SPCK.

Further closures and staff cuts were announced last month at the former SPCK bookshop chain.
I must admit to having rather mixed feelings about this. On the one hand it is a shame that access to Christian literature has been reduced BUT I was always horrified by some of the apostate stuff on sale in these shops.
Let's hear it for CLC - which comes fully recommended.



Is there any truth in the rumour that SPCK stands for The Society for the Prevention of Christian Knowledge as some have claimed?

Uninsured drivers.

Whenever asked why I quit as a Chairman of Magistrates, the asker has opened the floodgates.
There was never any single answer - just a lengthy list of areas where justice was not being done - and I was freely giving of my valuable time to help shore up the best setup for summary justice anywhere in the world, which had tragically been turned into a shambles from on high.
Uninsured drivers were the bane of my existence.
As a general rule they were young louts who had no money, would find £40 to buy a a wreck without MOT and which they would then drive around indefinitely in a dangerous condition. There were scores of these in Sheffield courts EVERY week. Their only costs would have been for petrol until the unregistered and untaxed vehicle finally gave up the ghost whereupon it would be abandoned.
Because of almost all of them being on benefits, we were only allowed to fine them £60!!!
Contrast this with some 18 year old working his socks off on minimum wage. This guy would probably have to find £1,500 to insure his car Third Party in the first year.
Just how unfair are these inconsequential, court disposals?

LINK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=550733&in_page_id=1811&ct=5

Informative letter - Western Morning News.

11:00 - 28 March 2008.

Sir, I don't know the extent that your readers are aware that, while most Tory MPs voted in favour of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, most also voted a few days later in favour of the superiority of EU law over British law; indeed they were whipped into doing so.This shows the true nature of the Tory Party's hypocrisy when it comes to our membership of the European Union. While they may pretend otherwise, they are totally in favour of our continued membership, as are the Labour and Liberal Democrat Parties.For example the non-appearance of David Cameron at both of the referendum rallies outside Parliament speaks volumes.Most Eurosceptic Tory voters still vote Tory out of a sense of loyalty to that party, but they must remember that loyalty should never be shown to an unworthy cause.When it comes to our membership of the corrupt, despotic and undemocratic EU, over the past four decades the Tories have proved how utterly unworthy they are of the Eurosceptic vote.When it came to this recent vote to confirm that EU law should have precedence over British law, yet again the Tories have shown their consistent relish for emasculating our own Parliament in favour of being governed from Brussels.The only party that represents and upholds the Eurosceptic cause is UKIP. Our vote is growing all the time; it tends to double at each General Election, with over 600,000 voting for this party in 2005.This shows that, year by year, more and more Eurosceptic Tories are deciding they have had enough of the Tories' dishonesty when it comes to the EU.All these people, like me, can see the nonsense of voting for a party that has openly said it will never give them what they want, as well as the obvious sense of voting for the party that really represents their patriotic views.With the tide flowing our way, it won't be long before UKIP's foothold on UK politics becomes a force to be reckoned with.


Hugh Williams, UKIP, South West Devon, Yelverton

MLK - who was he?

I have never managed to suss out Martin Luther King. I yearn to believe the noble legend but fear that it is something of a fantasy.
His beliefs did not apparently accept the bodily resurrection of Jesus - he was very much out of an extremely liberal background in the manner of his theological education.
I am also concerned to learn that: on Jan. 31, 1977, Coretta Scott King obtained a federal court order sealing for 50 years 845 pages of FBI records about her husband, "because its release would destroy his reputation!"
Furthermore, one of King's closest friends, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, acknowledges in his autobiography that King had a "weakness for women" .
In yesterday's programme on BBC 2, J. Edgar Hoover, bête noire of the liberal left, was portrayed as having decided to investigate King's many communist links.
In this, the programme was somewhat misleading as the primary source for investigating King was the Attorney General and arch liberal, Robert Kennedy - puts a rather different emphasis on matters, does it not?
That MLK achieved many positives is beyond argument but we must take care not beatify the man who had feet firmly mired in clay.
Roll on 2027. I wonder if I shall live to learn the truth?

50 mgs?

Oh no! Here we go again. the 80mgs of alcohol per 100 mls of blood limit to be reduced to just 50 mpgs?
Let us hope that this mad idea will not catch on. It "will save lives" say the worthy interferers. Rubbish.
What will this actually achieve? - It will simply criminalise people who are driving with very low alcohol levels in the blood.
I have jailed drink drivers on occasion.
I have sat in many courts and many are the drink drivers whose licences I have gleefully removed and to criminalise a new sector of society for perhaps having a single drink is 'nanny state' in full flow.
The 80 mgs limit at present is perhaps around two pints of standard bitter over two hours for a man of average build who has not got an otherwise empty stomach. - Or is it? To be certain that your metabolism does not get you into trouble, responsible people have to drink significantly less than this in their planning.
So just what does a 50mgs limit achieve?
We are still in the business of trying to catch the person who abuses drink and who then drives. Will this change affect the attitudes of such criminals one jot? - Of course not.
As with speed cameras on fast, wide roads where a 10 mph greater limit is probably more sensible, and which clobber people for being marginally over the low limit, this simply targets the people who are the lesser problems and utterly fails to address those who are the greater problems.
Drunk drivers should be punished VERY severely. This does not help.



It may eventually have to lead to there being no mandatory ban for lower level drink driving. That would be a backward step. People today know "You are over the limit - licence gone!"
That is the way it should be.

When will left of centre governments learn that oh-so-simple way forward? -

IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT!

LINK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=548749&in_page_id=1770&ct=5

Geert Wilders.

Dutch MP Geert Wilders has set himself up to attack Islam, the Koran and Mohammed.
Is he ignorant, or a fool, or 'saying what weaker people fear to say'?
Is he unreasonable, hate-filled or merely tactless?
Is he an off beam democrat or is he 'saying what needs to be said'?
Does he make the BNP seem like a liberal grouping or is he expressing the feelings of many Dutch people in a politically correct world?
Is he racist, misguided or a visionary?
Read the link below. Each person will need to make up his or her own mind. I shall make no attempt to influence either way.







LINK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=548528&in_page_id=1811

Questions in Canterbury.

"A shoplifter convicted for the 175th time was spared a prison sentence after magistrates decided to give her another last chance.
Joanne Jones, 31, has faced more than 200 court hearings and served 34 jail terms over the past 16 years, at a cost to the taxpayer of more than £700,000.
But she walked free from the court after Canterbury magistrates decided there was a "chink of light" to suggest she could change – despite the fact that she was on bail when she committed her last offence and is still hooked on heroin."





Time has come. Indeed it arrived 172 convictions ago. This woman is leaving a trail of misery behind her for small businesses and is adding to the prices the rest of us have to pay in the larger supermarkets. If these are her convictions, it is safe to say that her actual offences, the UNdetected ones, will probably run into many tens of thousands.


Jailed 34 times? - What does that mean? - It is quite possible that she will have spent less than 15 months locked up in total!


Under a proper system the time would be long overdue for her to be given 7 years - and preferably in a much tougher setup.


Canterbury deserves a rest. Her 'interests' are now secondary. She is a social menace and should be removed from the population for a very lengthy period.





The point has been reached when we must cease viewing these as 'minor offences'. They are not. They are crimes and she is not being punished for them.


The magistrates are probably in the position where the amount of time they can jail her for is so insignificant - with 50% off for 'good behaviour' and an early release scheme to 'free prison places' that they may as well not bother, so limited are their powers today.








LINK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=547310&in_page_id=1770

Congratulations to Asian MPs.

Labour MPs Khalid Mahmood of Perry Bar, Sadiq Khan of Tooting, Parmjhit Dhander of Gloucester and Ashok Kumar of Middlesborough all merit our congratulations.
They have expressed their doubts over Harriet Harman's plans for 'all black shortlists' for elections.
Expressions from these gents include "political apartheid" and Khalid Mahmood has even referred to "This smacking of a colonial attitude that divides our population into different blocks and allocates representatives accordingly."
You can only applaud common sense - even when it makes a rare appearance in the Labour Party.
Time for the egregious Ms Harman to stop her campaign to further damage society.

LINK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=547910&in_page_id=1770

Underclass.

I return to this theme, as once again, the term 'underclass' is being used to refer to the poor which is simply incorrect.
What the victorians used to call the 'undeserving poor' is nearer the mark and even Karl Marx had a moment of partial lucidity when he wrote of the lumpenproletariat which, according to his prejudices, consisted of:

"This scum of the depraved elements of all classes ... decayed roués, vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, brothel keepers, tinkers, beggars, the dangerous class, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society." [A bit harsh there in parts, Karl - but we do get the point.]

My definition is never one which includes the pathetic, the mentally ill or the socially incompetent but rather that ever growing, malicious, parasitical, criminal group which undermines the very fabric of society - and who are allowed the luxury to do so effectively unchallenged. Their lifestyle is often significantly higher than that of the toilers for minimum wage who live close by them.

Untouchable pimps.

Girls commonly as young as 14 are streetwalking in increasing numbers in Yorkshire and the Police are apparently too scared of the PC lobby to act.

"It is a sinister and deeply uncomfortable scenario, not least because these crimes frequently have a racial element: in many of the identifiable cases, the pimps come from the Asian or Afro-Caribbean communities. As such, the parents of some young victims claim the authorities are reluctant to tackle the issue for fear of upsetting race relations in areas with large ethnic minorities."

Of course there will be huffing and puffing from the worthy PC souls who are responsible who will vehemently insist that: "They do want the Police to arrest such people, without fear or favour." But just wait. As soon as the Police take them at their word, out will crawl the PC lawyers and politicians from the woodwork claiming that it is "Pure, racial harassment."
The Police Force [SORRY! - I meant 'Service'] is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't. I know the Police bring much down upon themselves - usually at a senior and oft times Politically Correct level - but the solid guys at the sharp end really are treated like doggie poo.


LINK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=546809&in_page_id=1879

David Davis.

Yes, I know that David Davis is one of the better tories and yes, I know that he is talking sense when he points out Labour's benefit failures. Yes, he is quite right that the disastrous figures for new marriages can be laid firmly at the door of Labour whose policies have made marriage a poor option for so many.
He probably believes - and rightly - that many labourites actually oppose marriage per se and are not unhappy to see the social mayhem caused.
What Mr Davis cannot claim is that the Conservatives' hands are sparkling clean in this matter. It was Chancellors under John Major who first began the rot - all Labour have done is to build on the wreckage. It was the Conservatives under John Major who began cutting the married couple's tax allowance in 1994/95. It was finally abolished by a Labour government in 2000.
In the immortal words of Al Murray - "Shame on YOU!"


LINK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=545849&in_page_id=1770

HL Mencken.

"Puritanism - The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

H L Mencken.

Trouble is , HL, it also applies to: pharisaism, political correctness, bureaucracy and socialism.

Paranyms.

"Zealotry is rich in paranyms. A paranym is a word used as an evasion, often in a sense that is opposite to its actual meaning: liberate for conquer, liberal for authoritarian etc. Zealots like to change the vocabulary in this way and paradox is one of their victims. Time and time again reality diverges from the dogma, so there has come to be, for example, the obesity paradox. Never mind though, for one of the first principles of zealotry is to ignore any contrary evidence. Another of their favourite techniques is to exploit the end-point fallacy. In Britain, for example, they almost invariably choose the fifties as a point of reference, a time when British women had suffered more than a decade of starvation. In America obesity rates have not changed for seven years, but are still routinely portrayed as a growing crisis. Over and over again the obesity scam is exposed, but the campaigners simply ignore the contrary evidence and march on".

[My favourite was always the fact that any state which was emphatically totalitarian would describe itself as a 'democratic republic'.]

I STRONGLY recommend that you read the whole article! John Brignell seems to know what he is talking about.

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/zealots.htm

First Commandment.

So why is Brown spitting out his dummy and insisting that there will be a three line whip for Labour MPs on the Embryo Bill?

Well the inimitable Melanie argues: "Part of the answer must lie in the intense pressure from scientists who, in the Godlike belief that they can eradicate disease and misery from the world, constantly push to be in the forefront of medical research regardless of any adverse consequences for society."

As usual, she is almost certainly right.
It is quite amazing that so many today should worship pop stars, actors, the unjustly famous - and of course - scientists.
Scientists are generally clever, nice and responsible people but not always and not by definition. They are as morally lacking as anybody else. It needs to be noted that they are also often wrong on scientific matters.
Time to step back and start obeying the first commandment!

Littlejohn reports...

"The iceman cometh...it must be March.

Global warming update. According to NASA scientists in Maryland, the polar ice caps, far from shrinking, are actually increasing in size this year.
To the north of Canada, ice now covers two million square kilometres more than it did the past three winters and is between 10mm and 20mm thicker than last year.
In the Alps, where last year's mild winter sparked a wave of hysteria about 'global warming', they've just had their best snowfall for 20 years and the skiing season kicked off two weeks early.
You won't have heard any of this inconvenient truth on the news.
Meanwhile, our own freezing Easter is taken by some as evidence of "climate change".
Yet I seem to remember when I was at school being taught a rhyme that went something like: 'March winds doth blow, and we shall have snow.'
So no change there, then."

Medicines.

More than 8,000 people have died in the past decade as a result of taking medicines intended to help them, figures have revealed.



CONTRAST WITH FACT PUBLISHED ON SAME DAY:-






Chinese herbal medicine killed a young woman who used it to treat a stomach upset and skin rash, an inquest heard. The remedy caused Ling Wang's liver and other organs to shut down.





One death due to chinese herbs is reported. How often do we hear of the 16 people who die from prescription medicines each week who are probably just the tip of the iceberg?



LINKS: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/healthmain.html?in_article_id=541928&in_page_id=1774

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=543714&in_page_id=1770

I was never in the NUT.

The NUT have said that parents have a right to have specific schooling in their own faith, if that was what they wanted. - Bully for them!
But having children taught at different faith-based schools had "led to community breakdown in some areas."

Pardon me for asking a rather obvious question here but, how many times has this "breakdown" happened because of a CHRISTIAN-based school? - Ah. Never, eh?
So. Jewish schools, then? - Them neither, eh?
So. It is purely muslim schools to which they refer, isn't it?
So. All 'faith schools' must suffer because of disgraceful actions in some muslim schools?

In addition, may I remind the NUT that Christian-based schools are a protection of OUR culture.

Relics.

Rageh Omar presented an excellent programme on The Turin Shroud last Saturday and, after the Carbon 14 insistence that this was a medieval forgery, a good case seems to have emerged on many grounds to re-examine the claims of 1988 when an Oxford lab had dated this to the 14th Century.
The case for it being considerably earlier and C14 being wrong [again] is quite strong. No matter.
Fascinating though the Shroud may be, it neither adds nor detracts one jot from Gospel accounts.
The Scriptures give us no hints that we should ever venerate: shrouds, cloths, bones of saints, 'actual' crucifixion nails, 'actual' crowns of thorns or holy grails.
As for the latter, what did the disciples do? Did they return to the upper room and nick the cup? I just don't see it.
Christianity is not proved by relics but a personal relationship with the Living Jesus.

A letter from The York Evening Press.

Dear Sir,

IN HIS 1788 book The Decline And Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon gave five reasons why the Empire and its civilisation collapsed.
They are: the undermining of the dignity and sanctity of the home, ever-increasing taxes and the spending of public money on free bread and circuses for the populace, the craze for pleasure, with sports and plays becoming more and more exciting, brutal and immoral, the decay in individual responsibility and the building of armaments when the real enemy was within.
And in addition the decay of religion whose leaders had lost touch with real life and their responsibility to guide the population.
This made me wonder: was there a ruling Labour Party in ancient Rome?
Colin Henson, Ullswater, Woodthorpe, York.

Nice one, Colin!

No wind from Booker...

"Wind power costs inflate - again!
A further huge question mark has been raised over the Government's plan to build 7,000 offshore wind turbines round Britain's coasts, to help meet its EU target of 15 percent of our electricity from ' renewables' by 2020.
The director of renewable generation for Centrica, our largest windfarm developer, last week revealed that the cost of this plan to create 33,000 megawatts (MW) of capacity has doubled in three years, from £40 billion to £80 billion.
[Remember the Humber Bridge - these costs are only the tip of the iceberg.]
But since, thanks to fluctuations in the wind, offshore turbines generate on average only 27.5 per cent of capacity, the actual power produced by these turbines would be only 9,000MW, putting its price at £8.8 million per MW.
The latest nuclear power station being built in Finland at a cost of £2.7 billion will produce 1600MW, 24 hours a day, representing £1.7 million per MW. In other words, six nuclear power stations could produce more electricity than all those windfarms for only a fifth of the price."
CHRIS BOOKER - Sunday Telegraph.

On the SAME day.

Royal Marine, Mark Ormrod, 24, who lost both legs and his right arm after stepping on a Taliban landmine in Afghanistan has been told he is not entitled to a full compensation packageHe was offered £214,000 in compensation by the Ministry of Defence rather than the maximum £285,000.

ON THE SAME DAY WE FIND.......




A woman prison officer was yesterday awarded nearly £150,000 after being made to carry out intimate "rubdown" searches of male inmates.
Carol Saunders, 42, had claimed it was "degrading, distasteful and dehumanising" that she had been made to perform physical searches on male prisoners.

One day I shall go pop! It is unbelievable that there be such an imbalance with justice.

Bail lunacy worsens.

When a government is so wretched that it fails its public duty in supplying sufficient prison places, one of the first targets is the bail system.
"Let 'em out - it will free up places."
Indeed it does and two people have to die every week from this policy as they will be butchered by bail bandits.
Funny how those who get so hot under the collar about the possibility of a mistake every decade or so [but only if things go extremely badly] when you have the death penalty, should be so silent when it comes to a thousand or more INNOCENT deaths over the same period.
One in five murder victims is killed by somebody on bail.
What a world we bequeath to future generations!

LINK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=543168&in_page_id=1770

Channel 4 - oh dear.

The claim from the genial Dr Robert Beckford at the start of Channel 4's 'The Secrets of the 12 Disciples' to be a Christian looked increasingly hollow as the programme progressed.



True the programme did seem to indicate that Simon Peter dying in Rome was exceedingly unlikely and backed this up by showing the tomb of one Simon Barjonah in Jerusalem and pointing out that there was no evidence that the apostle had ever travelled so far westwards. Fair enough.



The programme seemed happy to back the claim that the Apostle Thomas had taken the Gospel to S. India and made a reasonably good case. Fair enough.



But its attempts to reclassify Judas as 'hero' were downright silly - asking why he was not positively represented. [???] A linguistic expert was trotted out to claim that the word in the NT translated from Greek as 'betrayed' actually means 'handed over'. Big deal! Read all the rest!



We had the usual hobby horse of 'Who wrote John's Gospel, letters and Revelation?' without one single jot of evidence produced that it was not the Apostle himself.



References were made to texts hundreds of years after the events such as the 'Gospel of
Thomas'. For the sake of all pity WHY?



Vain attempts were made to see the early Church 'differently' and split between the
'anti-Jewish and pro-Jewish elements'. This deliberately chose to misrepresent the reason for the actual divisions based on whether or not gentile converts needed to be circumcised.
The influence of Paul was derided and an almost 'gnostic' revisionism used to hint that the early Church had been less than honest about what Jesus had taught. Weak, unconvincing and not based on evidence.


[Does it never occur to such 'Christians' that we might have had a teeny weeny bit of God's influence into which texts were chosen for the scriptural canon?]



The programme was a veritable mishmash which will have put so many doubts into the minds of the uninformed using the tactics of Berlitz or Von Daniken. Annoying and academically unworthy.

So: who would die for a lie?

The tomb was empty; Jesus gone. So what had happened to the body?
Grave robbers would have stolen ornaments, possibly cloth and definitely any thick oils and perfumes from a corpse which would have been scraped off for resale? Would they have carried the body away? - Absolutely not!
"Perhaps the Romans or Pharisees took the body", some say. These were the very people who wanted Jesus demonstrably dead and buried. The hypothesis is feeble.
"Perhaps the disciples, then". - People will devote their lives to a cause and may die for it even if that cause is false. What is psychologically impossible is for people to go out, without hope of wealth or earthly power, and DIE for a lie in which most or all have colluded.
You would be marginally better off suggesting that the body was removed by aliens.
Of course..... I do not suppose that the very many people at the time who claim to have met the living, corporeal Jesus were actually right. Were they?
A real puzzler and tantalisingly close to demonstrating, circumstantially at least, that Jesus DID rise from the dead.
However close to this point we get - it is not the real point. Christianity has gone all over the world because 'born again' believers experience Him today! They have encountered the reality.

Nutty.

Bill Greenshields President of The National Union of Teachers has called for the abolition of independent schools.
Let us forget for one moment that this is evidence of the very worst of marxist thinking; that it confirms the NUT as a leftist dinosaur; that it assaults human freedoms and grants ever more influence to the burgeoning power of the state.
It is precisely the same tosh which accompanied the virtual abolition of the grammar schools all those years ago. It was risk-taking lunacy then - knowing what we have learned over 45 years - it is unmitigated idiocy today!


LINK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=542338&in_page_id=1770

Sexual revolution has casualties.

So. Syphilis is making a big comeback.

Astonishing numbers of young women are having SECOND abortions. Significant numbers are having multiple abortions.
Chlamydia is running rampant, remains frequently undetected, and will damage the fertility of hundreds of thousands then the NHS will be expected to pull out all of the stops to restore the promiscuous to full fecundity.[I shall happily wager that these 'self-inflicted wounds' will not bring calls for medical treatment to be withdrawn as is now being suggested for smokers and the obese.]
Children without fathers abound with all the attendant, social consequences.
Aids, STDs, illegitimacy - the 'permissive society' has brought us so much to be proud of.
Again reasons why I could never be a fully fledged libertarian.The problems do not remain on our shores, they are global. Read the Aids link below.
In any other era it would have been called decadence.


LINK: http://www.christian.org.uk/issues/2008/family/syphilis_18mar08.htm
http://www.christian.org.uk/issues/2008/medicalethics/abortion_20mar08.htm
http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/womenshealth/facts/chlamydia.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2005/jun/03/internationalaidanddevelopment.aids

Protect the public.

As the government claims that murders by the mentally ill are not increasing, we must assume then that the figure has long been quite a high one, although just how much I feel that such stats may be trusted is quite another matter. Perhaps if we were to use the definition of 'criminally insane' with regard to such offences, greater clarity would be achieved as simply being classed as 'mentally ill' may not be strictly relevant.
Killings - I am reluctant to use the word 'murders' - are committed most frequently by those known to be dangerous and judged incorrectly by professionals to be 'safe' and by those who fail to take essential medication.
[In the case of psychopathy, the case for prison as opposed to the alternatives is quite a strong one.]
A great proportion of this problem has its roots in the ill-conceived 'care in the community' programme which has cost many lives since its inception.
I think the public has the right to demand that once a major act of violence has been committed by somebody who is mentally ill, then they will never again be allowed their freedom. The problem at present is that a crime is seemingly diminished by a conclusion that there is any mental illness present. A gradation of the level - and potential dangers - of every mentally ill offender is probably essential.
In retributive terms, in the best scenario, sentencing needs to be entirely commensurate with the degree of free will involved. The overriding factor should be protection of the community, however. The rights of the public must always take precedence over the rights of those who commit crime.
No advantage should ever accrue from an ordinary criminal's legal team claiming that 'mental illness is present' - but achieving this in the face of the enormous amounts of dishonesty by solicitors and barristers who go beyond the mere calls of duty when defending clients, will make this extremely difficult and always sensitive.
I refer in particular to offences of GBH, manslaughter, arson and rape.We are not always necessarily referring to prison under such circumstances but rather, secure facilities.
The safety of the public must be paramount.
Of course, reverting to a policy of having specialist accommodation for all of the mentally ill who need or desire such care might help the situation enormously.

LINKS: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article658445.ece
http://www.uea.ac.uk/~wp276/homicide.htm
http://www.inthenews.co.uk/news/news/health/homicides-by-mentally-ill-largely-avoidable-$460063.htm
http://www.sagb.co.uk/06.htm
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=558166&in_page_id=1770

Hail to the Beeb.

The BBC has long been criticised on this Blog for many things not least of which have been its countless anti-Christian outpourings.
'The Passion' however has passed the test. After 3 programmes and not a single miracle, in the final episode, it does not fudge the main issue.
The one miracle that matters is the Resurrection - and there it was!

Easter Day.

Hallelujah. He is risen!

He is risen indeed!

Resurrection!

It is quite fair for me to claim that if Jesus indeed rose from the dead, then Christianity has been proved.
Please examine the evidence at the link below which although a little basic, should satisfy intellectually or at the very least should state why Christians have such a good historical foundation for investigating Christ's claims personally.
But in order to KNOW that all of this is true, you have to experience The Living Jesus for yourself.
Invite Him into your life without let or hindrance and with an open heart and you WILL experience new life.

LINK: http://y-jesus.com/body_count1.php?gclid=CPqlsP2OnJICFQ7AaAodukDZCw

Vindicated after decades.

I freely admit that I have not yet read 'The Black Book of Communism' as I have a number of other weighty tomes to wade through before I get to that well reviewed volume.
Suffice it to say however, that I understand that it reaches the conclusion that Wisconsin senator, Joe Macarthy, known for his 'witch hunts' in the post war era, was factually correct and probably UNDERestimated the levels of communist infiltration.
He did indeed uncover a major communist network - much of which was centred on the american film industry.
Note how the mighty, leftwing propaganda machine turned him into the bad guy with consummate ease.
Even today, half a century on, history still tends to portray him as a bigot. Once 'the big decision' has been made by historians - oft times from the hard left - reversing it takes aeons of time.

LINKS: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3AY55EOKZXQUN
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1439582/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/934207/posts

Dear Mr Straw...

Dear Mr Straw,
I spent ten years on the Sheffield Bench in which time I dished out community penalties like confetti because guidelines prevented me jailing a great many persistent offenders who were not fit to remain alongside the non-offending majority. On more occasions than I can count, my colleagues and I were prevented from delivering a just and effective outcome by the constraints of guidelines. So why are you constantly implying that magistrates and judges are jailing people who need not be jailed?
Many offenders would have had two, four, six or even more community penalties before they ever spent a few short weeks in a reasonably pleasant gaol - typically Doncatraz.
Eventually, many of these offenders would reach a conclusion that the Law will not, indeed cannot, harm them. This does not address their offending other than to confirm them in the view that they are on the right track.
Minor inconvenience is NOT the same as punishment. So the recidivists will move up the scale until society is left no option but to lock them away for a substantial period in Crown Court. THAT is why your prisons are overflowing! You have TRAINED the criminal classes to this.
Mr Straw, the bar is far too high. Dishonesty must be punished and offenders sent down EARLY in the process.
The prisons are full because you and those of your ilk refuse to embrace reality.
PUNISH crime firmly from the outset - NOT years down the line when it is too late and the criminal lifestyle has become ingrained. Fear MUST be reintroduced into the system.
Yes. I know that the prison population would rocket under my scheme - but not for long. In well under two years results would be astonishing.
Show that you really mean business and our prison population will go down.
Spain jails four times the number of the convicted per 1,000 than we do and has a fraction of the prison population. LEARN!

LINK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=540788&in_page_id=1770

3 life issues.

Before I became a Christian I believed in capital punishment, abortion and euthanasia.
After I became a Christian I turned to the Scriptures for a full investigation of what God had to say.
I retained my belief in the death penalty as the teaching was clear, irrefutable and could only be criticised by deliberately muddling up personal and social requirements..
I changed my mind 100% about abortion and over years I have come to regard this practice with utter revulsion the more I have learned about it.
As regards euthanasia, I became one of the great 'really don't knows'. Any direct links to this matter are extremely hard to find in the Bible. Ironically, this is a topic I have had to teach and debate year on year with a great many pupils in RS lessons.
Euthanasia done in love cannot surely be murder, can it? Did Jesus ever require us to suffer beyond what we can bear? If Man is given the right to end guilty life, how can we still argue that only God may decide the 'when'?
But is this just suicide by any other name?
What we do to people would get us prosecuted were we to do the same to an animal at the end of its life. Has science 'moved the goalposts'?
If 'life-shortening' through heavy morphine doses is acceptable - why not go the whole way?
What about potential abuses? What of family members 'trying to get at the will'?
Do we 'love our neighbour' by extending his/her suffering?
If I am in that condition, I would not want to go on - or would I?
What of those who are healed or whose disease goes into unexpected remission?

No. I tend to err in favour of euthanasia but then pull back.
Tricky. Sorry if I have muddied the waters for you, dear reader.

Our Passover Lamb.

At about 3pm on what we now call Good Friday, Jesus died.
The time of His death, like everything else about the Christ, was no coincidence - the Lamb of God taking away the sin of the world.
It was exactly this time when the Passover lamb was sacrificed in the Temple.
I have already pointed out on this Blog that something dramatic had happened at precisely this point which verifies and vindicates Gospel accounts - the simply gigantic , four inch thick, Temple Curtain was torn into two.
If such a tremendous happening and stunning public event had NOT occurred, the Gospel accounts would have been shown up instantly to any who had been in Jerusalem at the time, as a mere fabrication.
The Gospel writers were happy to proclaim this fact. Ergo, it happened.
Historical proofs, though most convincing, are not a patch on that personal experience.

Simply unfair.

"White working-class boys are being consigned to the educational scrapheap because politically-correct ministers and officials are ignoring their poor performance, members of the ATL claimed yesterday.
They said boys from low-income homes do significantly worse in exams than any other group of pupils but their plight is being "overlooked" by Labour and the liberal establishment."
Guess what happens when your special "initiatives" to help: girls, blacks, asians, gypsies et al divert monies from ordinary kids? - Yes, this!
STOP all special treatments of various groups. It is not only unfair BUT it backfires.

Now challenged, the government response will inevitably be to 'set up an initiative' which will target certain working class children. What will be the initiative after that one? And the one after that?

John Enoch Powell once said: " If you try to help everybody you inevitably end up helping nobody."

What needs to happen is that all this rubbish be ditched and the hundreds of millons - perhaps billions - saved should help cut class sizes, which is yet one more Labour failure.

LINK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?

in_article_id=538829&in_page_id=1770

Too heavy on the HIPS.

The ill-conceived, badly designed, tax-raising, broadly useless, Home Information Packs which must now accompany house sales have been criticised by consumer watchdog Which, as 'the worst piece of consumer law for 50 years'.
This arrogant, thinking-free, money-grabbing, Labour administration has insisted on pushing this nonsense through in spite of countless warnings and much evidence that they are nothing more nor less than a fund-raising exercise with that special ingredient, added bureaucracy.
Done properly, it might even have been a good idea!

[Only 50?]

LINK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=540136&in_page_id=1770

Public Holidays.

Today is Good Friday. It is disgraceful that we have Easter Monday as the Bank Holiday.
God the Son died for us - and we, as a nation, should remember!
Very few businesses are closed today.

Hoover.

It has become de rigueur to mock J. Edgar Hoover who was the boss of the FBI for many decades. I really do not know sufficient to make any informed comment about the man or his motives - but the one thing I do know is that the attacks on him bear all the customary hallmarks of one of the leftwing smear campaigns which have been systematically directed at any public figure perceived as being even slightly to the right of centre.


If it is true that he was a crossdresser - I repeat IF - then surely we reveal a remarkable double standard. That would not be 'allowed' as a criticism of anybody who is left of centre.

[I shall leave you to construct your own list of those who have been grossly attacked, vilified, defamed and deliberately misrepresented. The list will be lengthy.
Try to make a list of left of centre figures who have been subjected to more than the normal criticism directed at political figures. I can assure you the list will be considerably shorter.]


It was Hoover who remarked: "Justice is incidental to law and order."
That has certainly made me think!

EU as stupid as it is corrupt.

"EU food chiefs have rejected calls to ban additives which trigger hyperactive behaviour in children.
The decision has appalled UK campaigners who insist millions of youngsters will be left exposed to harm.
A link between hyperactive behaviour and the substances used to colour sweets, drinks and medicines was established in a British study published last year....
The additives linked to hyperactive behaviour are the colours Tartrazine (E102); Quinoline Yellow (E104); Sunset Yellow (E110); Carmoisine (E122); Ponceau 4R (E124); and Allura Red (E129). The preservative Sodium Benzoate(E211) is also implicated."

ASTONISHING. The only thing that the EU ever does is to turn out squillions of nonsensical, expensive, unworkable and petty regulations year on year. BUT, ask them to do one simple thing which is desperately needed and ....

LINK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=536276&in_page_id=1770

Marriage decline is a social disaster.

"The decline of marriage is leading to widespread underachievement and indiscipline in schools, teachers warned yesterday.
Children with 'chaotic' home lives turn up at school too troubled to learn, wrecking their prospects of success in exams, they said."

But in the true principles of: dumbing down, lowering standards not raising them and following blind, leftwing principles, we shall have to expect some good old 'equality of outcome' to enable these tragic youngsters to go to university and gain great jobs and then unmerited promotions.
The fact that this will then displace the more able, the more socially-minded and the better prepared must not be allowed to concern us.

LINK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=538789&in_page_id=1770&ct=5

Spot on.

Peter Hitchens is an amazing writer. He gets right to the centre of every issue in a way only ever matched by the redoubtable Melanie Phillips.
What he writes is just SO true!



"Even if I were an atheist I think I would now feel it my duty to start believing in God because so many nasty, stupid people seem determined to stamp God out."

Lovely jubbly, Pete!

LINK: http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2006/02/peter_hitchens_.html

Rowntree Trust loses the plot.

Are they serious?

"Muslim immigrants face so much discrimination and hostility that they don't feel they belong here, according to a liberal research group.
As part of efforts to improve integration, it called for an improvement in public behaviour towards Muslims.
And it said other Britons are wrong to worry about segregation and Muslim-dominated enclaves, as there are benefits to 'residential clustering'. "

I despair.
"Residential clustering"? - That is a rather longwinded way of saying "ghetto", isn't it?

Let's get it right at Easter.

In Easter Week, I am beginning to feel assaulted by the claim that: "The same crowds who cheered Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday were so fickle that 5 days later they were baying for His death", so often has it been voiced.
Not true!
Jesus was arrested secretively at night; he was tried in clandestine fashion in the middle of the night; Pilate was dragged out of his bed; the crowd who 'bayed' were clearly all Sanhedrin members, scribes, levites and pharisees along with their families, friends and servants. It was a complex and well executed plot.
Being a holiday - Jesus had already been crucified before most people would have been up!
"The same people"? - Sorry. Not so.

Does it deter?

Since I first managed to get figures directly from the Home office in 1975 to examine murder rates, I have known as an absolute fact that the death penalty deters a great many murderers. If you think about it - how could it not? Tough punishments deter.
[If you park where you know you shouldn't, you face a small fine and may risk it. Honestly. Would you risk it if your hand were in danger of being cut off? - QED.]
Murder is little different.
Hanging was abolished in 1964/5 when there was a steady murder rate. In the first year, capital murders shot up by more than 126%! [Sunday Times report].
In the first ten years after abolition, more police officers were murdered than in in the whole of the rest of the century to that point AND the whole of the 19th Century too!

I draw your attention to the links below which look at the FACTS in Texas et al. Texas is a very good example of what can be achieved.
There is a visceral hatred of the death penalty by many who frequently hide behind the non argument that there will be mistakes made.
We have appendectomies where people die due to surgeon error but I have never heard the same argument levelled in this situation.
Shouting 'barbarity', 'revenge' etc does not work as logic. Christians, please read Genesis 9 - God clearly gives Man the right [or is it a duty?] to execute. Christ NEVER took away society's right to execute.
Incidentally, legitimate execution is retribution and not revenge. The former is NEUTRAL, the latter PERSONAL - a massive distinction.
I have read so many anti-capital punishment diatribes I am stunned by how illogical they all are; how many will deliberately twist facts; how they will take the guilty and make them into 'martyrs' and how their facts are so selectively chosen.
Let the public have their say! The politicians have wanted abolition and will not admit the depth of failure.
My view? - It is morally repugnant for any society to say to its people, "You may kill whomsoever you choose and your own life may NEVER be forfeited."
How do abolitionists care so much about the guilty and so little about the extra victims? It is hardly compassion, is it? They HAVE to convince themselves that the death penalty doesn't work - in the face of all the evidence.

Please read these FACTUAL links below - they are quite staggering!


LINKS: http://www.jewishworldreview.com/jeff/jacoby060702.asp
http://www.ncpa.org/bothside/krt/krt030200b.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,280215,00.html

Cameron advocates killing inconvenient babies.

"David Cameron has risked angering hardline anti-abortion campaigners by saying he will vote to allow the termination of babies with minor disabilities."

And he has incurred my wrath. Even if there were no UKIP for me to vote for, Cameron can forget getting my vote by default - ever.
It gets harder every week to find any positives whatsoever in this dreadful man who embraces virtually every leftwing cause and clinically banks on his traditional support remaining loyal as Labour is so terrible.

[I am not too sure that it is just 'hardline' campaigners he will have upset. Very few people favour late abortions to cancel out a club foot or hare lip, I suspect.]

I wonder how 'Dave' will explain this attitude to his own disabled child in years to come.

LINK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=536554&in_page_id=1770

EURSOC quotation.

"The BBC has come under fire for showing a pattern of anti-Christian bias. A season based on the experiences of Britain's white working classes led with a drama which suggested that conversion to Islam was the only salvation on offer for the downtrodden poor. This is to be followed by a new drama based on Christ's Passion, in which Judas and Pontius Pilate "appear to be exonerated."

It is true that portrayals of Judas and in particular Caiaphas were too kind and that miracles were expunged but Christ WAS portrayed as RISEN!

http:/www.eursoc.com/news/fullstory.php/aid/2384

Sickness benefits.

In my 10 years in the courts I saw shedloads of criminals pass through who were on sickness benefits.
It is simply never possible to judge what percentage of these were genuine by simply looking at them but I suspect that the number would have been tiny. Work was clearly anathema to them but they were never too sick to commit offences.
2.7 million are now on sickness benefits and our feeble government has apparently 'realised' that this is draining £235 billion annually out of the economy. The knock on social effects are appalling with countless children being brought up into an anti-work, give-it-to-me culture.
Were the non genuine to have been seeking work, could the government have possibly justified allowing hundreds of thousands of immigrants into the country 'to do the jobs our people will not do' thus consolidating the problem?
Is this not just 'sabre rattling' from Labour? Don't they actually want ever more be people to be dependent?
Will 'tough' rules now be enacted which will - as is customary - fail to address the problem?
Will those lefties implementing the plans not do the usual trick of twisting the rules so that some genuine people may be attacked so as to create bad publicity?

THIS SITUATION IS AN INSULT TO THE GENUINE who will now be quaking in their boots wondering if they will be unjustly targeted. Horrendous!

If Labour are genuine, why did they not let Frank Field do the job he wanted to tackle 11 years ago?



LINK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=536556&in_page_id=1770

'Isolated incident' or 'thin end of the wedge'?

Canon Michael Ainsworth was beaten up and put into hospital by three asian youths in what was clearly a faith-hate attack outside his church in Shadwell - an area in E. London with an extremely high Bangladeshi population.
I personally guarantee that there will be a firm sentence if these people are caught BUT I shall also guarantee that it will not be more than one third of what the sentence would have been if three white British thugs had attacked an Iman.

How could I possibly know? Well. I have been in the system; attended the courses; been subjected to the brainwashing.

Oh, yes. I know!

LINKS: http://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/content/towerhamlets/advertiser/news/story.aspx?brand=ELAOnline&category=news&tBrand=northlondon24&tCategory=newsela&itemid=
WeED14%20Mar%202008%2021%3A50%3A33%3A130

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=540078&in_page_id=1770