Letter From the UK (About Racial and Religious Profiling In Adoption)

Social Worker Tried to Stop Couple Adopting Because They Were ‘Too Jewish’

by A.B. Sanderson  

15 Nov 2014

BreitbartLondon

A former Justice of the UK’s Supreme Court has told how he had to overrule complaints that a couple were “too Jewish” to adopt. Lord Wilson told an audience this week that rules regarding the ethnicity of a child in care were discriminating against those same children they were intended to protect.

Child Protection agencies and local authorities recognise that an adoptive home is often the only viable solution for a child in care and the best opportunity they will get for a stable family home, particularly those who were taken into care because of abuse by their biological parents.

“But”, said Lord Wilson, “that has lead to other problems.”

In a lecture entitled “Adoption: Complexities Beyond the Law” he told a story of a three year old child who was to be placed for adoption with a couple with a strong Jewish identity.  The girl, who was a quarter Jewish, a quarter Scottish, a quarter Irish and a quarter Turkish should, according to the child’s guardian, be placed in a non-religious family environment.

“[The guardian] argued that C [the child] should be placed in a non-religious family in which exposure to her of the four elements of her ethnicity might evenly be developed. She said that the proposed couple were too Jewish,” said Lord Wilson.  “I rejected her view. I directed that C be placed with the couple and, a year later, I made the adoption order. Less than four weeks afterwards, out of the blue, the adoptive father died. I felt terrible: I had overruled the guardian’s objection and had caused C to be adopted by a grieving single parent.”

But he went on: “In the event however the adoption has worked out beautifully. C is one of four children, adopted under orders made by me, with whom, even after all these years, I keep in touch. They tend to write to me just before their birthdays, as if subtly to remind me of their continued ability to make use of £25.
Two years ago C and her mother invited me to attend her batmitzvah. The family pinned a kippa on to my head. C looked radiant.”

He added that he applauded the “recent statutory dilution” by former Education Secretary Michael Gove “of the aim of seeking to place a child with adopters of similar ethnicity.”  The reason, he says, is because most people who adopt are white. So while the authorities know that there is a perceived need for an ethnic match between child and parents, it is better they are placed in a loving home with parents from different backgrounds than “languish” in foster care.

In a conclusion which may well upset many politically correct organisations, he said that to permit children, based on their race, to miss the opportunity of a loving family home is discrimination itself.

Never Another Cent to the Red Cross

Priggishness, Self-Righteousness, And Bigotry

It is the duty of every donor to complete at least basic due diligence upon groups soliciting donations.  For example, we have never given a cent to Greenpeace, not just because of its extreme Greenist stance, but because of its wilful lawbreaking.

We used to respect Amnesty International, but once it became obvious that they had morphed from a creditable and respectable organisation speaking out on behalf of political prisoners to one espousing radical left wing causes they have been banned as far as donations go.  The same can be said for Oxfam whose espousal of Leftwing causes is both nauseating dull and utterly predictable. 

To this list of ill-repute we now need to add the Red Cross.  In the United Kingdom one of their long-term volunteers has been sacked because of a terrible crime.  He happens to oppose homosexual “marriage”.  Bryan Barkley had been a senior, long-serving volunteer, so experienced that he was doing sensitive specialist work helping reunite people with lost family members across borders.  But he, himself, has now crossed the border into the Darklands.  He happened to stand in public holding a sign opposing the British Government’s plans to ram through homosexual “marriage” legislation.  For this inexcusable breach, he was fired from the Red Cross.  He had, he was told, done terrible things which “went against the group’s values”.  One would have thought that he had raped someone, or committed murder, or was guilty of some other capital crime.  But no.  He was acting lawfully at all times.

OK.  If Bryan could be fired for actions “going against the group’s values” then it seems only fair that every donor at this point has an inalienable right to determine never again to donate to the Red Cross since it has adopted positions which go against the values of donors.  Seems fair.

But to get your gander up in a serious way, consider how the Red Cross has responded to the public outcry against its intolerance and bigotry.  It has reacted in high dudgeon via a statement oozing with oleaginous self-righteousness and priggishness of prodigious proportion.  BreitbartLondon records the malodorous eructation:

The Red Cross has responded, however, by accusing Mr Bickley’s supporters of distracting the organisation from its work dealing with international disasters. A spokeswoman said: “The British Red Cross is working internationally tackling enormous issues like the Ebola crisis, Syria and the food crisis in South Sudan.

“Orchestrated actions like this inevitably divert us from our humanitarian mission.

“Tragically it has taken up vital staff time and resources away from our international mission and in the UK.”

Apparently “enormous issues” like the Ebola crisis, Syria, and the food crisis in South Sudan pale in significance to the really vital mission of ensuring that all staff comply with the (perverted) values of the Red Cross.  Until miscreants like Bryan Bickley are purged from the organization, its “humanitarian mission” can be suspended, Ebola can whistle Dixie, Syria can cool its heels, and South Sudan can take a hike.  Ensuring that all staff are dedicated supporters of homosexual “marriage” will clearly preoccupy vital staff time and resources as top priority.  Such things are far more important than a few dying people in Africa.

This has to take the cake as the most egregious self-righteous priggery in a long, long time.

Never another cent to the Red Cross. 

Letter From the UK (About the Netherlands)

Assisted Suicide ‘Out of Control’ in Netherlands

by Nick Hallett  

3 Oct 2014

Breitbart London

The number of mentally ill people who have been killed through euthanasia in the Netherlands has trebled in a single year, according to new figures.

The Daily Mail reports that in 2012, 14 people with “severe psychiatric problems” were killed by lethal injection, a figure that rose to 42 in 2013.  There had also been a 15 percent overall rise in assisted dying over the past year, with the number of cases increasing from 4,188 to 4,829.

Deaths from euthanasia have risen by a total of 151 percent in a period of just seven years, with most cases involving cancer sufferers. However, there were also 97 people who were killed by their doctors because they had dementia.

The figures do not include “terminal sedation”, where the patient is sedated and then has food and fluids withdrawn. If they did, however, euthanasia would account for one in eight of all deaths in the Netherlands.
Dr Peter Saunders of the Christian Medical Fellowship told the Daily Mail that euthanasia in the Netherlands is “way out of control”, saying that it proves that assisted dying is impossible to regulate.

“The House of Lords calculated in 2005 that with a Dutch-type law in Britain we would be seeing over 13,000 cases of euthanasia per year,” he added.  “On the basis of how Dutch euthanasia deaths have risen since this may prove to be a gross underestimate.  What we are seeing in the Netherlands is ‘incremental extension’, the steady intentional escalation of numbers with a gradual widening of the categories of patients to be included.  The lessons are clear. Once you relax the law on euthanasia or assisted suicide steady extension will follow as night follows day.”

In Britain, a bill that would legalise assisted dying received its second reading in the House of Lords in July and will continue to the next legislative stage in November.  Earlier this year, Dutch regulator Theo Boer told the British Parliament “Don’t go there” when asked about the British proposals.

Letter From the UK (About An Assault Upon Christian Doctrine)

Forced Promotion of Homosexual “Marriage”

New Government Regulations ‘Compel’ Schools to Promote Same-Sex Marriage

by Gerald Warner  

10 Oct 2014

Breitbart London

The Coalition for Marriage has denounced new Government regulations for independent schools in England which are clearly aimed at compelling schools to promote same-sex marriage, regardless of the wishes of parents or teachers. This measure provides the latest evidence of the insincerity of the Cameron government in claiming that rights of conscience would be respected when marriage for homosexuals was forced onto the statute book.

These coercive provisions are contained in the new Independent School Standards regulations which change the legal framework for academies, free schools and private education. This means that they target a total of 6,238 schools. The number of pupils enrolled in academies alone amounts to 2,423,535, so millions of schoolchildren, teachers and parents will be affected by this new imposition. Ofsted has been charged with enforcing the same minimum standards on all other schools.

The Coalition for Marriage has published an analysis of the new provisions, accompanied by detailed advice from a senior QC consulted by the Christian Institute. This latest aggression by social engineers in a supposedly Conservative-led government is ominously significant, even historic, in that it crosses a red line never before violated by introducing state interference in the curriculum. Even Labour never went as far as that in its social engineering mania.

Colin Hart, Campaign Director of the Coalition for Marriage, observes: “As we know from recent history, reasonable opposition to same-sex marriage is routinely described as ‘homophobia’.” He asks if a school must discipline or dismiss a teacher who voices support for traditional marriage and whether parents of prospective pupils will be interrogated about their beliefs before their child is granted a school place. Such totalitarian inquisition is already practised with regard to fostering and adoption.

In supposed respect for that convention the school curriculum was excluded from the provisions of the Equality Act. Now, however, these new regulations will trample down that tradition of political neutrality in the curriculum in English schools. Regulation (b) (vi) introduces a duty to “encourage respect for other people, paying particular regard to the protected characteristics set out in the Equality Act 2010 (a)”. Note the weasel language regarding “protected characteristics”. Nobody has any problem with pupils being taught respect for other people – they have long been instructed in that duty in religious knowledge classes, civics lessons and in the home.

But respecting “protected characteristics” defined in the most un-British piece of legislation ever passed is an entirely different matter. It involves ideology rather than people. One of the protected characteristics set out in the Equality Act is sexual orientation. The regulations assert a “new requirement for schools to actively promote principles which encourage respect for persons with protected characteristics” with the intention of allowing the Secretary of State to take regulatory action in various situations, including “failure to address homophobia”.

Colin Hart, Campaign Director of the Coalition for Marriage, observes: “As we know from recent history, reasonable opposition to same-sex marriage is routinely described as ‘homophobia’.” He asks if a school must discipline or dismiss a teacher who voices support for traditional marriage and whether parents of prospective pupils will be interrogated about their beliefs before their child is granted a school place. Such totalitarian inquisition is already practised with regard to fostering and adoption.

The sinister term “actively promote” was defined in the Government’s consultation document: “ ‘Actively promote’ also means challenging pupils, staff or parents expressing opinions contrary to fundamental British values.” Anyone who thinks that is simply aimed at jihadist sympathisers is sadly deluded. “Fundamental British values”, in a Government context, bears no relation to the traditional ethos, beliefs and standards of mainstream Britain; on the contrary, it is coded language for political correctness.

This blueprint for indoctrination further insists that in future private schools must conform to “national norms” rather than the expectations of parents. So much for independent education. If this is the climate of enforcement that will prevail in the independent sector, what kind of Stalinist Thought Police can we expect to rule over state schools?

The QC’s opinion commissioned by the Christian Institute, another body alarmed by this interference with academic and moral freedom, quotes a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights: “The state is forbidden to pursue an aim of indoctrination that might be considered as not respecting parents’ religious and philosophical convictions. That is the limit that the states must not exceed.”

The British Government prefers to “challenge” parents. They should accept that challenge and respond, most notably at the ballot box. Some of them took the opportunity of doing so on Thursday. It beggars belief that this offensive against the ideological impartiality of the school curriculum, traditional marriage, parental authority and freedom of speech results from an initiative by a so-called Conservative Prime Minister.

Now we know just how “free” the Tories’ free schools are intended to be. Independent education is an oxymoron when the intruder State attempts to enforce its progressive prejudices on pupils and teachers. We are being herded along a road well trodden by totalitarian dictators before. How long before we arrive at the Orwellian destination where pupils are indoctrinated with the slogan “Be a good citizen – report your parents”? Debauching the school curriculum is an aggression too far by Dave’s PC social engineers.

Letter From the UK (About Consequences of Perverse Multi-cultualism)

Islamic Rape Gangs

Rotherham is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

James Delingpole

Breitbart London

7th September 2014

If you haven’t yet listened to the latest Radio Free Delingpole podcast I urge you to do so: but first you’ll need a strong stomach.

In it, I talk to George Igler of the Discourse Institute who has been following the Rotherham child rape gang story closely for the last three years. The full story is more shocking than you can possibly imagine, not just because of the ugliness of the abuse itself (redolent of that horrible scene from the movie Taken where smack-addled girls are serially abused in a filthy dive by countless grubby men) but also because of the extent of the cover-up by the left-liberal establishment of social workers, local government officers, child welfare charities, diversity co-ordinators, not to mention the regional police forces and even imams.

Truly this is one of the biggest scandals of our time. And it’s going to get bigger.  Here are some of the disturbing revelations in the podcast.

• The rape gang phenomenon has existed in the UK for at least 25 years, the first recorded instance being of a trial in Birmingham in 1989. But – typical, this, of what was to come – the defendants were not Muslim rapists. They were the Sikh fathers of abused daughters who had tried to attack the perpetrators of the crime only to end up being arrested themselves while the police turned a blind eye to the sex crime.
• It exists not just in impoverished, racially-divided, working class Northern towns by also in places as white and genteel as Henley-on-Thames
The rape gang phenomenon has existed in the UK for at least 25 years, the first recorded instance being of a trial in Birmingham in 1989.
• It begins like this: a “Romeo” targets the girls, wins their affections, pretends to be in love with them, makes them feel grown-up with presents, treats, drink, drugs. Then the trapdoor shuts. Next thing they know these girls are being plied with booze and heroin, shut in a room with strangers – often related: cousins; brothers; etc – who serially rape them, with the whole business being filmed. The video footage is used to blackmail the girls, who in any case, generally feel too ashamed to report the crime to the authorities. Most of them become addicted to the heroin whose purpose is first to make them resist less and secondly to make them keep coming back for more, despite their better judgement.
• These practices have long been widely known to the police, to social workers, to child-care charities and local councils. All found an excuse to absolve the rape gangs of criminal behaviour by claiming that these sexual activities were consensual – ie that these girls, some as young as 11, were sluts who had it coming to them.
• Each child is worth about £200,000 (around $300,000) a year to the gangs – which makes them even more lucrative than the drugs trade.
• Money is also one of the reasons for the complicity of so many local councils. At a time of general spending cutbacks, money can always be found for jobs in the all-important “Diversity” industry. On salaries as high as £100,000 a year, senior council workers have a vested interest in not rocking the boat. Better to cover up these scandals and preserve the illusion of community cohesion then to have unwelcome public attention drawn to these unsavoury goings-on.
Rotherham – with 1400 girls abused – is just the tip of the iceberg. This has been going on, largely unchecked, all over Britain for a period of 25 years.
• Does the broader local Muslim community know what’s going on? Of course. Remember, the 200 prosecutions so far have been brought mainly against the gang organizers – not against the many thousands of men who have participated in these rape parties.
• Also, the Muslim community has deliberately exploited white liberal squeamishness by threatening race riots and by warning off police that if they try to take the matter further they will report them for “racism.”
• Why haven’t more people in authority lost their jobs? Because time and again they deploy a formulaic excuse which they may well have learned at diversity workshops organised by groups like Common Purpose: yes there has been a scandal; it may be worse than we think; but only we have the training and experience to deal with it, which is why it is vital that we keep our jobs.
• Why wasn’t this reported earlier? It was. But often the people protesting were members of the BNP or the EDL whose “far-right” taint meant that their complaints could safely be dismissed by the left-liberal Establishment as racially motivated and dishonest. The same “racism” accusation was levelled against anyone brave enough to speak out such as Labour MP Ann Cryer. Most people therefore found it more convenient to look the other way.
• Rotherham – with 1400 girls abused – is just the tip of the iceberg. This has been going on, largely unchecked, all over Britain for a period of 25 years. And, if people take apologists like this woman seriously, it may well go on largely unchecked for some time to come….

Letter From the UK (About Supine Compliance with Bullies)

Kosher vs Halal is a Battle for the Soul of our Supermarkets

by Milo Yiannopoulos  

18 Aug 2014

Breitbart UK

In the red corner, a peaceful, creative, successful and admired diaspora that has gifted economic and cultural bounties wherever it has settled. In the blue corner, bigoted vandals, in hock to an ugly and violent ideology, bullying others while playing the victim and demanding special treatment. Guess who our supine supermarkets are sucking up to? Why, the bullies and bigots, of course. 

Yesterday, we learned that Sainsbury’s had removed kosher products from the shelves of its Holborn store after pressure from Islamist thugs. They later admitted to customers it had been a mistake to do so, but stopped short of issuing a proper apology. Would Sainsbury’s, or any other supermarket, have removed halal products from sale in the face of similar threats? Not on your nelly.

Indeed, our supermarkets go a step further and feed halal products to their customers in some cases without even correctly labelling it. And I think we’ve all seen the “halal section” of the meat aisle slowly expanding over the past few years. Brits are right, I think, to feel disorientated by its rapid growth. The amount of space they take up is wildly disproportionate to the number of Muslims in Britain.

In the Tesco near where I live, there is a wider selection of chicken and beef products in the halal section than in the normal bit. So if you want a full range of meat you are basically obliged to pick from cuts that have been prepared for Muslims. I don’t know about you, but the thought of my Sunday roast having been ululated over gives me the creeps.

The supermarkets like halal because they can put more of a mark-up on it. And I guess, in the wake of the horse meat scandal, some people might be tempted into mince with a more reliable provenance. Tesco would doubtless claim it is responding to local demand, but something has obviously gone wrong when its product selection makes it almost impossible to avoid halal. (When it’s even labelled correctly.)

By contrast, the kosher section in my local Tesco Extra is… well, I’m not even sure there is one. I drove over this morning to be sure. Perhaps Tesco thinks there are no Jews in Essex. But after 40 minutes of trawling the Tesco mega-store this morning I couldn’t find a single kosher food section, and certainly nothing like the vast banks of Islamic victuals. I’m quasi-Jewish, as they say, so don’t much care about kosher. But I find it odd.

The battle for the soul of our supermarkets is significant because it tells us a lot about how we, as a society, respond to pressure from bullies. So far our report card is disappointing. If catering for Muslims also means rolling over and taking it from Islamists, and pulling Jewish products from the shelves, perhaps it’s time to remove halal products from our supermarkets until the thuggish behaviour stops.

Of course, the dirty secret I’m not supposed to tell you is that I’m only using “Islamist” as a courtesy, so as not to offend Muslim readers. There’s no evidence that this loutish behaviour is coming from wannabe jihadis: it’s simply swaggering, boisterous young Muslim men, who have been taught that if they throw their weight around, they generally get what they want.

Are we to suck up to bullies in the vain hope they don’t come for us next? History suggests that’s foolhardy. Or do we protect the weakest in our society against brutishness and barbarism, and reject the spinelessness of Sainsbury’s?

It doesn’t help that vanishingly few of the checkout staff are white these days. Under normal circumstances I’d be grateful: I dread getting the sullen, judgmental white cashier who either doesn’t want to be there or thinks she’s better than supermarket work. But have a wander into the Holborn Sainsbury’s and you tell me whether the staff there would be hostile or sympathetic to removing Jewish food from the shelves.

It’s worth repeating that this has nothing to do with the purported justification for protest: suffering in Gaza. Because the food in question wasn’t even Israeli: it included pastrami sandwiches made in Wembley. So Sainsbury’s didn’t temporarily bow to pressure from humanitarian campaigners: it gave in to anti-Semites. Doesn’t Sainsbury’s know the difference between a race and a country? Compare and contrast this store manager’s cowardice – or complicity – and the boycotts of Jewish stores in 1930s Germany. 

It’s time to grow up and protect the people who really do need our protection. Anti-Semitism is on the rise everywhere. It’s at levels unseen since the Nazis, we’re told. Meanwhile, violent attacks on Muslims, except for a blip after the brutal murder of Drummer Lee Rigby, are going down., and are largely restricted to “hijab-pulling.” No wonder. I mean, would you walk up to a man coming out of a mosque and take a swing at him?
We must ask what kind of a country we want to be. Are we to suck up to bullies in the vain hope they don’t come for us next? History suggests that’s foolhardy. Or do we protect the weakest in our society against brutishness and barbarism, and reject the spinelessness of Sainsbury’s?

Letter From the UK (About the Ferguson Race Riots)

A black president couldn’t stop the Ferguson race riots 

Tim Stanley
The Telegraph
August 17, 2014 

Violence continues in Ferguson, Missouri. It began on August 9 with the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager cut down by a white cop’s bullets. Peaceful demonstrations turned into looting, the local police went in with rubber bullets and tear gas, all hell broke loose and, eventually, Missouri’s governor pulled out the local police and sent in state officers instead. But the rioting only paused; it didn’t cease. And it may continue. That’s probably because it’s driven by a deep, deep anger that will take a long time to calm.
Observers might ask, “How can this be happening in an America that has elected a black president?” How can black kids still get killed by white cops and how can towns still burn in race riots?

Part of the explanation is that the recession has been especially tough on African-Americans – reinforcing historical disparities of wealth between the races. Before the credit crunch, the median net worth of a black household was $12,124, compared with $134,992 in white households. After the crunch, the black net worth fell to just $5,677, compared with $113,149 among whites. Black home equity fell by an average of 28 per cent and retirement savings by 35 per cent. In May 2014, the black unemployment rate stood at 11.5 per cent – more than double the white jobless rate of 5.4 per cent.

To make matters worse, blacks face additional challenges at home and in the streets. There is a crisis in black fatherhood: while just 29 per cent of whites are born out of wedlock, the figure is 72 per cent for blacks. One result is a racial imbalance in welfare dependency: African-Americans make up about 13 per cent of the population yet 39.8 per cent of those on welfare rolls. Other frightening statistics point to a serious cultural malaise. Four out of five black women are overweight or obese; black women account for nearly 36 per cent of all abortions performed in the United States.

All of this is made worse by a police and judicial system that seems not just imbalanced against blacks but actually designed to put more of them in prison. The War on Drugs and mandatory sentencing has gone hand-in-hand with racial profiling to send large numbers of African-Americans to jail for small infractions: they now account for around 40 per cent of the prison population. For a sense of how, for many blacks, the police are an agency of state repression, consider this alarming fact: in Ferguson, 67 per cent of residents are black but 94 per cent of the local police are white.

Why has electing a black president not changed all of this? One answer is that while Obama is a president who is black, he has never sold himself as an expressly black president – that is, he tries to operate outside of the racial narrative rather than play a leadership role within it. He is evidence to the young black child that, yes, anyone can make it in America.

But what he was never going to be was someone who would confront racism head on or seek a substantial redistribution of power and money of the variety that many civil rights leaders feel is necessary to help the poor.

President Obama has tried on occasion to talk about race, but its political consequences have tended to be negative. When Trayvon Martin was shot dead by vigilante George Zimmerman, Obama remarked that he could have been his son – and it did nothing to help convict Zimmerman. On the contrary, many conservatives took exception to the remarks for it seemed like an inappropriate injection of national politics into a case facing the courts.

Obama has commented on Ferguson but mostly to appeal for calm and ask for a proper investigation of what happened.

If there is hope for real change, some of it might come from the Right. In general, they have been horrified by events in Ferguson – not so much by the looting (condemned by almost everyone) but by the obvious iniquities in the law-and-order system. Jonah Goldberg, a highly respected Right-wing columnist, argued that “the idea that police forces shouldn’t take into account the racial or ethnic make-up of their communities when it comes to hiring [is] bizarre.”

Senator Rand Paul, a libertarian Republican who would like to be president, has condemned both the militarisation of the police and the country’s drug laws. Meanwhile, many Republicans are embracing prison reform.

Of course, it will be the black community that will lead the fight for change. Fortunately, there is an expanding black middle class to offer a model of self-improvement and the black church remains a beacon of activism and uplift. Sadly, what they have discovered since the days of the civil rights movement is that government isn’t always their best friend and the promises of the Left can be empty. Change will come from within towns like Ferguson, not from within the White House.

Letter From the UK (About The Global Warming Scam Turning to Toast)

Mann v Steyn: If This Trial Ever Goes Ahead Global Warming Is Toast

by James Delingpole  

15 Aug 2014

Breitbart UK

Mark Steyn has published his latest brief in his protracted court case with discredited climate scientist Michael Mann (who is suing him for libel) and it’s a corker.

Here’s a sample:

The audacity of the falsehoods in Mann’s court pleadings is breathtaking. For example, on page 19 of his brief below dated January 18, 2013, he cites the international panel chaired by the eminent scientist Lord Oxburgh, FRS as one of the bodies that “exonerated” him, whereas on page 235 of Mann’s own book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, he states explicitly that “our own work did not fall within the remit of the committee and the hockey stick was not mentioned in the report.” It is deeply disturbing that a plaintiff should make such fraudulent claims in his legal pleadings. It is even more disturbing that the first such fraudulent claim – to be a Nobel Laureate and thus in the same pantheon as Banting, Einstein, and the Curies – should have led to the amended complaint and the procedural delays that then followed. It would be even more profoundly damaging were his other transparently false claims to be entertained for another two years before trial.

It is clear from the ease with which Mann lies about things that would not withstand ten minutes of scrutiny in a courtroom that he has no intention of proceeding to trial.”

For the full background to the case, read this. But all you really need to know is that Michael Mann is exploiting the flaws in the US legal system to try to draw out proceedings as long as possible in order to exhaust – or bankrupt – Steyn into submission.

Unfortunately for Mann he picked the wrong victim.
Steyn is a fighter who knows his way round the courts having battled a similarly vexatious and vindictive case in Canada when he was accused of Islamophobia – or some similar nonsense – by something called the Ontario Human Rights Committee. Plus, Steyn is astute enough to appreciate exactly what’s at stake here.

This, if Steyn is successful, could be the moment the dam bursts: the one where the global establishment is finally forced to acknowledge the fraudulence, the corruption, the mendacity, the trickery, the deception, the junk science, the big money and the official complicity which for the last two or three decades have been underpinning the Great Climate Change Scam.

This isn’t about hurt feelings or a damaged professional reputation, let alone an ill-chosen and imprecise turn of phrase. It’s about the very principle of freedom of speech.

And not just about freedom of speech either, important though that is.

This, if Steyn is successful, could be the moment the dam bursts: the one where the global establishment is finally forced to acknowledge the fraudulence, the corruption, the mendacity, the trickery, the deception, the junk science, the big money and the official complicity which for the last two or three decades have been underpinning the Great Climate Change Scam.

Up till now the response of the climate alarmist establishment (and that would include everyone from the Obama administration to the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia to the Royal Society and NASA GISS to the IPCC to the Prince of Wales to Vice and Grist to John Podesta, Tom Steyer and Michael Mann) in the face of criticism has been to deny, rebuff, bully, insist, conceal, bluster, misrepresent and sue.
They have got away with it not least because they are backed by such vast sums of money – far in excess of anything climate sceptical scientists receive, not just from governments and the United Nations and the European Union but also through various rich and powerful foundations which left-wing billionaire donors use as a political laundering process. (It’s all there in this Senate Minority Report).

They have also got away with it because of the complicity of the scientific, political and media establishment.
This was especially noticeable in the wake of Climategate. To any objective observer there was no mistaking the malfeasance and dishonesty revealed among the private emails of the “scientists” at the heart of the global warming scam. (These are the guys who write the IPCC reports which our governments use to justify hiking our taxes, driving up our energy prices and carpeting our countryside with wind turbines). Yet they got away with it by rigging at least four inquiries into the affair – either by deliberately not asking the right questions or stuffing the investigation panels or both.

Hence Steyn’s point in his brief. Mann and his supporters are forever claiming they were exonerated. But they simply never were – for reasons which become perfectly clear when you read the detailed report compiled by Andrew Montford for the Global Warming Policy Foundation and which any court of law, were it to do its job, would fairly swiftly establish.

No wonder Mann (and his anonymous – but evidently very rich – backers) are fighting so hard to delay the process for as long as possible. If this ever goes to trial they’re all toast.

This is what I’ve always found so thoroughly enjoyable about the global warming debate. It’s not one of those issues where there’s right and wrong on both sides and it’s really a matter of opinion which one you favour. Quite simply it’s a very straightforward battle between, on the one hand a bunch of lying, greedy shysters, fanatical, misanthropic, anti-capitalist eco-loons, bent, grant-troughing scientists, grubby politicians and despicable, rent-seeking millionaires and billionaires; and on the other a handful of brave, honest, rigorous, seekers-after-truth.

Under full disclosure in a US court system all this stuff would come out. It would have to because otherwise – so far as I understand US judicial process – the trial would be prejudiced and invalid. And if and when it does come out only one side can emerge as the winner because only one side is telling the truth or has facts to support its argument.

No wonder Mann (and his anonymous – but evidently very rich – backers) are fighting so hard to delay the process for as long as possible.

If this ever goes to trial they’re all toast.

Letter From the UK (About European Ossification)

Economic Europe is paying the price for political Europe

By Douglas Carswell 
August 14th, 2014
The Telegraph

Remember what European Monetary Union was supposed to do? It was going to add zillions to Europe’s GDP, they said.  According to the Lisbon development plan, by 2010, the EU was going to be “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable”.

The truth is that Europe is failing badly. At a time when the rest of the world is growing, data out today shows France stagnating. Shockingly, Italy’s output is lower today than it was fourteen years ago. Even Germany is going into reverse.

Economic Europe is paying the price of ever more political Europe. Introducing layer upon layer of rules, regulations and directive is starting to ossify. Europe’s economy has consistently performed worse than expected as a result of decades of dirigisme. 

Here in Britain we have nothing to be complacent about. To be sure, cheap credit is stimulating output. Combined with welfare reforms, this is driving a spectacular jobs boom. But beware.  We might be outside the euro – and therefore free to engage in our own monetary stimulus. We are not outside the single market regulatory sclerosis. The deadweight of all those directives presses down on us every bit as much as on the Eurozone. Strip away the easy money stimulus, and we’re not that much better off.

For years, politicos have told us we need to be inside the European single market to prosper. So why is wealth now being created almost everywhere but inside the highly regulated single market? Those parts of the world that are flourishing somehow don’t seem to struggle to sell either inside or outside Europe.

It is not only European monetary union we ought to steer clear from.

 

Letter From the UK (About Double Standards)

The West must face the evil that has revealed itself in the Iraq genocide 

By Michael Nazir-Ali
The Telegraph
August 10, 2014

A beautiful mosaic of ancient religions, cultures and languages in the Middle East is being systematically destroyed. Until now, the world has watched mutely. When Muslims were threatened with genocide in Bosnia, the international community acted in concert to prevent the campaign against them developing into a full-scale pogrom. I went there myself, as part of an effort to bring relief supplies to all those who were affected. I was also present when millions of Afghan refugees poured into Pakistan after the Soviet invasion of that country. Once again, Western countries, Christian, Islamic and secular organisations were at the forefront of bringing relief to these people.

For years now the Christian, Mandaean, Yazidi and other ancient communities of Iraq, have been harried, bombed, exiled and massacred without anyone batting so much as an eyelid. Churches have been bombed, clergy kidnapped and murdered, shops and homes attacked and destroyed. This persecution has now been elevated to genocide by the advent of Isis. People are being beheaded, crucified, shot in cold blood and exiled to a waterless desert simply because of their religious beliefs.

What began in Iraq, continued in Syria. Here the West’s ill-advised backing of an Islamist uprising (largely funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar) against the Assad regime has turned into a nightmare which has given birth to ultra-extremist organisations like Isis. Once again, religious and ethnic minorities, whether Christian, Alawite or Druze, have been the victims, alongside ordinary people of all kinds. Isis, now armed to the teeth with weaponry originally intended by the suppliers for “moderate” Islamist groups, has arrived in Iraq with a vengeance beyond anything that unfortunate country has so far experienced.

Next door in Iran, the Baha’i have been reduced to being a non-people: their marriages are not recognised, their children cannot be educated, their leaders have been executed or are in prison and even their graveyards have been desecrated. Christians, similarly, are not allowed to worship in Farsi, or to hold meetings in their homes. Churches have either been closed or can open only under tightly-controlled conditions. Any violation of these orders brings arrest, interrogation and imprisonment. Zoroastrians, belonging to the indigenous religion of Iran, are now so reduced in numbers that there are more of them outside Iran than remain in the country.

Jews, likewise, are in daily danger of being associated with Zionism and having their property confiscated as “enemy property”, even if they have never set foot in Israel.  In Pakistan, Christians are being cowed by the draconian blasphemy laws, systematic discrimination and terrorist attacks on churches, schools and social organisations. The Ahmadiyya (a heterodox group), also, suffer legal discrimination, restrictions on the practice of their religion and recurrent mob violence. Only in Egypt can we say that the large Coptic minority has a breathing space as they await the emergence, perhaps, of a new order.

So will the world just stand by and watch this unprecedented onslaught on freedom or will we do something beyond airdropping food and medicines and protecting our own personnel who may be caught up in the conflict?

Along with many others, I have been saying for sometime now that Iraqi minorities need internationally protected “safe havens”. Until recently, the obvious place for Christian safe havens were the plains of Nineveh. For years, the West operated no-fly zones over Saddam’s Iraq to protect Kurds in the North and the Marsh Arabs in the South. What can be done to protect those under threat now?

I recognise that American or British “boots on the ground” is asking for the moon, but a UN-authorised international force, drawn from a variety of countries, is desperately needed to prevent multiple genocide. This can go hand in hand with whatever air action is deemed practical in consultation with the Kurds and with Baghdad. If the UN cannot prevent this genocide, hard questions will have to be asked about its utility at all.
In Syria, the international community must encourage a negotiated end to the Civil War (without preconditions, such as the departure of Bashar Al-Assad). Everything must be done to prevent the acquisition of weaponry by extremists, whether directly or indirectly. As with Iraq, once relative security returns to the land, there will have to be a massive programme of rebuilding historic cities like Aleppo, returning refugees and internationally-displaced persons to their homes and the rehabilitation of the injured. It is clear that Syria will not be able to achieve this on its own. A very significant international effort will be needed. I am sure the large Syrian diaspora will assist in such an effort.

The paradox is, of course, that the West supported the uprising in Syria partly to check Iran’s influence over the Assad regime. Now that same Iran is needed to check the advance of Isis in Iraq. But can Iran be trusted in this matter or, indeed, on what is of much greater concern to the West, the nuclear issue? How can we trust a regime to keep its word internationally when it oppresses its own people, denying them basic freedoms of movement, belief and worship? Surely, any re-engagement with Iran must be will have to be all-round? It must take into account not only what is perceived as a threat to the West or Israel but also the future of Iran’s role in the region, as well as its treatment of women, religious and ethnic minorities.

On a wider front, bilateral relations, particularly aid, will have to be agreed with the human rights situation fully in view. Article 18 of the UN Declaration on Universal Human Rights can be a template for such discussions. Is educational aid, for instance, simply fuelling the teaching of hatred in school text books or is it being used to remove such teaching? Is aid reaching marginalised minorities, women and the very poor? There has been a welcome concern in the United Kingdom to help in the development of the rule of law and of legal systems. Such an approach can be used, on a case-by-case basis, to encourage ‘a Bill of Rights’ in Egypt, for example, or a review of the blasphemy laws in Pakistan. At another level, assistance with legal discourse on punishment which moves away from an Islamist insistence on deterrence to more consideration of reform and rehabilitation, will lead to the development of more humane legal systems and greater respect for fundamental freedoms.

We cannot go on as before. The evil, with which we have been living for so long, has once again revealed its full face in Iraq. It is not a pretty sight and the international community must ensure that it has no place in the coming world order.

Letter From the UK (About Dawkins’s Dogmatism)

Richard Dawkins, what on earth happened to you?

Dawkins in 2014 is a man so convinced that he possesses God-like powers of omniscience that he can’t understand why everyone is angry at him for pointing out the obvious

Eleanor Robertson
The Guardian
30 July 2014

Another day, another tweet from Richard Dawkins proving that if non-conscious material is given enough time, it is capable of evolving into an obstreperous crackpot who should have retired from public speech when he had the chance to bow out before embarrassing himself.

“Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse,” huffs Dawkins. Seeming to have anticipated, although not understood, the feminist reaction this kind of sentiment generally evokes, he finishes the tweet: “If you think that’s an endorsement of date rape, go away and learn how to think.”

. . . . Dawkins has been arrogant for years, a man so convinced of his intellectual superiority that he believes the one domain in which he happens to be an expert, science, is the only legitimate way of acquiring or assessing knowledge. All of his outbursts in recent years follow from this belief: he understands the scientific method, a process intended to mitigate the interference of human subjectivity in data collection, as a universally applicable way of understanding not just the physical world but literally everything else as well.

Hence his constant complaint that those appalled by his bigoted vituperations are simply offended by clarity; feeble-minded obscurantists who cling to emotion, tradition or the supernatural to shield themselves from the power of his truth bombs.

You don’t have to be religious to find this level of hubris baffling. In his review of The God Delusion, Terry Eagleton remarks:

Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.

Dawkins’ narrowmindedness, his unshakeable belief that the entire history of human intellectual achievement was just a prelude to the codification of scientific inquiry, leads him to dismiss the insights offered not only by theology, but philosophy, history and art as well.

To him, the humanities are expendable window-dressing, and the consciousness and emotions of his fellow human beings are byproducts of natural selection that frequently hobble his pursuit and dissemination of cold, hard facts. His orientation toward the world is the product of a classic category mistake, but because he’s nestled inside it so snugly he perceives complex concepts outside of his understanding as meaningless dribble. If he can’t see it, then it doesn’t exist, and anyone trying to describe it to him is delusional and possibly dangerous.

All we can do at this point is hope his decline into hysterical dogmatism culminates in a reverse deathbed conversion. But if there’s one thing Dawkins has tried to impress upon us, it’s that miracles don’t exist. So I’ll do him the courtesy of not holding my breath.

Letter From the UK (About Wolves)

Britain Needs More Wolves Like it Needs the Black Death 

By James Delingpole
21 Jul 2014
Breitbart London

Eco campaigner George Monbiot has been howling in the Guardian about a wicked government conspiracy to prevent wolves (and other locally extinct wild animals) being reintroduced to mainland Britain.

He is incensed that the government is preparing to pass a bill in which any animal species that “is not ordinarily resident in, or a regular visitor to, Great Britain in a wild state” will be classified as non-native and subject to potential “eradication or control”.

Monbiot lists some of the former British natives that fit into this category. They include: the lynx; the wolf, the European beaver; the brown bear; the spotted hyena; the lion; the wolverine; and the blue stag beetle.
What maddens Monbiot is that by declaring all such  species personae non gratae the government is trampling on his latest masterplan – explained in more detail in his latest book Feral – to repopulate Britain’s landscape with exotic beasties.

Apparently there is great public appetite for this. Or so he claims:

Some would be widely welcomed; others not at all, but it’s clear that a debate about which species we might bring back is one that many people in this country want to have, but that the government wants to terminate.

In your perfervid dreams, George. The only people who could possibly want any of these ravening creatures re-introduced to the British countryside – though we’ll let you have your blue stag beetle – are a) Guardian-readers or b) useful idiots so pitifully ill-informed, sentimental and incapable of rational thought that it has simply never once occurred to them what the consequences of this would be.

In the environmentalists’ imaginations, what wolves do on being reintroduced to the wild is recreate a lost world of Thoreau-esque innocence, living in perfect balance with nature, feeding only on game.

Let’s consider wolves, one of the main candidates for reintroduction. This scheme has the support of the John Muir Trust and also of Paul Lister, a furniture millionaire who owns 23,000 acres of Scotland. “There is no ecological reason why wolves couldn’t come back – we have the climate, the habitat and the food,” claimed the John Muir Trust, recently.

Possibly so, but there are plenty of non-ecological reasons, as disastrous rewilding projects like the return of wolves to Yellowstone Park has demonstrated.

The thing about wolves, as cattle ranchers on the edge of Yellowstone Park have discovered to their cost, is that they don’t play by the rules. In the environmentalists’ imaginations, what wolves do on being reintroduced to the wild is recreate a lost world of Thoreau-esque innocence, living in perfect balance with nature, feeding only on game.

What wolves actually do, though – and have done in Yellowstone: see the documentary Crying Wolf – is pick the easiest target. Yes, they’ve trashed the local elk populations too, but their main prey has been cattle livestock, which they either kill or hamstring or render near worthless because of stress-induced weight-loss.
Of course, this human suffering and economic loss has proved of little interest to environmentalists like Monbiot because in their Weltanschauung, human beings are but one verminous species among many.

Letter From the UK (About Russia as Rogue-State)

Russia must choose between respecting the law of nations and becoming a rogue state

By Daniel Hannan 
Last updated: July 19th, 2014
The Telegraph

Lord Palmerston was our last Whig prime minister, and probably the most ebullient patriot ever to occupy 10 Downing Street. When a French Ambassador politely told him, “If I had not been born French, I should wish to have been born British,” Palmerston replied, “If I had not been born British, I should wish to have been born British”. On another occasion, informed by his French counterpart that the English had no word equivalent to the French word sensibilité, he snapped back: “Yes we have – humbug!”

So when, in 1858, the French government demanded restitution from Britain over a failed attempt on the life of Napoleon III by an Italian nationalist named Felice Orsini, who was said to have had support from British radicals, many expected a brusque response from the peppery 76-year-old PM: perhaps the despatch of a gunboat to the Seine to teach Frenchie better manners.

Instead, Palmerston reacted with horror to what had happened. He ordered prosecutions against the British radicals accused of having abetted Orsini, and introduced a Conspiracy to Murder Bill into Parliament. He did these things at a time when the United Kingdom was without question the world’s leading power, able to enforce her will on every continent and archipelago.

Note that no one was accusing the British state, either directly or indirectly, of having been implicated in the assassination attempt. The complaint, rather, was that the authorities had not kept a proper eye on potential terrorists living under British jurisdiction. Orsini had learned how to make his bombs, and seemed to have acquired his materials, while exiled in London. The modern equivalent might be – to pluck an example from the air – turning a blind eye to the acquisition of a surface-to-air missile launcher by a paramilitary group supported by your own armed forces.

Palmerston didn’t have to worry about foreign pressure: Britain in 1858 was immensely more feared and respected than Russia in 2014. But the old man understood that the United Kingdom, of all nations, must respect the rules. The politician who, eight years earlier, had ordered the blockade of Piraeus and the seizure of Greek shipping in pursuit of compensation for Don Pacifico, a Portuguese Jew who, by virtue of having been born in Gibraltar, had a claim on British protection, now applied the law as sternly to his own country. Pam knew that law is what lifts men from savagery. When a small nation turns rogue, it’s an inconvenience; when a great power does so, it’s a calamity.

Over to you, President Putin.

Letter From the UK (About Australia)

Australia Repeals its Hated Carbon Tax

James Delingpole

17 Jul 2014, 
Breitbart UK

Australia has become the first country in the world to abolish its hated carbon tax – in fulfillment of an electoral “pledge in blood” by Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

The tax was introduced by the Labor-Greens coalition in mid-2012, despite earlier promises to the contrary by then Prime Minister Julia Gillard.  Prime Minister Abbott described the tax – estimated to have cost every Australian household $550 per year – as “useless and destructive.” It has now been repealed, after much wrangling – and only on the third attempt – by the Australian senate.

As Phillip Hutchings reports at Watts Up With That?, the tax was indeed a total waste of time and money.
Among the reasons it was so misbegotten are:

The sanctimoniousness of such a tax in Australia is breathtaking. We are an energy heavy-weight, the world’s largest exporter of coal. Soon we will also be the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas. At the same time as our Labor prime ministers were being successively culled by infighting over the carbon tax, the world’s biggest oil & gas companies were directing more than two-thirds of global investment in LNG production into Australia, the biggest investment boom ever in this country.

We are an economy built on the world’s hunger for fossil fuels. Yet with our gas and coal sources being either offshore or in remote locations, these vital export industries are mostly hidden from Australian voters.

The carbon tax itself was a lightweight. The theory underlying a carbon tax is to provide a long term price signal to drive a change in the industrial and consumer behaviour. On this score, the Australian tax was doomed to failure. After all, politically it had to appeal to the latte-sipping lefties, but without affecting their wallets.

To minimise the economic fall-out, the Labor-Green Government limited the carbon tax to large industrial emitters (more than 25,000 CO₂e/yr). Road transport and agriculture was exempt. Put together, that meant only about 185 companies in Australia’s US$ 1.5 trillion economy had to comply. And even those few were only lightly touched.

Industries which are “trade exposed” such as cement or aluminium smelting were mostly excused. They got either 66% or 94.5% of their carbon cost covered by the award of free units.

Just over one-third of Australia’s carbon emissions come from coal-fired electricity generators. And the dirtiest electricity comes from the aging brown-coal plants in Victoria – with almost double the emissions of modern gas-fired plants. Yet being located in a Labor-voting union heartland, they too got off lightly with the first half of their emissions effectively carbon- tax free. Nice.

3. It did little, if anything, to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The Guardian, of course, claims otherwise. But this is greenie wishful thinking. As Hutchings notes, though greenhouse emissions in Australia have been declining for almost eight years (long before the carbon tax was introduced) this has much more to do with the doubling of electricity prices, which caused consumers to cut back drastically on their consumption. This is exactly what the carbon tax was supposed to do (drive up prices; change consumer habits) but it had already happened naturally so the tax was pointless.

Other countries to have experimented with either a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme (which instead of taxing carbon dioxide directly, imposes a ceiling on CO2 production through tradeable permits) include the European Union member states, Japan and Korea.  

Letter from the UK (About an Ethiopian Farmer)

Ethiopian Farmer Sues British Government 

– For Sending Aid to Ethiopia

by Andre Walker 

16 Jul 2014, 4:13

Breitbart London

[The history of foreign aid does not make for pretty reading.  Like most government initiatives, the actual outcome is far from the original intent.  Now an Ethopian is suing the British Government because its aid grants to Ethiopia have cemented a one-man dictatorship in that country.  It’s to the credit of the UK judiciary that the case is being allowed to proceed. Ed.]

A 33-year-old Ethiopian farmer has become so disillusioned with the way UK overseas aid is propping a “one party state” that he is suing. The man, who has been granted anonymity to protect his family, believes that UK overseas aid helped the Ethiopian government inflict “brutal treatment” on himself and others.

The court papers were filed in Kenya claiming that the UKs £1.3bn donation to Ethiopia is being used to oppress the population. The father of six known as “O” has come in for criticism of his action because his legal fees are being paid by the British Taxpayer despite never having been to the UK.

However “O” insists his action is necessary, and has pledged to give any compensation he wins to charity. The exact reasons for “O” bringing the case is unclear but it is known that he was forced from his home and ended up in a refugee camp after he was tortured for trying to protect his land.

“O” is highlighting a real problem with Britain’s colossal overseas aid budget, which is regularly claimed to be the key to the survival of a number of despotic regimes.

The project to displace farmers in Ethiopia is claimed to have been funded by the Protection of Basic Services fund to which the UK has contributed £510m. Ministers had urged the High Court to throw out the claim, but Mr Justice Warby said it was “reasonable” for “O” to believe there was a link between the Department for International development handing aid to Ethiopia and alleged human rights abuses.

He granted “O” the right to launch a judicial review into the way the Department for International Development acts in Ethiopia. A spokesman at the department said: “The UK has never funded Ethiopia’s resettlement programmes. Our support to the Protection of Basic Services Programme is only used to provide essential services like healthcare, schooling and clean water.”

News of the court case has sparked a row in Westminster with some right-wing MPs such as Peter Bone criticising “O” for bringing a case against a country he has never visited. He told the Daily Mail the case was “bizarre” and ought to be dropped. However, others point out that “O” is highlighting a real problem with Britain’s colossal overseas aid budget, which is regularly claimed to be the key to the survival of a number of despotic regimes.

The idea that “O” is willing to go to such extreme lengths to stop hand-outs because he believes they are ruined Ethiopia will lead to more soul searching as the British wonder whether the huge overseas aid budget is actual making things worse.

Letter from the UK (About Margaret Thatcher Redivivus)

Children held back by ‘vested interests’ in education, says Michael Gove

Education Secretary Michael Gove attacks educational establishment for holding back classroom reforms, just as thousands of teachers prepare to stage a national strike 

By Graeme Paton, Education Editor

The Daily Telegraph

08 Jul 2014 

Education standards risk being undermined “by vested interests determined to hold back reform”, Michael Gove has said on the eve of a major national teachers’ strike. In a swipe at classroom unions, the Education Secretary says attempts to reform schools have “not always been easy” because too many teachers believe “things must stay the same”.

Writing for The Telegraph, Mr Gove says large numbers of pupils across Europe – including England – are facing a bleak future unless extra effort is made to raise standards and create more equal access to good schools. He says teaching standards must improve because too many children are still attending schools that “aren’t good enough”. 

Michael Gove is one of the most courageous politicians of our day.  He is not afraid to front up and confront the unions which have hitherto had a stifling stranglehold over education in the UK–as they do here in New Zealand.  Just as Thatcher stared down the coal miner unions during the UK miners’ strike of 1984-5 and saw them off, opening up the pathway to necessary reform in the UK, so Gove is attempting the same.  Different unions, same reality.
 

The comments are made in a joint article with education ministers from Spain and Portugal as a major international conference is staged in London on Wednesday – just a day before Britain’s biggest teaching union prepares for a national strike over Coalition education reforms.

Education ministers, teachers and school leaders from seven countries are expected to attend the summit co-hosted by the Department for Education.  It is expected to place renewed focus on a series of Government education policies including the creation of a new generation academies and free schools, more freedom for head teachers, an overhaul of the curriculum and a new-style league tables focusing on achievement in core subjects. 

Mr Gove has also introduced a wave of reforms aimed at teachers including raising the bar on entry to the profession and a new system of performance-related pay. The reforms have been met with furious opposition from classroom unions who claim Mr Gove has turned teaching into one of the worst jobs in the world.  On Thursday, the National Union of Teachers will stage a one-day strike across England and Wales in protest over performance-related pay and escalating workload.

It threatens to shut around a quarter of state schools and lead to the partial closure of many more – forcing millions of parents to take the day off work or seek emergency childcare.  But writing in the Telegraph, Mr Gove said the Coalition’s reforms were typical of those being pursued across Europe and the developed world.

He also criticises the education establishment for failing to support change.  “Our struggle has not always been easy,” he says. “All of us have been opposed by vested interests determined to hold back reform, insisting that things must stay the same.  We understand that change can be difficult. But it must happen.”

In an article written jointly with Nuno Crato, minister for education in Portugal, and Lucía Figar, a regional minister for education in Spain, he said: “A child’s education is only ever as good as their teacher. So all of us are focusing on driving up the quality of teaching in our classrooms.”

“In England, we’re raising the bar for entry to the profession, expanding elite recruitment routes and offering new incentives to attract the brightest and best into teaching,” he said. “It’s already working – we now have the best qualified teachers in a generation, and Ofsted’s impartial inspectors report that schools improved faster last year than at any time in Ofsted’s history.” 

This is in sharp contrast to the union mentality which can be summarised in a few false propositions:
All teachers are the same.
All teachers are excellent.
We just need more teachers, which will be uniformly excellent by definition.
All teachers need to be paid more.

The article says that England, Spain and Portugal have “long traditions of educational excellence, but we know that too few of our children are guaranteed an excellent education. Too many children across Europe – especially those from poorer communities – still attend schools which just aren’t good enough,” it is claimed. “And the nature of economic and technological change means those children, and our societies, face bleaker futures unless we can improve their education and make opportunity more equal.”

The Education Reform Summit – jointly hosted by The Education Foundation think-tank – will take place on Wednesday and Thursday. It has been billed as the most “high-profile example yet of global interest in the Government’s school reforms”.  Mr Gove has said that education reform experts are “coming here to share their ideas and see what we are doing in this country”.

But the conference threatens to be overshadowed by the biggest public sector strike since the Coalition came to power. As many as a million workers are set to strike as members of the NUT walk out alongside the Fire Brigades Union, the GMB, the Public and Commercial Services Union, Unison and Unite.

The NUT has been locked in an ongoing dispute over a series of controversial reforms, including the introduction of a system of performance related pay, which will see future salary rises linked to pupils’ results and behaviour.  They have also been angered by mounting workloads and reforms to pensions which will see staff work for longer and retire with a smaller fund.

Christine Blower, NUT general secretary, said ministers were “refusing point blank to accept the damage their reforms are doing to the teaching profession. The consequences of turning teaching into a totally unattractive career choice will most certainly lead to teacher shortages.  Teaching is one of the best jobs in the world but is being made one of the worst under Michael Gove and the Coalition.” 

We suspect the General Secretary of the teachers’ union is probably right.  Under the entrenched education system, teaching was one of the “best jobs” in the world.  One could skulk in the corner of a classroom doing nothing for one’s students, sure that everything would be different if only one was paid more money.  But if not, the gig was OK.  There are not many other places in the world where you can get paid a princely sum and have a sinecure for life for doing very little.

The problem that Christine Blower and her members face is this: all of the faux outrage and rhetoric in the world is insufficient to blanket over the poor educational outcomes now evident.  If her members had been doing a decent job, the results would tell a different story. 

 

Letter From the UK (About Bert and Ernie)

Bert and Ernie gay marriage cake leaves Christian bakery facing court threat

Christian bakery facing legal action from equality quango for refusing to make cake with Sesame Street characters saying ‘support gay marriage’ 

The Daily Telegraph

By John Bingham, Religious Affairs Editor 

July 07, 2014

A Christian-run bakery is facing legal action from a Government agency for refusing to produce a cake carrying a picture of the Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie and the slogan “support gay marriage”.

Ashers Baking Co, based in Newtownabbey, Northern Ireland, cancelled an order for a novelty cake with a picture of the puppets arm in arm printed onto the icing saying that it went against the directors’ religious beliefs.

They believe that producing the cake with the slogan and the logo of QueerSpace, a gay rights group the would-be customer supports, would amount to endorsing the campaign for the introduction of gay marriage in the province, and go against their religious convictions.

But the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland has now written to the firm claiming that it is breaking the law. A letter signed by the legal office orders the firm to “remedy your illegal discrimination” within seven days or be taken to court by the commission.  It claimed that refusing to print the cake amounted to discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation against the man who placed the order.

It establishes a dangerous precedent about the power of the state over an individual, or business to force them to go against their deeply held beliefs.

The Christian institute, which is supporting the bakery, says it is not discriminatory for managers to refuse to endorse a political campaign.  Gay marriage is not legal in Northern Ireland, the only part of the UK in which it is not on the statute book.

Colin Hart, chief executive of the Christian Institute, said: “This is a sign of things to come exactly as we predicted.  “The Government repeatedly failed to listen to members of the public, lawyers, constitutional experts even its own MPs when they called for safeguards to protect those who back traditional marriage, especially those who work in the public sector.

“Now this nonsense, more usually associated with the public sector, is being applied to the private sector. This means millions of ordinary people who do not agree with gay marriage, face intimidation and the real threat of legal action from the forces of political correctness if they, out of conscience, decline to provide good or services to campaign groups they do not agree with or support.

“It establishes a dangerous precedent about the power of the state over an individual, or business to force them to go against their deeply held beliefs.”  The customer was unable to comment.

 

Letter From the UK (Mocking Caliphatites)

Hey Guys, the Caliphate Has Been Declared! 

It’s Time to Go Join It!

By Raheem Kassam  

30 Jun 2014, 6:25 AM PDT

Breitbart London

Islamists! Hear ye, hear ye! The Caliphate has been declared!

Rejoice amongst yourselves! Celebrate with champagne sparkling water, women loads of other blokes, and a great deal of glee confusion. Come on! It’s time to go! Hey guys, the Caliphate has been declared! You’ve been banging on about this moment for ages now. Book your flights! You can now all finally live in the splendour squalor which you have long-imagined and campaigned for!

ISIS, those brave warriors for freedom, have said that the ‘Islamic State’ is now in full force. Don’t you understand?

Wait… what do you mean you don’t want to go?

Come on Anjem, come on Hamza, come on Jamal …Jordan!? It is time to live under the Shariah! I’ll even book your flights for you!

No? You don’t want to go to an extremely dangerous region, you say?

Oh you want to remain in the comfort of the West, suckling at the teet of the taxpayer while holding marches in favour of the caliphate on our streets? Hmmm.

What do you mean it might get “hairy” over there? Don’t be silly. Islamists wouldn’t hurt one of their own, would they? Oh, I see what you mean. They did kill that guy who was friendly with a Hamas leader. But that’s in Gaza right? They’re all nuts there!

What? They crucified fellow jihadis for not being extreme enough? Hmm, well… I’m sure you can all work on your extremism on the plane, no? We’ll make sure the airline has a wide variety of ‘On Demand Anwar al Awlaki‘ videos for you.

Oh COME ON guys. Don’t let us all down now. You’ve been flying the . . . flag for this thing for so long now, and once you finally get it, you don’t want it?! . . . Ingrates. Those ISIS guys have been doing all your dirty work and this is how you thank them!

Well fine, stay here then. But let me tell you something. I don’t want to hear a peep out of you about this . . . ‘caliphate’ rubbish anymore. Find a new drum to bang! Like climate change. Or the Bedroom Tax. At least those guys are totally  not hypocrites, right? Er… right?

(h/t Ghaffar Husain for the idea for this piece)

Letter From the UK (About Warmongers and A War-wearied Nation)

More Brits Joined Jihad Than Volunteered For UK Army Reserves

By Andre Walker  

17 Jun 2014, 5:08 AM PDT

Breitbart London

More British citizens joined the jihad in Syria and Iraq than signed up for the Army Reserves over the last twelve months, according to the MailOnline. Whilst “several hundred” have gone to fight for militants in the Middle East, only 170 have enlisted for the British Army Reserves despite a major recruitment campaign.

Foreign Secretary William Hague believes that as many as 400 Brits have gone to fight alongside the jihadists of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis). Their activities are now a major concern for the government, as they are likely to return to the UK radicalised and with military training. It is widely believed that these British militants will continue their ‘struggle’ when they get back to the United Kingdom.

In a statement to the House of Commons on Syria and Iraq yesterday Mr Hague said: “As I have previously told this House, we estimate the number of UK-linked individuals fighting in Syria to include approximately 400 British nationals and other UK-linked individuals who could present a particular risk should they return to the UK.”

Shadow defence secretary Vernon Coaker said that scale of jihadists from Britain was humiliating for the country because it outstripped the number of Army Reserve volunteers.
Mr Coaker said: “The government’s own figures show more UK citizens are joining ISIS than signing up for the Armed Forces Reserves. This is shameful, embarrassing and will cause deep concern.  We need to see action to ensure recruitment to the Armed Forces meets the targets set. Otherwise, Britain will be left with a dangerous capability gap.”

In the whole of 2013 the number of British Army reservists actually fell by 50 to 19,150 with only 170 new recruits coming in. Under normal circumstances this decline would be a blow but because of the government’s policy to rely much more on the reservists it is catastrophic.

The Defence Secretary Phillip Hammond has recently made large numbers of full time soldiers redundant and hopes to replace them with part timers. The target is to have 35,000 reservists by 2018, a level that seems unattainable given this year’s performance.  News that the jihadists are recruiting more British people than the Army will once again raise concerns that the strategy of bringing in part time soldiers is a risk to national security. Ministers are accused of undermining the military by starving it of funds and downplaying the important role of full time personnel.

Over a thousand regular soldiers have been made redundant in the latest round of cuts. In previous rounds the Royal Air Force search and rescue group was privatised, meaning that Prince William had to leave the RAF to avoid the embarrassment of being made redundant.

Letter From the UK (About Obama’s Flunkery)

Obama Flunks his Climate Science 101 at University of California, Irvine

By James Delingpole  

15 Jun 2014

Breitbart London

Denying climate change is like saying the moon is made of cheese, President Obama has said in his latest attempt to persuade an unconvinced world that “global warming” is the most urgent crisis of our time.

Obama was speaking to a crowd of around 30,000 at a commencement ceremony at the University of California, Irvine. Justifying the extravagance of his metaphor he said: “I want to tell you this to light a fire under you.”
Here are some lines from his speech which explain why those present would be better off ignoring their pyromaniacal president’s entreaties.

“I’m not a scientist.” Possibly the only factually accurate words in the president’s entire speech.

“But we’ve got some good ones at NASA.” “Did have some good ones at NASA” would have been more accurate. Problem is, the organisation that put man on the moon is now in the grip of climate alarmists like Gavin Schmidt, successor to activist James “Death Trains” Hansen. In 2012, 49 former NASA astronauts and scientists wrote to protest against the anti-scientific, alarmist position being adopted by Hansen and Schmidt at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). They wrote: “We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data.”

“I do know the overwhelming majority of scientists who work on climate change, including some who once disputed the data, have put the debate to rest.” No, you don’t know, Mr President. You’re just repeating the multiply discredited “97 per cent” consensus meme. And even that figure were accurate – which it isn’t – scientific knowledge is not a numbers game. If it were, we would still be going with the majority view that tectonic plates are a myth, that stomach ulcers are caused by stress, that combustion is caused by phlogiston, that leeches can relieve fever, that malaria comes from the bad air in swamps, etc.

“In some parts of the country, weather-related disasters like droughts, fires, storms and floods are going to get harsher, and they’re going to get costlier.” Technically accurate, utterly meaningless. Given the chaotic nature of weather, records are always being broken somewhere in the future. Increased costliness is a given as populations grow and more expensive houses and offices are built to accommodate their needs.

“Today’s Congress is full of folks who stubbornly and automatically reject the scientific evidence.” Indeed. They’re called Democrats and most of them refuse to accept the overwhelming evidence that there has been no global warming since 1997, that the computer models which predicted catastrophic warming have been proved wrong by real world data. If it weren’t such an ugly term you might almost call them “deniers.”

“They will tell you climate change is a hoax or fad.” There is a name for people who say such things. Truth-tellers.

“One member of Congress actually says the world might be cooling.” Only one? Only one person in the whole of Congress knows that the Earth has entered a prolonged cooling period, the result of weak solar activity?

“It’s pretty rare that you’ll encounter somebody who says the problem you’re trying to solve simply doesn’t exist. When President Kennedy set us on a course to the moon, there were a number of people who made a serious case that it wouldn’t be worth it. But nobody ignored the science. I don’t remember anybody saying the moon wasn’t there or that it was made of cheese.” 
As Anthony Watts says, this is ‘grade school level logical fallacy.’ No one said the moon wasn’t there or that it was made of cheese because neither statement is true. There is, on the other hand, a large – and fast-growing – body of evidence, well understood by many distinguished scientists and economists, that the catastrophic man-made global warming “problem” Obama is so keen to fix is, to all intents and purposes, non-existent.