to rent a DVD it sounds pretty reasonable to me."
Nobody has suggested that either defrauding Centrelink or prescription shopping is a "right". And the smart-arse comment about the level of I.D. required to rent DVDs is suggesting that since privacy has been lost in one area, then it's ok to let the process continue in all other areas of our lives. Typically stupid justification of the very slippery slope our liberties rest on.

"It will also cut administrative costs, practically eliminating the 500,000 letters a year Medicare sends to out-of-date addresses."
Sacking inefficient clerical drones by the hundred and insisting on reasonable work performance from public servants would save a damn sight more - but that's all too hard, apparently. Better to move the onus on to the citizen. Again. As usual.

"And yet judging by the reaction, you would think we were all about to be pinned down by Joe Hockey and have barcodes tattooed on our foreheads."
Well, Tory, at what point would you begin to object to the erosion of our liberties? When that happens, when the biochip is inserted under your skin or when somebody a bloody sight smarter than you steals your lovely new shiny electronic identity and you become an "un-person"?

"Come on, corralling all the data already floating around in the public arena into an easy-to-use card will save money, time and possibly lives."
Riiight - and it's for the chiiildren and the whales, too.

"Having been pre-teen during the Australia Card debate, my only solid memory of the furore was of graffiti on a bus stop that gradually faded over the years between 1987 and about 1992, so maybe it's a generational thing."
Indeed it is a "generational thing". On two counts. One, your generation has been brainwashed into believing that Big Brother is your friend and you don't have the education necessary to realise that liberties are lost gradually, easily and most often at the hands of the government you obey unquestioningly. And secondly, it's a generational thing because you have yet to grow up. Writing an opinion piece for the Telgraph obviously isn't evidence of maturity.
The current state of civil liberties in Britain is evidence enough that our liberties aren't lost overnight. They're eroded piece by piece, always accompanied by perfectly resonable-sounding crap such as "administrative improvements" and "greater efficiencies".
The greatest efficiencies would be implemented by making public servants efficient. And accountable. But we never see any serious effort in that direction. It's a twofer for the government - greater control of citizen's lives while at the same time an excuse to expand the vast population of bureaucrats and leeches that the working taxpayer is forced to support.
Apologists for increased government intrusion into our lives always side-step the crucial questions: at what point does the interference become too much? At what point have we lost our freedom?

update, from News.com:
"Police to get smartcard data
INTELLIGENCE agencies and police will be given access to a vast database of photos to be created for the new health and welfare smartcard."

Greenie versus Greenie

Feds going cold on windfarms (Hooray!)

Environment Minister Ian Campbell's campaign against unpopular wind farms will include a national code giving him new powers to veto any project facing community opposition. As Senator Campbell used the death of an endangered wedge-tail eagle to support claims that wind farms threatened birds, he vowed to defy threats of a constitutional challenge from Labor states to forge ahead with plans for the code. It would give him new powers to block any wind farm based on community opposition, not just on environmental grounds. Senator Campbell said he was close to securing a national agreement with the states, with the exception of Victoria and Western Australia. If he could not win their backing, he warned last night he would unilaterally extend federal powers as a "last resort". Senator Campbell last month infuriated the Victorian Government by stopping the Bald Hills wind farm project in Gippsland to "save" the endangered orange-bellied parrot. This week, he froze funding for a similar wind farm project on the south coast of Western Australia, which won state government approval but faced opposition from members of the local community. His hardline position came as it emerged yesterday that the rare wedge-tail eagle died after colliding with wind turbines at the Woolnorth Wind Farm in Tasmania's northwest in wind gusts of 140km/h. According to a report, it appears the eagle's wings were severed and the bird was decapitated by the turbines. Senator Campbell said the death sent a message to "those who sneer about me making a decision based on killing birds". "Wind farms kill birds very regularly," he said. "I think all those who snigger about environment ministers trying to protect threatened species - hopefully, this will be a bit of a wake-up call."

More here







Some Greenies applaud Feds on windfarms

For a good part of his life, licensed surveyor Peter Mortimer has plied the waves of the pristine beaches around the idyllic West Australian town of Denmark. "It's one of those special places where you are isolated from anything man-made. It's a totally natural environment," he said. Mr Mortimer surfs one beach in the summer when the wind dies down and another, more sheltered, beach in winter when the fierce gusts blast their way over the southern Indian Ocean. Between the two beaches lies a local landmark, Wilson's Head, and it is there that a group of Denmark locals want to plant two or three turbines to harness the same strong winds. Mr Mortimer does not like the idea of having such machines, with their huge blades spinning away, overlooking him as he's trying to catch a wave. In Denmark, population 5000, it's the battle of who's greenest. Mr Mortimer say he is not against wind farms per se, he just thinks it is idiotic to put such an eyesore in one of the few spots on the state's southeast coast that has not been developed. He says that principle applies not just for locals, but for Perth types who go to Denmark to "wash away the pressures of the built environment". Mr Mortimer is outraged that the state Government overrode the views of the local council and rezoned Wilson's Head to accommodate the proposed wind farm. He is delighted that federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell has said he will block any further federal funding of the project, which received $240,000 for a feasibility study.

More here

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and DISSECTING LEFTISM. My Home Page. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Some queer news

The Religion that you Must not Argue Against

Islam, right? No. Homosexuality. A group of 20 to 30 students at Charles O. Dickerson High School in Trumansburg, New York, seem to have got tired of all the pro-homosexual preaching and "celebrated" the pro-homosexual "National Day of Silence" by wearing t-shirts to school bearing such OUTRAGEOUS slogans as "It's great to be straight". As a result, they were booted out of their school for a day. I wonder what happened to that pesky First Amendment? Though the idea that such "revolutionary" statements as "It's great to be straight" would need First Amendment protection rather boggles the mind. Details here.



And the action is really hotting up in California:

"The national debate over gay rights became a divisive force on Sacramento-area school campuses this week, as religious Christian students wore T-shirts expressing their disapproval of homosexuality as others participated in a Day of Silence to honor gay and lesbian peers.

Thirteen students at Oakmont High School in Roseville were suspended Tuesday when they refused to take off T-shirts that declared: "Homosexuality is sin." The students hired a lawyer who appealed 12 of the suspensions to the district Wednesday.

Other schools in the region have disciplined students in recent weeks for refusing to remove T-shirts condemning homosexuality. Two students at Mira Loma High School said they were sent home Wednesday, and one student was suspended this month at San Juan High School."

Source


The slogan there -- "Homosexuality is a sin" -- would be most clearly protected under the freedom of religion provision of the First Amendment, one would think.







"Homosexual" Now a Forbidden Word in Britain

Britain's Lord Chancellor is a senior member of the British government with a still-significant legal role -- including an important role in selecting British judges. But the present incumbent:

"is facing accusations of political correctness after banning the word "homosexual" from official documents in his department. Lord Falconer has ordered for the word to be removed on the grounds that it "may be considered offensive"....

Other disallowed terms include immigrant, Asian, man and wife, mixed race, West Indian and asylum seeker....

A spokesman from Stonewall told PinkNews.co.uk the group has never said the term "homosexual" should never be used"

Source


The Lord Chancellor has avoided the suggested replacement term (`lesbian, gay and bisexual') too. He offers special consideration to "people in those groups which are currently represented in relatively small numbers."

I guess I should apply for a job there. I'll bet there are not many Australians working as British judges -- so are not Australians a "group which is currently represented in relatively small numbers"? Favoritism for Australians! Hooray! It could be fun to wear one of those funny wigs.

It is easy to see why he has avoided the term "gay" however. I also consider myself to be gay. I am certainly not homosexual but I laugh and chuckle a lot. If any government started offering favoritism towards "gay" people, I'll bet there would be a lot of people who are as gay as I am claiming the special deal concerned.

Note that this current stupidity is NOT the work of homosexuals themselves. Stonewall is Britain's major homosexual organization and they have disowned reponsibility for it.

"Homosexual" is of course the neutral scientific term for what it describes -- a term which implies neither derogatory nor laudatory judgments. It is another usage of the common Greek prefix "homo", which means "the same as" or "similar to". There are several compound-words in the Greek original of the New Testament that use the prefix "homo". So "homosexual" simply means "attracted to the same sex". You cannot get more straightforward than that. But I guess that straightforwardness is not in vogue these days. Favoritism, not neutrality, is the order of the day.

And as for the idea that words like "Asian" should not be used.....

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and DISSECTING LEFTISM. My Home Page. Email me (John Ray) here.)

The wonders of diversity in modern-day Britain

A Good Samaritan has spoken of his disgust after a dying man was heckled by yobs. Travis Marshall, 42, tried in vain to save an elderly driver who had a heart attack at the wheel and careered into a bus. But as the victim took his last breath, sick youths in tracksuits and hoods clashed with police and yelled: "He is just a white man."

Mr Marshall, who performed emergency CPR on the man in St James's Road, Bermondsey, last Friday, said: "It was sickening. Here you had a dying man, people trying to save him and police trying to clear the scene. "Then there were these black youths and all they wanted to do was fight the cops. They were saying, `You think I am scared of you because of your uniform'. "I told them to have some respect because a man was dying and they shouted, `Who cares-it's just a white man'."

Mr Marshall told how a black woman next to him pleaded with cops to arrest the youths. He said: "These people should be ashamed to walk the streets. "I would try to help someone whatever their colour. "You can't print what I really think of them. They are scum-scum of the earth."

Mr Marshall was driving for a quiet weekend with sister Terry Choeb at her home in Peckham when he arrived at the crash scene at 4.20pm. He said: "People were just standing around. The man was bleeding from the mouth and was hardly breathing." He talked to the ambulance service on a mobile while checking the man's pulse, but when it started to fade he made the decision to lift him from his car and lie him on the road. Mr Marshall, a former private ambulance driver, then tried to give the kiss of life. Paramedics arrived 10 minutes later but could not save him. Mr Marshall, formerly of Peckham Rye but now from Canterbury, Kent, said: "It is sad, but all you can do is your best."

Source

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and DISSECTING LEFTISM. My Home Page. Email me (John Ray) here.)

The Message of Cronulla

With the passage of time, let’s quietly dissect what the Cronulla ‘riots’ actually meant, shall we?

A small group, a small ethnic group, interpreted our country’s deep tolerance as weakness. This group decided that this weakness meant that they could pretty much do what they liked, as ‘we’ were too absorbed in our own corruption and dissolution to do much about anything (never mind this ethnic group’s own deep, and ingrained corruption). Then, one day, a trigger point was reached. It’s an interesting trigger point, in that it galvanised a generation (effectively); it motivated this same, ‘weak’ and ‘corrupt’ country to suddenly stop and think about what it is that gives them the opportunity to be so.

The reaction was actually a given.

Cronulla was a warning, loud and clear. It said: ‘Watch out. You push too far, and guess what? We, too, can get medieval on your arse.’

And so it did. And so it should.

Come here, be our friend, and be welcome. Come here, be our enemy, and find out what may well happen.

Cronulla was a warning. Nothing more and nothing less.

And the warning said: ‘Don’t push too far. Because, gentle and tolerant as we are, if you do, there is that distinct possibility that, given you have betrayed our trust, we can actually do a lot, lot worse. . .’

Greens lead attack

Well, that's good enough for me, whatever these insidious socialists are opposing, it must be a good idea and deserving of our support.
A plan to check English fluency and Australian values as part of a citizenship test for prospective immigrants has been blasted by politicians and ethnic groups. Greens senator Kerry Nettle led the attack today, saying not all native Australians were fluent in English, and not all ministers epitomised Australian values.

Andrew Robb, the parliamentary secretary to Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone, last night said he would consider the introduction of a compulsory citizenship test for prospective immigrants. The test would be on the English language and Australia's values, customs, laws and history, he said.

But Senator Nettle said: "A fluent grasp of English is not a prerequisite of being Australian. "Has Mr Robb forgotten that many Indigenous Australians do not speak fluent English? Is he suggesting that they are less Australian?
See, another case of mouth opening, words spluttering forth, brain engaging thereafter. No Kerry, he is talking about prospective immigrants ie. the ones coming into the country, from outside the country.
She said if Mr Robb really wanted to help immigrants learn English he would be proposing language assistance. "Mr Robb claims this move would be part of a response to the threat of global terrorism, but denying some Australian residents citizenship on the grounds that they do not agree with values defined by the Government will not build harmony."
That's right so we divide them all up into enclaves and let em fester, and when they blow some of us to smithereens or riot and pillage, that will induce warm and fuzzy feelings in all of us.
Language assistance, offcourse at taxpayers expense obviously, something these socialists are always hunkering to get their hands on.

Anyone see the distributions coming out from local councils, they are printed in 6 or 7 different languages, one can only imagine how much money could be saved by dropping all this nonsense, think about that all you 'cash strapped' home owners forgoing dinner to cough up for council rates.
The Australian Democrats said..
Wait, scratch that, who cares what the democrats have to say.

Desperate dentistry in England

This shows where socialized medicine ends up. Brits are told that they are entitled to "free" dentistry but the pay the NHS offers to dentists is so lousy that there are fewer and fewer NHS dentists around. So Brits pay for health insurance but cannot collect what they have paid for. Very often their only option is to pay a second time -- to go to an expensive private dentist

A woman told today how she got a friend to pull out one of her teeth with a pair of pliers and filmed the gruesome process on a mobile phone after failing to find an NHS dentist. Diane Hunter, 45, described how she became so exasperated after two years of toothache she opted for a DIY option. "In the end I just got really drunk and got a friend to pull it out with a pair of big pliers," she told the Bradford Telegraph and Argus. "There was a lots of blood but I just needed the tooth out - it was causing me great pain and it still is."

Miss Hunter, who lives in the Listerhills area of Bradford, said she has not seen a dentist for more than 20 years and failed in her search for any offering NHS care. She said she first tried the old schoolboy trick of tying one end of a piece of string around her tooth and the other around a door handle before slamming the door but it did not work. Miss Hunter told the paper she would never pull her own teeth out again. "I was going to do it again but I showed a nurse at the doctor's surgery what I had done and she said it could cause a heart attack," she said.

She even went to hospital for help at one point but was never given anything more than paracetamol. Her friend performed the DIY dentistry about six months ago.

Source

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More "obesity" stupidity

Two reports:

Experts stunned by tubby tots

Children as young as four are battling obesity, research shows. And children appear to be losing the fat fight as they get older. A Royal Children's Hospital study found almost one in five kindergarten kids (19.5 per cent) are overweight or obese. And just a year later 21.1 per cent were battling the bulge. Dr Joanne Williams, of the hospital's Centre for Community Child Health, said young overweight children were likely to still have weight problems as adults. "We're just watching the rates go up and up and up, and nothing's being done about it," Dr Williams said. "These kids get teased at school, their self-esteem is low, they have a poor quality of life and there are huge consequences later on in life."

Researchers measured the waistline, height and weight of 340 children aged four to six for the study, which has been submitted to the International Journal of Obesity. Dr Williams said advertising led parents to falsely believe they were feeding kids healthy foods when their diet was packed with sugar and fat.

Health Minister Tony Abbott has refused to crack down on junk food ads during children's television hours. He said parents, not the Government, should be responsible for what their children ate. But Deakin University nutrition lecturer Dr Tim Crowe said junk food TV advertising should be outlawed from 4pm-6pm to remove some temptation from households. "We have to acknowledge we are dealing with a health problem so serious that a group of children are not going to outlive their parents," he said.

Many parents did not seem to recognise when children were overweight. "We are not sure of the reasons why. Perhaps it is because they look at other kids and think their own are not fat," he said. [It's because the mothers themselves are fat!]

More here.

OF COURSE kids are getting fatter on average. It is predominantly overweight working class women who are giving birth these days. Huge numbers of slim bourgeois women now consider themselves too grand to have kids. And obesity is highly hereditary. So the increasing prevalence of fat kids is exactly what you expect now that fat women are the main ones having kids. Going on about the evils of junk food or the wickedness of advertisers is flailing at the air.


Schools to put cap back on soft drinks

Water and milk will be the only drinks allowed in some Victorian schools. The primary schools plan to scrap sugary soft drinks this year. Children will be urged to bring water bottles to class in the government-backed trial. Parents will be encouraged to pack only water and milk with lunches. Program co-ordinator and child health researcher Dr Lisa Gibbs said regular water drink breaks would improve students' attention span. Promoting water and milk was also good for teeth, Dr Gibbs said. Six government and private schools in the western and northwestern suburbs will be selected for the trial under the Go For Your Life campaign. The project could spread if successful.

"The idea in the first stage will be that if a student brings a drink into the classroom it can only be water," Dr Gibbs said. "If you have brought a soft drink, it will have to be kept in your bag during class times and only drunk at lunch time. "The eventual aim would be that you would only be allowed to bring water or milk to school." The plan coincides with a ban on sales of high-sugar soft drinks from canteens and vending machines in government primary and secondary schools by year's end.

More here

And what good is that going to do? Milk is extremely calorific and hence fattening. The kids would probably get fewer calories out of drinking fizzy drinks

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and DISSECTING LEFTISM. My Home Page. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Jewish Leftism

Excerpt from Dennis Prager

Liberal Jews fear most religion. They identify religion -- especially fundamentalist religion and especially Christianity -- with anti-Semitism. Jews are taught from birth about the horrors of the Holocaust, and of nearly 2,000 years of European, meaning Christian, anti-Semitism. They therefore tend to fear Christianity and believe that secularism guarantees their physical security. That is what animates the ACLU and its disproportionately Jewish membership, under the guise of concern with the Constitution and "separation of church and state" (words that do not appear in the Constitution), to fight all public expressions of Christianity in America.

Despite their secularism, Jews may be the most religious ethnic group in the world. The problem is that their religion is rarely Judaism; rather it is every "ism" of the Left. These include liberalism, socialism, feminism, Marxism and environmentalism. Jews involved in these movements believe in them with the same ideological fervor and same suspension of critical reason with which many religious people believe in their religion. It is therefore usually as hard to shake a liberal Jew's belief in the Left and in the Democratic Party as it is to shake an evangelical Christian's belief in Christianity. The big difference, however, is that the Christian believer acknowledges his Christianity is a belief, whereas the believer in liberalism views his belief as entirely the product of rational inquiry.

The Jews' religious fervor emanates from the origins of the Jewish people as a religious people elected by God to help guide humanity to a better future. Of course, the original intent was to bring humanity to ethical monotheism, God-based universal moral standards, not to secular liberalism or to feminism or to socialism. Leftist Jews have simply secularized their religious calling.

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Not good enough

I have not posted on this because on the surface this seemed like an unfortunate mistake. I don't think the Prime Minister is responsible for the mistake, we can hardly expect the man to be everywhere looking over every Australian government official's shoulder, we cannot expect that of the minister either. However I do not think it is too much for us to ask that our soldiers be treated with respect and dignity.
A SENIOR army officer will head an inquiry into how the body of Private Jake Kovco was left in Kuwait and the body of a Bosnian soldier was flown to Melbourne instead.

Defence head Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston said an assessment of what went wrong was being conducted today and an inquiry would start next week. The body of Private Jake Kovco, 25, was due to arrive at Melbourne airport early this morning ahead of a funeral with full military honours - but the wrong casket was brought instead.

Mr Nelson said the bungle at a private mortuary in Kuwait appeared to have been made by a civilian contractor and not the military. "He was transferred to a US military mortuary then subsequently to a civilian mortuary," Dr Nelson told ABC radio.

"It appears that the private company that is involved with the repatriation of Australians who sadly lose their lives overseas, something happened between him being identified in the civilian mortuary and his transfer then to the commercial flight back to Australia."
From what I have heard on the radio, this private company is an American company.

That's right if you die on the battlefield a private company gets involved, the dead are now being outsourced, for heaven's sake, when we ask these brave men and women to go out into the battle field and fight for our skins; they don't start pulling out contracts, negotiations, receipts and bloody forms for us to sign here, here and initial there.

A wife has lost her husband, children their father, parents their only son, for the love of God is it too much to ask that we take care of our own, is there anything that is outside of the budgetary constraints of the bean counters, is that all it comes down to, dollars and bloody cents.

I am glad the Prime Minister has apologised to Private Kovco's family, he speaks for all of us for we as a country owe them a debt that cannot be repaid. All we can offer them are our condolences and prayers and to honour Private Jake Kovco.

I have faith that PM Howard will put an end to this crap about outsourcing, if we have to pay extra taxes so that our soldiers are brought back by their own, then so be it, we as a nation owe them that, to hell with the bean counters, just get it done.

Only Europe's lights? I think not......

Europe's lights go out
April 24, 2006
The vice appears to be closing on Europe. As Patrick Goodenough reports on Townhall.com:

Islamic groups and governments are pressing ahead with a campaign to have international organizations take steps, including legal ones, to provide protection for their religion in the wake of the Mohammed cartoon controversy. In a drive pursued largely away from the headlines, the Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC) is promoting the issue at the United Nations and European Union, and having some success.
The executive council of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) this month approved an agenda item entitled ‘respect for freedom of expression, sacred beliefs, values and religious and cultural symbols.’ Introduced by more than 30 Islamic states and the subject of considerable debate, the motion explicitly tied freedom of expression to ‘respect for cultural diversity, religious beliefs and religious symbols.’

...The UNESCO move is just the latest illustration of the way the OIC and its 56 member states are using the cartoon episode to apply pressure on the West to comply with Islamic norms… In another development, it was reported last week that E.U. bureaucrats are drawing up a ‘lexicon’ of terminology to use when referring to Islam. Words like ‘Islamist’ and ‘jihad’ are under review, as is the phrase ‘Islamic terrorism.’


So we are about to be censored, stifled, gagged, prevented from naming and discussing the greatest contemporary threat to our lives and liberty.


From Melanie Philip's Diary.

Ungrateful Curs?

Hopefully most Italians don't feel this way.

The Vatican newspaper on Wednesday called the trampling and burning of Israeli flags during a march in Milan a "disgusting" offense to all Jews. Earlier on Wednesday,the Israeli ambassador to Italy condemned as "barbarous" the anti-Israeli demonstrations held "As a Jew and an Israeli, I was filled with shame and anger at the sight of the barbarous behavior of the 'fascists' who defiled the sanctity of the Liberation Day holiday," Ambassador Ehud Gol said in a statement.

The protests occurred near a march Tuesday commemorating the 61st anniversary of Italy's liberation from fascism. Demonstrators trampled and burned Israeli flags and yelled "Intifada" in support of the Palestinian uprising, according to media reports.

The protesters reportedly were angered by the presence in the march of Israeli flags in honor of members of the Jewish Infantry Brigade Group, which helped liberate Italy.

Commemorations are held throughout Italy on the April 25 national holiday in honor of the partisan uprising that began on that day in 1945 and ended with the execution of Fascist Party dictator Benito Mussolini.

It seems these vermin have grown old, wearied by the festering in their minds and in the days after, forgotten their liberators.

On the lighter side

Australian fashion week kicked off yesterday

And, for once, some of the fashions don't look too bad



Paris, Milan, New York ... and now, Sydney. Organisers of Sydney's Mercedes Australian Fashion Week (MAFW) say the annual event has surpassed London's rival fashion festival. "We have eclipsed London in terms of size, participation and attendance," MAFW founder Simon Lock said. "So on the ladder of fashion weeks, we could probably put ourselves at number four at the moment." MAFW, Australia's single largest fashion event, was founded in 1996 to bring local designers to world attention and is credited with launching labels such as Collette Dinnigan and Sass and Bide overseas.

Slideshow here. More here




Boob job quarrel



Women aged under 20 should not be allowed to have breast implants, health experts claim. With more young women opting for cosmetic surgery, they say 18, the age at which doctors can approve requests for implants, is too young. This is also the message from a national cosmetic surgery conference being held in Adelaide today, where women in their 20s can have half-priced breast implants. Patients will get the usual $8000-$12,000 price tag halved as their surgery is in front of an audience of medical professionals in workshops at the Norwood Day Surgery. Australian Medical Association state branch president Chris Cain has criticised a Big Brother housemate for getting breast implants at age 19 and flaunting them on national television. Sydney retail manager Krystal revealed on the Channel 10 reality show that she had had breast augmentation a few months ago.



Her mother and fellow housemate, postal worker Karen, 36, had the same surgery done at the same time.

More here

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The African AIDS fraud

It came almost two years after the Boston Globe exposed it, but the Washington Post on April 6 acknowledged that the number of HIV/AIDS cases in Africa has been grossly exaggerated by the United Nations in order to generate money through the world body to spend on the disease. In an April 10 editorial, the Post admitted, "The United Nations' credibility on AIDS will now suffer." So should the credibility of the media for taking the world organization seriously.

The Post editorial declared, "It's been clear for a while that UNAIDS, the agency responsible for these statistics, was reluctant to contemplate good strategies for fighting AIDS lest these undermine global support for expanded funding." The Post found the U.N. guilty of publishing "dubious AIDS data."

The FAIR Foundation, which stands for Fair Allocations in Research, had known about and exposed the dubious data. On its website, it highlighted how the UN AIDS office, the World Health Organization (WHO), the National Institutes of Health, and AIDS activists "continually speak of AIDS decimating the world and use that argument to argue for more research funding." It had posted the John Donnelly Boston Globe article of June 20, 2004, explaining how the figures had been exaggerated. "Recent studies in Kenya have confirmed millions of Africans previously thought to have AIDS are disease free," noted the FAIR Foundation. In Kenya, as the BCC reported on January 9, 2004, estimates had put the figure at 15 percent, when a subsequent survey found only 6.7 percent infected.

That's January 9, 2004-more than two years before the Post published its correction of the record. What the Post didn't acknowledge is the role it played in this fiasco. But writing in Human Events, Tom Bethell commented, "Back in 2000, the Washington Post was one of the main sources of hype about AIDS in Africa."

He explains: "The wildly exaggerated claims promoted by the mainstream media created an atmosphere of crisis. Guided by U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and Secretary of State Albright, the Clinton Administration took the issue of impending population collapse to the U.N. Security Council. African countries weren't going to be able to field armies or defend themselves because so many young men would soon be on their death beds." Bethell says his new book, the Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, deals with this manufactured "crisis" over AIDS.

Source

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New dams at last

It looks like the water shortage in Queensland has finally trumped the dam-hating Greenies. NSW take note



The $1 billion the Queensland government expects to earn from the sale of its power retailers will be used to build two new dams and set up a special infrastructure fund. Premier Peter Beattie said today his government would sell the retail arms of its power suppliers Energex and Ergon Energy, in a trade sale expected to earn more than $1 billion. The sale will take place in several tranches before the end of the year, ensuring the state market is ready for full retail contestability from July 1 next year.

Deputy Premier and Treasurer Anna Bligh said the sale would not influence the government's Budget, which was in good shape and expected to deliver a "very healthy surplus" when brought down on June 6. Instead, the expected $1 billion windfall would be ploughed into a Queensland Future Growth Fund, to be managed by Treasury, with legislation ensuring proceeds are spent solely on infrastructure needs. The fund's first projects include financing two new dams, located along the Mary and Logan rivers in south-east Queensland, to be built by 2011.

The Mary River dam, north of Brisbane, will service Gympie and the Sunshine Coast - it will rival the size of Brisbane's Wivenhoe Dam. A second dam would also be built along the upper reaches of the Logan River, either at the already-proposed Wyaralong Dam site or at Tilleys Bridge, near Rathdowney, providing water to western areas including Ipswich, Springfield and Beenleigh. Two new weirs will also be built in central Queensland and $300 million invested in clean coal technology.

Opposition leader Lawrence Springborg said while he approved of the decision in principle, the government's move was a "fire sale" to cover up black holes in its next budget

Source

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Strange new IQ study

We read:

"Girls have big advantage over boys on timed tests

"Vanderbilt University researchers Stephen Camarata and Richard Woodcock discovered that females have a significant advantage over males on timed tests and tasks. Camarata and Woodcock found the differences were particularly significant among pre-teens and teens....

Though males and females showed similar processing speed in kindergarten and pre-school, females became much more efficient than males in elementary, middle and high school." The researchers found that males scored lower than females in all age groups in tests measuring processing speed, with the greatest discrepancy found among adolescents. However, the study also found that males consistently outperformed females in some verbal abilities, such as identifying objects, knowing antonyms and synonyms and completing verbal analogies...

The researchers found no significant overall intelligence differences between males and females in any age groups. The research will be published in the May-June 2006 issue of the journal Intelligence. Camarata and Woodcock compiled their results through an evaluation of three sets of data collected from 1977 to 2001 as part of the Woodcock-Johnson Series of Cognitive and Achievement Tests."

Source


That is a really strange set of findings. Higher mental speed on a whole range of indices is normally associated with higher IQ so girls should have shown up as more intelligent but they did not. Among adults, males show up as having slightly higher IQ scores than females but not in this study. And strangest of all is that males outperformed females on verbal abilities. Probably the least disputed finding in the whole of IQ research is that FEMALES score highest on verbal abilities, with males doing best on visuospatial abilities.

So what the heck is going on here? It would be easy to dismiss the study as too much of an outlier to be anything but a product of poor methodology but I believe that the results are not as mysterious if we are aware of Lynn's huge summary of all the past research on these questions.

What Lynn showed was that results obtained with schoolchildren are not the same as the results obtained with results. And I am now going to say why. And I am going to say why in a way that will offend a lot of people. But I am going to say it that way because it is true and the truth concerned helps us to see a particular finding in a way that all scientists seek -- as being part of a larger pattern. And that fact is that maturation speed is inversely correlated with final level obtained. Since that is a hopelessly academic way of saying anything, however, I will now say it in another brutally frank way: Chimpanzees, blacks and women grow up faster than white males and the faster they mature, the lower is the intelligence level that they finally reach on average.

Yes. I know that most people will accuse me of being worse than Hitler for saying that but, as the old Scottish saying has it: "Facts are chiels that winna ding" (Roughly translated: "Facts are children that cannot be disciplined"). I am sorry to be the messenger of a deeply unpalatable truth but somebody somewhere some day has to tell it to the general public.

And the authors of the study above do note that their results vary with age so that is clearly the decisive factor. In other words, if the study had been repeated with adults, the results would have been different. Females scored equally with males on average simply because males had not reached their peak at the ages studied.

There are still some puzzling parts of the study, though. Although the slower maturation of males explains the male/female parity in average IQ at the ages studied and perhaps explains the higher female processing speed observed, the unprecedented findings with verbal abilities remain to be explained. My best guess is that the tasks used to assess verbal abilities were atypical -- though it does not sound as if they were. Maybe Richard Lynn or J.P. Rushton may be able to shed some light on it in due course.

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From bad to worse

For all their leftist rhetoric about human rights, the Europeans can't seem to practice what they preach to the rest of us barbarians. I wonder if it has anything to do with the Islamists in Europe, after all we are well aware of what they would like to see happen to homosexuals. I won't go into the details but it involves cranes and ropes.
The mayor of Amsterdam has sent letters to his counterparts in eight European cities warning that gay intolerance is on the increase and asking them to uphold homosexual rights such as allowing gays to get married and to hold demonstrations.

Job Cohen said he is "particularly concerned by the news that homophobic attitude and behaviour is propagated by measures and policies of local authorities in some of the new EU-member states," according to the AFP news agency.

Mr Cohen's letter was sent to mayors in Warsaw, Prague, Lisbon, Dublin, Vienna and in the Baltic capitals of Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius, as well as to EU justice commissioner Franco Frattini. The move comes after a motion by city councillors, concerned by recent attacks on homosexuals in Europe.
Whilst Mayors are concerned about minority rights and the need to protest, it seems there are more pressing matters, like putting food on the table in the next decade or so.
Prominent Belgian economist Paul de Grauwe has argued the euro is bound to collapse in 10 to 20 years as there is no clear progress towards a political union in Europe.

Professor De Grauwe from the Catholic University of Leuven, advocated the creation of the common currency in the 1990s but his forthcoming research paper will present evidence of the euro's risks for the future, news agency AFP reports.

"A political union is the logical end-point of a currency union," Mr De Grauwe told Belgian weekly, The Business, adding "The monetary union will collapse ... not next year, but on a time frame of 10 or 20 years. There is not a single monetary union which survived without political union. They have all collapsed."

Economists point out that the common currency was established with the view to creating more jobs, higher growth and lower prices, but the current situation is far less optimistic. Growth is around two percent a year in the 12-member eurozone and high unemployment - above 8 percent – remains.

These problems relate to the poor record of individual member states in pursuing reforms to improve economic performance, but the EU has little powers to sanction them for failing to do so.
The French politicians tried that recently, but were terribly thrashed (not literally) by the citizens, hell bent on making no progress, so I wouldn't be making any bets on future improvements there.
The Belgian economist is not the only expert to raise the issue. The same point was made at last week's hearing of a new member of the European Central Bank's board, German Bundesbank's vice president Jurgen Stark.

"The EU currently is in a critical phase," Mr Stark told MEPs on Tuesday (15 April), adding "I am concerned about these trends because monetary union ... needs a common political foundation and a political commitment to function smoothly."
On a, perhaps unrelated topic, does anyone know what the European Commission does? I dozed off after reading about it on Wikipedia, something about pillars, parallels, legislation and thousands of paper pushers. Well, whatever it is, they are not doing it very well.
The European Commission is mediocre in terms of administrative efficiency, the EU Ombudsman said on Monday (24 April), with some Belgian politicians keen to introduce a "Kafka index" for Brussels.

"The commission is more or less half way along the line," Nikiforos Diamandouros said while presenting his 2005 annual report on EU red tape, explaining that old EU democracies have the highest standards with young EU democracies lagging in the east.

"The commission was established on the French model of public administration and has all the difficulties and all the advantages of this model," he added.
See there's your problem right there, you took the French model. This barbarian from the land down under can tell you that, you should not need any fancy committees or waffling around tables to figure that one out.

British Politicians at Dinner

This way gentlemen, your usual tables await you, I think you will be pleasantly surprised at our new dining chairs gentlemen. There is extra support in the backs and also extra under thigh padding, to make up for your lack of muscle in both back and knee areas.

Waiter, quick our finest wine, the tax payer is picking up this tab [snicker snicker], not to worry sirs your chairs are facing away from the unwashed masses outside, that incident the other night was regrettable, you shall be spared their accusing glares and righteous anger from now on.

Well, what'll it be tonight gentlemen, the usual chicken livers, tenderised so as not to challenge your feeble molars or boneless pigeon to spare your delicate wrists?
The home secretary has said he will not resign after it emerged 1,023 foreign prisoners had been freed without being considered for deportation. Charles Clarke said he did not know where most of the people, who include three murderers and nine rapists, were. He admitted a growth in foreign prisoners had led to the Home Office taking its "eye off the ball".

The Home Office later revealed that of those, 288 were released from prison between August 2005 and March - suggesting the problem continued after it had been raised with the government. Mr Clarke had said the failure leading to the 1,023 releases was "deeply regrettable" and conceded that people would be angered by the oversight.
Oh yeah "deeply regrettable" alright, now that these 1023 are out on the streets, no doubt it'll be the public who will be bearing the brunt of these crims next round of law breaking. As the politicians up there in utopia are now discovering, these loving crims don't leave forwarding addresses, but who cares, its not their problem, it is the police who have to go looking for these waste bags.
So far the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) has located 107 of the total, leading to 20 deportations. Among the offenders, five had been convicted of committing sex offences on children, seven had served time for other sex offences, 57 for violent offences and two for manslaughter.

There were also 41 burglars, 20 drug importers, 54 convicted of assault and 27 of indecent assault. The Home Office said it did not have full details of offences committed by more than 100 of the criminals, but 237 were failed asylum seekers and 54 were still having their asylum applications considered. More than 870 were serving at least 12 months and 13 were serving more than 10 years.
Britain is quickly becoming a criminal utopia, as JR brought us the news earlier in April, it is now harder to get room and board in Britain's jails, you have to be a really vicious piece of dirt to qualify for a tax payer funded holiday in Britain. Then there are the unarmed police, unarmed public, if you are illegal, no worries, come on in guys, free room and board if you get caught, then let out to do it all again, and while your in there can we rearrange your toilet to suit your particular needs.
Home Office Minister Tony McNulty said he was "very, very shocked" by the news but he did not think Mr Clarke should resign.

Downing Street says Tony Blair has "full confidence" in both Mr Clarke and Mr McNulty. "It is unreasonable to expect ministers to know what is going on in every nook and cranny in their department," said Mr Blair's official spokesman.
Yep, I am sure the criminals also have full confidence in them too. And these buffoons wonder why the voters are looking elsewhere.

Refer a friend

And you'll get this voucher, 50% off your next nuke.

First they threaten and weasel their way into the Nuclear club, knowing fully well, the Europeans lack the stomach to stand up to them, the UN is a useless organisation, the Russians and Chinese will take cash/oil (No questions asked) as long as the missiles are pointing toward the west, hopefully the left will hobble the Americans long enough from doing any damage, and well there are those Israelis, we know they can be dangerous and devastating when provoked, but hey, no risk no gain.

Then when they are in the nuclear club, they start bringing along buddies, all in the name of knowledge sharing offcourse.
Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has said his country is ready to share its nuclear technology with other nations. Ayatollah Khamenei made the offer during a meeting with visiting Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

In his meeting with Mr Bashir, Ayatollah Khamenei said Iranian scientists' nuclear capability was "one example of the numerous scientific movements in the country". "The Islamic Republic is ready to transfer this experience and the technology and knowledge of its scientists," the leader was quoted as saying.

In return, the Sudanese president praised Iran's enrichment of uranium as a great victory for the Islamic world. Mr Bashir said last month his country was considering creating a civilian nuclear programme.
Yes I'm sure Sudan is eager to 'Spread the word', they must be encouraged by the global hand wringing over the genocide they presided over in Darfur. It took them a couple of months, if not years, to butcher a few thousand black Africans, and what did the UN and the International community do, bugger all. Sorry guys no time for genocide here, more important things to do, the rights of terrorist waste bags is being violated elsewhere, I hear a toilet being flushed by those mean Americans ... quick put together an inquiry.

Now on a totally unrelated issue, nothing to do with Iran or Sudan, its those militant Buddhists again, damn I'm so tired of their intolerance ... no wait, it isn't them..

It's the 'other' proponents of peace and tranquility.
A Cologne brothel touting for clients with a World Cup-themed banner has blacked out the flags of Iran and Saudi Arabia after threats from Muslims. The giant banner on a high-rise building shows a semi-naked woman and the flags of the 32 countries in the World Cup, which kicks off in June.

The Pascha brothel's owner, Armin Lobscheid, said a group of Muslims had threatened violence over the advert. He said they had accused the brothel of insulting Islam by using the flags.

First there were telephone threats of violence, then about 30 hooded protesters armed with knives and sticks turned up outside Pascha on Friday, the Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger newspaper reported.

"The situation was explosive," Mr Lobscheid told the paper. "Some of the people compared our ad to the Danish Mohammed cartoons," he said, referring to cartoons which sparked violent protests in several Muslim countries in February.
I think it was Donald Rumsfeld who said, if you keep feeding the crocodile that's coming after you, all you are doing is ensuring you will just be eaten later.

Pretty soon we'll all have to junk the PC brigade, ditch the civil libertarians, who cares what they think, they don't have the balls to enforce any of their pie-in-the-sky ideas anyway, we'll have run everything past the Islamic council of beheaders and throat slitters from now on.

Pathetic: The British nanny State strikes again

To the patriots of Bromham, a hearty English breakfast seemed the perfect way to celebrate St George's Day. Some 300 villagers were planning to tuck in to the fry-up in their community centre. But yesterday's charity event was cancelled at the last minute - because of a health and safety warning against frying eggs. The local council's guidelines state that volunteers should not prepare "protein-based foods" without proper training. Furthermore, the centre did not have the correct facilities to "chill, prepare and store" the food. Faced with not being able to serve eggs, cheese or milk, organisers abandoned the event.

They had been hoping to raise 500 pounds for St Nicholas Primary School in the village near Chippenham, Wiltshire. Peter Wallis, 39, chairman of the school's parents and teachers association, said: "I was astonished to discover that we had to adhere to health and safety regulations to cook people breakfast. "We have to provide evidence that whoever is handling the food has been trained to do so. "We spoke to other schools in the area and decided that because people were not properly qualified in food preparation we had to cancel the event. "This is just plain daft. These breakfasts have been going on for many years and we've never poisoned anyone. "We are looking at sending some of our parents on training courses but with the turnover of members each year that could be too expensive."

The school, which has 85 pupils aged between four and 11, has held fundraising breakfasts for some 15 years. This year ten parents had promised to help cook and serve the fry-ups. School governors now fear the guidelines could lead to the cancellation of their summer fetes and Christmas parties. The events raise 2,500 pounds a year to be spent on books and teaching equipment.

Tory MP Philip Davies said the guidelines were "bonkers". "It is barmy that parents who want to celebrate St George's Day and raise a bit of money for their local school are prevented from doing so by ridiculous rules and regulations," he said. "Do mums and dads really need to spend valuable time learning how to fry an egg? I'm sure they do it most mornings without training. "These potty rules are one reason people are discouraged from celebrating St George's Day."

Mr Wallis, whose seven-year-old son Sam attends the school, added: "The regulations also say the eggs have to be chilled literally from when we buy them to when they are cooked to be eaten. "What we have done for years and years is to buy them and take them home overnight to someone's home but that is not allowed any more. "Keeping them at some parent's house overnight is not sufficient evidence they have been stored properly." Councillor Mark Baker, vice-chairman of education on Tory-held Wiltshire County Council, said the authority's health and safety guidelines were not legally-binding.

The breakfast rumpus is the latest in a string of healthy and safety controversies. Last week grandfather Brian Heale, 73, was ordered off a bus in Cardiff because he was carrying a tin of paint. Earlier this month a lifeguard instructor and her husband were banned from taking their three children into the toddlers' pool at Sedgemoor Splash in Bridgwater, Somerset. Keren and David Townsend were told their children needed individual supervision.

Source

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Anger at Britain's warped welfare State

From an article by a Labour party member of the British pariament:

This is not about race. Immigration and bogus asylum seekers act like the barium meal of an X-ray, showing up the weakness of the body politic. Yet the revolt of working-class voters is not limited to areas of high immigration. Race merely acts as a flashpoint. In my constituency, Birkenhead, where black faces are still a rarity, the revolt is just as fundamental as in London and other multicultural centres.

Many on the Left imagine that support for the BNP and other extremists represent a cry for the reinstatement of Old Labour values of nationalisation and high state spending. In fact, the objection is much more fundamental. It represents a clash between people's sense of fairness, grounded in a collective social ethic, and what they see as the foreign idea of individualised rights....

Housing remains a flash point. The working-class sense of fairness is mocked by allocation policies that put at the top of the list groups who, in the local community's eye, have less claim than other groups. A policy of housing the homeless is noble. It is the way it is carried out which is so objectionable. I have never heard a constituent - even one who has waited in the housing queue for decades - argue against a policy that looks after the homeless. What so many of my constituents object to, as I do, is the way the homeless jump to the top of the queue and are able to choose the best homes. This policy strikes at the very sense of fairness that working people hold. Fairness demands that those who have striven longest should rise to the top of the queue and take the best housing. The accommodation they vacate should then be offered to the homeless.

In parts of the East End, the housing flashpoint is colour. In Birkenhead, it centres on the advantage that single parents or the homeless have in sweeping the weekly housing jackpots. The objection is the same. Dench and Gavron detail the ways current social housing policy favours the family in crisis against the family that has strengthened the local community.

The values that welfare preaches are equally objectionable to decent poorer families of any colour. Within the living memory of many voters, welfare has been reshaped from a system whose values reflected a working-class collective culture to one based on individual rights. In place of effort and contribution, a welfare system has been rolled out preaching and practising inalienable rights that individuals gain simply by turning up and asking for help....

Political correctness on individualised rights now runs deep in the Parliamentary Labour Party. It will take a considerable amount of courage to realign welfare with the collective values that are crucial to underpinning strong and sustainable communities. Moreover, altruism is sustainable in the longer run only if it is buttressed by a widespread sense of fairness.

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The British welfare State nearly kills a young guy

Peter Owen, 19, was in agony for a week as he tried SIX times to have a tooth out. He was eventually rushed to hospital after an abcess on the tooth swelled so much that it blocked his windpipe. Peter had an emergency tracheotomy - where a breathing tube is inserted through a hole in the throat - and was on life support for two days.



Mum Wynn, 47, said last night: "Peter nearly died because there is a shortage of dentists. "It is shameful that someone should be taken to hospital fighting for his life just because of toothache." Peter was not registered with an NHS dentist when he developed raging toothache. Wynn rang NHS Direct who told her there were NO available dentists near their home in Colwyn Bay, North Wales. The nurse who answered suggested the emergency dentist at Royal Alexandra Hospital in Rhyl could see him - but not for six days.

Next day Peter went to a dental centre in his home town who told him the tooth must come out. But he was quoted a total of 121 pounds which he could not afford on his Jobseeker's Allowance. The next day he went to Colwyn Bay Community Hospital - but was told they were not taking any more dental patients. The day after that Peter's pain was becoming unbearable as his mouth began to swell.

Wynn called her doctors' surgery saying her son needed antibiotics for the pain. But she was told they did not deal with dental matters. Desperate, the pair then went to Glan Clwyd hospital where a nurse said he HAD to see a doctor. But after waiting two hours they had to go as Wynn was in agony with a shoulder problem. The following day Peter saw the dentist at Royal Alexandra Hospital who confirmed he needed the tooth out.

He prescribed antibiotics - and Peter made an appointment for an extraction four days later. But his condition got worse and the next day Wynn rang NHS Direct again, saying: "You're going to kill this lad." That night Peter could not breathe and dad Gareth rushed him back to Glan Clwyd, near Rhyl, where surgeons performed the emergency surgery. He was eventually allowed home a week later.

Wynn said: "It's a terrible story. These kids can't afford a private dentist and there are no NHS dentists anywhere. "I also blame the Welsh Assembly for the shortage of dentists in our area."

Conwy and Denbighshire NHS Trust said: "We can't discuss individual cases. But if Mrs Owen contacts patient services at the hospital we will discuss her concerns." A Welsh Assembly spokesman said: "Steps are being taken to address the issue of dentists."

Source

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"A NATIONAL EMBARRASSMENT"

Thiswas the newspaper headline which greeted me just before dawn this morning, when I called into a service station on the way to the dawn service.
The text of the article had this to say, though: "The treatment of some of our returned service people was a national embarrassment, retired Lieutenant Colonel John Gardner said today."
Ok, fair enough..or is it? Most people would simply see the photograph and the headline - and the juxtaposition of the two conveys, I suspect, precisely what the person responsible intended it to.
Either that or it's such monumental stupidity that the mind boggles....

Anzac Day. April 25th.





"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them."

Suppressed debate surfacing in Britain

A Tory MP has presented David Cameron with the first real test of his pledge to create a more tolerant Conservative party. Philip Davies claimed voters were turning to the BNP because political correctness had left white Britons afraid of being 'sacked or locked up' for expressing their feelings on race. Davies said politicians were failing to debate asylum and immigration enough, prompting voters who felt ignored to turn to the far right. And he cited the suspension of a university lecturer who suggested whites were cleverer than black people, plus the unsuccessful prosecution of BNP leader Nick Griffin for allegedly inciting racial hatred, as incidents that caused voters to reject mainstream politics.

Davies, the MP for Shipley, North Yorkshire, said he would 'obviously' like his own party to talk more about the issue, but added that he believed Cameron agreed with him that tough immigration policies were crucial to good race relations. 'People feel nobody is standing up and talking about [asylum and immigration] issues. This whole thing about political correctness is a key driver of that. They feel the only way they've got now to express their opinions is to put a cross in a secret ballot for the BNP,' he told The Observer. 'The fear is if you are white and you say something that may be considered derogatory by somebody about an ethnic minority, you are going to be sacked or locked up.'

Labour MPs demanded the Tories disown Davies's views. 'If David Cameron wants to show that his party has genuinely changed, then he needs to take action against the extreme right wing in his own party,' said Martin Salter, the MP for Reading West. A Tory party spokesman said Davies was 'entitled to his views' but added: 'We don't accept that we haven't really dealt with immigration.'

Davies's intervention follows an agonised debate within the Labour party over the BNP, after the Employment Minister Margaret Hodge warned that eight out of 10 white voters she canvassed in her Barking constituency in east London had at least flirted with backing the extremist party - citing competition with asylum seekers for homes as a flashpoint. Some colleagues accused her of unwittingly worsening matters by publicising the BNP threat.

Former Home Secretary David Blunkett said it would have been 'slightly more helpful' to have debated the issue well before next month's local elections. He conceded people were 'confused' about how council housing was allocated, telling The Observer: 'Over the last 20 years, we have moved away from the time-based entitlement for public sector housing to a points-based system or even a bidding system. That has confused people in terms of who is entitled to what.' Blunkett also called on judges to consider the political consequences before making decisions such as overturning restrictions on so-called bogus marriages or ruling that Britain must house jobless people from other countries, including those recently granted asylum. 'Far from giving people rights, it's more likely to give people justification for voting for a party or parties that would take away rights,' he said.

More here

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