More black people jailed in England and Wales proportionally than in US

The following article from The Guardian sees the high rate of black imprisonment as a problem. Given that ALL African populations everywhere have high rates of crime, it would be more reasonable to see it as a solution. Blacks just ARE very crime prone and no amount of Leftist outrage can hide that. They have high rates of crime in Africa itself as well as in Britain and America so blaming it on the society in which they live is ignoring the obvious.

So why is the rate of imprisonment higher in Britain than in the USA? One obvious reason is that British blacks are blacker. On some estimates, African Americans are overall 25% white genetically so their crime tendency is reduced by that. Most British blacks are wholly of African ancestry. Another factor is that American blacks tend to live in ghettoes which police tend to avoid -- so many crimes there go unsolved

The proportion of black people in prison in England and Wales is higher than in the United States, a landmark report released today by the Equality and Human Rights Commission reveals.

The commission's first triennial report into the subject, How Fair is Britain, shows that the proportion of people of African-Caribbean and African descent incarcerated here is almost seven times greater to their share of the population. In the United States, the proportion of black prisoners to population is about four times greater.

The report, which aims to set out how to measure "fairness" in Britain, says that ethnic minorities are "substantially over-represented in the custodial system". It suggests many of those jailed have "mental health issues, learning disabilities, have been in care or experienced abuse".

Experts and politicians said over-representation of black men was a result of decades of racial prejudice in the criminal justice system and an overly punitive approach to penal affairs.

"People will be and should be shocked by this data," said Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust. "We have a tendency to say we are better than the US, but we have not got prison right."

Lyon said that although there had been "numerous efforts to address racism in the prison system … we have yet to get a better relationship between justice authorities and black communities. Instead we have ended up with mistrust breeding mistrust."

Evidence of this damaged relationship can be found in the commission's report. On the streets, black people were subjected to what the report describes as an "excess" of 145,000 stop and searches in 2008. It notes that black people constitute less than 3% of the population, yet made up 15% of people stopped by police.

The commission found that five times more black people than white people per head of population in England and Wales are imprisoned. The ethnic minority prison population has doubled in a decade – from 11,332 in 1998 to 22,421 in 2008. Over a similar period, the overall number of prisoners rose by less than two thirds. The commission says that the total number of people behind bars accelerated in the last decade despite "a similar number of crimes being reported to the police as in the early 1990s … the volume of indictable offences has fallen over this time".

A quarter of the people in prison are from an ethnic minority. Muslims now make up 12% of the prison population in England and Wales.

Some on the left of the Labour party blame its policies while in power. Diane Abbott, who raised the alarm over the growing numbers of jailed black men as a backbencher, said she "very much regretted that the last Labour government swallowed [former home secretary] Michael Howard's line that 'prison works'."

"There was never a serious examination of the consequences of locking up a generation of young black men. The result is there are some prisons in the south east which are now virtually all black. Many are converting to Islam."

The problems may start at school. The commission points out that black children are three times as likely to be permanently excluded from education.

"We are reaping the effects of criminalising a community in the 1970s," says Ben Bowling, professor of criminal justice at Kings College London and a former adviser to the home affairs select committee.

"The question is how you break the cycle when young men experience custody. Three quarters simply re-offend. We have to intervene with families more effectively to stop kids going to prison. That means looking at school exclusions. You need to deal with issues like mental health and substance abuse. It is not enough to throw our hands in the air."

The policies implemented in the last decade mean incarceration levels in Britain are now among the highest in western Europe. England and Wales have an imprisonment rate of 155 per 100,000 and Scotland of 149 per 100,000 of the population. This contrasts with rates of less than 100 per 100,000 for most of Britain's neighbours.

The commission also warns of the rising numbers of women in jails. It says that the "number of women prisoners has nearly doubled since 1995 in England and Wales, and since 2000 in Scotland – currently around 5% of prisoners are women".

The Ministry of Justice said that the government would not comment on individual portions of the report.

SOURCE




Bundeskanzlerin says German multicultural society has failed

'Too little required of immigrants' says tough-talking Christian Democrat leader

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said her country’s attempts to build a post-war multicultural society have ‘utterly failed’. In a landmark speech, she broke one of Germany’s last taboos and courted anti-immigration support by claiming those from a different background failed to live happily side-by-side with native Germans.

Her comments, to the youth wing of her own Christian Democrat Union party, came amid growing resentment about immigration in Germany. There are about seven million foreign residents living in the country. Some 4.3million of these are Muslim and there are more than 3,000 mosques across Germany.

Mrs Merkel said the so-called ‘multikulti’ concept – ‘that we are now living side by side and are happy about it’ – does not work. ‘This approach has failed, utterly,’ she said just days after a poll showed a third of all Germans viewed immigrants as nothing more than welfare cheats.

Addressing fears of ‘German-ness’ being lost amid new mosques, headscarves in classrooms and Turkish ghettos in cities like Berlin, she added: ‘We feel bound to the Christian image of humanity – that is what defines us. Those who do not accept this are in the wrong place here.’

Mrs Merkel joined leading political and business leaders who have questioned immigration policies in recent months. Bundesbank board member Thilo Sarrazin recently moved the debate centre-stage when he wrote a book that said the country’s four million Muslims were ‘dumbing down’ society and that the national Christian identity of Germans was in danger of being lost.

A poll taken after his book was published showed that one fifth of all Germans would vote for a party headed by Mr Sarrazin if he chose to form one. Against that backdrop, Mrs Merkel – with her own and her CDU conservative party ratings in the gutter – has chosen finally to speak out.

Until now, mindful of the German legacy of the Second World War and atonement for racial policies responsible for the deaths of millions, German politicians since 1945 have tended only to speak in broad positive terms of the ‘multikulti’ society.

Germany began to evolve into a country of immigration in the 1960s when Turks and others arrived to fill the labour vacuum left by the nation’s war dead.

Mrs Merkel addressed this in her speech saying: ‘At the beginning of the 60s our country called the foreign workers to come to Germany and now they live in our country. We kidded ourselves a while, we said: “They won’t stay, sometime they will be gone.” But this isn’t reality.’

She tempered her comments by insisting that Germany still welcomed immigrants – particularly the skilled ones it needs for its export-driven economy – and echoed recent comments made by the country’s president that Islam was ‘part of Germany’, like Christianity and Judaism. But Mrs Merkel also added that those who did come must adapt, and learn German ‘as quickly as possible’.

The ratcheting up in the political tone, allied as it is with the fears of the population about unemployment and loss of identity, triggered a sharp warning from Jewish leaders in Germany that democracy is under threat.

Stephan Kramer, of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said yesterday that the current debate on immigration was making people feel ‘uneasy and scared’. He also referred to a study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, which showed that more than a third of those surveyed thought Germany was being ‘over-run by foreigners’ and that more than one in ten called for a ‘fuehrer’ to run the country ‘with a strong hand’.

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The undeniable Jewish state

Is ISRAEL a Jewish state? Is the pope Catholic?

Nothing about Israel could be more self-evident than its Jewishness. As Poland is the national state of the Polish people and Japan is the national state of the Japanese people, so Israel is the national state of the Jewish people. The UN's 1947 resolution on partitioning Palestine contains no fewer than 30 references to the "Jewish state" whose creation it was authorizing; 25 years earlier, the League of Nations had been similarly straightforward in mandating "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." When Israel came into existence on May 15, 1948, its Jewish identity was the first detail reported. The New York Times's front-page story began: "The Jewish state, the world's newest sovereignty, to be known as the State of Israel, came into being in Palestine at midnight upon termination of the British mandate."

Today, half the planet's Jews live in that state, many of them refugees from anti-Semitic repression and violence elsewhere. In a world with more than 20 Arab states and 55 Muslim countries, the existence of a single small Jewish state should be unobjectionable. "Israel is a sovereign state, and the historic homeland of the Jewish people," President Barack Obama told the UN General Assembly last month. By now that should be a truism, no more controversial than calling Italy the sovereign homeland of the Italian people.

And yet to Israel's enemies, Jewish sovereignty is as intolerable today as it was in 1948, when five Arab armies invaded the newborn Jewish state, vowing "a war of extermination and a momentous massacre." Endless rounds of talks and countless invocations of the "peace process" have not changed the underlying reality of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is not about settlements or borders or Jerusalem or the rights of Palestinians. The root of the hostility is the refusal to recognize the immutable right of the Jewish people to a sovereign state in its historic homeland. Until that changes, no lasting peace is possible.

That is why the Israeli government is correct to insist that the Palestinian Authority publicly recognize Israel as the Jewish state. It is the critical litmus test. "Palestinian nationalism was based on driving all Israelis out," Edward Said told an interviewer in 1999, and the best evidence that most Palestinians are still intent on eliminating Israel is the vehemence with which even supposed "moderates" like Mahmoud Abbas will not -- or dare not -- acknowledge Israel's Jewishness as a legitimate fact of life. "What is a 'Jewish state?'" Abbas ranted on Palestinian TV. "You can call yourselves whatever you want, but I will not accept it. . . . You can call yourselves the Zionist Republic, the Hebrew, the National, the Socialist [Republic]. Call it whatever you like. I don't care."

There are those who argue that Israel cannot be both a Jewish state and a democracy. When Israel's parliament decided last week to require new non-Jewish citizens to take an oath of allegiance to Israel as a "Jewish and democratic" state, some people bristled. "The phrase itself is an oxymoron," one reader wrote to the Boston Globe. "How can a state openly favor one ethnic group over all others and declare itself to be democratic?"

But there is no conflict at all between Israel's Jewish identity and its democratic values. Indeed, the UN's 1947 partition resolution not only called for subdividing Palestine into "independent Arab and Jewish states," it explicitly required each of them to "draft a democratic constitution" and to elect a government "by universal suffrage and by secret ballot." The Jews complied. The Arabs launched a war.

Many of the world's democracies have official state religions. Think of Britain, whose monarch is the supreme governor of the Church of England; or of Greece, whose constitution singles out the Eastern Orthodox Church as the country's "prevailing religion." The linking of national character with religion is a commonplace. Israel stands out only because its religion is Judaism, not Christianity, Islam, or Hinduism.

Nor is democracy incompatible with ethnic or national distinctiveness. Ireland waives its usual citizenship requirements for applicants of Irish descent. Bulgaria's constitution grants the right to "acquire Bulgarian citizenship through a facilitated procedure" to any "person of Bulgarian origin." It is not oxymoronic to describe Ireland as "Irish and democratic" or Bulgaria as "Bulgarian and democratic." Israel's flourishing little Jewish democracy is no oxymoron either.

It is something different: a beacon of decency in a dangerous and hate-filled neighborhood. If the enemies of the Jewish state could only shed their malice, what an Eden that neighborhood could become.

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The British welfare state is not a ‘guardian angel’

Both the critics and defenders of welfarism are blind to the detrimental impact it is having on autonomy and the human spirit

This week, by accident, I caught some of that BBC1 show Saints and Scroungers.

It features a loud little bald man exposing the ‘scroungers’ who fraudulently claim welfare benefits they are not entitled to, before praising the ‘saints’ in welfare services who help pensioners, single mums and other down-at-heel people to access benefits they are entitled to. The show has caused a stink, with some accusing it of promoting a view of people on benefits as scrounging con-artists. But I was far more alarmed by the ‘saints’ section, where welfare workers were described as ‘guardian angels’ helping to ‘turn poor people’s lives around’. I mean, if you’re going to be insulted on TV, surely it’s better to be demonised rather than super-patronised?

Saints and Scroungers, for all its awfulness, captures the essence of the welfare debate today. On one side, mainly amongst the right-wing, only the extreme problems with the benefits system – such as incapacity benefit or the way some sections of society have become reliant on handouts – are held up as problematic. And on the other side, the largely left-wing side, the welfare state is looked upon as a saintly institution, a sacred cow, against which no insult or slur can be tolerated. Neither side is ready to pose truly awkward or probing questions about benefits, and to ask whether, 70 years after it was instituted as a post-Second World War initiative, we really want to continue living in a ‘welfare society’.

Following the Conservative Party conference, many liberal defenders of the welfare state are accusing David Cameron and Co. of taking a Thatcher-style cudgel to the benefits system. They are a ‘chainsaw mob’, says one commentator, cutting everything they can: ‘They can’t contain a cocksure excitement with their brand new chainsaws. They enjoy it and it shows.’ Maybe cocksureness is in the eye of the beholder – because in truth, the most striking thing about the Tory attitude to welfare (it would be stretching things to call it a strategy) is how tentative it is. Cameron has not taken a chainsaw to the welfare system so much as a scalpel, promising to cut off little bits here and there while avoiding doing anything that might damage his party’s carefully crafted new image as Caring and Not Thatcherite.

Cameron’s welfare cuts do not spring from an overarching plan – whether of the economic or ideological variety – but rather look like exercises in spin. The announcement at the party conference that the traditionally universal child benefit would be cut for parents who earn more than £43,875 a year was clearly designed as a very public pronouncement that the Tories are no longer ‘the nasty party’ that attacks the less well-off. In a desperate bid not to be seen to be attacking the poor, the Conservatives cut from the middle classes instead, in a move that wasn’t economically essential but which was politically useful inasmuch as it sent a message about the New Tories.

Likewise, the Conservatives’ new drive against incapacity benefit – with pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith arguing that 500,000 of the people claiming that benefit could actually start work right away – shows that when it comes to welfare they are only interested in attacking easy targets. Incapacity benefit is the most extreme expression of what people refer to as ‘welfare dependency’. It is viewed by many as problematic, because it involves inciting tens of thousands of actually able-bodied people effectively to conceive of themselves as ill. In taking on this extreme form of welfarism, the Tories can once again appear to be taking action while avoiding being tarred with the Thatcher brush. Far from cocksure, their tinkering with the benefits system reveals their lack of an economic or ideological project, and their profound unwillingness to tackle, head on, the welfare cornerstone of British society.

The other side in the debate – the side opposed to Cameron’s cuts – is equally uninspired. Its supporters treat the welfare system as the great unchallengeable institution of British society. Anyone who criticises it is anti-poor and right-wing. It is important to note that this defence of welfarism, this erection of an intellectual forcefield around the postwar way of doing things, is based less on a die-hard commitment to all things welfarish than on the left’s utter inability to imagine how society might look and function without this safety net. It is their failure to understand how social relations would work without benefit payments, their lack of faith in such things as spontaneous social bonds and real community solidarity, that leads them to view welfare almost as a religious institution – literally as the ‘guardian angel’ for the otherwise unpredictable, incapable poor.

Yet from a humanist perspective – rather than from a money-saving, anti-scrounger one – there is much about welfare that can be, and ought to be, called into question. To take the extreme: incapacity benefit (IB) should definitely be rethought, not as a money-saving exercise, but as a way of challenging the welfare state’s problematic redefinition of the relationship between the state and the individual, as a way of recovering important ideals such as autonomy and solidarity. Properly instituted (ironically enough) during the Thatcher years, IB is explicitly about encouraging people to accommodate to the fact of being unemployed, to see their lack of employment not as a political problem that might be fixed through protest or reform or economic development, but as a natural state, a product of their own inability to hold down a job.

It is no coincidence that the numbers of men claiming IB rose exponentially in the 1980s and 1990s, increasing every single year (apart from 1997), from 463,000 men in 1981 to 1,276,000 in 1999 (today, an estimated two million people, including women, claim IB). This is because in the 1980s, when thousands of working-class men were being thrown out of work, they were being encouraged to see themselves as sick, as physically or mentally incapacitated rather than as being deprived of work by social and economic factors.

It was inconceivable that hundreds of thousands of working men had actually fallen gravely ill. Rather, the welfare state was cynically soaking up these people, desperately attempting to offset their potential political anger at being unemployed by inviting them to view their predicament as a health-based problem instead. This can become a self-fulfilling prophecy: told they are ‘incapable’, left to watch self-pity-inducing daytime TV, it’s not surprising that some people come to conceive of themselves as genuinely unable to work. It might be right that half-a-million of these people could start work tomorrow, but in the act of rethinking certain benefits we shouldn’t leave unchallenged the backward political and cultural trends that led to an explosion of IB in the first place.

Incapacity is only the most extreme form of such welfarism. In other areas, too, the spread of the welfare state is further harming social bonds, community solidarity, and even individual self-reliance and belief, to the extent that welfare has become increasingly therapeutic, too. And yet on one side we have a government only chipping away at aspects of welfare because it is so scared of how people will respond, and on the other side various commentators and activists are passionately defending welfarism because their lack of faith in people’s capacities is so profound, so deep-rooted, that they cannot comprehend how we would cope without permanent external assistance. We urgently need a new debate, one based neither on penny-pinching or people-pitying, but on the question of whether a social institution brought into existence 70 years ago is really the best we can expect today.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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The Democratic 'D' now stands for demagoguery

I've been in campaign meetings. Sometimes the atmosphere is grim. Your side is down and you're looking to turn things around. The pollster goes down the list of issues tested. Health care? Nope. They hate your stand on that. The economy? Thumbs down. Foreign policy? Nobody cares anymore.

Then, finally, something that works. An assistant at the polling shop throws in a question about campaign contributions by foreigners. Turns out most voters don't like them. They don't think it's an important issue, but, hey, nothing else works. So let's go with it.

This or something like it seems to have taken place at Team Obama Central sometime in the past few weeks.

Back in January, the president attacked the Supreme Court for ruling that corporations and unions have First Amendment speech rights and pointed to the possibility that foreigners might try to influence American election outcomes. Now he and his spokesmen on the campaign trail and on Sunday interview programs are charging that outfits like the Chamber of Commerce are smuggling foreign money into the campaign.

Their evidence? Well, there isn't much, as even the New York Times, Washington Post and factcheck.org agree.

The smoking gun? The Chamber of Commerce collects $100,000 in membership dues from foreigners out of a $200,000,000 operating budget and spends some of that budget on campaign ads. But Obama uberadviser David Axelrod says it's up to the chamber to prove it's innocent.

There are a couple of odd things here. One is that the 2008 Obama campaign, by deliberately not using the address verification software most enterprises use to determine it's really your credit card, took in a lot more illegal foreign money than its rivals. The Obama folks may be projecting their own sins on their opponents.

The other is that this charge of foreign money doesn't fit into any familiar political narrative. At least when the Obamaites attack evil rich people, some voters think of 19th-century caricatures of fat cats (and ignore the fact that Obama carried voters with incomes over $200,000 in 2008).

But who are these evil foreigners who are trying to inject their dirty money into American campaigns? The guys who got the jobs that were supposedly outsourced from Youngstown, Ohio? Americans who gave up their citizenship to avoid taxes? James Bond villains like Auric Goldfinger?

I seem to remember that it was candidate Barack Obama (not John McCain or Hillary Clinton) who gave a big election year speech in the Tiergarten in Berlin. It was Obama cheerleaders who told us that foreigners would love us once again if we sent George W. Bush back to Texas and installed their multicultural champion in the White House. Back in 2008, we were supposed to vote for the candidate foreigners loved. Now in 2010, we are supposed to vote against the party foreigners support.

You can be pretty sure that this is not where the Obama Democrats wanted or expected to be three weeks before the 2010 election. They operated on the assumption that history is a story of progress from no government to big government and that American voters would be grateful for little bits of economic redistribution, like the $400 tax rebate in the 2009 stimulus package.

But as Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute (where I'm a resident fellow), points out in his book "The Battle," happiness does not increase in proportion to dollars taken in. Lottery winners are happier for a few months, then go back to feeling the way they did before. What makes us happy, Brooks argues, is earned success, often in the form of money we think we've fairly earned, but also satisfaction from fulfilling family and personal responsibilities or performing community service.

Obamanomics hasn't resulted in much earned success, and Obamacare doesn't seem likely to either. The chief talking point on the latter seems to be that you can stay on your mommy and daddy's health insurance until you're 26.

Last month Barack Obama took to saying that D (Democratic) stood for Drive and R (Republican) stood for Reverse: shorthand for his notion that history inevitably and correctly moves left. Focus groups and polls showed that didn't work. So now we have the issue of supposed foreign contributors to Republican campaigns. It looks like D stands for demagoguery and desperation.

SOURCE






British police red tape revealed: reams of paperwork to look through a window

Detectives carrying out surveillance on criminals must complete a 16 page form before they can look through a window, an official report will reveal this week. It is the most basic piece of detective work – but police officers who want to watch a suspect through a window must first fill in a 16-page form to seek permission. The volume of paperwork needed to carry out this simple task has been exposed in an official report which will be published by the Government this week.

Jan Berry, hired two years ago as a Home Office “tsar” charged with combating red tape in the police service, discovered the form created by one force for officers carrying out surveillance. “One superintendent pointed out to me very poignantly that he could sign a piece of paper to authorise someone to be shot, but has to fill in a 16-page form for someone to look through a window,” she said.

Mrs Berry, former chairman of the Police Federation, will conclude that police officers spend a third of their time on pointless bureaucracy. Other examples she will cite include:

* A police officer who makes an arrest must enter the suspect’s details in at least four separate databases, or as many as eight in some forces;

* When a member of the public reports a crime, it is assessed by four different officers before an investigation even begins;

* A student constable investigating a straightforward burglary will have nine other officers supervising their work.

In an article for this newspaper today Nick Herbert, the police minister, says: “The police must be crime fighters, not form writers.”

The minister also reveals that the Coalition will introduce requirements on individual police forces to buy equipment such as cars and IT at a national level to save money.

Mrs Berry has not identified the force which requires a 16-page permission form for surveillance operations. She said the document was in two sections. In the first, to comply with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), officers must log details of the investigation, justify the need for surveillance and explain why they cannot pursue an alternative course of action.

In the second, the “operational order”, they must record how many colleagues will be joining the operation, the ranks of all the participants, and how they will be deployed. “This could just involve simple surveillance such as going to look whether a suspect is at home, by peeking through the glass,” she said. “Clearly, I think this is unnecessary. “We can’t have a Big Brother policing with unregulated surveillance, but at the same time most members of the public will think that level of bureaucracy is totally ludicrous.”

Other police forces impose similar volumes of paperwork on officers taking part in surveillance operations, but ask officers to complete two separate documents - a RIPA form of around seven pages, and an operational order of eight to 10 pages.

All of the paperwork must be approved by a superintendent. Failure to complete it properly could lead to a prosecution collapsing in court when defence lawyers claim surveillance was carried out without authorisation.

Mrs Berry, a retired police inspector, will warn in her report that British policing sometimes gives “greater attention to recording than investigation”, and wasteful practices still exist despite being first identified more than a decade ago.

She said: “We have whole armies of people filling in spreadsheets trying to prove their force meets this or that different standard. “There is one third of policing that we could cut out. I suggest an estimate that one third of work is added by duplication, over-engineering and risk assessments at every level of policing. “Over the last 10 years there have been so many initiatives to cut red tape but if we are honest some of the barriers that were there 10 years ago are still there now.”

Further examples of red tape cited by Mrs Berry include:

* An offender accused of a simple shoplifting offence can be held in custody for up to 14 hours in one police force area, because the arresting officer has to hand the case over to a specific team rather than handle the case themselves;

* About 80 per cent of guidance given to officers on how to handle different crimes is duplicated;

* In major crime investigations and other activities known as “protective services”, forces have to answer 1,099 questions to prove they are meeting standards;

* Officers spend 30 to 45 minutes a day ploughing through internal emails because bureaucrats send communications to everyone in the force;

* Supervisors can spent two to three hours per shift preparing for daily intelligence meetings.

The report will conclude that a prime problem is that no single person is responsible for the police nationally, or for overall control of the criminal justice system. It will recommend creating a job with “clout” to have that wide oversight, claiming that otherwise reforms will never happen.

Mrs Berry, who was hired as “independent reducing-bureaucracy advocate” by then-home secretary Jacqui Smith in 2008, said: “In the current economic climate we cannot afford for this to get worse.

“Forces are going to have their budgets cut and they are going to have to look at what roles people are playing. “At the moment, when someone reports a crime, one member of staff receives the call, it goes to someone else for assessment, then to someone else for another assessment, then someone will decide if it should be a priority and another person will put together an investigation plan. This must be simplified. “Performance culture is huge and, while the government has rightly removed a lot of the targets, at a local level targets are alive and well.”

Other main recommendations include allowing officers to use common sense, reducing the use of “gatekeepers” who are nominated to handle certain types of crime or processes, and reviewing structures and departments to streamline investigations.

Simon Reed, vice-chairman of the Police Federation, which represents front line officers, said: “There will be fewer police as a result of cuts, and we must have a huge reduction in bureaucracy to help make up the shortfall.”

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The British police must have power to stop and search ethnic groups

By Brian Paddick (Paddick was formerly Deputy Assistant Commissioner in London's Metropolitan Police Service)

Suppose two Asian gangs from different parts of the country have agreed over the internet to settle their differences in a street fight. Armed with knives and baseball bats, they make their way to your high street only to find that the police have organised a blanket ‘stop and search’ operation in order to disarm them.

So why are the officers telling white passers-by to open their bags and empty their pockets? Such a state of affairs might seem bizarre, but it is all too common. Police officers fear they will be accused of discrimination if they target people on the basis of their appearance, a form of political correctness which can only damage their ability to uphold the law.

Why, then, has there been such an outcry at Government proposals to bring back a bit of common sense and allow officers to stop some suspects rather than others? It has been claimed that the proposals – draft guidance from the Home Office – are a return to the ‘sus laws’. They are setting the clock back, it is said, and will allow the police to directly discriminate on grounds of race.

I am a firm believer in civil liberties and a great admirer of the Liberty campaign group. However, as a former police officer, I believe such criticisms are entirely misguided, in partic­ular the claim that the proposals amount to a return of ‘sus’.

‘Sus’ – or being a suspected person loitering with intent to commit an indictable offence – is discredited legislation from 1824 that has long since been repealed. It was a criminal offence, not a power to stop and search, and it was at the heart of poor relations between the police and black people in Britain for good reason.

The usual evidence given in court in a ‘sus’ case was no more impressive than ‘three car door handles, your worship’. If a police officer saw – or said they saw – a suspect looking for an unlocked car door in order to steal, this would be sufficient to prove they were up to no good.

Regrettably, some police officers would invent evidence in order to secure a conviction. In 1978 I was at Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court when one of my colleagues put a young black man in the dock. The accused man pleaded guilty to ‘sus’. Yet when I spoke to the arresting officer he told me in hushed tones that the ‘guilty’ man had done nothing. ‘He just ran away when we came around the corner and when we caught him we said he could either have an attempted burglary or ‘sus’ and he went for ‘sus’.’

As there was no need for any corroborative evidence, it was a law open to abuse, which is why it has been consigned to the legislative dustbin.

These new Home Office guidelines are nothing to do with ‘sus’ and every­thing to do with practical policing. Of course it is wrong to pick on black people simply because an officer might associate being black with criminality.

That is a matter of straight­forward prejudice. The overwhelming majority of black people are law-abiding. It is equally wrong for the police to target Muslims in the crude and misguided belief that Muslims are likely to be terrorists.

What does a Muslim look like, anyway? The ‘shoe bomber’, Richard Reid, was born in the London suburb of Bromley to a white British mother and a Caribbean father. He looked neither Middle Eastern nor South Asian. So, yes, I have sympathy for the civil libertarians. But in this case they are wrong, as a matter of principle and of detail.

The new Home Office guidance suggests no more than a modest rewording of Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, a piece of legislation originally aimed at gangs of rival football supporters but which is now used to counter violence of all sorts.

Before Section 60 can be used, a senior police officer must reasonably believe that there is going to be serious violence or that people are carrying weapons. Only then are the police authorised to stop and search anyone. The powers come with strong safeguards. They can be used only within a specific area and for only a limited time, initially no longer than 24 hours.

When I was the police ­commander in Wimbledon, South London, in the late Nineties, we sometimes received intell­igence that rival Asian gangs from different parts of London were preparing to fight on the streets.

If we had specific information about where and when the fight was going to take place, we could use Section 60 to prevent it. The new Home Office guidance is saying no more than this: that if the police believe the fight will take place between two Asian gangs, it makes sense to stop and search Asian people.

In 1999, the white supremacist and nail-bomber David Copeland was targeting busy shopping areas at weekends. In the absence of anti-terrorism legislation at that time, we used Section 60 to try to catch him. Officers were given authority to stop and search and were told that we were looking for a white man carrying a sports holdall. Copeland had been caught on poor-quality CCTV but we could still make out his ethnic origin, if not his identity.

Police at that time did not racially stereotype all white people as terrorists. They did, however, target their stop and search on a particular ethnic group and in this case the people of interest happened to be white. Any reasonable person can see the merits of the police having such powers.

The proposed new guidelines state that officers should take care not to discriminate, but say: ‘There may be circumstances...where it is appropriate for officers to take account of an individual’s ethnic origin in selecting persons and vehicles to be stopped in response to a specific threat or incident...’

Bear in mind, too, that some potential crimes, such as a fight between neo-Nazis, would probably exclude people from min­ority ethnic backgrounds from suspicion. Far from jeopardising race relations, such a commonsense approach could actually promote them.

If serious violence can be prevented, then police officers must be empowered to conduct blanket stop-and-search operations which target the most likely individuals. Yes, it is a draconian power; yes, its use should be limited. But there are circumstances where such powers are absolutely necessary.

SOURCE






'You're not on welfare so we can't help': What a British job centre told mother trying to return to work

A mother-of-two claims a job centre told her they couldn't help her find work - because she didn't want to claim benefits. Lynne Dawson, 32, had taken a career break to raise her two children while engineer husband Anthony brought in an income. But now daughters Deanna, six, and Keira, three, are older she felt she should find work as well as help the family.

Intending to work part-time from home Mrs Dawson said she was having trouble finding the right job and decided to seek help at her local job centre.

Shockingly despite contacting the her local centre in Derby Lynne claims she was told without claiming benefits she couldn't get an interview. She even tried a different branch and another member of staff but was still turned down.

The former medical inspector, from Chaddesden, Derbys, said: 'There is a recession on and a lot of people out of work. 'It's quite shocking that you have to sponge off the state to qualify for some personal advice in getting back into work. 'I couldn't believe it. It was the first question they asked me: 'Are you claiming any benefits?'.

'I don't want to claim benefits. I'd rather do things on my own. All I wanted was some advice on putting a CV together and finding work by sitting down and talking with someone. But they wouldn't do it.

'I wanted a part-time position I could do from home and I started to check job websites but it was quite confusing. 'So I decided to go and ask the job centre, to get some help putting a CV together, I haven't done one for years.'

Taxpayer's watchdog the Taxpayer's Alliance branded the job centres actions as outrageous. A spokesman said: 'This is a total outrage and just goes to show how topsy turvy our welfare system has become. 'Someone willing and able like Mrs Dawson should be encouraged into work, not on to benefits. 'Her commitment to finding work is admirable but it's a complete disgrace that she's being denied help.

'Real reform is desperately needed if we're to get people back into employment and break open the benefit trap.'

Job centres offer advice in getting back to work and compiling a CV via the Directgov website but Lynne said she was not made aware of this when speaking to staff. A spokesman for the Department of Work and Pensions said: 'We are sorry that this information was not offered to the lady who approached us for help.

'Jobcentre Plus prioritises its services by offering support mainly to people who receive welfare benefits and to those who have experienced long-term problems in getting back into employment.

'Our online and telephone services are convenient to use and provide extensive advice. The Directgov website, available to anyone, offers help and information about looking for work as well as providing access to the UK's largest jobs database.'

Conservative Minister for Employment Chris Grayling said the coalition Government had no plans to change Jobcentre rules. However, he did highlight Government proposals to set up 'work clubs'. He said: 'We are setting out this week radical plans for welfare reform to break the culture of welfare dependency which is present in too many communities around the country, but we are also stepping up the support to newer job seekers through job centre Plus and work clubs.'

George Cowcher, chief executive of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire Chamber of Commerce, said it seemed 'counter-productive' to turn somebody away who wanted to find employment. He said: 'Nobody who is actively seeking work should be denied such help and support.'

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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Blind Minority Support for Democrats is Racist

Gabriel Garnica

As a proud Latino professional and educator, I have always found the automatic, large minority support for the Democratic Party nauseating. After all, we have been told over and over that bias has its roots in assumptions, preconceptions, and stagnated beliefs.

History shows that, despite some exceptions, for the most part, Democratic candidates can expect large minority support thanks to a constellation of myths perpetuated by the liberal media and liberals themselves. These myths include the belief that Democrats care more about minorities’ needs than keeping minorities in their hip pocket when voting time comes. To the contrary, it has become fairly obvious that Democrats seek to perpetuate a dependent minority base and have no interest in helping that base become self-sufficient, independent, or successful. It is quite clear that Democrats have no interest in teaching anyone to fish but, rather, have every intention to keep providing fish so as to foster gratitude, dependence, and blind loyalty.

Imagine the outcry if a bumbling white leader had over 90% white support despite a downward spiral of ineptitude. The only thing we would hear is how racist such blind, obviously race-based, support would be. Turn the tables, have a Democratic side that not only enjoys widespread African-American support, but now increasingly seeks to spread its voting monopoly deeply into the Hispanic community, and one witnesses the usual hypocrisy so rampant on the Left and among its pet media.

Polls among African-Americans reveal an equally troubling dynamic among blacks regarding Obama. It seems that half of African-Americans are so steeped in delusional denial as to declare, with a straight face, that this Administration is doing well. While this blind loyalty in the face of contradictory evidence is to be expected, it does not speak well for the objectivity of those involved. If that blind allegiance is tragic, the justification of the other half of this voting base is downright pathetic. It seems that this other half does not even consider the issue of this Administration’s competence relevant, but is content that an African-American has even been elected and seeks to keep that dream alive regardless of the fallout.

Again, imagine the outcry if polls showed that a vast majority of whites mainly sought to keep the White House white. In fact, liberals wail on and on about how many whites blindly vote for white candidates simply to keep minorities out of power. Turn the tables and have most blacks still supporting a black leader despite considerable evidence of incompetence and these liberals have no problem with the situation.

The crux of racism is blindly supporting a person, cause or agenda based on racial preferences in the midst of contrary evidence. While the African-American community should certainly be proud of the fact that one of its own has in fact reached the top and use this fact as a motivation to greater success, it is certainly selling itself short by failing to rise above subjective, biased and, most destructively, oblivious support simply because of the color of a leader’s skin. The African-American and, for that matter, Hispanic and all other minority communities, deserve a lot more than such a superficial, biased, and utterly pathetic standard for its support.

The deadly combination of crafty liberal PR and pervasive liberal media hype and myth has perpetuated and almost institutionalized the lie that conservatives do not care about minorities and liberals spend every waking moment working for them. History, and the facts, however, tell a far different story to those with enough self-respect and intelligence to substantiate and validate their political support and loyalty through careful research and self-information.

Between Nancy Pelosi’s ringing endorsement of welfare as a social good and Obama’s stimulus people sending checks to the deceased and incarcerated, it has become painfully clear that the only political side even remotely interested in teaching people to fish is the conservative side. Liberals, on the other hand, seem only too content to continue patronizing dependence and selling fish at the same kind of discount that they believe America is worth. Perhaps sending this money to those now dead or in jail is simply another Democratic attempt to capture more voters, one way or the other.

SOURCE






Crooked British Muslim cop is made to pay just £750 of £64,500 trial costs... despite his THREE homes

Disgraced police chief Ali Dizaei was at the centre of a new storm last night after it emerged he has been forced to pay just £750 towards the prosecution costs of his corruption trial.

The Crown Prosecution Service had asked that three-times married Dizaei be ordered to pay their £64,500 bill for the four-week hearing earlier this year. But despite owning three homes worth a total of £1million, playboy Dizaei – who had expensive tastes in women, cars and clothes – said he was virtually penniless and able to pay only a tiny amount. After considering his case, Southwark Crown Court ordered that he pay £750 plus VAT towards the prosecution costs.

Yet the Mail can reveal that Dizaei owns homes in Acton and Chiswick in West London, and co-owns a property in Henley-on-Thames with his former wife Natalie.

Before his corruption conviction, Dizaei won a substantial five-figure libel payout from a Sunday newspaper. It is not known where the money went.

The decision to make the former Met Commander pay so little has staggered his former colleagues in the Metropolitan Police. One said: ‘A lot of people find it very hard to believe he is only worth £750. Many people will think he’s played the system and won.’

According to publicly available Land Registry documents, each of Dizaei’s homes is mortgaged. It is not known how much equity is in each.

Dizaei, 47, was jailed for four years in February for abusing his police position to bully a young businessman. He assaulted and falsely arrested Iraqi Waad al-Baghdadi, 24, after the businessman asked for £600 he was owed for creating a website showcasing Dizaei’s career.

He was sacked from his £90,000-a-year job at Scotland Yard in March but, despite his dismissal, will still be able to claim at least a third of his gold-plated police pension in the future.

A former president of the militant National Black Police Association, he has endured a torrid time since being jailed, including an attack in which he was knocked out and had a slop bucket poured over him.

The Iranian-born former officer, who spent thousands of pounds on a hair transplant, has also been goaded about the colour of his hair after it turned grey without lashings of black dye. Dizaei is now in Leyhill open prison in Gloucestershire.

In August, it emerged Dizaei plans to sue the prison service for failing to protect him from a brawl in which he allegedly attacked another cellmate at a previous jail in South Wales. He is demanding damages from prison authorities – even though he is being investigated by police for allegedly assaulting another inmate.

Southwark Court confirmed that Dizaei has been ordered to pay just £750 plus VAT for the prosecution costs of his trial. The CPS refused to comment.

SOURCE





Nutty British prisons boss says inmates should have choice of FIVE dishes for dinner

Prisoners must be given a choice of at least five different dishes for dinner, it emerged last night. Under new rules – quickly dubbed ‘Porridge à la Carte’ – inmates will be presented with a menu from which to select their desired meal from the five on offer.

Governors must change the menu regularly to ensure the same options do not appear more than once a month. The order dictating the changes even insists that prisoners are ‘consulted’ about the quality of meals served. Prisons minister Crispin Blunt, who previously gave the go-ahead for Halloween and Christmas parties for inmates, is responsible for prisoner food rules.

Critics described the regulations as ‘lunacy’. The rules, issued by the Ministry of Justice and sent to every jail in England and Wales, came into force on October 1 but were only published yesterday.

Diktats include that drug addicts trying to get clean should be given hot chocolate because it is ‘comforting’. New inmates must be given an arrival pack containing tea and coffee, sweets and cigarettes. And late arrivals – such as newly-sentenced prisoners – must be given a hot meal even if they arrive at the prison after all the other inmates have eaten.

Fiona McEvoy, campaign manager at the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: ‘While many ordinary, law-abiding taxpayers struggle for cash and brace themselves for cuts in services, these convicts are getting five-star treatment on the public purse. ‘The amount of effort and planning going into these menus is just insulting – it seems criminals are being fed better than patients, school children and the elderly in many cases. ‘No one would deny inmates a decent meal, but this is just ridiculous.’

Tory MP Douglas Carswell added: ‘Surely we should be giving individual prison governors control over meals and letting them see what works and what gets results? ‘Why are we trying to micro-manage the prison service from the centre, right down to the amount of gravy and type of vegetables prisoners have for their meals? It’s lunacy.’

The edict follows a bizarre speech by Mr Blunt last month in which he said inmates should be served perfectly-sized and shaped apples to prevent ‘fruit riots’. He told the House of Commons that ‘undersize’ fruit handed out at jail canteens could create ‘issues of order and control’.

‘It is worth remembering that discontent about the quality of food, changes to menus and failure to deliver what was previously promised have been known to be the catalyst for serious disturbances,’ he said.

‘An undersize apple handed out at the servery will create issues of order and control, so we use suppliers that are sensitive to that need and that use their sourcing ability to maintain consistency from their supply base.’

Mr Blunt provoked outrage within weeks of his appointment by lifting a ban on taxpayer-funded prisoner parties and comedy workshops for high security inmates. The MP for Reigate – who is the uncle of actress Emily Blunt – was swiftly slapped down by Downing Street, and the decision reversed the following day. He was slapped down again after he said criminals could get their jail sentences slashed if they said sorry.

And there was further outrage when it emerged that newly-released prisoners are being offered free mobile phones in a taxpayer-funded ‘welcome pack’ when they arrive at bail hostels.

The ‘Catering – Meals for Prisoners’ section in Prison Service Instruction number 44/2010 states: ‘A multi-choice minimum five choices, pre-select menu including a minimum of one substantial hot meal choice per day will be provided for the lunch time or evening meal.’ Food must meet the ‘cultural, nutritional and diversity needs’ of inmates, the order states.

It adds: ‘The menu provides information which enables prisoners to make decisions about their menu choice. The menu cycle will be for a minimum of four weeks. ‘Prisoners are consulted about and can make comments on the catering provision.’ Officials said each menu would include a hot meal, a cold meal, a vegetarian option and one that is free of dairy products.

Every menu must also include a halal meal that complies with the Islamic code on how animals should be slaughtered.

Tory MP Philip Davies said: ‘At a time when the Government is looking for ways to save money it’s quite extraordinary that the only people who look like they are going to be better off are prisoners. As far as I’m concerned it’s absolutely unacceptable and I think the public will be outraged.’

Although many prisons already offer a wide choice at mealtimes, it is thought to be the first time the five choices have been set in stone by ministers.

A Prison Service spokesman said: ‘The choice of meals that are available to prisoners reflect both religious and medical requirements, including halal, dairy free and vegetarian options. In practice this means a number of prisoners only have one choice.’

SOURCE










British school trips to be freed from health and safety red tape as Lord Young promises to roll back compensation culture

Red tape surrounding school trips is to be slashed as part of a Government drive to inject ‘common sense’ into Britain’s health and safety laws. Former Cabinet minister Lord Young said the regulation surrounding school trips was now so onerous that many teachers no longer bothered to organise them – leading millions of children to miss out on a vital part of their education.

Launching a Government report on health and safety laws today Lord Young criticised the ‘enormous bureaucracy’ currently surrounding school trips. He said ministers would cut back the 12-page risk assessment that currently has to be completed by teachers for each trip. Parents will also be able to sign a single consent form which covers a child’s entire time at the school, to prevent the wasteful practice of seeking consent for every visit.

Lord Young, who was appointed by David Cameron to roll back Britain’s compensation culture, said: ‘The simple truth is that filling in a form doesn’t make a trip more safe. ‘Children are potentially missing out on vital education because schools just do not have the time and resource to carry out the process. ‘If they do, they are too concerned about the threat of legal action should an accident happen.’

The report also calls for risk assessments of children’s play areas to consider the benefits of giving youngsters somewhere to play rather than focusing solely on the potential risks.

Lord Young said health and safety laws originally designed for dangerous industries were now being applied to a range of jobs and everyday activities that are ‘non-hazardous’.

He also hit out at no-win, no-fee lawyers for fuelling the compensation culture, saying: ‘I started out as a lawyer and I am frankly ashamed of some of the things that I have seen.’ The new report calls for a crackdown on adverts encouraging people to launch a compensation claim for even the most trivial accident.

Lord Young said the Government would ban the practice of law firms and claims handlers offering people up to £500 up front in return for lodging a compensation claim. Lord Young said the growth of the compensation culture led to higher insurance premiums for millions of businesses and individuals, and persuaded many organisations to adopt an unnecessarily risk-averse approach.

He said the insurance industry was also ‘part of the problem’. He added: ‘Businesses now operate their health and safety policies in a climate of fear. The advent of 'no win, no fee' claims and the all-pervasive advertising by claims management companies have significantly added to the belief that there is a nationwide compensation culture.’

Two years ago teachers at the John F. Kennedy Primary School in Washington, Tyne and Wear, scrapped the sports day sack race fearing children will fall over

The report ‘Common Sense, Common Safety’, which was accepted in its entirety by the Government, also calls for the introduction in law of a ‘Good Samaritan clause’ to make it clear that volunteers cannot be sued unless they have clearly acted recklessly or maliciously.

Lord Young said the move would prevent a repeat of the farce last winter when people were warned they could be sued for clearing the snow in front of their home if someone then slipped on the pavement.

A separate legislative move will make it clear that members of the emergency services will not risk prosecution on health and safety grounds in circumstances where they have acted heroically – a move immediately welcomed by the Association of Chief Police Officers.

The Prime Minister said he hoped Lord Young’s report would prove to be a ‘turning point’ which would ‘help stop the creep of unnecessary health and safety culture that we have’.

Other changes include requiring killjoy councils that want to ban community events such as pancake races to put their reasons in writing. Organisers will be able to challenge any ruling and councils could be fined if they are found to have acted wrongly.

A new fixed-cost system for resolving compensation in road traffic accidents will be extended to cover straightforward personal injury claims.

Simpler guidance on health and safety will be published for offices and other low-risk workplaces, and employers will not have to conduct a full health and safety assessment for staff who work from home.

Lord Young insisted that his reforms, which will be rolled out over the next 18 months, would have no impact on important health and safety laws in hazardous workplaces.

But TUC general secretary Brendan Barber described the report as a ‘grave disappointment’ which could throw safety improvements into reverse. Mr Barber said: ‘The report contains not a single proposal that will reduce the high levels of workplace death, injuries and illness.’

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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A politically correct Nobel prize in economics?

Comment below by German economist Dr Oliver Marc Hartwich

This year’s Nobel prizes started promisingly enough: The literature prize was awarded to Mario Vargas Llosa, who made the defence of individual liberty the theme of his work. Then the peace prize went to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiabao, who has had to pay a high personal price for his decades-long fight for political freedom in the one-party state.

The Nobel Prize in economics, however, left me somewhat puzzled. To be sure, the recipients Peter Diamond, Dale Mortensen, and Christopher Pissarides are all highly respected economists. Their contributions to labour market theory have become part of textbook economics. In this sense, the prize is well deserved.

Having said that, awarding the prize to the trio also looks a bit like a safe choice. If the Nobel committee had wanted to set an exclamation mark with their decision, they could have honoured branches of economics they had hitherto neglected. For example, research into entrepreneurship is long overdue in terms of Nobel recognition, and someone like Israel M. Kirzner would have been a worthy recipient. No one has more elegantly formulated why and how entrepreneurs are the key figures in driving the competitive market economy and thus economic growth.

In another sense, too, the choice of the three labour market specialists is hardly revolutionary. Though their models are elegant, what they are actually saying is very much common sense. For example, their model shows that ‘more generous unemployment benefits give rise to higher unemployment and longer search times,’ the Nobel committee inform us in their press release. But does it surprise anyone that a life on benefits makes it less urgent to look for a job?

Even stranger, the Nobel laureates are happy to claim responsibility for labour market reforms that are widely regarded as failed. Pissarides says the ‘New Deal for Young People,’ a British government initiative aimed at getting 18- to 24-year-olds back on the job market after long spells of unemployment, ‘is very much based on our work.’ But, as a report by former British welfare reform minister Frank Field for London-based think tank Reform shows, the program was costly without actually bringing young jobseekers back into work. ‘The results of the New Deal for Young People have however been modest, to put it mildly,’ Field concluded.

To round off the oddities about this year’s prize, one of the laureates, Peter Diamond, had been nominated by President Obama for a seat on the board of the Federal Reserve. His nomination has been blocked, however, because Republican opponents have doubts about his qualifications for the job.

It seems the main purpose of this year’s prize is to underline that markets often do not work, in this case because of search costs in labour markets. But that such costs exist is hardly disputed.

It would have been more appropriate if the Nobel committee had honoured an economist who had made contributions to showing how markets work. Like Liu Xiabao, who was widely pipped to win the Nobel last year, Israel M. Kirzner may have to wait one more year.

The above is a press release from the Centre for Independent Studies, dated 15 October. Enquiries to cis@cis.org.au. Snail mail: PO Box 92, St Leonards, NSW, Australia 1590.





As career criminals with 100 convictions are spared jail in Britain, MPs ask... What DOES get you locked up?

Thousands of career criminals are being spared jail despite having amassed at least 50 convictions. Almost 2,700 were handed a community sentence after being found guilty more than 50 times before. Incredibly, 315 offenders even received a non-custodial punishment after 100 or more previous offences.

The figures, seen by the Mail, also show more than 13,000 on at least their 30th offence received a community penalty – widely derided as ‘soft’ by critics. It means offenders who are convicted of 30 or more crimes are 1,000 times more likely to be given a community sentence or a fine than end up in prison.

MPs and experts said the alarming revelations showed why Kenneth Clarke should be imprisoning more convicts – not fewer. Criminologist Dr David Green, director of the Civitas think-tank, said even more prolific offenders could escape jail in future. ‘It’s all very well giving out community sentences for minor offences – but if you’re on your 101st conviction, then it’s evidence of being a career criminal,’ he added. ‘I would have thought a long custodial sentence would be appropriate for these people, who will have been committing crimes more or less every day for all their adult life. If they do allow career criminals to roam the streets, we can safely say there will be a rise in crime.’

Tory backbencher Philip Davies said: ‘These statistics show what a joke the criminal justice system has become. You have to work very hard to get into prison nowadays. ‘No wonder people have lost faith in the criminal justice system when we see people carrying out literally hundreds of crimes and getting off time and time again.’

But the Justice Secretary yesterday remained defiant over his plans to hand out community punishments rather than short jail terms. He said: ‘Simply banging up more and more people for longer without actively seeking to change them is not going to protect the public. I do not think prison is or should be a numbers game’.

The re-offending figures, which are for 2008, were revealed last week by Justice Minister Crispin Blunt following a parliamentary question. They show that the problem of repeat offending has been getting worse. In 2006, a total of 179 criminals were spared jail after 100 convictions – not much more than half of the 315 figure in 2008. And whereas in 2002 a total of 1,200 had 50 or more convictions, that had soared to 2,670 in 2008.

Some of the figures were published earlier this year, buried in an annex of a document of sentencing statistics. The Ministry of Justice document reveals that repeat offending is getting worse. The proportion of sentences given to offenders with 15 or more previous convictions or cautions has risen from 17 per cent in 2000 to 28 per cent in 2008.

Graham Jones, the Labour MP who asked the question, said: ‘These figures seem to show that the “prison doesn’t work” idea put forward by the Conservatives is wrong.’

Despite how hard it has become to earn a custodial sentence, Mr Clarke is still insisting there are too many convicts sent to jail for six months or less. He wants to replace these sentences – given to around 50,000 offenders each year – with ‘tougher community’ penalties.

Yesterday, he said: ‘The army of short term prisoners we have at the moment, who have a particularly bad record of re-offending within six months of being released, is too big and we’ve got to find some sensible community sentences.’

Governors say it will slash jail numbers by 7,000 at any one time – with some prisons closing because there are too few inmates.

The vast majority of those convicted of a range of offences are have been convicted of the same crime before.

Mr Clarke provoked anger among the Tory grassroots earlier this year by declaring that prison ‘doesn’t work’ – ripping up almost 20 years of party policy. But he has stuck doggedly to the position that short-jail sentences are ‘ineffective’ and ‘absurd’. He says that – with 60 per cent of jailed inmates re-offending on release – the system must be changed.

The government is carrying out a sentencing review, which is due to report back within weeks. It will rule out scrapping short sentences altogether. But community punishments are likely to be toughened by making offenders wear an electronic tag. Officials hope this will persuade magistrates to use the punishment instead of jail.

In yesterday’s speech to the Prison Governors Association, Mr Clarke reiterated his plan to encourage inmates to work a 40-hour week, in return for the minimum wage. He also said he wanted to modern versions of Victorian prisons with a new focus on hard work and discipline.

He also said he wanted an ‘intensive effort to start developing drug-free wings’ in prisons, getting inmates off drugs altogether, and wanted regimes which prepared prisoners for an ‘ordinary honest life outside’.

Only this week, we heard that judges and magistrates are being told to send fewer violent thugs to prison. Now those found guilty of actual, or even grievous, bodily harm will not be going to prison at all, particularly if they are young or express remorse.

Makes you wonder who we’ll be letting off next? Rapists? Murderers?

Ken Clarke, our new Justice Secretary, may have come to the highly convenient, money-saving conclusion that prison sentences do not reduce crime – which I don’t believe – but I’m more inclined to side with former Home Secretary Michael Howard and his famous ‘prison works’ speech.

It addressed the problems of criminals and criminality in a way that the latest milksop, so-called ‘community payback’, never will. A couple of weeks loafing around in high-visibility jackets? Oh yes, I’m quite sure that will get hardened criminals back on the straight and narrow, Mr Clarke.

At the grassroots level, the judicial system is a currently a mess, where something as serious as shoplifting can earn you an £80 fixed penalty fine, while dropping a cigarette butt can land you with a £1,000 fine.

It’s a world where the police keep telling us that crime is falling but only, I’m convinced, because they’re letting repeat young offenders off with warning after warning, caution after caution.

Sometimes I wonder why they don’t just raise the age of criminal responsibility to 20 and solve the whole problem of youth crime overnight.

More HERE





Save us from red tape, beg British local councils: Labour issued 74,000 pages of rules in a decade

Local government bureaucrats have had to follow 74,000 pages of new rules and instructions handed down by Whitehall over the past decade, council chiefs complained yesterday. The forest of red tape was a product of 4,000 different laws and circulars covering everything from parish council election advice to carbon reduction targets.

The direct cost to taxpayers of demands sent down by ministers to town halls amounts to £900 million a year and the overall losses could be as high as £2.5 billion annually, the Local Government Association said. It demanded simplification of the rules that govern local councils and an end to central government guidelines that give detailed instructions on how town halls should carry out their duties.

According to a report published by the umbrella body for local councils, the burden has amounted to 40 pages of regulation for every day that Parliament has been sitting since 2000. The rules include 2,000 pages of planning guidance issued by John Prescott and other Labour ministers to try to impose national policies on housebuilding, development in green fields, and traveller sites.

There were 1,300 pages sent out last year in one manual from the Department of Work and Pensions instructing local officials how to pay out Housing Benefit.

And targets issued by the Communities Department in 2008 required town halls to increase the number of new businesses started in their area, cut the re-offending rates of local criminals, and get more people to stop smoking.

Even since May and the arrival of the Coalition government, councils have been given 1,355 pages of rules thanks to 67 new laws which have come into effect.

The page count produced a plea for mercy from LGA chairman Baroness Margaret Eaton. She said: ‘An avalanche of paperwork has descended on town halls across the country in the past decade. ‘There is no justification for the amount of form-filling, data returns, reviews and micromanagement being foisted on local government.

Red tape of this kind wastes valuable time and resources which councils need to spend delivering services.’

The Association appealed for instructions to councils on how to carry out their legal duties to be scrapped, for consolidation of local government laws into a simplified codebook, and for an end to demands for statistics and information on whether targets have been reached.

Lady Eaton said: ‘Councils are well aware of their responsiblities towards their residents. What they need are the freedoms which will allow them to make the money go further and do more for everyone.’

Ministers yesterday announced one cutback on red-tape with the withdrawal of 4,700 Whitehall targets set under the regulations on ‘Local Area Agreements’.

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles also said central government demands for information would be simplified. He said: ‘National targets tend to mean that councils are constantly working on things which matter to Whitehall, regardless of what local residents think. I’d much rather councils were tackling local issues.

The money being spent on form fillers and bean counters could be far better spent helping elderly people to stay in their homes.’

SOURCE






'The Aim Is to Make Israel a Pariah'

Rupert Murdoch

Last night, Rupert Murdoch gave an extraordinary speech at an Anti-Defamation League dinner in which he revealed, yet again, that he is a true and selfless friend of the Jewish people and of Israel. Here is the text:

You [the ADL] were founded a century ago against the backdrop of something we cannot imagine in America today: the conviction and then lynching of an innocent Jew. In the century since then, you have fought anti-Semitism wherever you have found it. You have championed equal treatment for all races and creeds. And you have held America to her founding promise. So successful have you been, a few years ago some people were beginning to say, “maybe we don’t need an ADL anymore.” That is a much harder argument to make these days. Now, there’s not a single person in this room who needs a lecture on the evil of anti-Semitism. My own perspective is simple: We live in a world where there is an ongoing war against the Jews. For the first decades after Israel’s founding, this war was conventional in nature. The goal was straightforward: to use military force to overrun Israel. Well before the Berlin Wall came down, that approach had clearly failed.

Then came phase two: terrorism. Terrorists targeted Israelis both home and abroad – from the massacre of Israeli athletes at Munich to the second intifada. The terrorists continue to target Jews across the world. But they have not succeeded in bringing down the Israeli government – and they have not weakened Israeli resolve.

Now the war has entered a new phase. This is the soft war that seeks to isolate Israel by delegitimizing it. The battleground is everywhere: the media … multinational organizations … NGOs. In this war, the aim is to make Israel a pariah.

The result is the curious situation we have today: Israel becomes increasingly ostracized, while Iran – a nation that has made no secret of wishing Israel’s destruction – pursues nuclear weapons loudly, proudly, and without apparent fear of rebuke.

For me, this ongoing war is a fairly obvious fact of life. Every day, the citizens of the Jewish homeland defend themselves against armies of terrorists whose maps spell out the goal they have in mind: a Middle East without Israel. In Europe, Jewish populations increasingly find themselves targeted by people who share that goal. And in the United States, I fear that our foreign policy sometimes emboldens these extremists.

Tonight I’d like to speak about two things that worry me most. First is the disturbing new home that anti-Semitism has found in polite society – especially in Europe. Second is how violence and extremism are encouraged when the world sees Israel’s greatest ally distancing herself from the Jewish state.

When Americans think of anti-Semitism, we tend to think of the vulgar caricatures and attacks of the first part of the 20th century. Today it seems that the most virulent strains come from the left. Often this new anti-Semitism dresses itself up as legitimate disagreement with Israel.

Back in 2002 the president of Harvard, Larry Summers, put it this way: “Where anti-Semitism and views that are profoundly anti-Israeli have traditionally been the primary preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists, profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities. Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent.”

Mr. Summers was speaking mostly about our university campuses. Like me, however, he was also struck by alarming developments in Europe. Far from being dismissed out of hand, anti-Semitism today enjoys support at both the highest and lowest reaches of European society – from its most elite politicians to its largely Muslim ghettoes. European Jews find themselves caught in this pincer.

We saw a recent outbreak when a European Commissioner trade minister declared that peace in the Middle East is impossible because of the Jewish lobby in America. Here’s how he put it: “There is indeed a belief—it’s difficult to describe it otherwise—among most Jews that they are right. And it’s not so much whether these are religious Jews or not. Lay Jews also share the same belief that they are right. So it is not easy to have, even with moderate Jews, a rational discussion about what is actually happening in the Middle East.”

This minister did not suggest the problem was any specific Israeli policy. The problem, as he defined it, is the nature of the Jews. Adding to the absurdity, this man then responded to his critics this way: Anti-Semitism, he asserted, “has no place in today’s world and is fundamentally against our European values.” Of course, he has kept his job.

Unfortunately, we see examples like this one all across Europe. Sweden, for example, has long been a synonym for liberal tolerance. Yet in one of Sweden’s largest cities, Jews report increasing examples of harassment. When an Israeli tennis team visited for a competition, it was greeted with riots. So how did the mayor respond? By equating Zionism with anti-Semitism – and suggesting that Swedish Jews would be safer in his town if they distanced themselves from Israeli actions in Gaza. You don’t have to look far for other danger signs:

The Norwegian government forbids a Norwegian-based, German shipbuilder from using its waters to test a submarine being built for the Israeli navy.

Britain and Spain are boycotting an OECD tourism meeting in Jerusalem.

In the Netherlands, police report a 50% increase in the number of anti-Semitic incidents.

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised by these things. According to one infamous European poll a few years back, Europeans listed Israel ahead of Iran and North Korea as the greatest threat to world peace.

In Europe today, some of the most egregious attacks on Jewish people, Jewish symbols, and Jewish houses of worship have come from the Muslim population.

Unfortunately, far from making clear that such behavior will not be tolerated, too often the official response is what we’ve seen from the Swedish mayor – who suggested Jews and Israel were partly to blame themselves.

When Europe’s political leaders do not stand up to the thugs, they lend credence to the idea that Israel is the source of all the world’s problems – and they guarantee more ugliness. If that is not anti-Semitism, I don’t know what is.

That brings me to my second point: the importance of good relations between Israel and the United States. Some believe that if America wants to gain credibility in the Muslim world and advance the cause of peace, Washington needs to put some distance between itself and Israel. My view is the opposite. Far from making peace more possible, we are making hostilities more certain. Far from making things better for the Palestinian people, sour relations between the United States and Israel guarantees that ordinary Palestinians will continue to suffer.

The peace we all want will come when Israel feels secure – not when Washington feels distant.

Right now we have war. There are many people waging this war. Some blow up cafes. Some fire rockets into civilian areas. Some are pursuing nuclear arms. Some are fighting the soft war, through international boycotts and resolutions condemning Israel. All these people are watching the U.S.-Israeli relationship closely.

In this regard, I was pleased to hear the State Department’s spokesman clarify America’s position yesterday. He said that the United States recognizes “the special nature of the Israeli state. It is a state for the Jewish people.” This is an important message to send to the Middle East. When people see, for example, a Jewish prime minister treated badly by an American president, they see a more isolated Jewish state. That only encourages those who favor the gun over those who favor negotiation.

Ladies and gentlemen, back in 1937, a man named Vladimir Jabotinsky urged Britain to open up an escape route for Jews fleeing Europe. Only a Jewish homeland, he said, could protect European Jews from the coming calamity. In prophetic words, he described the problem this way: “It is not the anti-Semitism of men,” he said. “It is, above all, the anti-Semitism of things, the inherent xenophobia of the body social or the body economic under which we suffer.”

The world of 2010 is not the world of the 1930s. The threats Jews face today are different. But these threats are real. These threats are soaked in an ugly language familiar to anyone old enough to remember World War II. And these threats cannot be addressed until we see them for what they are: part of an ongoing war against the Jews.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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Bollywood film paints Australians as violent racists

This is what comes of political correctness. Ordinary Australians are being blamed for what are predominantly the deeds of African "refugees". Africans hate Indians because they are also coloured yet are much more successful in most ways than Africans are. But since about 2007 the Australian media have been very chary of mentioning the race of the attackers. A blanket of silence has descended. So most people would assume that the attackers were white. And on the rare occasion when the attacker is white THAT is mentioned, of course

A BOLLYWOOD blockbuster inspired by the violent attacks on Indian students in Australia has come under fire for producing "venom that's spewed against Australians".

Crook: it's Good to be Bad, tells the story of an Indian who moves to the Australian city of Melbourne and finds himself in the midst of race-motivated violence, the Herald Sun said.

In the film, Melbourne is depicted as a city rife with gang violence between Australians and Indians, while the locals are portrayed as beer-guzzling blokes and immoral women.

Indian critics have panned it for being sensationalist and its stereotyping of Australians. There was particular outrage against the inflammatory language made by the main character. "A country of ex-convicts. A country where they sleep with each other without marrying. A country where they don't take care of their families. Yes that's the sort of venom that's spewed against the Australians in Crook,'" an India Today reviewer wrote.

Last year, the Indian media heavily covered a series of violent assaults on Indian immigrants in Melbourne, including a 10-page special in Outlook magazine entitled "Why Aussies Hate Us".

Director Mohit Suri said he was inspired to make the film after visiting a convenience store in the western Melbourne suburb of Sunshine. "Inside the very same store one of the most brutal racist attacks had taken place just a few months back. The events as told to me were horrifying, about how an Indian was brutally beaten up only because of his colour and religion," he said in an interview with an Indian entertainment website.

SOURCE





If You Cant Beat Them, Silence Them

The Progressive Movement is desperate. The 2008 election was supposed to be the dawn of a new liberal era. An enlightened bureaucratic elite in Washington was supposed to enact a broad and transformative agenda that would save the economy, return the nation to prosperity, and legitimize big government for a generation.

But only the enactment of the agenda occurred, without any of the promised benefits. President Obama’s trillion-dollar stimulus and trillion-dollar health care entitlement are now law. The leftist bureaucrats have been empowered … but their policies have failed. Health insurance premiums are rising, poverty is up, and the nation’s unemployment rate hovers near 10%.

Faced with the obvious failure of their policies, the left is now desperately seeking to avoid accountability by blaming others. So President Barack Obama told a crowd in Philadelphia this weekend that “special interest groups” like the Chamber of Commerce are “spending unlimited amounts of money on attack ads.” The President continued: “It could be the oil industry. It could be the insurance industry. It could even be foreign-owned corporations. You don’t know because they don’t have to disclose. … Now, that’s not just a threat to Democrats – that’s a threat to our democracy.”

The President may say he is only interested in disclosure, but his policy prescription does not accomplish that. When Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) introduced the DISCLOSE Act to the Senate he gave away the real aim of the bill. “The deterrent effect should not be underestimated,” Schumer said. And just what does the left want to deter Americans from doing? At the House committee DISCLOSE Act markup, Rep. Michael Capuano (D-MA) said: “I have no problem whatsoever keeping everybody out [of elections]. If I could keep all outside entities out, I would.”

The President is not interested in educating the American people by making everyone disclose their donations. He is only interested in silencing his opponents. That is why unions were specifically exempted from the DISCLOSE Act as were a slew of other interest groups.

On Face the Nation this Sunday, CBS host Bob Schieffer confronted White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod about a New York Times article showing that White House charges of “secret foreign money” “stealing our democracy” were completely baseless. Schieffer asked: “If the only charge, three weeks into the election that the Democrats can make is that there’s somehow this may or may not be foreign money coming into the campaign, is that the best you can do?”

Axelrod went on to contend that it is the responsibility of those the White House accuses to prove they aren’t breaking the law. This morning, NBC’s Chuck Todd described Axelrod’s answer as “McCarthy-esque” on Daily Rundown.

Yes. Baseless charges about foreigners stealing democracy is the best the left can do. Their policies have completely failed and they are afraid of being held accountable. The President’s response is to try and use the power of the federal government to deter all dissent. If there is a threat to our democracy in this election, it is not coming from the Chamber of Commerce.

SOURCE






Send fewer thugs to jail and save £20m a year, British judges and JPs told

Judges and magistrates were yesterday ordered to send fewer violent thugs to jail. New guidelines mean those guilty of grievous bodily harm or beating up a police officer will remain on the streets rather than going to prison.

And courts will be told to count the youth or remorse of an attacker as a mark in their favour, even though many assaults happen when pubs and clubs close and are committed by young people.

The Sentencing Council believes its move could save almost £20million a year to the prison and probation services and mean 4,000 fewer violent yobs being sent to jail.

But it provoked a storm of protest last night and comes against a political backdrop of Justice Secretary Ken Clarke declaring he wants to reduce sharply the number of short term jail sentences.

Lord Justice Leveson, who is chairman of the council, said judges and magistrates have been ‘ignoring’ guidelines and setting longer sentences for lesser assaults. Despite insisting that ‘none of us is soft on crime’, he was forced to deny the judges have acted in league with Mr Clarke, who is committed to sending fewer offenders to prison.

He added: ‘If this works, there will be less use of custody.’ But critics said the thinking behind the policy was ‘dubious’ and could create ‘more crime and more victims’.

Criminologist Dr David Green, of the Civitas think tank, said: ‘I do not believe that any experienced judge would think that current sentencing practice is disproportionate. ‘When you make the consequences of crime less severe, you will get more of it.’

The new rules would mean fewer jail sentences for common assault, assault on a police officer, causing actual bodily harm and assault trying to resist arrest.

For grievous bodily harm, an assault causing permanent disability, disfigurement, broken bones or injuries requiring lengthy treatment, attackers will not go to jail if they are considered to have factors in their favour. These include youth or immaturity, showing remorse, and causing the injury with a single blow.

The council’s guidelines were put out as a consultation and are likely to be given legal force next spring. Unlike previous sentencing rules handed down by predecessor bodies, they must be obeyed to the letter by judges and magistrates.

Lord Justice Leveson said: ‘What’s moving me is to get the system right, fair, proportionate and understandable.’ He added that there had been a ‘general trend towards longer sentences for all assault offences’ over the past ten years.

The guidelines could mean:

- Between 1,000 and 2,800 fewer offenders jailed each year for common assault.

- Between 300 and 900 fewer jailed each year for assault causing actual bodily harm.

- Between 200 and 700 fewer jailed each year for assault on a police officer.

- Between 15 and 50 fewer jailed each year for assault with intent to resist arrest.

- Between ten and 30 fewer jailed each year for causing grievous bodily harm.

‘There has been an increase in the severity of sentences at the lower end of the assault range and I think we’re trying to adjust that for reasons of proportionality, rather than anything else,’ he said. ‘I think there may be a slight increase at the very, very top, for the most serious offences of this type.’

Mr Clarke announced his policy of cutting down on numbers of criminals sent to prison in the summer. The aim, which disappointed many Tory MPs and voters, was to cut the 85,000 prison population and save the taxpayer money. Doubting that prison worked to cut crime, Mr Clarke said it cost £38,000 to keep someone in jail for a year, more than the fees to send a pupil to Eton.

His critics say that one major reason why crime has fallen in recent years is that judges and magistrates have chosen to send more offenders to jail, despite pressure from Labour politicians and from senior judges not to do so.

They also say that the cost of sending criminals to jail is small compared to the cost of the crimes they commit if they are left on the street to re-offend. The prison population has risen from around 55,000 in 1996 to about 85,000.

The Sentencing Council also hopes to reduce community sentences – including work details for offenders who may also be given curfews and electronic tags – and replace them in similar numbers by fines for lesser offenders.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said the Government was committed to ensuring that penalties deter crime, protect the public, punish offenders and cut re-offending. [How?}

SOURCE






Beware falling acorns! Health and safety lunacy reaches new peak with warning sign



It is an autumnal hazard that mankind has successfully negotiated for millions of years. Not that you would know from the latest advice from hospital health and safety chiefs who reckon that, after all this time, we need a little help in dealing with the danger of acorns. As a result signs have been put up around an oak tree warning ‘Caution Please Be Aware Of The Falling Acorns’.

Staff at the Brentwood Community Hospital in Essex erected the sign after a patient stepped on an acorn last year and suffered a slight sprain to her ankle. Although the patient did not sue, gardeners have also now been ordered to collect fallen acorns in the hospital grounds.

Andrew McGowan, 28, who was visiting a patient yesterday, said: ‘It’s health and safety madness really. You don’t need a sign to warn you about things falling from the tree. It happens at this time of year and you can see acorns on the ground.’
tree

Details emerged days after visitors to a park in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, were warned of falling conkers with a sign that proclaimed: ‘Beware Falling Conkers – Please Proceed with Care.’

The Brentwood hospital yesterday defended the move, citing the slip last year. A spokesman added: ‘Our groundsmen now sweep acorns up and they have put the signs up just to be on the safe side.’

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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