Archive for January, 2009

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Evidence was gathered illegally because 6,000 speed cameras were not given proper Parliamentary approval, it was claimed in a test case.

The action has been brought by a Aitken Brotherston, 61, a businessman from Lyme, Cheshire, who is appealing against a speeding conviction.

Michael Shrimpton, his counsel, told Manchester Crown Court that the case had wide-ranging implications.

It could mean that an estimated £600 million collected in fines and accompanying penalty points were invalid and trigger an avalanche of compensation claims from motorists.

Mr Shrimpton said a change in the 1988 Road Traffic Offenders Act in 1991 had not been properly implemented.

Until then the law that merely required the Home Secretary to approve the technical evaluation of the speed cameras. But since then additional Parliamentary approval has also been required for the devices.

Successive Home Secretaries, starting with Michael Howard in 1992, had failed to do so.

“But this was not done,” Mr Shrimpton said. “It is an insult to Parliament in general that it had not identified a single device. This is a very important constitutional point.

“Since 1992 there have been hundreds of thousands of cases which we think are invalid.

“Speeding fines and convictions effect the very fabric of our society. Businesses and people’s lives are severely affected when there is a ban from driving or fines.

“There are considerable economic considerations to take into account.”

Mr Shrimpton added: “What the Department of Public Prosecutions is saying is that a Minister for example could decide to bring back hanging and he could do so without going to Parliament.

“He could draw up an order without Parliament seeing it and it would then become law.”

Nearly 80 other cases are lined up behind Brotherston’s which is likely to end up in the House of Lords.

The businessman, of was caught doing 52mph by a speed camera mounted in the back of a van in a 40mph zone.

He was photographed on the A5103 at 1pm on November 6 2006 while he drove his Y-reg Mitsubishi Gallant Estate out of the city centre.

Mr Brotherston received three points on his licence but he is adamant he was not speeding.

Guy Williams, the camera operator told the court: “That vehicle seemed to be driving in excess of 40mph. On seeing this I then aligned my crosshairs on the front of the car producing a reading of 52mph.”

The case continues.

Telegraph 

There will come a day when everyone understands that the Justice Minister Jack Straw ranks as one of the bigger menaces to our free society. Whatever issue you care to consider – the macro or the micro – Jack Straw is chipping away at freedom, accountability and openness. He really should be hauled before a commission of good democrats, exposed and made to account for his sins with community service order and a Day-Glo jacket.

Today we will look at a micro issue – the disgraceful behaviour of his department over the Courts and Tribunal Enforcement Act, the law which ends 400 years of the tradition that an Englishman’s home is his castle and allows bailiffs to march into that home and seize what goods they like in settlement of a fine (think ID card fines; think of the pressure people are going to experience in this recession).

It is not misty-eyed to say that the protection afforded to people in their own homes was truly an emblem of British civilisation. The judge who defined the law, in 1605, said:

“That the house of every one is to him his castle and fortress, as well as for the defence against injury and violence as for his repose.”

Our government is no respecter of history or of tradition, and it cares little about setting a lot of thugs on people who are frail or cannot protect themselves, like Andy Miller, the pub landlord driven to a cashpoint machine in order to settle a fine, who collapsed and died.

It is clear that householders are going to be offered violence in their own homes owing to this law, but the trouble is that no one has been able to discover under what circumstances bailiffs will be able to push people aside while seizing a TV or computer or the wedding picture in a silver frame.

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What if the doomsayers are right … what if society, as we know it, really is about to collapse? Do you have what it takes to make it in a world without electricity and running water? Tanya Gold offers an essential survival guide

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Already, Gaza has faded from the front pages of the Western press. Already it is yesterday’s news, yesterday’s massacre, just another in a long, long, endless line of human debauchery. After all, the Western press, the Western establishments, indeed, Western popular opinion, have often countenanced — even championed — far worse atrocities. The establishments and power structures of most Arab nations are also hastening to forget, to downplay, to bury, once again, the suffering of the Palestinians, in the interests of political gamesmanship, both domestic and diplomatic.The reality of the actual human beings in Palestine who have been inflicted with horrific suffering matter no more than the reality of the human beings in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Somalia, or Kurdistan, or Chechnya, or Colombia, or Sri Lanka, or Burma, or the Congo, or anywhere else on the far-flung earth where the machines of power wring the blood and terror that is their fuel from the flesh of men and women and children. (And this geography of suffering includes the sacred Homeland itself, of course, where, for example, more than two million citizens are now held in cages, most of them for the “crime” of temporarily deranging their senses to escape the pain of the world that power has made.)

What do the men and women and children of Gaza matter to these brokers and drivers of power? Why speak of Gaza — where the relentless and ruthless Israeli assault on civilians ended almost precisely with the ascension of Barack Obama to high office — when that newly-ascended embodiment of hope is already drawing first blood in his marshalship of the “War on Terror”? Already, Obama has ordered his first drone missile attacks on the sovereign territory of Pakistan, an American ally; already he has killed his first civilians with the faceless, soulless weapons of remote-control mass death.

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Patients should phone their GP rather than drive in for a visit, according to National Health Service guidelines unveiled today.

Ministers want family doctors to hold more ‘phone-in’ surgeries to help the environment by cutting carbon emissions from cars.

They also want hospitals to achieve their green targets by reducing the amount of meat they serve to patients in wards.

Patient groups said the ‘telemedicine’ plans were fraught with danger because a misdiagnosis over the phone could lead to incorrect treatment and even death.

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‘Despite calls, questions and complaints to the UK Telegraph as to the purpose and origins of a bizarre, offensive and crudely put together “photo gallery” depicting a nuclear attack on London, the newspaper is now featuring part two of “Blackjack” on its website, which portrays six major cities being nuked before a fascist “Union of North America” is implemented.’

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The Government has placed the pharmaceuticals industry at the heart of its economic agenda with the appointment of Lord Mandelson and Alan Johnson to a key health sector group that will report to the Prime Minister.

Gordon Brown has summoned senior industry figures, such as Andrew Witty, chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline, and David Brennan, his opposite number at AstraZeneca, to a meeting at No10 to discuss ways of protecting pharmaceuticals and biotechnology companies, their revenues and their jobs, as the economy deteriorates rapidly.

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 new bill introduced in Congress authorizes the Department of Homeland Security to set up a network of FEMA camp facilities to be used to house U.S. citizens in the event of a national emergency.

The National Emergency Centers Act or HR 645 mandates the establishment of “national emergency centers” to be located on military installations for the purpose of to providing “temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster,” according to the bill.

The legislation also states that the camps will be used to “provide centralized locations to improve the coordination of preparedness, response, and recovery efforts of government, private, and not-for-profit entities and faith-based organizations”.

Ominously, the bill also states that the camps can be used to “meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security,” an open ended mandate which many fear could mean the forced detention of American citizens in the event of widespread rioting after a national emergency or total economic collapse.

Many credible forecasters have predicted riots and rebellions in America that will dwarf those already witnessed in countries like Iceland and Greece.

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When mercury was removed from many vaccines (except the flu vaccine) years ago, it was under the false guise that finally vaccines were now safe. What health agencies did not want you to know is that there are many other toxic additives still in vaccines, and one of them is aluminum.

Aluminum has not received the widespread media attention that mercury has, therefore many people don’t realize it’s a health risk.

“Aluminum is not perceived, I believe, by the public as a dangerous metal. Therefore, we are in a much more comfortable wicket in terms of defending its presence in vaccines,” said Dr. John Clements, WHO vaccine advisor.

Notice he said that aluminum is “not perceived” by the public as a dangerous metal … he couldn’t say simply that aluminum is safe, because this would be a lie.

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For four days running, an ambulance has driven 15-year-old Amira Ghirim from Shifa Hospital in Gaza to the Rafah border in the hope that she will be allowed to cross into Egypt and then on to France, where she has been promised emergency surgery.

Amira’s left arm and thigh were crushed and her internal organs damaged by falling rubble when a shell hit her home in the Tel al Hawa neighbourhood of Gaza City in the final days of Israel’s offensive. The attack killed her father, brother and sister, leaving her an orphan.

But, despite her urgent need for surgery, Amira has been turned away at the border each time, said her aunt, Mona Ghirim. “Each morning we arrived at the crossing and the Egyptian soldiers cursed us and told us to go away.” 

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New laws set to be passed in England and Canada would make it illegal to use bad language or take photographs of police officers, moving us further away from the idea of police as public servants and more towards the notion of cops assuming God-like status.

According to the British Journal of Photography, the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008, which is set to become law on February 16, “allows for the arrest and imprisonment of anyone who takes pictures of officers ‘likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism’.” The punishment for this offense is imprisonment for up to ten years and a fine.

However, even before the passage of the legislation, police in Britain have already been harassing and arresting fully accredited press photographers merely for taking pictures of them at rallies and protests.

Besides the 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain, one for every fourteen people, Police are now equipped with mobile surveillance vans and head mounted cameras and they routinely videotape everyone at a protest, yet anyone attempting to record them has been met with increasing hostility.

Justin Tallis, a London-based photographer, was taking pictures of the anti-BBC protest this past weekend when he was approached by an officer. The officer demanded to see his photographs and when Talis refused the officer tried to seize his camera, arguing that Tallis ’shouldn’t have taken that photo, you were intimidating me’.  

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Should proof ever be needed of the scandalous social engineering now so casually carried out by our state, it comes in the case of the loving grandparents of two small children who desperately sought to adopt them but saw them instead placed with a gay couple.

The decision was made to refuse the grandparents the right to raise their own blood relatives and instead give them away to two gay men ‘in accordance with who can best meet their needs’, according to the social services jargon.

But how can two strangers – gay or straight – best meet the needs of two children abandoned by a drug-addict mother for whom the only constants in their short, difficult lives have been their loving grandparents?

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I knew this was coming. The inflamed, all-seeing red eye of political correctness, glaring this way and that from its dark tower, has finally discovered that home schooling is a threat to the Marxoid project, and has launched its first open attack on it.

Before long, those who wish to declare independence from the state system (and cannot afford monstrous private school fees) will face endless interference, monitoring and regulation.
How do we know this? On the 19th January, an obscure person called Delyth Morgan levelled what I regard as an astonishing smear against people who educate their children at home. She suggested that such parents might be abusers, saying (I have taken these words directly from the Education department’s own website):  ‘Making sure children are safe, well and receive a good education is our most serious responsibility.
‘Parents are able, quite rightly, to choose whether they want to educate children at home, and a very small number do. I’m sure the vast majority do a good job. However, there are concerns that some children are not receiving the education they need.
‘And in some extreme cases, home education could be used as a cover for abuse. We cannot allow this to happen and are committed to doing all we can to help ensure children are safe, wherever they are educated.
‘This review will look at whether the right systems are in place that allow local authorities and other agencies to ensure that any concerns about the safety, welfare or education of home educated children are addressed quickly and effectively. The review will of course talk to home educating families to ensure their views and experiences are heard.’

The nerve of it is amazing.  She first suggests the existence of abuse, then produces no evidence for this claim, then says that one purpose of the inquiry is to see if there is any evidence of such abuse. But if they haven’t any evidence, on what basis do they think they have the right to launch such an investigation? It is sadly true that, if you want to wreck someone’s reputation, you accuse him of child abuse. Everyone will immediately back away, and guilt will be presumed.

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Things got a little bit hot here in Brussels last night, when the independent think-tank Open Europe held a meeting for a discussion on its research into the amount of money –  £2.2bn in 2008 alone – that the European Commission spends on pro-EU propaganda.

As usual, Open Europe was keen for someone  from the Commission to attend. But definitely not as usual, someone from the Commission actually did turn up: Joe Hennon, spokesman for Margot Wallstrom, the Swede who is commissioner in charge of spending all this propaganda money. Though of course Mrs Wallstrom doesn’t call it propaganda. She calls it  ’communications strategy.’ Whatever she calls it, you are paying for it.

Unfortunately I was somewhere in the Channel Tunnel while all this was going on, but the report is that Hennon was there to say spending taxpayer-funded millions on euro-culture, euro-citizenship and euro-education was okay, because the imperative to work towards an ever-closer union ‘is in the treaties.’

Then he tried a drive-by smear, and claimed that Open Europe was anti-Europe, and wasn’t independent at all.

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‘Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Martin Narey said that social workers should remove more, not fewer, children from their natural parents.

He admitted many professionals would regard his views as “heresy”, and criticised the prevailing philosophy of social services departments which, he claimed, sought to keep families together wherever possible.

Mr Narey also said that once the decision had been made to take a child away from their family, there should be greater use of residential care - formerly known as children’s homes - as an alternative to placing challenging children with a succession of foster families.

He said: “The emphasis is - too much in my view - on fixing families”.’

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Martin Narey Is the Ex-head of the Prison Service and pimps himself out as an after dinner speaker

See here…

LABOUR peers are prepared to accept fees of up to £120,000 a year to amend laws in the House of Lords on behalf of business clients, a Sunday Times investigation has found.

Four peers — including two former ministers — offered to help undercover reporters posing as lobbyists obtain an amendment in return for cash.

Two of the peers were secretly recorded telling the reporters they had previously secured changes to bills going through parliament to help their clients.

Lord Truscott, the former energy minister, said he had helped to ensure the Energy Bill was favourable to a client selling “smart” electricity meters. Lord Taylor of Blackburn claimed he had changed the law to help his client Experian, the credit check company.

Taylor told the reporters: “I will work within the rules, but the rules are meant to be bent sometimes.”

The other peers who agreed to assist our reporters for a fee were Lord Moonie, a former defence minister, and Lord Snape, a former Labour whip.

The disclosure that peers are “for hire” to help change legislation confirms persistent rumours in Westminster that lobbyists are targeting the Lords rather than the Commons, where MPs are under greater scrutiny.

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Ministers were accused last night of profiteering from the soaring numbers of people facing bankruptcy after they announced huge increases in fees at debtors’ courts.

Charges are to rise by up to 233 per cent for debt proceedings from next May, affecting hundreds of thousands of people who plunge into the red.

The move, which has been branded a stealth tax on those least able to pay, comes as a survey by The Independent reveals the depth of Britain’s debt problem with the country now officially in the worst recession for 30 years.

Statistics gathered from local branches of the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) show the number of people contacting the charity for advice on how to manage their mounting debts rocketed across the country during the past three months of last year.

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‘A former British Cabinet minister says the BBC seeks to appease Tel Aviv by refusing to broadcast a humanitarian appeal for Gaza. The BBC has sparked controversy by refusing to broadcast a charity appeal for the victims of the war on Gaza.

In a Saturday interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation, former Labour MP Tony Benn attributed the BBC refusal to claims made by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni that there is no humanitarian crisis in the territory.

The former Cabinet minister lashed out at the network, saying that the BBC “betrayed” its public service obligations by refusing to broadcast the humanitarian bid – which has left aid agencies with a donation shortfall of millions of pounds.’

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Town halls are photographing houses in the middle of the night to see whether they are wasting energy.

The thermal images, which show heat escaping though windows, doors and roofs, will be sent to homeowners to encourage them to insulate.

Tens of thousands of properties have been photographed over the past few months and there are plans to extend the scheme to every house in the country.

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‘On 8 October 2008 Lloyds TSB wrote to the Islamic Bank of Britain (IBB), giving them 60 days notice of withdrawal of their services as a clearing bank, unless they agreed they would no longer process transactions for Interpal, a charity sending aid to Palestinians in Gaza.

In effect, this meant that the IBB would have to close down or freeze Interpal’s account or lose clearing facilities for all its customers’ accounts. After representations from The IBB, Lloyds TSB agreed to postpone this action until 30 January 2009.’

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The BBC has refused to broadcast a national humanitarian appeal for Gaza, leaving aid agencies with a potential shortfall of millions of pounds in donations.

The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), an umbrella organisation for 13 aid charities, launched its appealtoday saying the devastation in Gaza was “so huge that British aid agencies were compelled to act”.

But the BBC made a rare breach of an agreement dating back to 1963 when it announced it would not give free airtime to the appeal. Other broadcasters then followed suit. Previously, broadcasters have agreed on the video and script to be used with the DEC, with each station choosing a presenter to front the appeal, shown after primetime news bulletins.

The BBC said it was not the first time broadcasters had refused to show a DEC appeal.

The corporation said it had been concerned about the difficulties of getting aid through to victims in a volatile situation. The BBC, which has faced criticism in the past over alleged bias in its coverage of the Middle East, said it did not want to risk public confidence in its impartiality.

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Impartiality? Don’t make me laugh!