Courage - The New Definition

Police last night paid tribute to the victim of three men who filmed themselves sexually abusing her, as she lay comatose in an East Oxford flat... Speaking after the sentencing, Det Sgt Simon Beaton said: “I would like to express my appreciation to the victim for her courage, both during the investigation and throughout the lengthy trial.

“Without her perseverance and strength this would never have reached the conclusion it has today.”

Those reading the details of the case (yes, it's this one again), however, may have a different word or words to describe the 'victim':

The trio carried out the attack in November last year as the victim lay passed out on the sofa after drinking three vodka and Red Bull cocktails.

The jury heard that she had been invited to the flat for a “social evening”, but became so intoxicated that she passed out.

Yes, 'courage' isn't the word that first comes to mind, I have to say. Not is 'strength' or 'perseverance'...

And there's no excuse, either. If the police want to see real courage, they don't have to look very far.

You Just Want To Bang All Heads Together...

Details of shocking claims that MPs swore at and bullied staff in charge of a crackdown on expenses can be revealed for the first time today.

It's really one of those stories where you think everyone involved needs to be told to grow the hell up:

Today’s revelations follow the resignation of IPSA operations director Nigel Gooding in June after rows with MPs over the tough new expenses regime. Mr Gooding, 46, said he left ‘for the sake of my health and sanity’.

You had a job that the majority of people in the country would kill for - getting to grips with the troughing swines who nearly brought the country to its knees. I'd have done it for HALF your salary...

Ayrshire Labour MP Brian Donohoe, rebuked after a row at a delay in paying his wages, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I had many a run-in with IPSA but I didn’t threaten anyone. I said they owed me £6,500 and if they didn’t pay it I’d sue them. Hey presto, I was paid in days.’

Yup, threatening to sue someone isn't threatening anyone. Apparently.

I think it helps to be so completely divorced from reality that you are a Labour MP in the first place to be able to work by that kind of logic, though...

Even though the IPSA staff bent over backwards to assist, some of these dinosaurs couldn't adapt:

A two-hour lesson was arranged for Dennis Skinner to overcome his aversion to computers, but the veteran Labour Left-winger said: ‘I can’t bloody do this.’

Told his staff could do it for him, he said: ‘None of them use computers either. Why can’t we use paper like before? What a waste of money.’

From a representative of a Labour government that computerised (at eye-watering cost, and usually to worse effect) every system that would hold still long enough, that must be worth some kind of chutzpah award!

Tempers flared when IPSA policy director John Sills had a two-hour showdown with massed Labour MPs that colleagues say left him ‘shaking with shock’.

One said: ‘It was like the Somme. Poor John was a nervous wreck.’

Like the Somme? Presumably, without the blood, mud, dysentery and enemy fire?

The MPs demanded: ‘How much do you earn? Come on, tell us.’

As he defended an £85,000 salary, MPs (on £65,000) shouted: ‘That’s more than us.’

Pointing at wheelchair-bound Aberdeen Labour MP Anne Begg, MPs cried out: ‘Anne will never cope with the expenses cuts.’

Mr Sills pleaded with her: ‘But we’ve promised we’ll look after you, you know that don’t you?’

He said there was extra aid for disabled MPs but was drowned out. One MP quipped: ‘If we’d had a rope, he’d have been hanged.’

Funny you should mention rope. Rope was what sprang to mind as I was reading this...

IPSA operations director Nigel Gooding objected to ‘aggressive’ comments when Mr Ainsworth told him to ‘stop screwing me around’ over constituency expenses cuts.

Today Mr Ainsworth said: ‘Mr Gooding promised to return my calls but never did. I told him it was unacceptable and he had no right to screw me around. He claimed that was abuse, so then he did get some abuse. He was incapable of doing the job.’

Bob Ainsworth ought to be the best judge of who is incapable of doing a job. God knows, he only has to look in a mirror...

I Find It Hard To Blame The Police Entirely For This One…

A "highly vulnerable" young addict died from an overdose in a police cell while a custody officer surfed the internet and ignored his requests for help, a damning judicial investigation has found.

Yes, that’s bad, no doubt about it.

But read on…

The fatal accident inquiry found Tayside police custody assistant Stuart Lewis was deliberately sitting in a quiet room in the cell block, out of sight of the assistance lights linked to each cell, while he surfed the net in breach of police regulations.

Kristoffer Batt, a 17-year-old known addict who had taken diazepam before he was arrested, twice tried to raise the alarm before Lewis responded. Lewis then failed to ask Batt why he was calling for help and failed to turn off the warning light, making it impossible for Batt to call again for help.

Hmm, so he didn’t monitor the system as he should have done, and the lad died from the diazepam?

Well, no…

By then the teenager had taken a fatal dose of heroin, which he had smuggled into his cell between his buttocks.

/facepalm

Yes, it’s a bad thing that he wasn’t searched and it wasn’t discovered, but let’s face facts here, people; the police didn’t hold him down and inject him with the stuff! He took it himself!

Despite having been in custody repeatedly, including seven arrests in 2007, Batt was not strip-searched when he was brought into force headquarters in Dundee…

We aren’t talking about a first-timer here, clearly. This man was a habitual drug-user and criminal. Yes, the procedures that might have kept him safe (until the next time? And for what?) weren’t followed, but ultimately, the only one truly responsible for Batt’s death is Batt.

He was playing Russian roulette with his life, and simply happened to finally select the loaded chamber while on police premises…

Ugh!

Marie Stopes International offers employees, their partners and children free abortions as part of its benefits package - which also includes cheap gym membership, reduced rates at theme parks and an annual health check for £10.

What next? Free euthanasia if you work for these people?

Some Pictures Are More Equal Than Others...

Much disgust over the actions of the police in publishing photographs of suspected prostitutes on their wbsite, first noticed on Twitter, and All Copped Out picks it up. Al Jahom has a good article on it.

No doubt Jack of Kent (who Tweeted it on Saturday) will be posting something soon.

It was unfortunate the story broke on the same day that the police were whining about this:

Facebook is wrecking criminal trials, according to detectives.

Victims and witnesses using the social networking site to identify a suspect are jeopardising justice, police have warned.

The National Detectives Forum, a specialist unit which advises the Police Federation, has revealed that a number of trials have collapsed after victims and witnesses played detective, browsing Facebook and Twitter to find a suspect.

Well, that might be annoying, I'll grant you, but I'm not sure what, if anything, you could do about it.

Oh. Wait...

Now detectives are calling for legislation to prevent victims carrying out their own inquiries on the web to track down offenders.

Fantastic! How would that work, exactly? Do you even have any idea?

One officer from Leicestershire Police told Police Review: 'There seems to be a gap in legislation and in the understanding of the Crown Prosecution Service and courts that there is an entire community which is on Facebook and Twitter and everything else.'

And there's a similar lack of understanding in the police service force that making something an offence isn't always the answer...

Lord Judge issued new guidance at the Court of Appeal that jurors needed to understand that 'although the internet is part of their daily lives, the case must not be researched there'.

Appeals are starting to reach the courts where defendants claim their trials were jeopardised by jurors resorting to information from personal computers, mobile phones and social networking sites.

Jurors will now be warned about the internet in addition to the traditional instruction that they must not discuss their case with family or friends.

So, I wonder how the Met can justify publishing the details of sex workers. Isn't that going to similarly jeopardise any future case?

'Hard Evidence', Eh..?

Parents who smoke in cars in front of small children are "committing a form of child abuse", a leading GP has said.

Hmm, I think all that money they were paid under the last government went to some of their heads...

Professor Steve Field, chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, has condemned society's attitudes to food, alcohol and cigarettes.

Evidently, no GPs ever smoke or drink or are too fond of takeaways...

In a letter to the Observer newspaper, he said parents had to take more responsibility for their children's health - and set a good example.

He said irresponsible behaviour led to high levels of disease and early death.

He called on parents, mothers-to-be, the obese, smokers and drinkers to turn into healthy role models for their children.

'Do it! Do it for the children!'

The thing that really made me choke on my cornflakes (with full fat milk) is this, though:

He said GPs based the advice they gave on hard evidence.

Hahahahahahaha....

*pauses for breath*

Hahahahahahaha....

Cheers, doc! For a minute there, I laughed so hard I clean forgot about the alcohol 'limits' based on sod all evidence, the reliance on BMI in a 'one size fits all' policy, the way actual evidence that is politically unfortunate is promptly ignored, etc, et-bloody-cetera.

Can't wait to see Dick Puddlecote and Leg-Iron tear this pompous cretin a new one...

Update: Longrider gets there first.

Sunday Funnies

I now have a lot more respect for the Mounties...

Just Give Us The Money – We Know How To Spend It Better Than You!

Peter Wilby (Yes, he of ‘Why is everyone upset about the death tax?’ infamy) in ‘CiF’:

It is surely admirable – isn't it? – that 40 US billionaires, led by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, have signed the "giving pledge" to donate half their fortunes to charity.

I suspect you’re going to tell us the answer’s ‘No’, aren’t you?

Far better that they open their wallets to deserving causes than that they spend yet more money on yachts, carbon-emitting private jets or garish mansions.

Mmm, because buying those things doesn’t stimulate the ship-building/aerospace/house-building/decorating/servicing industries, does it?

It doesn’t create employment, they simply fall, fully-formed, from the Boeing Tree or can be plucked from the Mansion Bush…

The filthy rich, or some of them, have shown they have a heart.

Well, that’s grudging of you, Peter. Any chance of you showing you have a brain?

But let's be clear. Money paid to charity is exempt from tax; the US treasury already loses at least $40bn (£25bn) a year from tax breaks for donations. So billionaires, not the democratically elected and (at least theoretically) accountable representatives of the people, get to decide on the good causes.

Ahhh, see that term ‘loses’?

Peter regards it as the government’s money, to which they are rightfully entitled, not the money earned by an individual, for them to decide to spend or not...

As Michael Edwards, a former World Bank adviser, asked in a study for the thinktank Demos, Small Change: Why Business Won't Change the World: "Why should the rich and famous decide how schools are going to be reformed, or what drugs will be supplied at prices affordable to the poor, or which civil society groups get funded for their work?" And even if they give away half their money (or 99% in Buffett's case), billionaires will still be rich.

That’s the problem, isn’t it, at least for you, Peter. It’s not the fact that people are poor that concerns you. It’s that people are rich.

When they shouldn’t be, according to you.

Their generosity, however, helps to legitimise inequality and head off political protest.

It clearly hasn’t stopped you writing columns in CiF or pushing your progressive agenda everywhere you go, has it?

You may think, if we're talking about mosquito nets to stop children dying from malaria or drugs for HIV, that it doesn't matter where the money comes from.

Well, quite. Why not ask those in receipt of such vital charity from the west, charity that only becomes vital in the first place because their elected (or not!) representatives would prefer to add another gold-leaf seat cover to their diamond-encrusted Range Rover, rather than spend the money on their countrymen?

Because the answer you get might not suit you, perhaps?

In the short term, it probably doesn't. But rich business people tend to bring their own values to charitable giving, and there's a danger they will undermine those of the voluntary sector.

Aha! Now we get to the crux of the matter. He who pays the piper inevitably calls the tune. And that tune may not be music to Peter’s ears…

Wealthy benefactors usually want efficiency, clearly defined targets, measurable outcomes, quick results.

Oh, horrors!

Who could possibly make such bourgeois concerns a priority? Why, when you are spending other people’s money, such things are merely fripperies…

They tend to select charities as they would select suppliers of goods and services to their companies.

What!? You mean, they ignore things that might conceivably advance their own political agenda or make them look good at Islington dinner parties in favour of projects likely to make a real difference? Barbarians! *swoons*

Some bodies provide data that help donors decide which charities to support: in the US, for instance, GiveWell records effectiveness according to "the most lives saved for the least money". These things aren't necessarily wrong – many charities would benefit from more rigour – but they don't always translate easily to the voluntary sector. They are not readily applicable to the more diffuse, long-term aims of civil society organisations, nor to their more transparent, less top-down decision-making processes.

Methinks you protest too much, Peter…

The Gates Foundation wants to "give where we can effect the greatest change". But the greatest change is likely to come from transforming the economic system and the pattern of property ownership. Will Gates fund projects that undermine his own power and economic status?

Well, no. Because it’s not a zero sum game, is it?

It’s entirely possible for Gates to stay rich and the poor to get richer at the same time. Should that be what we all strive for?

If the rich really wish to create a better world, they can sign another pledge: to pay their taxes on time and in full; to stop lobbying against taxation and regulation; to avoid creating monopolies; to give their employees better wages, pensions, job protection and working conditions; to make goods and use production methods that don't kill or maim or damage the environment or make people ill.

And even if they do all that (those few that aren’t doing it now, of course), would you be happy?

I suspect the answer’s no…

Brewer's Droop - The Ideal Defence!

A man accused of sexually assaulting a woman said he could not have raped her because he suffers from impotence if he is drunk.

And how likely is he to drink?

Well...

Mohammed Shahjahan, 27, of Slaymaker Close, Headington, Oxford, denies rape and assault by penetration, while Feizal Ali, 25, of Howard Street, in East Oxford, denies assault by penetration.

Ummm...

Giving evidence, Shahjahan said he had previously had a sexual relationship with the woman — who cannot be named for legal reasons — after first meeting her at a house party in 2008 but did not have sex with her on the night.

And we wonder why the conviction rate is so low?

H/T Anna Raccoon via email.

Be Careful What You Ask For…

…because when you get it, you might not like it:

Immigration officials charged with carrying out the government's pledge to end the detention of children in immigration centres have launched a scheme designed to deport them and their families from the country within weeks.

Ha!

The move dashes expectations of a more liberal alternative to child detention.

Good!

Families with children facing removal are to be given a two-week ultimatum to leave the country voluntarily, according to a document seen by the Guardian.

If they fail to go they will be told they will be deported "at some point" within the next two weeks, sometimes without being given a specific date or time to get ready.

Naturally, this has brought the fakecharities and other parasites crawling out of the woodwork to protest this interference in their living:

The Refugee Council said last night it would be extremely concerned if families were given only two weeks to leave the country when they may have been in Britain for many months or even years.

Well, indeed. If I were them, I’d be pretty upset to see my regular meal ticket disappearing on a plane, perhaps never to return…

"Families must be fully informed of their options throughout the asylum process," said Donna Covey of the Refugee Council. "At the end of the process, it is imperative that families have enough time to access legal advice to ensure that they will be safe on return, and they can settle their affairs, and, importantly, prepare their children to leave the country. Many of these families will have a well-founded fear about returning to a country where there is conflict or human rights abuses, and we must ensure that they can return safely and in dignity. The welfare of children involved in any return must be paramount."

Which is one long whine that the British public voted for an alternative approach to the one preferred by Ms Covey and it’s just not faaaaaaiiir that they appear to be keeping that promise.

But the UKBA document, leaked to Socialist Worker, suggests that boosting the removal rate, rather than humanitarian considerations, is the priority for ministers.

And for the public, who are sick to death of seeing the money wasted on pointless legal challenges championed by the likes of the Refugee Council with the intent of prolonging the removal process.