I Have A Good Use For Plastic Bags...

....we should stick one over the head of Ben Stafford, from the Campaign to Protect Rural England:

Marks & Spencer has been accused of "misleading" the public over its campaign to cut plastic bag use in its stores.

...

But a survey of stores by The Sunday Telegraph found staff often encouraged customers to avoid charges by offering them several smaller bags, which are still free. In some cases, the charges were just being waived.

Ben Stafford, of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said: "If a policy like that is to work, you can't have loop-holes. You should be targeting them all, not putting a 5p charge on some and an exemption on the rest."

Well, you see Ben, M&S is a retail store, and depends on its customers. It's also losing money at the moment, and would like to keep those customers if it can. Not p*****g them off by refusing bags for their purchases is a really good way of doing that.

Or they could just jack in the retail business and start soaking the taxpayer and begging for charity money instead, like the Campaign to Protect Rural England...

Ahhh, Sensitive Wee Soul...

Another £5000 of taxpayer funding poured down the drain:

Scotland Yard's most prolific sharpshooter has been secretly awarded £5,000 in damages for “hurt feelings” because a female police chief jokingly called him a “serial killer”.

And why didn't the Met resolve this internally with a dressing down for both parties?

Sources say the Met agreed to the payout after an assessment that going to a tribunal would cost at least £150,000. A senior official said: “We made an economic decision to settle.”

Congratulations! You've just made a rod for your own backs there.

What are you going to do when 'Killer' decides that he dosn't like the shade of blue in his uniform, or that his gun is too heavy? Or when Commander Akers decides that finding her quip unfunny is a result of the Met's 'institutionalised mysogyny' and demands her own £5000...?

Still, it's not the Met's money, really. Is it...?

"I Know You Are, But What Am I..?"

Labour has said the Conservatives are in "disarray" after the resignation of London deputy mayor Ray Lewis.

'Disarray', eh...?

Well, there's a lot of that going around...

What Isn't Thatcherism To Blame For...?

...because it seems knife crime is the latest thing:

The singer said he worries for the safety of his own young children growing up in a country where stabbings are increasingly frequent.

"It's horrible. It's not just in London, I was up in Liverpool the other day and it's the same there.

"The scumbags are taking over the streets" he said.

"I don't know what David Cameron and Gordon Brown are going to do about it.

"It all goes back to the Thatcher years. It sounds like a cliché but that's when the rot set in."

He added: "me and the Missus sit up and talk about it at night, about how our kids are going to grow up. I don't know what you can do.

"Kids are so de-sensitised to it. It's really scary how it's all changed.

"In my day, status was about trying to be somebody - now it's about trying to kill somebody."

Oh, I remember the Thatcher Years - the miner's strikes, the stabbings, the Iranian Embassy siege, the ERM crisis, the stabbings, the Falklands War, the stabbings, Broadwater Farm riot, the stabbings.... (some of that may not be true).

I know what you can do, Mr Gallagher, for starters - stop asking fifth-rate warblers their political opinions and stop treating them with any more weight than your average person on the street. How about that..?

Government: We Can Trust Them With Our Data

Except it seems that, no, we can't:

Hundreds of innocent people have been wrongly branded as criminals by the Government agency set up to vet people working with children, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

People applying to take up jobs as teachers, nurses, childminders and even those volunteering to work with youth groups are likely to have been among those falsely accused of wrongdoing by the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB).

Those wrongly accused by the CRB face having their careers blighted or being stigmatised by their communities. They also face having to endure an appeals process to clear their names.

Signs of life from the opposition, too!

Last night, the Conservatives said that blocking innocent people from working with children was "completely unacceptable" and that the CRB needed an urgent overhaul.

Yes, well, think it needs a bit more than that, frankly...

‘Teaching..? Who Has Time For That Anymore!

If the DEA proposals to have ‘preparing good little future worker drones’ into the curriculum weren’t daft enough, you can rely on Ed Balls to come up with an even more outlandish suggestion:

Schools are to be judged on how they improve children's 'wellbeing' by tackling obesity, drug abuse and teenage pregnancy.

Teachers will be expected to monitor and record up to 31 detailed aspects of their pupils' lives at home and at school.

Yes, because they’ve solved the ‘reading and writing’ problems and have 100% literacy for school leavers, right? What else are they to do with their time…?

The controversial plans come as Children's Secretary Ed Balls launches a clampdown on hundreds of 'coasting' schools that are not doing enough to raise standards.

He is introducing new legal powers that will force complacent local authorities to take action, even against schools that have good exam results but are not displaying sufficient progress year-on-year.

‘Progress’ in what, precisely…? Ah:

In addition, the Government is planning to introduce 'strong school level indicators' that will measure how much the country's primaries and secondaries are contributing to pupils' well-being.

Schools and local authorities could be made to gather data about 'on site health services' such as contraception clinics which hand out condoms and morning after pills.

Schools will also be expected to monitor healthy eating, look out for 'signs of abuse or neglect' (Ed – this is new..?) and record whether pupils walk or cycle to school.

The report says that this 'robust information' will be used by Ofsted in inspections from 2009 onwards. It will also allow comparisons between schools.

Whoever came up with this is living in utter fantasy land. Or should be sectioned…

For once, I’m in full agreement with a union official:

Mick Brookes, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: 'We see an increasing apparent responsibility for the ills of all society being planted on to schools.

'The danger of that, of course, is that they will be distracted from their core task which is good quality education.

'For some schools, the well-being agenda is one that isn't particularly applicable.

'The children appear to be thriving in their lives and we could have a reverse situation where these schools will be at the bottom of any such statistical analysis.'

He’s not alone, either:

Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said: 'The Government seems obsessed with gathering statistics about every aspect of children's lives.

'It's worse than a nanny state. It's reducing children and schools to a series of numbers.'

This government is on the way out. There’s now no question. This bonkers proposal is just another nail in the coffin, and an inside job to boot.

But will Cameron’s team be any better..? I’d hope to see robust condemnation of this proposal, and a vow to scrap it the minute the Conservatives get in. But I wonder….

‘How About A Rendition Of ‘Mammy’ While You’re Here…?’

A white actor “blacked-up” to play an African government official in a role-play exercise staged by the elite squad leading the fight against organised crime, The Times has learnt.

The incident, which has led to accusations of crass racism, occurred in a recruitment process for candidates applying to be overseas liaison officers for the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca).

So far, so amusing. However, it seems the recruits they are attracting aren’t quite up to the potential expected of an organisation with’law enforcement powers and harm reduction responsibilities’, because the first thing some of them did was go whining about it to the union and management:

The situation shocked several people taking part and provoked at least one official complaint.

One Soca source said: “The most infuriating thing about this is that there are a lot of people in the organisation who cannot see what they have done wrong.

Not just in the organisation, Mr Anonymous. I think a lot of the public would regard this as a storm in a teacup too.

Jeremy Gautrey of the PCS union, which represents Soca staff, confirmed that he had been consulted over the incident. He said: “If the accusation is true it is extremely concerning. What this identifies is a clear need for equality and diversity training within the organisation to make sure this sort of thing never takes place again.

Bill Hughes, the director-general of Soca, was said to be furious when he heard of the exercise and ordered an immediate inquiry. It is being carried out by Andy Baker, one of Soca’s deputy directors and a former head of murder inquiries at Scotland Yard.

A spokesman for the agency refused to discuss specific details of the allegations but confirmed that an internal review was in progress.

Ah, well, who cares about the fight against organised crime, when we can pursue the person who employed an actor to wear blackface, grievously shocking the delicate sensibilities of our future steely-eyed investigators.

Soca has been affected by repeated reports of low morale among staff who complain that the agency is undertaking too little investigative work and is burdened by a top-heavy management structure.

Yeah. This’ll fix that problem, won’t it…?

Learning: Only Ever To Be Undertaken By Qualified ProfessionalsTM

Young people are being left "globally illiterate" as school fails to prepare them for the wider world, according to a new study.
Half of children believe people of different backgrounds and cultures should not live in the same country, it is claimed.

And a fifth of teenagers have never discussed worldwide news stories or problems, such as the crisis in Zimbabwe or the Beijing Olympics, at school.

Oh, horrors! What shall we do? The end of civilisation is surely upon us, unless our elite imparts this information to our children….

Hetan Shah, DEA chief executive, said: "In secondary schools there seems to be an overwhelming focus on getting pupils through the tests. Teachers are finding it more and more difficult to bring in some of these wider issues.

"I've heard of incidences of children going into schools and saying 'What's going on in Zimbabwe', and the teacher saying they don't have time to get into those issues."

Now, he has a point about teaching to targets, but the rest of it is the usual babble you’d expect from a hired mouthpiece for another money- and publicity-hungry charity. God forbid the children so curious about Zimbabwe access this information from anyone but the Government!

Kids: You probably have PCs and Internet access – if you are curious about Zimbabwe or world affairs, leave off Facebook and downloading the latest MP3s and try Google. I’m reliably informed that even modern gaming systems can access the net, where all kinds of information from the MSM and blogs is available; it’s not just so you can access information about how to progress in ‘Grand Theft Auto IV’.

There are still free libraries in most areas (though the government is working on that!) and they do sometimes have internet access if the thought of cracking open a book or a newspaper sends you into spasm.

You could always ask your parents, too…

But now we come to the real meat of this little study:

Mr Shah called on the Government to make world issues a central part of education, saying employers were no longer interested in individuals with a "little England" mentality.

"The Government wants young people to have a 'world class' education but a key question is whether it is preparing them for the world," he said.

"Ahead of the G8 meeting to discuss world issues, we need to face reality. An education system that leaves English children globally illiterate, without a basic understanding of world events or problems and intolerant towards those from different backgrounds is one that sets children up to fail."

It’s all about getting a compliant workforce that has been spoonfed government propaganda since before they could toddle. No free thinkers need apply.

The NHS: Reducing Healthcare Costs, One Pensioner At A Time….

Obviously, poor care, waiting lists and MRSA and other hospital-acquired infections aren’t reducing the burden on the NHS quick enough, so they are skipping straight to the direct route:

A woman has claimed an NHS hospital "starved" her elderly mother rather than continue her care.

Ellen Westwood, 88, was in Birmingham's Selly Oak Hospital for two months being treated for dementia and C.difficile, which she had previously contracted. Her daughter Kathleen Westwood said the hospital decided in February it was in her "best interests" to halt fluids and nutrition - a move the family opposed.

Ms Westwood had to fight the hospital to get her mother treated after the hospital staff made the decision to starve her to death:

” Ms Westwood said she and her father were called into a room at Selly Oak Hospital on 8 February and told doctors had decided to withdraw all fluids, food and hydration.

They said they had begun giving Mrs Westwood morphine "because she is dying".

She said: "Because of this capacity ruling, if you deem somebody to have lost capacity, then the doctors can act in the best interests.

"Well in their view the best interests was for my mother to die - and clearly by Monday she would have been dead.

"We said we don't want this to happen and they said 'it's happening, sorry'.

"I had to fight very, very hard to get it stopped."

The hospital agreed to continue treating Mrs Westwood after the family gained a second opinion from another doctor.”

Happily, Mrs Westwood survived but the hospital is unrepentant:

The University Hospital Birmingham (UHB) NHS Foundation Trust said it could not respond in detail as this would compromise patient confidentiality.

A spokeswoman said: "Mrs Westwood's relatives have raised a number of concerns.

"We have met with the family and are investigating these issues via our normal internal channels.

"UHB adheres to the national guidelines relating to the care of the elderly and we consider that we provide the best care possible to all our patients."

Remember back in 1999, when a consultant said there was an unofficial policy of involuntary euthanasia, and then Health Secretary Alan Milburn decided such claims were ‘ludicrous’?

Looks like they sidestepped that one by making it part of the ‘national guidelines’…

Say What…?

The Metropolitan Police Commissioner has vowed to step up police efforts in combating knife crime in the wake of the death of 16-year-old Ben Kinsella.

I know he never passes up an opportunity to get his face on the news, but what the hell is that supposed to mean? ‘Step up’ police efforts…? What were they doing before….?

Speaking at City Hall, Sir Ian Blair said the community needed to reach out to teenagers and their parents.

Sir Ian expressed his "deep sadness" at the death of the teenager and said the death would see police "rededicate efforts to stop others dying".

He re-emphasised his support for the London Mayor Boris Johnson's overall approach, but said some factors went beyond policing.

Sir Ian said: "We need as the whole community of London to reach out to young people and their parents to get rid of the knives on our streets and provide them with alternatives to crime and gang membership."

He didn’t specify just how the ‘whole community’ was supposed to do this, nor what kind of ‘alternatives’ he had in mind.

In fact, he sounded remarkably like a middle manager at a bank, preparing his staff for a painful round of staffing cutbacks or an overly complicated new processing system, and determined to pre-emptively spread a little bit of blame in the event it all goes tits up. Funny, that….