What Are We Paying These People For?

Lord Anderson's report described how a Prevent 'intervention provider' met Ali, then a sixth former, only once after his school raised concerns he was being radicalised. Following the meeting at a McDonalds in Croydon in January 2015 the intervention provider described Ali as a 'pleasant and informed young man' in a report. They added that Ali 'does not agree' with extremists including Islamic state and al-Qaeda, and 'has no grievances against the west or other faiths or groups'.

...because it's certainly not 'to keep us all safe from terrorism' is it? 

An unnamed Prevent counter-terrorism case officer – a Scotland Yard civilian police worker - then emailed their colleague: 'He seems to be a great person, are you still all right to do a lesson at his school, do you think it is worth it?'

A 'great person'? That's a value judgement, not one of risk posed by the subject.

Lord Anderson's report went on: 'Ultimately, the intervention provider accepted what they described as a decision taken by others that no further meetings were required.'

‘Not me, guv, big boys did it and ran away!’ 

The 156-page report also said a document describing the intervention provider's contact with Ali was 'overlooked' by the Home Office. It had been sent to civil servants in 2021 but was not provided to a previous review of the case, and has only now come to light. It was disclosed to Lord Anderson only on June 25. 

Where was it? Who failed to provide it? We’ll never find out. 

'I told the Home Office that I considered this a significant matter, and asked that checks be made to ensure that no further sources of relevant evidence had been disregarded,' yesterday's report said. 'The Home Office responded with an assurance that it has conducted a thorough search and that no additional information has been detected.'

And you accepted that assurance? 

And They Will Keep On Failing, Because There Are No Consequences For Failure

Another day, another failing by the State' agents:

Police and social services failings may have contributed to the fatal stabbing of a 'peaceful and loving' musician by a mentally ill teenage girl, a coroner has ruled.

And of course, in that modern day inversion of reality, the mad one with the lethal weapon is the one who is considered the ‘vulnerable’ one and not her innocent victim:

The girl - who was known to be vulnerable and was on a Child Protection Plan - had been flagged as posing a 'high risk' and often 'carried a knife' around with her.

And no-one thought that might be a good enough reason to ensure she didn’t simply wander the streets? 

Just four days before the fatal attack, the girl - referred to as Child A - had gone missing from her home in Three Bridges, Crawley in West Sussex. Police located her but were unable to return her home, because her mother was away in London. Officers decided not to take her into protective custody and instead allowed her to stay with a woman who claimed to be her 'cousin'.

Well, perhaps they didn’t have a good reason to disbelieve th….

Oh! 

However the woman was not a relative and was known to police as a drug user with previous criminal convictions.

*sighs* 

Ms Schofield also said social services had failed to hold an emergency strategy meeting which had been organised when the child went missing.Ms Schofield added: 'It is possible that had these matters been addressed, the perpetrator may not have been in a position to carry out the act which led to Mr Hendrick's death.'

Mr Hendricks said: 'The police and authorities failed, they failed in every sense of the word.'

Yes, as they've done so very many times! And because there are never any consequences for failure, they will keep on doing it. 

Police arrested the girl, who had a criminal record, and she was later judged to be suffering from a 'significant abnormality of mind'. The teenager pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility at Bristol Crown Court in 2022 and was sentenced to nine years - five in custody and four on extended licence.

Meaning, 'in a town near you, at some point', never anywhere senior judges or police officers live, of course. The risk of her reverting to type is for you to take, never them. 

Another ‘I Don’t Understand. Nobody I Know Voted For Nixon!’ Moment In The ‘Guardian’

 

I’ve worked with the super-rich my whole career. I worked for more than a decade as a lawyer advising high net worth individuals, and many of the people I worked with had assets worth more than £10m.

And now you're writing articles in 'the Guardian'? My, I guess you weren't all that good at it... 

Many of the super-rich have ties all over the world, decamping to homes in the south of France in the summer, or their Alpine chalets for ski holidays. Some have constructed more contrived connections to places like Singapore or Bermuda to reduce their tax bills. But regardless of their undeniable worldliness, the super-rich love living in the UK.There is a prestige to owning property in the UK. A bolthole in London allows you to visit the Frieze art fair in Regent’s Park or sit on Centre Court at Wimbledon. On the practical side, many are enticed by how easy it is to set up and conduct business in the UK. Of paramount concern to certain ultra-wealthy families is that the UK offers peace of mind in terms of affording them refuge from those who might otherwise see them as a target for kidnapping in other jurisdictions.

Is it just me, or is there a faint whiff of envy emanating from this article? 

This hasn’t stopped the Times from publishing endless doomsday prophecies of a wealth exodus on an epic scale. The endlessly repeated trope is that the ultra-wealthy will flee at the first signs of higher taxes, taking their tax revenue and business investments with them, and having the overall effect of lowering growth. However, recent research by Tax Justice Network, with Patriotic Millionaires and Tax Justice UK, discredited previous, similar claims as vastly overexaggerated.

Ah, I see where we are going now.... 

We have an economy in which work doesn’t pay – the income of people who work for a living is taxed at higher rates than that of those who earn money from simply having money.

Any normal person would therefore suggest the answer is to reduce the amount of tax on people, but of course, this is the 'Guardian', and so their solution is to rob from the rich. 

Before becoming a private wealth lawyer, I hadn’t realised that the way the ultra-wealthy earn their income is quite different from the majority of us. While the average person earns money from their daily work, the ultra-wealthy make eye-watering sums simply from owning assets. They generate wealth from investment funds and rent and sales profits from their property empires.

And do investment fund mean that the money disappears? No, it's invested in other businesses! 

I now work with people focused on giving away their wealth.

There's a big need for prople like you? What do you do? Hold their hands as they write a voluntary donation cheque to the Treasury? 

They recognise the privileges they have and acknowledge that they have benefited from a tax system that protects their wealth at the expense of ordinary people. Many of them tell me they see their responsibility of paying higher taxes on their wealth as merely practising good citizenship and contributing to the benefits of living in the UK.

Well, nothing to stop them. The Treasury accepts donations, after all. But of course, it's not enough for those motivated by the politics of envy... 

The moral and pragmatic case for a wealth tax is clear. Those with the broadest shoulders can and should contribute more.

And if they don't want to do it voluntarily, they must be forced to.

Kindness Can Get You And Your Pets Slaughtered...

A common mantra on the progressive side is; 'Be Kind'. It seems innocent enough, but as with everything else from the Left, be warned...

In a tearful statement, a colleague from Mr Brown's law firm told the hearing that the victim would have helped anyone if he could, adding that Naveed had taken away any 'future memories'. She said: 'He wasn't just a 72-year-old-man tragically killed by his housemate, he was a solicitor, a boss, a partner, a kind man.'

Tragically, that drove him to take in a foreign nutcase as a houseguest, who promptly repaid that kindness by killing him. And his cat. 

Habiba Naveed, 35, also said she was 'Jesus' and had been 'sent to eliminate evil from the world' after battering her 72-year-old landlord to death and stabbing his pet cat in the neck. Naveed previously denied the murder of solicitor Christopher Brown, but pleaded guilty to his manslaughter.She also admitted causing unnecessary suffering to his cat Snow by stabbing him in the neck on or before August 15 last year. 

At a hearing at the Old Bailey on Thursday, Judge Sarah Munro KC imposed a hospital order under Section 37 of the Mental Health Act and a restriction order under Section 41 - meaning Naveed can be detained indefinitely.

But almost certainly won’t be, she’ll be released as ‘cured’ soon as so many are, to a location well away from where ever it is that Judge Sarah Munro or any of the senior consultants at her mental hospital live, of course…

H/T : Steve Ludek via Twitter