Bigoted British court

A British Airways worker has lost her case for religious discrimination over wearing a cross to work, she said Tuesday. Nadia Eweida, 56, took BA to an employment tribunal claiming it effectively discriminated against Christians because they were not allowed to wear religious jewellery while Muslims were allowed to wear hijabs and Sikhs bangles.

The airline, which changed its policy to allow crosses on chains over work clothes last year amid controversy over the case, said its clothing policy did not discriminate against Christians.

The row erupted in 2006 when Eweida claimed she was asked to remove or hide her cross. "I'm very disappointed," she said. "The judge has given way for BA to have a victory on imposing their will on all their staff."

A BA spokesman said: "We are pleased that the tribunal's decision supports our position. "Our current policy allows symbols of faith to be worn openly and has been developed with multi-faith groups and our staff."

Eweida, who still works for the airline, pledged to return to work Thursday wearing the cross.

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Britannia waives the rules (again)

'Don't deport students who overstay visas'

The Government official in charge of the immigration system admitted telling her officers not to enforce new rules for deporting students who stay in Britain after their visas expire. Lin Homer, the head of the Borders and Immigration Agency, said finding and removing thousands of people who overstay their visas was not high priority for her staff. Instead, she insisted immigration officers are "focused on those people that are causing harm".

The change in immigration practice came to light after Ms Homer intervened to prevent officers deporting a Chinese student whose visa had expired. She said the student concerned had overstayed her visa because of an "administrative error". Ms Homer told BBC Radio 4's Today programme immigration officers have been instructed not to spend time enforcing new rules on visas introduced in September.

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Cancer patients fight to stop NHS withholding care

CANCER patients have launched a legal action to prevent the NHS from withdrawing care if they seek to improve their chances of recovery by paying privately for an additional drug. The patients say the NHS will be breaching their human rights if it withdraws the treatment they are receiving. Two of the patients, Colette Mills, 58, a former nurse from near Stokesley, North Yorkshire, and Debbie Hirst, 56, from St Ives, Cornwall, who both have breast cancer, have been told they will be made to foot the entire 10,000 pound monthly bill for their care if they attempt to pay privately for an additional drug, Avastin.

Ministers claim that to allow patients to pay for top-up drugs would be unfair to those who cannot afford them and lead to a two-tier NHS. The health department has issued guidance to NHS trusts warning that such co-payments are not allowed. However, the patients' solicitor, Melissa Worth of the Manchester law firm Halliwells, said NHS trusts would be breaching several articles of the 1998 Human Rights Act if they withdrew chemotherapy treatment. Worth also argued that in withdrawing treatment NHS trusts would undermine the National Health Service Act of 1977. She said: "In light of the indisputable obligations of the trusts to provide life-sustaining treatment when there is a known, real and immediate risk to life, there is no legal justification for the trust threatening to withdraw all free treatment should our clients wish to maximise their chances of survival by complementing the treatment they are receiving by receiving Avastin."

NHS chief executives, the Patients Association, Doctors for Reform and Saga, the organisation for the overfifties, have all backed Mills and Hirst since The Sunday Times highlighted their plight last month. This weekend they were joined by one of Britain's leading breast cancer consultants. Professor Ian Smith, head of the breast cancer unit at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, said: "I am very sympathetic to the case of these patients. We are looking after patients with life-threatening diseases and it is difficult enough telling them they cannot get the drug on the NHS without needing to then say: `Even if you are prepared to pay for it, you still cannot have it.' This creates a very emotionally fraught situation and seems very harsh."

Politicians have also pledged to campaign for a change in policy. John Baron, a Conservative MP and former shadow health minister, said: "It is absolutely wrong for the NHS not to allow tax-paying patients to top up their treatment if they so wish. Why shouldn't patients make that extra payment for a drug that could be life-saving? This is unfair and the government should be ashamed."

The health department said: "It is a fundamental principle of the NHS, supported by all the main political parties, that treatment should be free at the point of need. Co-payments would undermine this."

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Segregation: Muslim style

Where there are large concentrations of Muslims in England, "no-go" zones are being established and, according to the Right Rev. Michael Nazir-Ali, the Church of England's Bishop of Rochester, non-Muslims who "trespass" in such neighborhoods risk attack. Nazir-Ali, a native of Pakistan and convert to Christianity, writes in The Sunday Telegraph that a spiritual vacuum in Britain, along with its indifference to the rise of Islamic extremism and a growing "multifaith" society, is robbing the nation of its Christian identity and putting its future in jeopardy. He is not alone. A poll of the General Synod - the church's parliament - shows that its senior leaders also believe that Britain is being damaged by uncontrolled immigration....

Anyone who has studied Islamic societies (as Nazir-Ali has, having been part of one) knows segregation and subjugation of non-Muslims is the norm, not the behavior of an "extremist fringe." Former Muslims and others have issued dire warnings about the intentions of these immigrant invaders and their objectives to subordinate Western countries to their view of God's will. Segregation and intolerance are the first fruits of what they intend to impose on everyone. Political leadership in Britain and increasingly in the United States turns a blind eye to such things because they are prospecting for votes, including from those who would end democracy.

No wonder Britons are growing increasingly uneasy, even despondent, about life in their country. A poll conducted by the respected YouGov organization and published in the Dec. 30 London Times found that more than half of all men and four in 10 women said they would rather live abroad if given the choice. The main reasons are antisocial behavior among a growing underclass and immigration. The "state of the nation" poll of more than 1,500 people found that concerns about immigration topped the list of issues of six out of 10 of those questioned. Among self-identified conservative voters, three-quarters consider immigration among their top concerns.

Three British cities already have high Muslim populations, thanks to immigration, high birth rates and conversions (but don't try converting any of them to another faith, which is one reason they are creating "no-go" zones). Seventeen percent of London's population is Muslim (1.3 million out of 7.5 million). In Luton, it's 14.6 percent. Birmingham has 14.3 percent. Other European cities have a higher percentage of Muslims.

Multiculturalism, globalism and an emphasis on "interfaith" are contributing to the decline of the West just as paganism, hedonism and greed undermined past empires. Rather than learn from their mistakes, the West thinks it can engage in such practices without consequence.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has expressed concern about the loss of "Britishness," but unless he does something to slow, even reverse, Muslim immigration, the Britain we've known will be lost and radical Islam will remake it in its own image. As Bishop Nazir-Ali writes, "But none of this will be of any avail if Britain does not recover that vision of its destiny which made it great. That has to do with the Bible's teaching that we have equal dignity and freedom because we are all made in God's image." The segregationists didn't believe that at one time in America and the Muslim segregationists in Britain don't believe it now.

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