Another Teacher Pupil Love Case

Shelley White, a 24 year old geography teacher, has been convicted of 'abuse of trust' by having sexual activity with a child, a 15 year old boy. The 'sexual activity' was kissing (or 'snogging' as the Telegraph puts it).

It may not be desirable conduct in a teacher, but it is not something that warrants a conviction. The difference in age was not so great, and the acts were consensual, and in any case fell well short of intercourse.

A matter of school discipline perhaps, but not the criminal law.

The jury probably thought so too, because it was a 10 - 2 majority conviction. In the old days that would have meant an acquittal, and should have done so yesterday.

Instead, another life ruined.

Government Planned Population Explosion

Official forecasts from the ONS suggest the UK's population will grow from 60 million now to 67 million in 2031. Much of the increase will be in south east England.

The growth results from greatly increased immigration - net migration into the UK last year was 223,000, against 50,000 a year in 1997. The new forecasts are greater than Migrationwatch has put out, when it has been called 'alarmist'.

So will those who have been encouraging this massive wave of immigration free up the planning system so people can live decently and affordably in southern England? Or will the government inspired rabbit hutches continue to proliferate, for those that can afford them, and we come to live in ever closer proximity to each other as more spacious houses are demolished to accommodate increasingly cramped ones, and traditional gardens disappear?

Oh, and by the way, when did the English ever ask for so many new neighbours?

Has it ever been alive, European Democracy?

The EU cannot undo its lack of democracy by setting up national debates with students, young people, politicians, trades unions, academics and business groups as reported by the Telegraph. The problem is there is no EU demos - people's political activity, awareness, and allegiance is at the level of individual nation states. Democracy exists only within the nation state, not the EU, its antithesis.

Margot Wallstrom, the European Commission's vice-president for communication asks, "Has it ever been alive, European democracy?"

She should know when she says, "This [the EU] has been a project for a small elite, a political elite ..."

If the EU were a democracy there would not be a series of European Commission inspired 'debates' with a few groups, but elections where the electorate were regularly offered the power of decision at EU level. Yet not only are there no such elections, and the EU is ruled by an unaccountable, unelected, self-perpetuating elite, but EU political supremacy is not even wanted: in Britain at least, people want their nation state to continue and do not want to be subject to foreign control.

Parliament, wake up!

The Craven Broadcaster

John Humphrys, the BBC Today presenter got a dressing down from his bosses last month for remarks which made fun of some Labour politicians.

But the Telegraph today reports that:

BBC chiefs wanted to sack the Today presenter John Humphrys over jibes he made about Labour leaders in an after-dinner speech ...

... According to John Kampfner, the New Statesman's editor and a former BBC journalist, Mr Grade [the BBC chairman] was intent on making an example of Humphrys to placate the Government at a time when it is reviewing the corporation's charter. He said Mr Grade also saw the Humphrys issue as an opportunity to prove to politicians that the corporation's new governance system is effective.

If true, it is a good reason to abolish the 'licence fee' and let the BBC find its own way in the world, truly independent of any government.

If it isn't true, it is a good reason to abolish the 'licence fee' and let the BBC find its own way in the world, because the idea that the BBC is in thrall to the politicians is all too believable.

Being English Now Banned

On the same day I learn from Mark Steyn about a Tory council banning all pig related items, including an employee's box of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet tissues, due to Muslim sensitivities - and a so-called wish for 'tolerance', I now discover the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Ann Owers has been at it too:

A section on race relations in Owers' report [on Wakefield prison] said: "We were concerned to see a number of staff wearing a flag of St. George tie-pin.

CNN goes on to report:

Chris Doyle, director of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, said Tuesday the red cross was an insensitive reminder of the Crusades.

"A lot of Muslims and Arabs view the Crusades as a bloody episode in our history," he told CNN. "They see those campaigns as Christendom launching a brutal holy war against Islam.

"Muslim or Arab prisoners could take umbrage if staff wore a red cross badge. It's also got associations with the far-right. Prison officers should be seen to be neutral."

Doyle added that it was now time for England to find a new flag and a patron saint who is "not associated with our bloody past and one we can all identify with."

I say wave the flag, sing the national anthem, march on St George's Day, and let's see who our friends are!

To have pride and respect for our past, and support the ancient institutions that have grown out of it in the face of a new intolerance is to stand firm for our country's freedom and future. The tail cannot wag the dog. Down with PC prats and religious bigots.

It's nearly enough to start me eating meat again - pork, that is.

Dogs' Dinners

Jamie Oliver exposed the dire state of Britain's school dinners on TV.

The government commissioned a report which says:

The state of many school meals is an indictment of more than two decades of public policy which has in effect stripped nutrients off plates, removed skills from kitchen staff and seen the take-up of school meals drop precipitously.

So, caught out, the government intends to enforce nutritional standards and on-site cooking (even though it will mean building kitchens for many schools - another one-size-fits-all approach), while banning many 'junk' foods.

Very good. But would school meals have got so bad if schools were not controlled by the state, and obliged to direct their attention and resources to satisfying the bureaucracy and politicians rather than children and parents?

Having spent "more than two decades" making a dog's dinner of school meals, the government still thinks it knows best, showing no respect for the freedom of parents to determine what their children may eat. According to the Telegraph:

At first, the standards will cover only the provision of food. By 2011, however, they could be applied to its consumption, which would involve restricting the food children were allowed to bring into school.

Government conceit joined by the heavy hand of an obese state.

History as Propaganda

On his blog, James Bartholomew describes a visit to St Pauls - a leading boys' independent school in London.

The sixth form boys had very little idea of the reality of life before today's welfare state, greatly underrating health and education provision in the past, and with little conception of past generations' independence, a partial view fed by their highly left-wing teachers.

As Bartholomew says, if it is like this even in private schools, what sort of message is being promoted in state secondary schools?

No wonder people find it so hard to consider moving beyond the welfare state.

Abuse of Terror Act

An 82 year old man, Walter Wolfgang, a refugee from Nazi Germany and a Labour Party member since 1948, was yesterday ejected from the Labour party conference for heckling. According to the Telegraph:

When he tried to re-enter the secure zone, he was stopped by a police officer citing the Terrorism Act.

... At first Sussex police denied that Mr Wolfgang had been detained or searched but a spokesman later admitted that he had been issued with a section 44 stop and search form under the Terrorism Act.

Another example of a law passed for one purpose but used for another - moral: never trust the state.

And if the Sussex police denial was made knowing its falsity, an example of self-serving lack of integrity.

Blair U-Turn on Kyoto?

Those of us who failed to pick up the great scoop from James Pinkerton at Tech Central Station on 15th September 2005 are only now learning from the MSM of Blair's change on Kyoto. The Sunday Times reports Blair saying:

“The truth is no country is going to cut its growth or consumption substantially in the light of a long-term environmental problem. To be honest, I don’t think people are going, at least in the short term, to start negotiating another major treaty like Kyoto.”

... In his comments, Blair suggested he no longer had faith in global agreements as a way of reversing rising greenhouse gas emissions. Instead he appeared to place his faith in science, technology and the free market ...

Perhaps he'll tell his 'scientific' advisers now, and we'll have to endure less of the sanctimonious claptrap we've been getting from the likes of Sir John Lawton, chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, reported by the Telegraph saying:

... the intensity of the hurricanes was caused by water in the Gulf of Mexico being warmer than usual and was consistent with the latest scientific predictions of how the climate will behave as a result of man-made warming.

"If this makes the climate loonies in the States realize we've got a problem, something good will come out of this situation," said Sir John.

And yet Sir John had only to look at the US National Hurricane Center's statistics on hurricane strikes on the US mainland over the past 150 years to see that while there is a lot of variation, there is no pattern of increasing frequency or intensity in recent years.

As I've said before, and maybe Blair is coming round to this too, if there is global warming we are better off adapting to climate change than trying to control the weather, which is still subject to greater natural forces than we can deal with.