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Stupidity page 1Trying to block flood of immigrants is futile, admits Blair (from The Daily Mail) Tony Blair has admitted that trying to shut Britain's borders to mass immigration from Africa is ‘utterly futile.' Just nine months after promising to tighten up the immigration system he conceded that migrants cannot be kept out. The Premier said: ‘We must now all accept the utter futility of trying to shut our borders to problems abroad. Famine in Africa will affect our countries because it will be a trigger for mass migration.' Mr Blair's extraordinary declaration came in a four-page article he contributed to the Economist magazine in advance of Britain taking the presidency of the G8 group of the world's richest countries. Critics last night said it was an admission that the immigration and asylum system is out of control. They claim the Government has vastly underplayed the scale of the future influx from abroad. Sir Andrew Green, director of the Migrationwatch think tank, said: ‘We certainly need to provide more effective help for Africa. But it is extraordinary to suggest that we should weaken our own border controls, as 80 per cent want to see them strengthened.' The official forecasts for population growth in regions of England were published last month by the Office for National Statistics. These said that of the projected 6.1million increase in population by 2031, 3.6million will be migrants. Migrationwatch believes that if migrants' subsequent children are added, the increase from migration will be 5.1million and that Mr Blair's latest admission indicates the total will be even higher. P.I. comment: Well now you know and straight from the horse's mouth as well. Whitehall staff told how to keep it civil (from The Daily Mail) Civil servants are being packed off on courses to learn how to be nice to each other – at a cost of nearly £140,000 to the taxpayer. Scores of officials have been sent to the ‘diversity and equality workshops' as the amount spent on Whitehall training courses soars. Millions are being lavished on training staff every year, with the amount spent by some department's quadrupling in recent years. The training bonanza includes the ‘diversity and equality' courses attended by 173 staff from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The workshops, held in 11 towns and cities including London, Leeds and Exeter, cost the taxpayer £138,400. The Tories published figures showing that the Department for International Development spent £4.4million on courses last year – a 400 per cent increase since 1997. The budget for training has trebled at the Department for Constitutional Affairs to £2.92million. Conservatives said the initiative amounted to little more than teaching officials to be nice to each other. Party co-chairman Liam Fox said: ‘It is clear that Tony Blair's Government doesn't give you value for money. After seven years in power and 66 tax rises, Labour is wasting taxpayers' money on fat government. They should be spending taxpayers' money on cleaner schools, more police and school discipline.' A Defra spokesman defended the department's decision to send nearly 200 staff on the courses. ‘We are a new department and we want to work as a single body and to embrace diversity – age, race and gender,' she said. ‘We want to ensure senior staff are speaking to those at junior levels – that there's no bullying. It's about building a co-operative and collaborative culture that we can all work in.' P.I. comment: When we have a multi-billion pound public spending deficit looming later this year, this government still wastes taxpayer's money like it was water on teaching people to be politically correct. PC Brigade redouble efforts to change Christmas A choir was made to to sing a politically correct Christmas Carol in Cardiff this Christmas. Instead of the traditional carol lyrics ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen', they were told to change the words to ‘God Rest Ye Merry People'. The change was ordered by the Very Reverend John Lewis, Dean of Llandaff Cathedral in Cardiff. The amended version was attacked as over-the-top political correctness by churchgoing Tory politician Glyn Davies said: ‘This smacks to me of political correctness gone mad. I haven't heard this version but I would not consider singing it under any circumstances.' P.I. comment: Would any woman be upset by keeping the word Gentlemen? I think not! While any regular reader will know that I don't believe in God, religion or Christmas, they will also know that I am an advocate of free speech and expression and how much I detest the PC Brigades attempts to stop others in the UK celebrating it in a Christian fashion. Many schools have cancelled carol services and nativity plays. Our beloved Emperor, Mr Blair keeps a foot in both camps and sends Christmas cards with different messages to different people. The PC idea behind all this stupidity is not to 'offend' other religions. Yet if you ask anyone with a different religion if they are offended by the Christian celebration of Christmas, they look at you as if you are mad and say 'definitely not'. Rather than dividing communities, free expression helps one ethnic community understand the views of another ethnic community and of course, understanding others helps for peaceful communities. So yet again political correctness does the opposite of what it purports to do! Sikhs lay siege to theatre over sex and murder play (from The Daily Mail) The Birmingham Rep has had to cancel their current production Behzti, a play depicting sex abuse and murder in a Sikh temple, after 400 Sikhs attacked the theatre. Windows were smashed, missiles hurled and three police officers injured when the mob burst into the foyer. At the height of the mayhem 80 officers attended – 30 in riot gear – as the force's helicopter hovered overhead. A theatre spokesman said: ‘The Rep had been transparent with leaders in the Sikh community about the content and nature of the play in discussions over the last few months and had agreed to provide audiences with a statement written by those community members who do not approve of the play.' Actress-turned-writer Miss Bhatti, who is herself a Sikh, says she has received death threats and has been advised by the police not to say anything in public. P.I. comment: Yet another blow to the freedom of speech. Why (yet again) do the police not do their job and arrest those responsible for these public order offences and ensure that people can go about their lawful business? I am sure you can all guess by now. New law to protect 'faith groups' from religious hatred is flawed. The government's plan to protect religions from 'incitement to religious hatred' will not be used to stifle free speech, criticism or mockery the Home Office promised. It told MPs that the law was intended to protect people who "feel threatened ... and feel society is not embracing them". David Blunkett said: "We are trying to stop groups of people who are prepared verbally, in writing and through the internet, to incite others to hate because of someone's faith not because of the argument about their faith." But comedian Rowan Atkinson wasn't convinced. He said "To criticise a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous but to criticise their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom. The freedom to criticise ideas, any ideas - even if they are sincerely held beliefs - is one of the fundamental freedoms of society. A law which attempts to say you can criticise and ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed." P.I. comment: Well said Rowan! No one will give a bean for the promises of a here today, gone tomorrow politician once it becomes law. The police, the CPS and the courts, all heavily infiltrated by political correctness, will decide how the law is used. Free speech will be just a distant memory. Always remember that free speech is the life blood of a free society. Children's Wendy house must go while local Gipsies stay put A father ordered to remove his children's Wendy house is refusing to do so until Gipsies are ejected from an illegal camp nearby. Justin Pipe is furious that council planners have come down on him ‘like a ton of bricks' while 17 caravans remain on a field 400 yards from his home. The 50 Romany Gipsies have laid a gravel access road, built hard standings and installed septic tanks on the village site in flagrant breach of planning regulations. They moved in over a weekend recently and submitted a retrospective planning application, leaving the council powerless to move them. Mr Pipe's 10ft by 8ft play hut, however – built for his children, Chloe, nine, and six year-old Coby – is the size of a garden shed. Mr Pipe, 33, a tree surgeon, said he would defy the council until it removed the Gipsies from the field on the edge of North Curry, near Taunton, Somerset. He said: ‘I've told them there's no way I'm removing this while Gipsy caravans remain standing around the corner. If anyone comes to tell me to take this down, I'll drive them around the corner and show them something that does need to be taken care of. ‘The Wendy house is staying put as a matter of principle. It's the kids' pride and joy.' A council spokesman said they appreciated the family's feelings but it did not change the situation. P.I. comment: This Blair's Bloody Britain in 2004! My guess is that Mr Pipe has brought this all on himself by being a respectable, white, middle class homeowner. If only he were a member of one of the PC Brigade's favoured minorities he could have built Canary Wharf in his garden and got away with it. My advice to him is to put down some tarmac next to the Wendy House, park a caravan on it and cover the garden with rubbish and human excrement. The council will then be too afraid to bother him again. Hunt ban WAS about class war admits Minister's aide (from The Daily Mail) The ban on foxhunting is about a class war and not animal welfare, a member of the Government admitted. Peter Bradley, a ministerial aide to Rural Affairs Minister Alun Michael, said his fellow Labour MPs felt so strongly because it was their opportunity to take on the landowning ‘gentry’. Mr Bradley, who proposed the amendment to the Hunting Bill to delay the ban before it was forced through Parliament, wrote in the Sunday Telegraph that Labour MPs wanted to wipe out the ‘old order’. ‘We ought at last to own up to it: the struggle over the Bill was not just about animal welfare and personal freedom, it was class war. This was not about the politics of envy but the politics of power. Ultimately it’s about who governs Britain.’ Mr Bradley attacked pro hunting campaigners as ‘the privileged minority which for centuries ran this country from the manor houses of rural England’ and tried to keep people like him ‘in our place’. He added: ‘But that old order no longer prevails. The old families have come to realise that though they may still own the country, they are no longer running it.’ P.I. comment: So the truth was as we all suspected! When the country has so many serious problems that need urgent attention, this stupid government wastes hundreds of hours of parliamentary time on something so childish. Voters please note! Government gets in the POPO (from The Daily Mail) Thousands of pounds are being wasted renaming the controversial Prolific and Other Priority Offender scheme in case the acronym POPO offends Turkish people. Popo is an affectionate term used in Turkey to describe a baby's bottom. The scheme has been renamed PPO even though the Turkish embassy expressed surprise that anyone should think that the term would be thought of as offensive. P.I. comment: Who on earth would even think about these things? Does the government have a whole expensive PC department sitting there waiting to pounce on non-PC speak? More money down the drain! Town bans Christmas lights A town is to slash its Christmas lights display because of health and safety fears. Officials in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk say the lights might drop on someone or set fire to a timber-framed building. The decision follows a ruling earlier this year by Suffolk County Council which banned hanging baskets in case they dropped on passers-by. The move angered shoppers in the town. One mother said: ‘This is another stupid decision to join the barmy one about hanging baskets. Everyone suffers because someone seems to think we need to be wrapped up in cotton wool.’ P.I. comment: The real culprit here is Political Correctness which allows the compensation culture to flourish. Poppy shower tribute banned as a fire hazard A traditional Remembrance Day poppy shower has been scrapped – because health and safety officials say it is too dangerous. In a tradition spanning more than 60 years in the West Midlands town, thousands of paper petals are released as people observe a minute’s silence. But now health & safety inspectors have ruled that this is a potential fire hazard. Local councillors have condemned the ‘ridiculous’ decision. It is not the first time the Royal British Legion has fallen foul of health and safety regulations. Last year, there were calls to stop it supplying pins with poppies for fear of being sued if someone was accidentally injured. Buyers traditionally get a pin to attach the poppy to their clothing. But alternatives such as stickers are becoming popular. One garage in Bath refused to sell poppies with pins due to ‘health and safety reasons’. P.I. comment: It is a good job we didn't have health & safety inspectors around in the first world war otherwise they would have stopped our troops carrying guns in case someone got hurt! What on earth has happened to our country? Man had too many convictions to be sent to jail (from The Daily Mail) A career criminal with 112 convictions was spared jail under a controversial Government programme. The policy which allowed Kevin Page to walk free from court was bitterly attacked by police and campaigners for victims’ rights. Page began his life of crime in his teens, has caused damage and stolen property worth tens of thousands of pounds, and has been sentenced 37 times including 13 custodial sentences totalling six years. But instead of being jailed for his latest offence of breaking into a car, magistrates placed him under the Prolific and Priority Offender Scheme for 18 months. The order means Page, 23, will be allowed to remain in the community under the scrutiny of probation officers and other agencies. That is despite the fact that the drug addict had been released from prison only four weeks before the offence for a previous crime and was under a Community Rehabilitation Order – which meant he was already meeting with probation officers on a regular basis. Police have repeatedly said he will continue to commit crimes unless he is put behind bars. P.I. comment: Whenever the PC brigade bleat about how jail doesn't work, I have to remind them that it works in at least two ways. 1) people can't commit further offences when they are in jail and 2) at least the police won't be tied up chasing them or investigating their misdeeds, releasing them for the more important work. (like filling speed cameras with film?) Council pays troublesome travellers £600,000 to leave site Families of travellers who blighted a neighbourhood have been handed up to £600,000 of taxpayers’ money to move away. Council chiefs desperate to see the back of them paid the sweetener amounting to £30,000 per family. The decision has enraged council tax payers who endured years of intimidation and thefts that they blamed on the group. They condemned Labour-run Haringey Council in North London for wasting their money on a ‘bribe’. Other critics said it made a mockery of claims to be getting tough on anti-social behaviour. P.I.comment: Yet again the innocent suffer and the guilty get richer! The pupils teaching us a lesson in discipline (from The Daily Mail) A brand new ‘beacon’ school in East London has been built without corridors because (its designers say) corridors are where bullies and troublemakers lurk. What defeatism. The school has been erected on the rubble of a former grammar school, where the children of the poor got a decent, disciplined education without the stunts or gimmicks or fashionable architecture or ‘superheads’. The results of a recent survey showed that many young people now want the return of the cane in schools as an ultimate deterrent. They should know. Maybe a wise conservatism is now gestating among the victims of half-a-century of liberal bilge. P.I. comment: It is always amazing the lengths to which the PC Brigade will go to avoid having to admit their policies are disastrous! Instead of bringing back discipline into schools, they take out the corridors! More EU gender meddling madness (from The Daily Mail) The ‘Girl wanted to share flat’ adverts which fill the accommodation to let columns are to be outlawed by Brussels. Instead, if a group of females want a new housemate, they will have to advertise for a ‘person’. The latest EU ‘gender equality’ proposals are supposed to ensure ‘sexual equality in access to goods and services’ by preventing differentiation between the sexes. Under the same proposals, women drivers will have to pay hundreds of pounds a year more for their car and life insurance. Currently, female drivers are charged up to 30 per cent less than male drivers because they have fewer accidents. But the European Commission wants to ban the use of gender in assessing premiums and benefits for insurance, pensions and annuities. Luisella Pavan-Woolfe, the Commission official who is masterminding the gender equality drive, argues that it would be unacceptable to charge black people more for car insurance even if it could be proved they had more accidents, so it should be equally unacceptable to differentiate between the sexes. P.I. comment: Why do these PC people have to meddle in everything? If a girl wants to share a flat then she is unlikely to want to take a strange man in. If I want to employ a man rather than a woman for a particular job why should I not be able to? In reality of course everyone does just that and ignores the stupid regulations. That is until someone spots it and thinks they can get some compensation! Ethnic minority is now an insult say Law Society (from The Daily Mail) It is one of the most widely-used politically correct expressions of our age. Instead of referring to non-British people by their colour or race, they are almost invariably called ‘ethnic minorities’. But now it seems even that title is deemed offensive in some quarters. According to a diktat from the Law Society, published in their 'Equality and Diversity Handbook', solicitors should now reverse the term to ‘minority ethnic’. Apparently some people prefer not to use this term because they feel it implies that 'only minority communities have ethnicity.’ A better phrase, it says, is ‘minority ethnic’, which ‘makes it clearer that it is not just minorities who have an ethnic identity but also the majority’. For any black people who may feel left out by this, the advice goes further, suggesting the term ‘black and minority ethnic groups’. This is seen as ‘all-embracing and inclusive’. ‘It recognises the fact that we all have ethnicity and that it is the minority status which is being emphasised,’ adds the handbook. P.I. comment: Ethnic minority or minority ethnic - who cares? The thing I find most amazing is that people actually get paid for coming up with all this rubbish and that someone actually pays them to do it! How would they survive in the real world? Another Punch & Judy show banned by a PC council Reg Payn's Punch & Judy show ran into trouble when it was disrupted by the Women’s Domestic Violence Support Network in Bodmin, Cornwall, who threw objects and chanted so he couldn't continue. Not content with that, they persuaded Bodmin Council to ban Punch & Judy shows completely. P.I. comment: As I have commented before, children have the common sense to separate real and imaginary violence and love shows like Tom & Jerry. Unfortunately, the PC Brigade haven't got that common sense as they have to have it surgically removed as a condition of membership! However, this case does help me understand why Cornish people use the expression 'gone completely Bodmin' to describe someone that has gone mad or lost their reason. More appalling misuse of Human Rights Act costs taxpayer over £250,000 Thugs who terrorised a neighbourhood have left taxpayers with an astonishing £250,000 legal bill after claiming their human rights were infringed. Despite making life hell for residents on a housing estate, William Marshall, Martin Kelly and Jovan Stanley were outraged to be ‘named and shamed’ on posters. So, with breathtaking hypocrisy, they decided to launch a ‘human rights’ case at the High Court. And not only was it heard by two senior judges, but they were granted legal aid – meaning they will not have to pay a penny of the mammoth bill. The local council and police were forced to waste valuable time and resources defending their campaign to Lord Justice Kennedy and Mr Justice Treacy, who (in a very rare show of judicial common sense) eventually threw out the case. In another case, convicted yardie Mark Lambie, serving 12 years for kidnap and torture, was this week given £10,000 legal aid to sue the Home Secretary for having him moved to a tougher-category jail. Lambie was not moved arbitrarily: he had a secret mobile phone and was thought to be organising a break-out. The 33-year-old, known as the Prince of Darkness, was jailed for 12 years in 2002 for kidnapping two men and torturing them with a hammer, electric iron and boiling water. However, he was made only a Category B offender when he began his sentence. But after being caught at Full Sutton jail, in York, with a mobile phone which officials suspected he may have been using to organise a breakout, Lambie was upgraded to Category A, with a tougher prison regime. He is also reported to have been caught with another mobile phone at Whitemoor Jail, in Cambridgeshire. P.I. comment: It is easy to see why we are all taxed so heavily when we allow money to be wasted in this frivolous manner. Prisoners should lose their human rights for the duration of their prison sentence - after all they are all volunteers, no one forced them to break the law. Travellers drive a caravan and horses through UK planning laws Travellers who set up homes in defiance of planning laws should be allowed to stay, judges have ruled. They said such settlements must be respected even if they were established in flagrant breach of the laws that apply to the rest of the community. The Appeal Court judgment, based on European human rights rules, could make illegal camps across the country virtually untouchable. The ruling gave three gipsy families who moved on to land they bought in Chichester, West Sussex, three years ago the right to stay even though they had no planning permission to live there. Nothing in the judgment appears to prevent travellers from building on rural land to set up permanent settlements. Over the summer a string of such cases left residents in despair as travellers took over their villages. In Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, there have been constant complaints of verbal abuse, intimidation and antisocial behaviour since 800 travellers set up a site. The three appeal judges, Lord Justice Wall, Mr Justice Pumfrey and Lord Justice Auld, overturned a decision made in July last year by a High Court judge that planning laws should overrule the gipsies’ rights to set up home. P.I. comment: This is sheer PC madness! The Appeal Court has given gypsies carte blanche to break planning law on the grounds that they are entitled to expect society to give them what they want, and if society doesn't then it is OK to break laws to get it for themselves! How would society survive if everyone took this approach? Planning laws exist to regulate development on the grounds that actions which cause inconvenience or harm to others are not allowed. Again, judges have decided that certain favoured groups may waive the legal requirements that apply to the rest of us. To our politically correct judges, the rights of minorities count for more than the rights of the majority. If anyone speaks out against gypsies then they are portrayed as the bad guy, yet gypsies who break the law have their behaviour sanctioned by the courts. Again, Political Correctness succeeds in turning reality on its head! The only thing we can be sure of is that Lord Justice Wall, Mr Justice Pumfrey and Lord Justice Auld don't have an encampment near them! Trafalgar celebrations ‘will upset the French’ Councillors are refusing to honour the 200th anniversary of Nelson’s victory at the Battle of Trafalgar next year in case it offends the French. Totnes Council in Devon fears marking the naval hero’s 1805 triumph will particularly upset those living in its twin town of Vire in Normandy. Nationwide celebrations are planned next year but Totnes councillor Tony Mead said: ‘This town is twinned with a town in France. ‘It would be rather tasteless of us to celebrate a victory over a country we are allied with and twinned with. ’Another councillor, Geoff Date, added: ‘We were allied with France in the First and Second World Wars. Celebrating a French defeat is a bit poor.’ Bruno Peek, chairman of the Trafalgar Weekend organisation which is co-ordinating the celebrations on October 21 next year, said: ‘I don’t understand their thinking‘ The anniversary of D-Day was celebrated this year and that did not upset the Germans. I don’t believe it will upset the French at all.’ P.I. comment: Again the PC Brigade wants to forget or change history. Why do we have to be ashamed to be British? PC saves PC PC Tariq Mahmood is the Police Constable who drove away after a crash that injured two women and a child. He then tried to cover up the incident by respraying his car and asking others to lie for him. He was driving without insurance. He was lucky to escape with a just a fine and a driving ban. But his luck didn’t end there. Astonishingly, a police disciplinary hearing in Manchester has allowed him to keep his job because of ‘mitigating personal factors’. P.I. comment: The general consensus seems to be that Mr Mahmood's main ‘mitigating personal factor' was his colour. This was discussed on Mike Dicken's morning phone-in on Talk Sport. Several serving police officers called to express their disgust at him keeping his job and saying that they certainly wouldn't want to work with him. These serving police officers also expressed their lack of surprise at the verdict; pointing out that this was just what their weak and spineless management would do, given their greater fear of being branded 'institutionally racist' by the PC Brigade. Most of these serving officers also said that they thought that being in the police was a great job that was spoiled by the lack sensible management and that they intended to leave. I also made my own enquiries with a local PC I know in the pub. He told me that if Mr Mahmood had been a white PC then 'his feet wouldn't have touched the ground' on his way out of the force but that the police management is so desperate to have its quota of PC's from the ethnic minorities that they can do no wrong. Bonkers against Conkers (from The Daily Mail) The six handsome horse chestnut trees have stood on Temple Park Road for a quarter of a century, drawing children every autumn to gather their conkers. But the ritual seen by most as a harmless pursuit has fallen foul of what one mother called ‘the nanny state gone mad’. The leafy trees have been reduced to the bare branches pictured above to prevent children being injured climbing them or throwing sticks to get the conkers. Council chiefs acted after a boy was injured falling from a branch. Soon, a ‘less dangerous’ species will be planted and in time the horse chestnuts – which had grown to 30ft in their 25 years and could have lived for centuries and reached 115ft – will be felled. The decision by Labour-run South Tyneside Council has angered residents and parents. ‘It is the nanny state gone mad,’ said 30-year-old Karen Williams, who lives in the road in South Shields. ‘My little boy is eight and if he does nothing more dangerous than throwing sticks to knock down chestnuts I will be well pleased. It is a shame the little boy was hurt but this is a gross over-reaction.’ Ed Johnson, of the nearby Friends of Chopwell Wood conservation group, said: ‘Horse chestnut trees of this age are a part of our history. This is environmental vandalism.’ The council claimed it had ‘no option’ but to chop the trees down. A spokesman added that children throwing objects at the branches was a danger to passing cars. Three years ago, Norwich City Council chopped down seven chestnut trees it decided were a threat to the safety of children. P.I. comment: Why don't we just wrap children in cotton wool until they are 18? By over protecting them we do them no favours. They don't learn to manage risk, they don't learn to manage themselves and they never grow up properly. If our children cannot play conkers, take part in sports or climb a tree; if we keep telling them that it is such a dangerous world out there then can we be surprised that they end up as couch potatoes slumped in front of a television set. Here of course they are in fact being exposed to a different and REAL danger, that of obesity, heart trouble and diabetes. Lord Chief Justice fails to take murder seriously (from The Daily Mail) Under new sentencing guidelines from Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf and his politically correct Sentencing Advisory Council, it becomes just another negotiable offence, to be punished (if the perpetrator pleads guilty) with only 10 years or even less in jail. Yet he knows perfectly well that the public was only persuaded to accept the end of capital punishment by the solemn assurance that life sentences for murder would mean just that - LIFE. Don’t the will of Parliament or the views of the British people matter to his Lordship? Doesn’t he consider the clearly expressed opinion of MPs only last year that killers should receive a minimum 15 years? Evidently not. In his determination to clear out Britain’s overcrowded jails – the real reason for this – our Lord Chief Injustice seems to think he can ride roughshod over MPs, the public and victims alike. To make matters even worse, it isn’t just murderers who will enjoy his indulgence. Thieves, thugs, organised criminals – all can look forward to a new era of leniency. Under Lord Woolf’s curious idea of justice, sentences of more than 12 months will be cut by a quarter. The idea that prison is a punishment? That is obviously old hat in his eyes. The need to protect the public? The idea hardly registers. The gun crime plaguing Britain? Presumably he thinks it somebody else’s problem. Rarely has a Lord Chief Justice seemed so smug, self-satisfied and remote, while the law he is supposed to uphold sinks deeper into disrepute. P.I. comment: So with 50% remission for good behaviour, the murderer would be back out on the street in 5 years. Hardly a deterrent is it ? Shoplifters will not be given a criminal record (from The Daily Mail) Shoplifters can be handed an £80 spot fine which carries no criminal record under new measures unveiled by the Government. Stealing goods worth up to £200 from a shop will be added to the list of crimes which police can deal with by handing out fixed penalty notices – with no criminal charges or even an official caution. Children as young as ten may be given the fines, which their parents will be liable to pay on their behalf. Critics warned last night that such a minor punishment would be no more than an ‘occupational hazard’ for shoplifters, with no hope of deterring crime. The new measures, which take effect next month, emerged as at the same time as Home Office research revealed that almost a third of all fixed penalty notices go unpaid – raising further questions over the effectiveness of the punishment. P.I. comment: Well it's open season on shops now! As long as you manage to nick one item worth £200 then you can afford to get caught twice and still be in pocket. What ever happened to B liar's 'Tough on crime' soundbyte? Private Dicks to replace the Police (from The Daily Mail) The pretty village of Ryton-on-Dunsmore looks like a rural idyll. But after a spate of muggings, thefts and vandalism, residents of the Warwickshire village have been left feeling less than safe. Despairing of the lack of police on their once tranquil streets, they have decided to take matters into their own hands and are hiring private detectives to crack down on the mini crimewave. Parish council chairman Ian Spiers said the village used to have its own policeman until seven years ago. It now has a community beat officer, who divides her time between Ryton and a neighbouring village, and community beat officers who cover the surrounding area.‘We only see our community policewoman once in a blue moon,’ he said. ‘There is also drug-taking and dealing in our recreation ground and people have had enough.’ Mr Spiers said the council had spent years campaigning for more officers but had now decided to call in private help after a rise in burglaries and a wave of anti-social behaviour. Among the victims is Robert Rankin, 67, a retired grinder who has lived in the village since 1947. He has had two cars stolen in the last 18 months.‘The village is unrecognisable now,’ he said. ‘Youths have run riot because they know there is no police presence.’ Mr Spiers said the extra cost of security would be budgeted for through the council tax. Neil Brunton, Warwickshire Police superintendent for the Ryton area, said using private detectives would ‘reduce the fear of crime in the community’. But he said such initiatives were welcomed only if operated in partnership with the police. P.I. comment: With three police stations closing a week, this situation will only get worse and will be repeated throughout rural England. The Police have abandonded us to the yob culture. Every morning, ticket clerk Keith Smith would scrawl a different joke on an information board used to announce delays and line closures - in an effort to keep travellers spirits up. But even this harmless pleasure has now fallen foul of political correctness. It began when Mr Smith wrote: ‘Hear about the dyslexic who went to a toga party? He dressed as a goat.’ For most commuters, it provoked a chuckle. But there were three complaints that the joke was offensive to dyslexics – and Mr Smith, 55, was suspended from his job at Hove Station in East Sussex. Simon Allan, acting station manager at nearby Brighton, said: ‘It is something that could contravene our equal opportunities policy.’ But workmates and passengers have accused rail bosses of overreacting and called for Mr Smith to be allowed back to work. One station worker commented: ‘Some miserable git has complained. You can imagine what this has done for morale.’ P.I. comment: Keith Smith should have realised that in the humourless miserable politically correct society we now live in, some miserable git was bound to complain. I am prepared to bet that 1) the gits that complained weren't dyslexic and 2) if asked the Dyslexic Society (if there is such a body) would not approve of them speaking on their behalf any more than the National Federation of the Blind did and actually issued a statement asking the PC Brigade to shut up! Read that story here. Commons to use Parliament Act to force through Bill banning fox hunting The Government is to railroad a bill through the Commons this week to ban hunting with dogs. If the Lords reject it then they will invoke the Parliament Act to force it into law before the end of this Parliamentary session. P.I. comment: Again, with all the pressing problems facing the country, why on earth are we wasting our valuable Parliamentary time on PC nonsense like this? It won't save the life of any fox; they will suffer a worse death by being either trapped or poisoned instead. Also the lives of 200,000 hunting dogs are likely to sacrificed as well. All just to satisfy the stupidity of a couple of hundred politically correct Labour MPs. (Voters please note.) Fireworks display to mark 400th anniversary thwarted by the PC brigade House of Commons authorities have rejected a free fireworks display to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Guy Fawkes trying to blow up Parliament - in case it offends Catholics. The decision, which has been condemned as ludicrous political correctness, was made by the House of Commons commission, chaired by the Speaker Michael Martin, a prominent Glasgow Catholic. Its letter states: ‘The planning of Parliament’s exhibition to mark the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot has been careful to avoid associating the event with any notion of a celebration; even after 400 years there are sensitivities to be taken into account so the approach will be dispassionate and educational. Accordingly, the Commission does not think it appropriate for the House to be formally associated with any show.' P.I. comment: Is this just another attempt to eradicate British History or just more miserable political correctness for its own sake? Welsh Development Agency Newspeak course off track Around 500 members of the Welsh Development Agency(WDA) were sent on a 'Newspeak' training course to teach them how to avoid upsetting minority groups by using 'offensive' language such as 'nit-picking' and 'brainstorming'. But the course, believed to have cost the taxpayer at least £17,500, was castigated by critics not only as a waste of money and political correctness gone mad but also as being plain wrong. According to the Oxford English Dictionary(OED) the term 'nit picking' has nothing at all to do with the slave trade and it defines ‘nit-picker’ as a pedantic critic and says its first use was in 1951. It cites the first use of ‘brainstorm’ in 1894 when it was described in a medical dictionary as ‘a succession of sudden and severe phenomena, due to some cerebral disturbance’. It has since come to mean an ‘attack on a problem by spontaneous discussion in search of new ideas’. A spokesman (sorry, spokesperson) for the OED said ‘The WDA has fallen foul of the kind of mistaken political correctness that’s very prevalent at the moment'. P.I. comment: Why (I hear you ask) do these agencies waste so much of the taxpayer's hard earned cash on this PC rubbish? The WDA said 'it had a legal obligation to train staff in equality and diversity issues under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act and disability legislation'. Just don’t mention the war, Brian (from The Daily Mail) Actor Brian Blessed was at the centre of a politically correct row after speaking out about the Second World War during a patriotic concert for old soldiers. He was forced to apologise for remarks he made while compering a D-Day anniversary concert by the Band of the Grenadier Guards at the Exeter Festival. He told the 7,000 crowd: ‘There has been a complaint – I’m told there are some Germans out there and I must apologise for what I have said.’ Blessed, 68, had spoken passionately about the fighting spirit of British soldiers and his regret at the devastation German bombers caused to Exeter and Sheffield. Exeter City Council said: ‘Mr Blessed went completely off the script.’ But a spokesman for Blessed pointed out that the actor’s wife Hildegard was German and added: ‘It is ridiculous he should be accused of being anti-German.’ P.I. comment: The only thing I would accuse Brian Blessed of is being too loud! Or am I being a volumist? Is that the PC term? Or a loudist? Travelers torch barn (from the Daily Mail) Travelers burned down a farmer’s barn after he sprayed manure near their illegal camp. They also hampered the efforts of fire crews to put out the blaze, police said yesterday. The arson attack came after farmer Nick Burrington put pig muck on a field near two camps at Matford, near Exeter. Mr Burrington has told police the operation was part of his normal work – not an attempt to drive off the travellers. As officers began investigating the blaze yesterday, the travellers and their 30 caravans moved on. Mr Burrington spread the muck on Thursday afternoon and fire crews were called to the scene at 8.58pm. They initially found a car ablaze in the field but as they were dealing with it they noticed smoke coming from Mr Burrington’s barn. Firemen stopped the blaze spreading but were unable to save the 100 tons of hay inside. The flames caused £2,000 of damage to the Dutch barn and destroyed £5,000 worth of hay. Six police officers were called to the incident to keep order. Firemen say children from the camp tried to sabotage their attempts to tackle the blaze. Station officer Mark Wilkins, of Exeter fire station, said: ‘There is no question that the fire was started deliberately. The first crew, who were called to the car fire, had to back off because children belonging to the gypsy encampment were getting in the way and trying to turn off the hoses.’ A police inspector and sergeant spoke to the travellers but no arrests were made. PI comment: I'm surprised they didn't arrest Mr Burrington for something, what with him being white and male! When will the police and courts stop being politically correct and treat these travelers for being the menance they are. Huge fraud investigation stopped amid fears of political correctness (from The Scotsman) Detectives investigating what is believed to be the biggest fraud in Scottish criminal history believe it could have been prevented if a unit created to tackle the threat of Asian gangs had not been disbanded over fears that it could be seen as persecuting ethnic minorities. PI comment: It really beggars belief - again political correctness rears it ugly head and ruins peoples lives. In this case it seems to have ended a life...... Tony Oldfield waited eight days for police to turn up after a violent robbery at his firm. But the shaken businessman at least had the reassuring sight of officers nearby . . . manning a speed trap on the road outside. He delivered a furious attack on police priorities. ‘It’s obvious what’s most important to them – catching motorists, not robbers,’ he said. ‘After all, they get £60 a time for catching motorists, but there’s nothing in it for them for chasing robbers.’ Mr Oldfield, 39, told how two raiders drove a people carrier on to the premises of his company, Enterprise Freight Services in Basildon, Essex, in full daylight. They cut into the canvas cover of an 18-ton lorry carrying office items and unloaded £5,000 of telephone equipment before they were challenged. ‘One of my drivers saw what was happening and tried to block them off,’ said Mr Oldfield. ‘He tried to drag the driver from the car but the thief fought him off and they escaped. We yelled for someone to call the police and got in our cars to try to follow them. My office lad was kept waiting for 15 minutes when he dialled the local police station, so eventually he called 999. We gave them a full description of the men and the car and said they had been caught on a neighbour’s CCTV security film. But all that happened was we were given an incident number. In spite of calling them again, we didn’t get a visit for eight days.’ Even then it was only after a critical article in a local newspaper. But the delay did not appear to be down to a shortage of manpower, said Mr Oldfield. Two days after the raid a group of around six officers arrived to set up a speed trap 400 yards from the scene. ‘There were two or three of them in one spot and three more further down the road to wave in the drivers,’ said Mr Oldfield. ‘Arriving eight days after the incident is pointless. Even if they find the vehicle the stuff will have disappeared by now. If they had more officers chasing real criminals they could have caught them when we made the 999 call and made their job a lot easier.’ Essex police said that they had been too busy to respond to the robbery call or to visit the firm to take statements over the following week. The same force came under fire in May after it emerged that road deaths had risen by 25 per cent, despite its participation in the pilot cash-for-cameras scheme under which police are allowed to keep a proportion of speeding fines revenue. The county has 90 speed cameras and a pool of 100 dedicated officers who claimed £510,000 in overtime last year. A fortnight ago the force revealed it had overseen a 20 per cent increase in crime during the past year, one of the largest in the country, with violent crime up 44 per cent. Norman Brennan, director of the Victims of Crime Trust, said: ‘It’s cases such as this that undermine public confidence not only in the police but in the criminal justice system.' He said ordinary officers were not at fault – it was the Home Secretary who ‘talks about extra officers but weighs them down with so much red tape and political correctness that often they are left standing still’. PI comment: Same old story really - wrong priorities - too much political correctness. We need to elect Chief Constables in the manner of a USA Sheriff. He knows If he doesn't do the job - he won't get re-elected. Victoria sponges can seriously damage your health (from The Daily Mail) The elderly patients at Saffron Waldon hospital are up in arms because hospital officials have banned the Women's Institute from bringing in their speciality homemade fayre, freshly baked Victoria sandwiches, tarts and fruit cakes. After consulting environmental health officials, the hospital trust says as the women's kitchens can't be inspected, they can't be sure they meet health regulations. W.I. members are naturally outraged. "Whoever heard of anyone dying from eating a Victoria Sponge?" asked one "It is just silly bureaucracy being brought in at the expense of common sense" PI comment: When hospital superbugs are claiming up to 20,000 lives a year, I would have thought that feeding patients with food prepared outside the hospital gave them a better chance of survival! Squatters put widow's health in danger (from The Daily Mail) When poor health forced Iris Davies to move out of her home of 50 years, the 81-year-old had one small consolation. The sale of her £200,000 house would at least cover the cost of a good nursing home where she could live out her days in comfort. But the widow’s peace of mind has been shattered by squatters who descended on the empty Georgian terrace days before it was due to be sold. The jobless couple and their six-year-old son are refusing to leave. Yesterday, they even boasted that the police were powerless to act as there was no evidence of a break-in. They say the back door was unlocked, a claim that is disputed. Claire Simpkins, 30, and her boyfriend Chris Davis, 33, also boasted of inviting other squatters around to stay the night, get drunk and smoke cannabis. Miss Simpkins, who has two facial piercings, has never had a job and receives £76-a-week jobseekers allowance plus child benefit. She was evicted from her previous flat after 118 complaints from neighbours. Her boyfriend, an out-of-work mechanic, receives £48 a week in benefits. Miss Simpkins insisted: ‘We want to stay here. Usually with a squat you have to spend time clearing up when you move in. But this is lovely – I really like it.’ The squatters have changed the locks and pinned a message to the front door claiming their rights under ‘Section Six’. This refers to the Criminal Justice Act 1977, which bars people from gaining access to property – even their own – by using violence or threats of violence. ‘This is now our home,’ wrote the squatters. ‘There is at least one person in the building at any time. Do NOT attempt to enter. If you do it will be unlawful.’ Meanwhile, their elderly victim, who has serious heart and lung problems, is said to be ‘worried out of her mind’ about being thrown out of her £2,500 a month care home. You can’t ask for ‘hard workers’ in your advert...it’s discrimination When an Optician wanted to hire a receptionist for her family’s busy opticians practice, she thought it reasonable to include the phrase ‘hard-working’ in the advert. But when she phoned the vacancy through to a Job Centre she was shocked to be told: ‘Sorry, you can’t say that. It’s discriminatory.’ The bewildered Optician persisted and said she wanted to get across the message that this was not a job for the work shy. But she was even more flabbergasted when told: ‘We will only include “hard-working” if we can say that you insisted on it.’ In the politically correct world of the workplace, it seems, it is wrong to discriminate against lazy people. Labour's job cull was branded a sham after it emerged 584 new public sector jobs – with a combined annual salary of £22million – have been advertised in a single week. Despite Gordon Brown’s pledge to slash bureaucracy, a snapshot survey revealed the public sector is still frantically recruiting hundreds of people every week. They will cost the taxpayer £22million a year, enough to pay for 985 new nurses or 835 new teachers. Teachers and nurses are real jobs - useful jobs! Which is more than can be said for the ‘excellence cluster co-ordinator' which a local council is apparently ready to pay £50,229 for or £12,064 for a substance misuse worker! PI comment: Can someone tell me what the hell is a 'excellence cluster co-ordinator' is? Billions of pounds of our money is wasted on useless jobs because the government can't keep its nose out of any aspect of our lives. Advert falls foul of the new Media Police An advert that mentions faggots has been banned by Ofcom, the new PC regulator of UK Radio and TV. An advert by Sommerfield featured a man whose wife fed him the same thing on the same day every week. On Friday when she fed him faggots, he complained "I've nothing against faggots, I just don't fancy them." Three people complained and the advert was banned on the grounds that it was "capable of causing serious offence" and agreed that faggot was "a highly derogatory term". Villain sues police over a poster. (from The Daily Mail) A convicted gunman and drug dealer is suing Nottinghamshire Police over a poster which uses his picture warning of the consequences of becoming involved with guns and drugs. He feels his human rights have been abused and backed by Liberty, he is seeking thousands of pounds in compensation. The Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire, Steven Green commented "It's a joke. It is about time we established that the Human Rights Act is there to protect victims not criminals" PI comment: Well said Steven. A criminal's human rights should be suspended for the duration of their sentence! Police 'stop and search' more Asians! Shock and horror! The police are racist! The BBC's top story of the day - an interview with Home Office minister Hazel Blears, who (while wringing her hands) says it is an unacceptable imbalance. From next April, police forces would be required to record reasons for all searches! (Apparently eight Asians are stopped a day now instead of two!) PI comment: Hang on - aren't we under threat from Al Qaeda who seek to repeat what they did in New York and Madrid here? So isn't it reasonable (essential even) to keep a closer eye on the Asian community? When the IRA was bombing London they obviously kept a closer eye on the Irish. It is just common sense really - which is why the PC Brigade can't understand it - they have theirs removed when they join! Burglars go undetected - their victim goes to jail. Richard North refused to pay £68 of his council tax - the annual police precept - because he felt he was not getting any service from them. After being burgled five times and seeing his neighbours suffer similarly he commented "The police are about as much use as a chocolate fireguard." Sentenced to 14 days for non payment (the £68 had now risen to £1000) he ended up in jail until the Daily Mail kindly paid the fine for him. PI comment: Richard North made the mistake of being white, male and gainfully employed - the only group not to come under the umbrella protection of political correctness in Blair's Britain. Political Correctness may seriously endanger your life! At the 9/11 hearings in New York, the past president of United Airlines and the current president of American Airlines both testified under oath that "the Department of Transportation continued to fine any airline that was caught having more than two people of the same ethnic persuasion in a secondary line for questioning, including and especially, two Arabs." 'So if airline security had three suspicious Arab guys they had to let one go because they'd reached a quota?' they were asked. "That was it" they replied "because of this political correctness that became so entrenched in the 1990s, and continues in current administration" (from Patterico.com) Read the full story here. PI comment: Didn't each of the Sept. 11 flights have more than two Arab terrorists? Remind me not to fly to any Politically Correct countries! The Lord's move to ban smacking (from The Mail on Sunday) The Government has caved in to Labour rebels demanding new penalties for parents who smack their children. A deal of some sort is expected to be struck (no pun intended) as Tony Blair is said to think that an outright ban would not be acceptable to most parents. It seems likely that there will be a ban in all but a handful of extreme situations. A leading Labour MP, Shaun Woodward (who admits smacking - so he is human after all) writing in the Mail On Sunday, thinks that smacking should be banned as it can easily lead to abuse. He asks who can judge whether the smacking was reasonable chastisement? He points to our football hooligans and asks what role smacking has had in their upbringing? PI comment: I can answer all those questions for you Shaun. One legged policeman The West Midlands police force now have a one-legged policeman! This is PC style equality in 2004. Whilst I wish him the best of luck in his new job I can't help wonder how can this man do what a policeman is supposed to do? Yes, yes, I know he can put the film in the speed cameras but can he chase muggers? Can he stop bank robbers? He would be brave if he told a group of yobs hanging around the off licence to hop it! PI comment: A step too far in the equality stakes! Politically Correct 'outreach' workers ignore parents completely In two cases in the same week, social workers have either not spoken to or just ignored parents of teenage girls. In one case a 14yr old girl was given an abortion without any reference to her mother. In another, a girl was removed from her adoptive parents who objected to her way of life. The social worker said that the 13yr old girl had a 'right' to a sex life and that it was 'normal' to experiment with drugs! PI comment: This actually sends totally the wrong message to the very people you are paid to protect. Human Rights Culture - explosion of compensation claims expected The government has announced plans to establish a new super-quango - The Equality and Human Rights Commission - to hunt down discrimination on - well almost any grounds at all really. This will only lead to more greedy lawyers fuelling a culture of complaint and compensation to the detriment of British business which is already struggling against competitors from EEC countries that don't have to put up with so much stupid political correctness. The initial cost to the British taxpayer is £1,000,000 a week. Now add to that the legal aid bills and compensation payouts and you can see exactly why we have to be taxed to the very hilt! PI comment: We are already drowning in a sea of Politically Correct compensation slime - now they have decided to melt the polar ice caps! PC spreads to Spain The statue of St James, the Moorslayer at Santiago Cathedral will be removed so as not to offend the Muslim community. It will be replaced by a statue of St James as a pilgrim. The Spanish fear that it could attract the anger of the Arab world in a period of high tension. PI Comment: The PC Brigade are rewriting history again! Absolutely ridiculous. Volunteer forgets newspeak (from The Sun) Volunteer Sarah Templeton has been kicked off a government scheme that helps young offenders go straight for calling a colleague "Petal". PI Comment: Presumably, if she'd said "Yo, Mother F*cker" she'd be deemed to be fitting in and still gainfully employed. It had to happen Both CNN and the BBC are both running stories today concerning the computer industries penchant for the terms ‘master' and ‘slave' (for designating a primary or secondary hard drive, for example). According to CNN “… an unidentified worker spotted a videotape machine carrying devices labeled ‘master' and ‘slave' and filed a discrimination complaint with the county's Office of Affirmative Action Compliance.” They go on to quote Joe Sandoval, division manager of purchasing and contract services, who states “… based on the cultural diversity and sensitivity of Los Angeles County, this is not an acceptable identification label.”: "The County of Los Angeles actively promotes and is committed to ensure a work environment that is free from any discriminatory influence, be it actual or perceived". But removing the universally adopted terms from drives may cause more problems than it solves, say manufacturers, as users -- including those employed by LA County -- would find the settings confusing if the labels changed. One major drive manufacturer's response was of incredulity: "I thought the British were prim and proper," said a spokeswoman for the company, who asked not to be identified, "but what's up with these Americans? It's not a Schwarzenegger change is it? You'd have to be barking mad to do this." The spokeswoman said it is highly unlikely that drive manufacturers would take the request seriously. IT director Andres Tomlin was similarly unimpressed. "This is another ludicrous example of "political correctness," he said. "This is political point-scoring and nothing to do with the reality of everyday life." PI Comment: Long ago I predicted this would happen. Sheer PC madness!
Turn up for school and win £100 Would you believe it - Education bosses in Manchester are to try to bribe children to turn up to school by offering them cash prizes! I would print the whole story but I find it far too depressing to do so - if you want to read about the whole shameful affair click the link below: Turn up for school and win £100 by Deborah Haile - Manchester Online The good people of Manchester don't think much of it either - if you want to read their comments on the matter click this link - Comments PI Comment: How stupid can we get? What is this teaching our children? The gentle art of blackmail? (For more comment click the Children link on the left) Tories disown cockler joke MP PI comment: This one really got to me, so much so that I wrote to Mr Howard! I pointed out this was just a joke and there were a large number of similar jokes circulating the country at present as happened after all tragedies like this - it was just the British way of dealing with the grief. I asked how this could be termed a racial joke? Would it have been ok to make the joke if the victims were British? I said I was disappointed that at a time when the country needed a strong leader to deal with all the damage done to us by political correctness that he was showing himself to be as weak and spineless as the rest of the politicians! And as if to prove my point, the reply that came just thanked me for my interest and then just repeated the press release quoted above. All quite unbelievable! Boy suspended for playing kiss chase PI comment: What planet do these school officials come from? The planet madness I think! Speed Cameras don't save lives! (but they do raise lots of money) It's official - the police's own statistics prove it. Evidence obtained by The Mail on Sunday from those Police forces across the country (the one's that would actually release them) shows that road deaths have gone up since 2001 (the year of the camera explosion), contradicting repeated claims by supporters that they drastically reduce road death and injury. The figures from two forces showed that although they had doubled the number of cameras in their areas since 2001 - the number of deaths had risen by a third. Other documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday showed that three police forces had actual targets for the number of tickets to be issued per year; it seems they were hoping to increase on the £73 million cash cow generated by the 6,300 fixed cameras across the country in 2002. The chief constable of North Wales came in for the most criticism after he doubled the number of cameras in his area and said that he hoped to see the number of tickets issued double across the whole country. Local businessmen say his campaign has gone over the top and is affecting trade and tourism and they would rather see more burglars and vandals caught. Not very likely though as the chief constable was forced to defend his force's burglary clear up rate (the worst in its long history) as a 'blip'! Read the whole article in The Mail on Sunday, Jan 18th 2004 by Peter Zimonjic PI comment: Well researched Peter - but it only proves what common sense infers. The Police will always take the easy route. Clearing up burglary takes effort and is in itself Politically Incorrect. Nothing will change while we have this P.C. Government in power! Fire Chief guilty of hiring unfit & unqualified candidates to meet P.C. target! An industrial tribunal has ruled that Staffordshire Fire & Rescue service deliberately and illegally discriminated against white male applicants to increase the number of women and ethnic minorities groups in the service. Fitness and safety tests were made easier for women and ethic minorities by ignoring the results of selection tests and then by constantly changing the basic job specifications to favour them. The part time firefighter who brought the case very sensibly commented: "I want to see more women and ethnic minorities in the service but you don't do that by discriminating against white men" Read the whole article in The Mail on Sunday, Jan 18th 2004 by Alistair Self PI comment: It really does beggar belief! How can they put public lives at risk by taking on under qualified personnel just to satisfy some demented politically correct dogma? I had a friend that was refused entry to Bedfordshire Fire & Rescue only on the grounds that his mathematical ability?? was not up to par. Perhaps he should have a sex change and reapply! Prison Officer sacked for making 'Bin Laden' joke! A prison officer cleared of making a racial remark about our national enemy Bin Laden revealed "These days you can't even refer to black coffee in the prison service without being branded a racist! We are told to refer to prisoners by their first name and not to say anything that may be construed as 'upsetting' to them. We even have to refer to their ethnic origin by 'code'. It makes running the prison service all but impossible. I feel I was singled out for making a throwaway remark just to make an example to others and to further the career of the governor!" Read the whole article in The Mail on Sunday, Jan 18th 2004 by Matt Nixson. PI comment: I can only imagine what Mr Mackay in Porridge would make of it all! No wonder prison is no deterrent anymore - it sounds more like a holiday camp. No wonder the prison officer morale is at an all time low. I have just lost what little respect I ever had for David Blunkett. When Rebecca Trebble found that her car had been vandalised, she expected the police to treat her as a victim of a crime. Even when they told her they were not sending an officer to investigate what they regarded as a minor matter, she thought they would at least care about her plight. But when she wrote to them complaining about her treatment, the local police chief in Taunton, Somerset replied that whoever had damaged her car was a victim deserving of sympathy too. Superintendent John Snell wrote back: "Whilst I have every sympathy with you being the victim of crime, the position regarding victims is not limited to those who suffer as you have done. Many of those who are responsible for the commission of such minor crimes could be considered to be victims themselves. To my knowledge some of our prolific offenders are heroin addicts who live in the very worst housing conditions in our area in relative poverty. It is also true many of them are from broken homes and really have miserable family backgrounds. I know this is no excuse and it is difficult to sympathise with such individuals when they commit crime; however, I do think sometimes we should give a thought to those less fortunate than ourselves" Miss Trebble, a 21yr old financial assistant, said yesterday: "I was shocked. I felt I was being patronised and that he was lecturing me. To suggest the criminal was as much the victim was amazing. That's just not what you expect from the police." This was published in the Daily Mail in February 1999 (which I have taken from Peter Hitchen's excellent book 'The Abolition of Liberty'). PI comment: This shows the extent of the PC rot with the police force! I would love to find out if Superintendent Snell is a fast tracked university graduate.
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