Never Learning Lessons…

Residents living near a traveller site fear a “Dale Farm situation” if planning permission is granted for six static homes.

The McCarthy family set up the unauthorised site in Janda Fields, off Fane Road, Thundersley, in August 2012 and then applied to Castle Point Council for retrospective planning permission for two caravans.

Permission was eventually granted but the family has now applied for further retrospective planning permission to remove one caravan and install six static homes on the site.

That was just to get their foot in the door.

Bill Dick, councillor for St Peter’s ward, said he would oppose any further development.

He said: “We are going to end up like Basildon if we are not careful. If it’s retrospective then they have got to a certain point without planning permission which is not really nice.

“I think we have been fairly decent to them.”

And that was your first mistake.

Make Up Your Minds, Lads....

Solicitor David Bailey had his £1,000 mountain bike stolen by thieves who first removed the saddle so he could not ride it home, then returned at night to cut through the bike’s heavy-duty lock and chain.

Despite the crime taking place in full view of police-controlled CCTV cameras in Old Steine, Mr Bailey claims police have refused to review the tape.

Well, of course they have. Good grief man, don't you realise they have Facebook & Twitter to monitor? They don't have time for stuff like theft!

The force said using staff time to watch the tape covering the 7pm to 8am window during which the crime took place was “not proportionate to the nature of the offence.”

Quite right. It's not like these thieves are committing the heinous crime of....errr....driving around?

Wait, do you want footage or don't you? Can't you make up your minds?

Well, Don't Press It With Your Finger Then!

...use a pen!

Sheesh! They really don't recruit the brightest, do they?

Headline Writer Level: Beginner...

Nice try, kid.

Sunday Funnies...

Still, all a lot better than mine, some days...

War Is Hell, And Culture War Is Even Worse…

Gaby Hinsliff is your war correspondent today:

What makes the Tower Hamlets story so titillating for some readers is the idea of little Christian children in east London being forcibly subjugated by Muslims, which evokes both an age-old racist trope and a contemporary fear among Europeans under attack from Islamic State. Even if every word were true, which it clearly isn’t, the story would have needed handling responsibly.

For when this nebulous anxiety about identity finds something concrete to cling to, the consequences can be serious. Charlottesville ended in the death of a young woman. If Great Ormond Street hospital staff got death threats following reporting of the Charlie Gard case, imagine what might be spewed at Tower Hamlets staff in the next few days. The facts will never, ever catch up with the headlines, at least for those who get their news chiefly from far-right Facebook pages.

Yes, just forget about it, it's all a manipulation of 'the media' to make you fear Muslims. Just listen to the 'Guardian' in future, they'll never twist or manipulate the facts to sway you....

...this isn’t just about fostering, any more than recent events in Charlottesville were about removing a statue. Both stories tap into the fears of a white majority that feels its privileged status slipping away, and is suddenly terrified of being treated as it often treated minorities in the past; of having its identity erased.

You see, if it happens, we deserve it anyway!

“The secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.”

Felicity Lawrence is at it yet again in the pages of CiF:

It has been a summer of food scares. They pop up at regular intervals to shake us briefly out of our complacency about the safety of our food supply before we carry on as before.

Yup, like big cat scares, henna tattoos gone awry and near-drownings, they are the hallmarks of summer. And they are usually as based in reality as the first, and caused by people's stupidity just as much as the second and third.

Rarely are they a genuine concern. Mostly, they are whipped up by the MSM to fill the empty summer pages.

With equal regularity the authorities reassure us that they have it under control. The risks are low. We have a food chain of unparalleled sophistication and all is basically well in this best of all culinary cornucopias.

Well, compared to other countries, yes, we do. That's an undeniable fact.

The truth, however, is that the structures established in the wake of previous scandals to ensure our food is not only safe and wholesome, but is also what it claims to be, are being quietly dismantled. Just when Brexit demands a well-resourced, home-grown capacity to safeguard food standards, we are shrinking our capabilities. Local authorities – a crucial pillar in the edifice since they have legal responsibility for testing foods sold in their areas – are so starved of money that they have cut checking to the bone.

Good grief, is there nothing they can't shoehorn a mention of Brexit into?

Controls are to be “proportionate and risk-based”; “administrative burdens” on business are to be reduced; “relationships with industry improved”; and the agency’s understanding is to become “more commercially astute”.

In other words, we will replace the burdens on business and instill the concept of personal responsibility and common sense into everyone? What's not to like?

The Food Standards Agency, at its best a model of transparent working in the public interest, has shrunk from the eight floors it once occupied at London Aviation House to less than two.

Yet it still manages to find time to draw up nannying press releases, doesn't it?

So before we have another food scandal, let’s hear less about reducing burdens on business, and more about the crucial role of an active state in giving the public the protection it deserves.

Whether the public wants it, or needs it...

"He ended his tirade by saying simply: "I rest my case your honour.""

During the two-day trial prosecution barristers said that after telling confused passersby to 'go back to Isis' he slapped a Chinese boy with a newspaper and then hurled abuse at the Welsh family.

He then approached three young girls and made lewd remarks, threatening them with a syringe taken out of a nearby bin, before he was arrested by police.

Representing himself in court, Brown yesterday delivered a largely incoherent rant from the dock as his closing speech.

Brown, who denied any involvement in the incident, told jurors that the 'Government was corrupt' and referred to the 'corrupt' police as 'them boys in Cowley'.

He also made references to Theresa May, 'that Scottish woman' and Brexit.

 Makes a lot more sense than a lot of defendants, I have to say...

After the jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict on all three counts he then screamed and shouted and continued to hurl abuse shouting 'respect the referendum' and 'Brexit'.

He will be sentenced at the same court after psychiatric reports are prepared on October 10.

Oh, I think we can skip that, don't you?

Sounds Like Victim Blaming To Me, Judge

Karol Michta, 22, was “enjoying the thrill” of speeding home when he struck 53-year-old builder Henrik Luszcz as he crossed the A4 in Isleworth.

Michta, a free runner who once performed at 10 Downing Street, was due to be sentenced in February, but Judge Anthony Morris QC agreed to delay the hearing until he had finished his degree at Queen Mary University.

So he can be the most educated jailbird on the block?

At the Old Bailey, the judge sentenced Michta to 12 months in prison suspended for two years after hearing he now suffers from “survivor’s guilt”.

Wha..?

Sentencing Michta, the judge said Mr Luszcz had decided to cross the three-lane dual carriageway in an unsafe place, and urged transport chiefs to move a bus stop nearer to a pedestrian crossing.

Oh, for pity's sake! The issue here is the excessive speed, not whether Mr Luszcz decided to forget his Green Cross Code!

And you could carpet the high street in pedestrian crossings and not prevent people crossing where they please.

We don't have 'jaywalking' on the statute books as a crime so why should it get the death penalty by the back door?

Post Title Of The Month

David Thompson, on the Google memo debate that kicked off August for us: