Oh, No He Didn't..!

Good news about the police raid on 'weapon dogs' on a South London estate, though a pity the owners won't also wind up chipped, neutered or put down.

However, someone needs to go back to media communication school. Put your best foot forward, and straight into your mouth, Sergeant McPartland:

Asked if he found the seizures depressing, given that around half of the dogs removed will be put down, he replied it was 'terrible' adding: 'I spent 25 years as a dog handler and now I'm out there taking dogs off people who really don't know how to treat them.

*cough*

Oh, how quickly they forget Nottingham Police Farce's July Hot Dog Cookout...

Trouble at t’Diversity Mill…

Are things falling apart for the establishment’s man at the Equality Commission?

It was not supposed to work like this. The Government's equality watchdog – which is charged with rooting out discrimination on the grounds of sex, race, religion, sexuality, age or disability – was yesterday in the dock charged with discrimination by a member of its own staff.

Is anyone really surprised by this? That a quango doesn’t abide by the rules it expects the rest of us to follow?

The woman before an employment tribunal yesterday was Brid Johal, from Tipperary. (These things are important when it comes to equality). She was an aide to the aide of Mr Phillips. Even aides have aides in the wonderful world of quangos…

Why not? They aren’t spending their own money, after all…

While she was on maternity leave the person who was covering for her – whom we might, unkindly perhaps, describe as the aide of the aide of the aide – was promoted over Ms Johal's head. It happened just as a commission bigwig was holding forth publicly about how unfortunate it was that women get penalised if they take a year off. Ms Johal told the tribunal that she had not been informed that there was a vacancy available despite her bosses' promises that she would be "kept in the loop" while she was away.

Whoops! Sounds like she has them bang to rights. Hope she takes them to the cleaners and..

Oh, wait! We’ll be paying that as well, too, won’t we?

"There is something oddly old-fashioned going on in terms of plum jobs at the higher level," one insider said recently.

You mean, despite what it preaches, it’s as much an ‘old boy’s club’ as any other large institution? I’m shocked. Shocked…

In the next few weeks the National Audit Office is expected to deliver a hard-hitting verdict on the commission's finances, and may even qualify its accounts. Its concerns are said to centre on staff who were given generous redundancy payments when the CRE was wound up, then re-hired by the EHRC. Mr Phillips may soon face questions in Parliament.

Questions will be asked in Parliament? The place where, if you get the heave-ho as Speaker due to incredible incompetence, you’re in line for a peerage to make up for it?

That’ll be fun to watch.

More personally embarrassing for Mr Phillips is the rumbling row over his private business activities. Last year he was forced to quit as director of the Equate Organisation, a management company that he founded – and in which he owns a 70 per cent stake – when it was disclosed that it gave advice to Channel 4 following the Jade Goody race row in the 2007 series of Celebrity Big Brother. He was accused of a conflict of interest between his business and his public-sector role. It was also revealed that his contract with the commission – where he is paid £110,000 for a three-and-a-half day week – allowed him to use the commission's offices for a number of exclusively private business activities.

*cough* Smith Institute *cough*

But it seems that Trev has fallen foul of the racemongers within his own organisation by not being PC enough:

…in April three board members resigned after a public assertion by Mr Phillips that the police were no longer institutionally racist. Mr Phillips argued that the police had "shown a much better understanding of how to deliver a public service that doesn't discriminate just because of the colour of your skin" since the botched investigation into the murder of Stephen Lawrence. But this did not go down well with the old guard.

They had already been incensed by his U-turn on multiculturalism – the notion that a diverse society should celebrate the different cultures of its ethnic groups. Multiculturalism, Phillips argued, might actually be counter-productive.

Well, that attitude will never do…

But don’t weep for Trev. Like all cool cats, he’ll find a way of landing on his feet:

There is now talk that his time at the commission may be nearly up. Some are suggesting deal may be done to allow him to save face, by which he will be offered another three years – on the understanding that he will turn it down. He might be offered a job as head of another quango, the British Council, which has a vacancy at the top following the departure of Neil Kinnock who had to quit when his wife, Glenys, was made a minister.

Ahhh. Cozy…

A New Way Of Dealing With Problems?

An intriguing new approach to the problem of unfit mothers was highlighted in the ‘Observer’ recently:

"You can take this child away from me, but I'll have a baby every year until you let me keep one," a mother shouted recently at a district judge, Nicholas Crichton, as she stormed out of his courtroom. The threat was serious, as Crichton knew only too well - he is the only full-time judge at the specialist family court and it is his job to grant local authority requests to take children into care, and to do so as often as is necessary.

"It is perfectly usual in the Inner London Family Proceedings court to remove the fourth, fifth and sixth children from their mothers," he said. "Those women become pregnant again and again, with each child following their sibling into the care of social services. It's not unheard of for me to remove the eighth or the 10th child from their parents. In one case, I removed the 14th. I have a colleague who has removed the 15th."

Wouldn't it be cheaper to...

No, I'd best not:

Such numbers might stretch the credulity of those unfamiliar with the world in which the family courts operate, but Crichton finds them grindingly repetitive. In his 15 years at the helm of the central London court, these scenarios have become depressingly familiar. As has their explanation.

"These multiple cases of removal are usually the result of a mother with a drink or a drug problem, or both," he said. According to government-funded research, 70% of children come before the family proceedings courts because their parent - almost always a lone mother, herself damaged by a traumatic childhood - has a serious problem with drugs or alcohol, or both. Crichton, however, puts the figure in his courtroom higher, at 80% or 90%.

Damaged children breeding damaged children. Oh, what the permissive society and the abolition of shame hath wrought...

Crichton believes families with drug and alcohol addictions have problems so complex that courts in England and Wales are unable to give them the help they need. "Courts simply take the children away, tell mothers to find a treatment centre and come back when they have been rehabilitated," he said. "This doesn't work because these parents don't have just an addiction problem, they have a whole raft of issues, from housing to domestic violence, learning disabilities and mental health, and so on.

All of which, up to now, have been tackled (or not) individually, by seperate sections of the huge state juggernaut.

Crichton set himself the task of finding the solution. After meeting a judge from the drug dependency court in San Jose, California, he hit upon what he believed was the answer: the Family Drug and Alcohol Court, an entirely new court system dealing solely with families suffering addiction problems.

Which sounds pretty expensive and specialised.

Until you consider the alternative:

The concept of the Family Drug and Alcohol Court is deceptively simple, yet culturally ground-breaking: instead of sending families off to seek help, the support and services are brought to them. Action is swift and tightly co-ordinated. Westminster, Camden and Islington social services refer a proportion of their most vulnerable families to the court. That same day, the mother - and, very occasionally, the father too - meets the specialist court team and starts drawing up the programme they must follow if they are to keep - or win back - their child.

So, no more passing 'clients' from pillar to post, with no department ever liaising or talking to the other.

It sounds promising. But it doesn't sound like the quick fix so beloved of politicians:

In the 17 months it has been up and running, the court has had only three graduates. Although it hopes for 10 more by the end of the year, including one mother who had previously lost six children to the care system but has bonded with her seventh, Crichton admits the figure might surprise some.

So, not everything in the garden is rosy.

This, however, is potentially even more worrying:

Held in a simple room with desks set in a horseshoe, two dozen people can crowd into it for early hearings, including court officials, the legal representatives of each parent and each child, and the local authority team.

As the hearings progress, however, the judge encourages the parent and social workers to appear unrepresented. "It's astounding how those parents will engage with us when lawyers are not present," said Crichton. "Initially inarticulate people become very eloquent and open about what help and support they need to make the necessary changes to their lives."

Hmmm.

Not sure I like the sound of that…

Yes, I Think I Would, Too...

...out of shame:

Lloyds TSB declined to comment.

Cretins...

H/T Rob, in the comments...

They Really Don’t Like Competition, Do They…?

Yasmin is at it again; commenting on the case of the unsuccessful prosecution against Darryn Walker (which 'LfaT' covered so well last week), she’s not happy about the outcome:

The case was dropped and is celebrated as another important knock-back for censorship. Sadly I felt unable to join in with the good cheer.

There’s a shocker…

Something is deeply troubling about the validation given to Walker and those who think they have the right to say whatever they wish and excitedly share with others the thrills of extreme violence against women.

Yes, how dare they think they might have the right to say what they want! Don’t they realise that they aren’t journalists, just little people? The nerve!

The formidable Geoffrey Robertson QC (who rose to fame fighting the case brought against Oz) is very pleased indeed. Jo Glanville, editor of Index Against Censorship (an organisation I support but not blindly) righteously asserts: "The prosecution should not have been brought in the first place. Since the landmark obscenity cases of the 1960s and 1970s, writers have been protected so they can explore the extremes of human behaviour. This case posed a serious threat to that freedom."

Now, if champions of free speech like that were allied against my argument, I’d be shutting up and reflecting on how I might be wrong.

But the Yasmonster is paid by the word, obviously:

Hmmm. Is that so? So If Walker had written, say, the same fantasy but on the sexual torture of Anne Frank, would Index have backed him? Or if a wannabe Muslim fiction writer had done the same, would he have the right to "explore the extremes of human behaviour"? I hope the answer to both these hypothetical questions is No.

I hope it’s ‘Yes’.

Not because I’d want to read it, but because it’s not against the law to do so.

We all exercise judgements on what we say or don't say in public. You stop yourself because you don't want to hurt people, or to instigate a street brawl. There are laws that sacrifice freedom of speech for a greater good- harmony between races, public safety, social gentility and so on.

Some would say we’ve gone far, far too far down that road already…

Not everybody agrees on where the lines should be, but most know there are lines. These restraints belong to a pre-internet era and cannot contain or temper the limitlessness of the web. And yet we must, over the next few years, define the boundaries of what is acceptable in this brazen new world.

We must, must we? Says who?

Peter Tatchell tells me that lies are circulated about him and he receives constant threats. Polly Toynbee and others are subjected to mob fury for no good reason. Are we just supposed to put up with this behaviour because the web must be free?

So, don’t they have any comeback, due to the nature of the Internet?

Yes. They have the same comeback as anyone else:

In 2006, Ukip's Michael Keith won damages after joining a chatroom where anonymous postings smeared his character and in 2008 a CEO of a housing business got a large payout after a rival company carried out a malicious personal smear campaign against him.

See? We don’t need any further laws or restrictions. The system works for the Internet too.

But Yasmin still isn’t satisfied:

We don't yet have a really effective way of restraining material promoting racism, sexism, violence (except against children), homophobia, and other group hatreds. It must come if we are to make the best use of this amazing technology and not let it pull us down to a barbarism posing as freedom.

And obviously, the best way to ‘make use of this amazing technology’ is to let the State regulate and control it.

It’s worked for everything else, right?

Are You Nuts, Or Is It A ‘Cultural Norm’…?

So, it’s recommended that public sector workers like police, teachers, etc should be trained to spot early signs of possible mental illness. Who could object to that?

Oh, there’s always someone…

A mental health group has criticised a report recommending police, teachers and other public sector workers should be trained to spot early signs of mental illness, saying it could marginalise those of black and minority ethnic backgrounds.

How, exactly?

The group claims that, if implemented, the recommendation could increase the chances of people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds being misdiagnosed by amateurs with no professional mental health credentials and lead to further stigmatisation.

Surely, it could increase the chances of everyone, not just black and minority people?

"There are grave concerns over the suggestion that the police or teachers should be trained in spotting signs of mental ill health," said Matilda MacAttram, of BMHUK. "Currently black men are six times more likely to be stopped and searched than their white counterparts, as such it is unwise to suggest that the police should be responsible for spotting signs of mental ill health. It could lead to catastrophic results."

Yes, really catastrophic. It could mean that people who need help will get it sooner. How terrible…

But finally, we get to the meat of their concerns:

"There is a real danger that cultural norms could be misconstrued, which could have disastrous consequences for a child's educational career," she added.

No, I’ve no clue what ‘cultural norms’ happen to just look like insanity, and there’s nothing in this article to give anyone a clue.

Politicians Don't Possess These, Peter...

Peter Hitchens on the New Tory Gayness:

Forgive them for what? Section 28 resulted from a fuss over the appearance of books aimed at children, intended to spread the view that single-sex couples could bring up children without any disadvantage to those children.

I still remember the titles: ‘Jenny Lives With Eric And Martin’ and ‘Heather Has Two Mommies’.

Less than 25 years ago, only revolutionaries such as Ken Livingstone endorsed this sort of thing.

Yes, but that was before he found himself between a rock and a hard place, cozying up to such notoriously ungay-friendly characters as Quaradawi.

Politicians, eh? So fickle…

Nowadays, opinion formers and MPs have been scared into conformity, and the unhappy majority have learned to keep quiet about their concerns, for fear of the Thought Police.

This supposedly wicked law was little more than an expression of opinion by Parliament.

Nobody was ever prosecuted under its provisions. Try as they may, the homosexual liberation movement have never produced evidence of any martyrdoms resulting from it.

That hasn’t stopped them from regarding it as the worst disaster to befall the UK since Take That broke up though…

How far into the swamp will the Tories allow Mr Cameron to lead them before they realise what he is?

Peter, Peter, Peter…

They know full well what he is. They don’t care, because he’ll lead them to the promised land of government, and power for its own sake.

Principles? Who believes in them any more?

'Rare'. Sure...

Oh look!

And we were just discussing, over at Tim Worstall's site, how hapless lefty 'johnb' thinks these only come along once every six months...

Crying Wolf….?

This is in most newspapers today:

Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism command fears that right-wing extremists will stage a deadly terrorist attack in Britain to try to stoke racial tensions, the Guardian has learned.

Yes, there’s a lot to fear from the cunning, ninja-like warriors of the extreme right…

Senior officers say it will be a "spectacular" that is designed to kill. The counter-terrorism unit has redeployed officers to increase its monitoring of the extreme right's potential to stage attacks.

I don’t think it’s going to take Sherlock Holmes to monitor these blundering incompetents, is it?

So why the sudden concern?

Commander Shaun Sawyer told a meeting of British Muslims concerned about the danger to their communities that police were responding to the growing threat.

Ah. Now it’s all clear…

Sawyer revealed that the Met commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, had asked the counter-terrorism command, SO15, to examine what the economic downturn would mean for far-right violence. The assessment concluded that the recession would increase the possibility of it.

I’m a little confused here. Why would an economic downturn only fuel ‘right wing’ violence? Isn’t everyone likely to be affected by it equally?

Sources have told the Guardian that while they believe the neo-Nazi terrorist threat has grown, they have no specific intelligence of an attack.

But they plan to ramp up the rhetoric anyway. Why not?

There might, after all, be brownie points in it:

"There is an increased possibility of violence from the far right. There is a trend," said one senior source, adding that the ideology of the violent right was driven by "people who don't like immigration, people who don't like Islam. We're seeing a resurgence of anti-semitism as well."

So, not ‘liking’ something is now akin to ‘extremism, is it? Hmm, I wonder where they got that idea from?

And I wonder if the rise in anti-semitism is caused by the right-wing extremists, or the left…?

The meeting at which Sawyer spoke was staged by the Muslim Safety Forum, whose chair, Abdurahman Jafar, said: "Muslims are the first line of victims in the extreme right's campaign of hate and division and they make no secret about that. Statistics show a strong correlation between the rise of racist and Islamophobic hate crime and the ascendancy of the BNP."

So how much of a threat is this really?

Well, they have to go back over ten years to find the last real threat:

It is a decade since an extreme rightwing terrorist has used bombs to claim lives in Britain. In 1999, David Copeland struck three targets in London. His attack on a gay pub in Soho, London, killed three people and left scores injured.

So far, the erstwhile successors to Copeland have proven themselves to be hopeless underachievers.

But times have changed:

The senior source said: "When Copeland attacked we did not have the religious tensions with the Muslim community. What kind of schism would a Copeland-type event cause now?"

Oh, absolutely! I remember when the 7/7 atrocity and its follow-up brought white Christian people out onto the streets, burning and looting Muslim shops and homes in an orgy of viole..

What’s that you say? It didn’t happen?

How odd.

Update: Predictably, prize tit and media go-to boy for all things 'effnik' Sunny Hundal is wetting his knickers, wailing 'OMG! OMG! The rightwingers are coming! Flee! Flee for your lives!'

What's the phrase that springs to mind when I read this drivel?

Ah, yes. 'Useful idiot'...

Water, Water Everywhere...

...and what an opportunity for snooping and control freakery:

Swimming pool owners, those with large gardens and those in areas prone to droughts should be moved onto water meters as a matter of urgency, with companies using satellite images from Google Earth and aerial photographs to ascertain heavy water users.

These are just some of the recommendations put forward by Anna Walker, a leading civil servant, in her 220-page interim report into domestic water bills, commissioned by the Department for the Environment.

You can just imaging her little heart swelling with delight at the thought of commanding all that power, can't you?

And don't think it's just millionaires who have to look up anxiously in the sky - she has plans for everyone:

Every household in Britain should eventually be moved onto a water meter, at cost of £3 billion. (Ed: Yes, that's three more billion we haven't got..)

Lavatories with large cisterns and large shower heads should be banned from being sold.

Domestic appliances should carry water efficiency labels, with the least efficient washing machines and dishwashers outlawed.

But, you say, aren't we a notoriously wet island, surrounded by water?

Yes. And don't think that makes a difference:

A spokesman for Anna Walker said: "This should be seen as a wake up call. Water is going to become much more scarce in summer because of climate change, and the population is increasing.

"We either spend billions on desalination plants and building extra water storage, or we do something about saving water now."

Well, if we're going to 'spend billions' anyway, it might as well be on the desalination plants and water storage, shouldn't it? That's the sensible thing to...

Oh. What's that?

Ah, right. Of course. That doesn't give the State the opportunity it desires to employ even more people and poke their noses even more into our private lives than they already are doing...