Perverse British justice again

Teenage rapist charged with new sex attack just eight days after judge let him walk free. One often gets the impression that the only serious offence in Leftist Britain is being middle class

The Attorney General has been asked to investigate the case of a rapist who was allowed to walk free from court with a community sentence - and allegedly struck again just days later. The 16-year-old, who admitted raping a minor and a series of other sexual offences, is accused of committing a further rape just eight days after his release. The teenager - who cannot be identified for legal reasons - received a three-year community rehabilitation order instead of the custodial sentence which the police and families of the victims had expected.

Immediately after the case, Crown Prosecution Service lawyers wrote to the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland, in an attempt to use the Unduly Lenient Sentence procedure to have the case considered for referral to the Court of Appeal. The rarely used measure allows the CPS to request a review of any sentence it believes falls below guidelines.

According to police sources, senior detectives involved in the case were dismayed and frustrated that the teenager was allowed to return to his home on the council estate where the first rape took place. The original case was dealt with at a Crown Court earlier this year. Following the latest alleged attack, the teenager has appeared at a youth court charged with raping a boy and causing a boy to engage in sexual activity. This time the teenager was remanded in custody for committal proceedings.

Meanwhile, his close-knit local community has been left in a state of disbelief by the chain of events, with friends and family of the victims incensed he was let out to allegedly attack again. The teenager was allegedly known by police for his sexual interest in young boys. Last night, one mother who lives locally said: 'This youth is a danger to children. It is beyond belief that he was not locked away to protect kiddies in the area. This latest incident has left everyone sickened because he has been a real threat in this area for some time. 'It is inconceivable that he was allowed to return home and back to this neighbourhood. The courts should have done something about him and we feel that we've been let down.'

As part of the three-year community rehabilitation order, the youth, who is now 16, would have received counselling sessions to address his behaviour and supervision from probation officers. The judge, who cannot be named for legal reasons, would also have ruled that the teenager be placed on the Sex Offenders Register and must attend meetings with social services. But a legal source said last night: 'What he received was the soft option and it allowed him to be released back to the area where his victims lived. 'As a result of him being freed he was arrested again, but this time he was placed in custody. The system failed because he should have been imprisoned for his initial offences. This was not a one-off offence, it was a catalogue of sexual offending.'

The accused boy's family - he lived with his mother after his parents separated - have since left the area and moved into a safe house following threats.

A neighbour claims that the boy's mother had pleaded with social services to take him into care, but was ignored. During the original Crown Court case, the judge heard that the victim had been lured to the boy's bedroom, where he was assaulted. The alarm was raised after the victim later told his parents about the incident. The court was asked to take a further three sexual assaults of minors into consideration when sentencing.

The Ministry of Justice said last night that the maximum sentence for rape is life, whatever the ages of the perpetrator or victim. If the victim is under 13, the starting point is 10 years' imprisonment. Normally a sentence falls between eight and 13 years, but a judge can waver from these guidelines if there are aggravating or mitigating circumstances. The spokesman said: 'Normally there would be a custodial sentence of some degree. Six years if possible or even four years. But to go from an eight-year minimum sentence to a community order is a huge leap. 'Our official line is that this is a matter for the courts and the Attorney General to consider a sentence which may be unduly lenient.'

The CPS confirmed that the sentence has been referred to the Attorney General for consideration under the Unduly Lenient Sentence procedure. 'It is for the Attorney General to decide whether to refer the sentence to the Court of Appeal,' the spokesman added.

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British school pupils told: Sex every day keeps the GP away

And they wonder why Britain has a huge problem of teenage pregnancy and abortion

A National Health Service leaflet is advising school pupils that they have a “right” to an enjoyable sex life and that regular intercourse can be good for their cardiovascular health.

The advice appears in guidance circulated to parents, teachers and youth workers, and is intended to update sex education by telling pupils about the benefits of sexual pleasure. For too long, say its authors, experts have concentrated on the need for “safe sex” and loving relationships while ignoring the main reason that many people have sex, that is, for enjoyment.

The document, called Pleasure, has been drawn up by NHS Sheffield, although it is also being circulated outside the city.

Alongside the slogan “an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away”, it says: “Health promotion experts advocate five portions of fruit and veg a day and 30 minutes’ physical activity three times a week. What about sex or masturbation twice a week?”

Steve Slack, director of the Centre for HIV and Sexual Health at NHS Sheffield, who is one of the authors, argues that, far from promoting teenage sex, it could encourage young people to delay losing their virginity until they are sure they will enjoy the experience.

Slack believes that as long as teenagers are fully informed about sex and are making their decisions free of peer pressure and as part of a caring relationship, they have as much right as an adult to a good sex life.

Anthony Seldon, master of Wellington College, Berkshire, who introduced classes in emotional wellbeing, said the approach was “deplorable”.

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Britain's young generation can now not add up

Huge decline in numeracy

When the Bamberger family opened a haberdashery 65 years ago, they insisted their staff use mental arithmetic to price up customers' purchases. Despite the arrival of calculators, that attitude has remained unchanged over the intervening years. But now the family finds itself facing an unexpected maths problem - most youngsters it would like to employ are incapable of working out sums in their heads.

Colin Bamberger, 82, whose parents founded the Remnant Shop in 1944, said that less than one in ten applicants are now able to solve basic maths problems without turning to a calculator or till. In the past, around eight in ten made the grade. Mr Bamberger, who stills runs one of the family's two stores, yesterday blamed the decline on falling education standards and over-reliance on the pocket calculator. He said: 'Most of the youngsters who come to us for jobs are unemployable because they are not numerate.

'It is a sorry situation and a poor reflection on the academic qualities of young people these days. I think it shows modern teaching methods are sadly lacking. 'It is all very well using calculators but if you have not got some idea what the answer is, how do you know if you have pushed the right button? It's so easy to make a mistake. Around eight out of ten people who came to us for work were capable of doing it in the 1950s and 1960s - but now it is less than one in ten. 'You ask them how much they would charge for nine metres of material at £9.90 a metre and they fiddle about for ages.'

He said that mental arithmetic was essential in his shops because, if customers queried the final bill, staff could scribble their calculations on a piece of paper to show them how they arrived at the sum. With calculators, all customers are presented with is the final figure. 'The problem is people are not taught multiplication tables in school any more,' Mr Bamberger added. 'Paper qualifications these days are just not important to us. 'It is reflected in the fact that many of our staff are a lot older. The modern generation just don't seem to have the skill.'

The Remnant Shop was founded in 1944 by Colin's mother Betty, who sold material and haberdashery from her first-floor flat in Felixstowe, Suffolk. It proved so successful that her husband Sydney soon gave up his job as a commercial traveller to help with the business. A year later, Mr Bamberger joined the family business after studying mathematics and chemistry at Bristol University. The business expanded when his son Robert opened a second shop in Colchester in 1996. The business, which employs 28 staff, stocks 5,500 items of haberdashery, including pins, needles, ribbons and wool as well as 5,000 rolls of fabric used for curtains, crafts and dressmaking.

Robert said that even if applicants were 'massive at marketing, super at sales or even Alan Sugar's next apprentice - if they can't add up quickly in their head we won't have them'. 'My grandfather could add up a column of 50 figures in old pounds, shillings and pennies - including ha'pennies and farthings - in a matter of seconds,' he added. 'He used to insist that any staff we took on could do the same and we have carried on that practice.'

Last year, it emerged more than half of trainee teachers needed multiple attempts to pass a basic numeracy test. Although the exam was originally introduced to drive up standards, it emerged that trainees could take it as many times as they like. One reportedly took the test 28 times before passing.

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Official British police policy: Incitement to violence is OK if Muslims do it

We read:

"In a bid to stop Muslim extremists from becoming more militant, the UK Government is set to issue a guideline for police, directing them not to charge them in many hate crime cases, a move that has created outrage amongst critics.

Guidelines will tell forces to press for conviction only in cases of clear-cut criminal acts, and refrain from proceeding when evidence of lawbreaking is “borderline.”

Officers will be advised to turn a blind eye on crimes such as incitement to religious hatred or viewing extremist material on the Internet.

“For instance, where there has been incitement or someone has been on the internet there can be a grey area where there is some discretion and it would be more sensible to avoid going down the criminal route,” the Daily Express quoted a White Hall source, as saying.

Critics, however, saw the move as a politically correct attempt to appease extremists who hate Britain, and warned that the move could mean Islamic radicals being give the freedom to encourage violence.

Source

Abject surrender. No equality before the law. How far can the Leftist destruction of British society go? Britain has been run by the Left for 12 years. What would 12 years of Democrat government do to America? Just the first 7 months have seen ominous changes. Fortunately, Americans get to vote every two years. The Brits have to wait five years.





Meet The Man Who Has Exposed The Great Climate Change Con Trick

An excerpt below from The Spectator, mainstream journal of British conservatism

James Delingpole talks to Professor Ian Plimer, the Australian geologist, whose new book shows that ‘anthropogenic global warming’ is a dangerous, ruinously expensive fiction, a ‘first-world luxury’ with no basis in scientific fact. Shame on the publishers who rejected the book

Imagine how wonderful the world would be if man-made global warming were just a figment of Al Gore’s imagination. No more ugly wind farms to darken our sunlit uplands. No more whopping electricity bills, artificially inflated by EU-imposed carbon taxes. No longer any need to treat each warm, sunny day as though it were some terrible harbinger of ecological doom. And definitely no need for the $7.4 trillion cap and trade (carbon-trading) bill — the largest tax in American history — which President Obama and his cohorts are so assiduously trying to impose on the US economy.

Imagine no more, for your fairy godmother is here. His name is Ian Plimer, Professor of Mining Geology at Adelaide University, and he has recently published the landmark book Heaven And Earth, which is going to change forever the way we think about climate change.

‘The hypothesis that human activity can create global warming is extraordinary because it is contrary to validated knowledge from solar physics, astronomy, history, archaeology and geology,’ says Plimer, and while his thesis is not new, you’re unlikely to have heard it expressed with quite such vigour, certitude or wide-ranging scientific authority. Where fellow sceptics like Bjorn Lomborg or Lord Lawson of Blaby are prepared cautiously to endorse the International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) more modest predictions, Plimer will cede no ground whatsoever. Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory, he argues, is the biggest, most dangerous and ruinously expensive con trick in history.

To find out why, let’s meet the good professor. He’s a tanned, rugged, white-haired sixtysomething — courteous and jolly but combative when he needs to be — glowing with the health of a man who spends half his life on field expeditions to Iran, Turkey and his beloved Outback. And he’s sitting in my garden drinking tea on exactly the kind of day the likes of the Guardian’s George Monbiot would probably like to ban. A lovely warm sunny one.

So go on then, Prof. What makes you sure that you’re right and all those scientists out there saying the opposite are wrong? ‘I’m a geologist. We geologists have always recognised that climate changes over time. Where we differ from a lot of people pushing AGW is in our understanding of scale. They’re only interested in the last 150 years. Our time frame is 4,567 million years. So what they’re doing is the equivalent of trying to extrapolate the plot of Casablanca from one tiny bit of the love scene. And you can’t. It doesn’t work.’

What Heaven And Earth sets out to do is restore a sense of scientific perspective to a debate which has been hijacked by ‘politicians, environmental activists and opportunists’. It points out, for example, that polar ice has been present on earth for less than 20 per cent of geological time; that extinctions of life are normal; that climate changes are cyclical and random; that the CO2 in the atmosphere — to which human activity contributes the tiniest fraction — is only 0.001 per cent of the total CO2 held in the oceans, surface rocks, air, soils and life; that CO2 is not a pollutant but a plant food; that the earth’s warmer periods — such as when the Romans grew grapes and citrus trees as far north as Hadrian’s Wall — were times of wealth and plenty.

All this is scientific fact — which is more than you can say for any of the computer models turning out doomsday scenarios about inexorably rising temperatures, sinking islands and collapsing ice shelves. Plimer doesn’t trust them because they seem to have little if any basis in observed reality.

‘I’m a natural scientist. I’m out there every day, buried up to my neck in sh**, collecting raw data. And that’s why I’m so sceptical of these models, which have nothing to do with science or empiricism but are about torturing the data till it finally confesses. None of them predicted this current period we’re in of global cooling. There is no problem with global warming. It stopped in 1998. The last two years of global cooling have erased nearly 30 years of temperature increase.’

Plimer’s uncompromising position has not made him popular. ‘They say I rape cows, eat babies, that I know nothing about anything. My favourite letter was the one that said: “Dear sir, drop dead”. I’ve also had a demo in Sydney outside one of my book launches, and I’ve had mothers coming up to me with two-year-old children in their arms saying: “Don’t you have any kind of morality? This child’s future is being destroyed.’’’ Plimer’s response to the last one is typically robust. ‘If you’re so concerned, why did you breed?’

This no-nonsense approach may owe something to the young Ian’s straitened Sydney upbringing. His father was crippled with MS, leaving his mother to raise three children on a schoolteacher’s wage. ‘We couldn’t afford a TV — not that TV even arrived in Australia till 1956. We’d use the same brown paper bag over and over again for our school lunches, always turn off the lights, not because of some moral imperative but out of sheer bloody necessity.’

One of the things that so irks him about modern environmentalism is that it is driven by people who are ‘too wealthy’. ‘When I try explaining “global warming” to people in Iran or Turkey they have no idea what I’m talking about. Their life is about getting through to the next day, finding their next meal. Eco-guilt is a first-world luxury. It’s the new religion for urban populations which have lost their faith in Christianity. The IPCC report is their Bible. Al Gore and Lord Stern are their prophets.’

More HERE






Everyone in Britain will soon get untested vaccine against swine flu

This seems amazingly precipitous. The reasoning is clearly that MOST people will be OK and damn the minority. I think I would rather take my chances with the flu rather than risk Guillain-Barré syndrome

The NHS is preparing to vaccinate the entire population against swine flu after the disease claimed the life of its first healthy British patient. A new vaccine is expected to arrive in Britain in the next few weeks and could be fast-tracked through regulatory approval in five days. As many as 20m people could be inoculated this year. Ministers have secured up to 90m doses, and the rest of the population is likely to be offered vaccinations next year.

A man from Essex was confirmed on Friday as the first person without underlying health problems to have died from the virus. The health department said most people with the virus had only mild symptoms.

Peter Holden, the British Medical Association’s lead negotiator on swine flu, said GPs’ surgeries were ready for one of the biggest vaccination campaigns in almost 50 years. “If this virus does [mutate], it can get a lot more nasty, and the idea is to give people immunity. But the sheer logistics of dealing with 60m people can’t be underestimated,” he said. The health department said a vaccination programme would be drawn up based on expert advice.

The path of a popular medicine from the laboratory to the chemist or doctor’s surgery can involve years of clinical trials on a select group of patients. When the new vaccine for swine flu arrives in Britain, regulators said this weekend, it could be approved for use in just five days.

Regulators at the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) said the fast-tracked procedure has involved clinical trials of a “mock-up” vaccine similar to the one that will be used for the biggest mass vaccination programme in generations. It will be introduced into the general population while regulators continue to carry out simultaneous clinical trials.

The first patients in the queue for the jab - being supplied to the UK by GSK and Baxter Healthcare - may understandably be a little nervous at any possible side effects. A mass vaccination campaign against swine flu in America was halted in the 1970s after some people suffered Guillain-Barré syndrome, a disorder of the nervous system.

However, regulators said fast-tracking would not be at the expense of patient safety. “The vaccines are authorised with a detailed risk management plan,” the EMEA said. “There is quite a body of evidence regarding safety on the trials of the mock-up, and the actual vaccine could be assessed in five days.”

The UK government has ordered enough vaccine to cover the entire population. GPs are being told to prepare for a nationwide vaccination campaign. Dr Peter Holden, the British Medical Association’s lead negotiator on swine flu, who has been attending Department of Health meetings on the outbreak, said GPs’ surgeries were prepared for one of the biggest vaccination campaigns in almost 50 years.

He said although swine flu was not causing serious illness in patients, health officials were eager to start a mass vaccination campaign, starting first on priority groups. First, the jabs would reduce the chances of a shortage of hospital beds because of people suffering from swine flu. Second, it would reduce the effect on the economy by ensuring workers were protected from the virus. “The high-risk groups will be done at GPs’ surgeries. People are still making decisions over this, but we want to get cracking before we get a second wave, which is traditionally far more virulent.”

Holden said it was likely the elderly would be given their seasonal flu jab as well as the swine flu vaccination. The new vaccine is likely to require two doses.

Details of the inoculation plans emerged after the death of a patient, reportedly a middle-aged man, at a hospital in the Basildon area of Essex. The victim had no underlying health problems, but officials say there is no evidence the swine flu virus had mutated into a more dangerous strain.

Holden said it would be the biggest campaign in response to an outbreak since mass vaccination against smallpox in 1962. He said surgeries would be aiming to inoculate about 30 people an hour in a “military-style operation”. The Department of Health said it had still not finalised which groups would be vaccinated first, but children, frontline health workers, people with underlying illnesses and the elderly are likely to take priority.

The European Commission is also identifying population groups which it believes should get priority. It is keen to ensure that countries such as the UK, which had ordered supplies of the vaccine in advance, do not cause inequities in treatment elsewhere in Europe. It warned health ministers in a note circulated last month that if the vaccines were more readily available in some countries it could cause “vaccine tourism/shopping in other member states”.

About 15 people have died of swine flu in Britain, but most of those infected get only mild symptoms. According to the latest figures from the Health Protection Agency, the UK has had 9,718 confirmed cases of the disease.

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More Britons are emigrating to Australia

More Britons are emigrating, and they don't have to be young and carefree to join the exodus. Consider the choices of Britons joining the 2.26 million jobless queue, with rain outside and peeling paint within. If they are of a generation that enjoyed the sun-kissed, carefree bliss of the backpacker trail, this increasingly is the moment to swap recession-hit Britain for balmy and relatively buoyant Australia. British unemployment has reached 7.2 per cent, a 12-year high, and thousands of people are preparing to follow the masses of Australians going home to an economy which has largely avoided recession.

There is nothing new about British immigration, of course. Tens of thousands arrived under the postwar £10 Poms scheme, encouraged by a labour-hungry Australia willing to subsidise their passage and determined to preserve Australian whiteness. But money frequently is no longer the guiding principle for today's crop of often comfortable departees from the old dart. Quality of life is the new holy grail; many can fall back on sizeable cash reserves accumulated during boom times.

Not everyone is invited to the party though. In a world where sophisticated immigration policies have been tailored to the needs of individual labour markets, the door is open only to a "migrant elite" with specified skills. Unlike earlier generations, large numbers have no intention of returning to Britain.

Typical are members of the Mercer family from the Wirral, north-western England, who are set to move to Australia this year. "My expectation is that Australia is a land of opportunities where hard work will be recognised in a way that I think is taken for granted here," says Tony Mercer, 31, whose property business went bust in the economic storm last year.

An aircraft engineer by trade, his skills did not meet the qualifying criteria because he had not used them for years. Instead, the Mercers secured the points needed to move to Australia because his hairdresser wife Jane's skills are in demand. With Samuel, 7, and Jessica, 4, the Mercers have chosen Adelaide. Aside from air fares, a family of four is likely to pay about $10,000 in the visa application process, a system the Mercers describe as "a minefield".

Unsurprisingly, inquiries have shot up at the Emigration Group, a British company employing former Australian immigration staff who help with visa applications. "More people are having serious concerns about the future of this country," says an Emigration Group director, Paul Arthur. Increasingly his customers are young, middle-class professionals citing high taxes, poor weather and poor services as reasons for emigrating. The vast majority are homeowners, although the stagnant property market has meant some are biding their time before they raise the capital needed.

Another option for those wanting to emigrate is to study overseas. One British company, Study Options, has taken on extra staff to place Britons in Australian and New Zealand universities. Co-founder Stefan Watts reports a surge in business from professionals wanting to ride out the recession by taking time to study. Mr Watts sees more clients who are older, in their late 20s or 30s, and time poor. Many look forward to returning to a country they once backpacked around and are unfazed at getting little or no support to pay fees such as the typical $17,000 for undergraduate degree courses.

Will Morrin, a 38-year-old from Glasgow who was made redundant last year from his job as a broker, is about to embark on a three-year radiography degree at Newcastle in NSW, even though he was accepted for a similar degree in Britain with no fees to pay. "I have savings and had been doing a bit of thinking so I sold the car and the house. Weighing it up, what's important is the quality of life," he says. "Weather is the No.1 draw and getting away from the rat race. Things in the UK will only get worse once interest rates kick in." Once qualified in a sought-after profession, he may stay for four years to qualify for Australian citizenship or move to Canada, another economic lifeboat of choice for many...

Traditionally Britons emigrated in good years and stayed put in uncertain economic times. The sign from this recession, however, is a bucking of those traditions. Immigration peaked in 2007 and began to decline early last year, but picked up again in the second half of 2008, according to the Office for National Statistics. More than 165,000 British nationals had emigrated in the first seven months of last year.

This year's yet-to-be published Brits Abroad report by the Institute for Public Policy Research will show most British migrants are highly skilled, although the net loss of such workers seems to be decreasing. Work, lifestyle and adventure are listed as the three main reasons for leaving. The big surprise, however, is in the flexibility afforded by technologies that promote and facilitate remote working. More people are having their cake and eating it, emigrating while retaining jobs back in Britain.

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More British bungling: "New vehicles purchased to protect British troops in Afghanistan have already been rejected as unsafe by the US military. The vehicles failed basic 'survivability' tests, which showed soldiers would be left vulnerable to roadside bombs, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. But although the Pentagon rejected them, the Ministry of Defence has ordered 262 to replace the controversial Snatch Land Rovers. In contrast, the Americans have now ordered a more robust model - at half the £600,000 cost of the vehicle the British have dubbed the 'Husky'. The disclosure, at the end of the blackest week for British forces in Afghanistan, came as Gordon Brown responded to growing anger over the death toll by promising to improve troops' equipment.


There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.