AFP reports a survey demonstrating that the beneficiaries of Labour’s education system are having increasing difficulty recognizing which famous names are historical personages and which are only characters in books.

Britons are losing their grip on reality, according to a poll out Monday which showed that nearly a quarter think Winston Churchill was a myth while the majority reckon Sherlock Holmes was real.

The survey found that 47 percent thought the 12th century English king Richard the Lionheart was a myth.

And 23 percent thought World War II prime minister Churchill was made up. The same percentage thought Crimean War nurse Florence Nightingale did not actually exist.

Three percent thought Charles Dickens, one of Britain’s most famous writers, is a work of fiction himself.

Indian political leader Mahatma Gandhi and Battle of Waterloo victor the Duke of Wellington also appeared in the top 10 of people thought to be myths.

Meanwhile, 58 percent thought Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective Holmes actually existed; 33 percent thought the same of W. E. Johns’ fictional pilot and adventurer Biggles.

UKTV Gold television surveyed 3,000 people.

Socialized health care British-style transfers costs from individuals to the government, and sooner-or-later government starts wondering if it ought to be paying for some people’s sinful ways or for people who are already too old.

The Telegraph:

Doctors are calling for NHS treatment to be withheld from patients who are too old or who lead unhealthy lives.

Smokers, heavy drinkers, the obese and the elderly should be barred from receiving some operations, according to doctors, with most saying the health service cannot afford to provide free care to everyone.

“First they came for the fully-automatic machine guns, and I’d didn’t protest because I didn’t own a machine gun…”

As the BBC reports, even joke guns and toys swords must be registered and stored locked up in today’s Britain.

A Cornish village drama group has had to register a toy gun with the police to comply with health and safety rules.

Carnon Downs drama group in Cornwall have also had to keep their plastic cutlasses and wooden swords locked up for the pantomime, Robinson Crusoe.

Producers of the show called the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) rules “farcical”.

A spokesman for the HSE said the rules were designed to make risks “sensibly managed”.

The climax of the show is a fight in which actors use replica 4ft-foot long plastic cutlasses.

There is also a toy gun which produces a flag saying “Bang”.

The directors contacted police after receiving advice from the HSE and the National Operatic and Dramatic Association.

The HSE have a page on their website called Entertainment Information Sheet 20 which lays down strict rules for the handling of guns, swords and other weapons on set.

Drama group co-director Linda Barker said: “The cutlasses count as weapons even though they are replicas and made of plastic and apparently they could be mistaken for real ones.

“Our only gun was a panto pistol which produces a flag with the word bang on it.

“Our local police at Truro were fantastic and they have registered the gun, the two plastic cutlasses and our six wooden swords.”

She added: “It gets a bit farcical when you are dealing with plastic swords. It is not as if anyone is likely to be scared by them.”

Neighbourhood beat officer Pc Nigel Hyde said: “We have been informed and made a note.

“It seems a bit unusual but other forms of replica weapons have been used to carry out crimes and the consequences have been serious.”

A spokesman for the HSE said: “We do not want to stop people putting on pantos or having fun as long as the risks are sensible managed.”

Hat tip to Walter Olson.

The London Times reports the story of a British coastguard who is resigning after being reprimanded for saving a life by violating his agency’s safety procedures.

A coastguard who risked his life to save a teenage girl stranded on a cliff ledge has resigned after he was criticised for breaching health and safety rules during the rescue.

Paul Waugh, 44, was so concerned for the 13-year-old girl that he clambered down to her in gale-force winds without waiting to fit safety harnesses.

The father of three, who was hailed as a hero and received an award for stopping the girl from falling 300ft as she waited for an RAF rescue helicopter, announced yesterday that he was leaving the service after 13 years.

Officials at the Maritime and Coastguard Agency said that Mr Waugh, from Cleveland, had breached health and safety regulations because he had not been roped up for the descent. A spokesman said that the rules were in place because the agency did not want any “dead heroes”.

Mr Waugh said: “I am very sad that I have had to leave because I loved my job, but it is one of those things. You save a life and this is how they treat you. I am sorry, but I would not leave any 13-year-old girl hanging off a cliff.

“Saving her life was the important thing. The cliff edge was crumbling away and I didn’t think I had time to wait. It was pitch black and all you could see was a little girl’s frightened face. She was even planning her own funeral. If I had left her and ran back to the vehicle, got the safety equipment and then ran back, she could have fallen. She had been stuck there for 45 minutes and the cliff ledge had actually gave way so she was hanging by her arms off tufts of grass.

“If she had fallen and I had stood watching her, my life would not have been worth living.”

The former miner gave up as a volunteer for the agency, blaming “immense pressure” from management at Bridlington Coastguard.

The girl, Faye Harrison, had been walking with three friends along the cliff top at Brotton last January when they followed the wrong path down the cliff. As it got dark they became disorientated and stranded. A dog walker raised the alarm after hearing their screams for help.

Mr Waugh was paged by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, and with two others went to the scene. Because of a locked farm gate they could not get the rescue vehicle, which contained harnesses and ropes, to the cliff. Mr Waugh clambered down to Faye and held her to prevent her from falling. About 30 minutes later they were winched off by the helicopter.

Mr Waugh said: “I broke a rule and did not use the kit but I saved a life. I don’t call myself a hero. I would have helped even if I had not been in the coastguard. If I had done nothing I would have got slated, but I saved her life and I still get slated.” ...

A spokesman for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency said: “We wish Paul well in his future endeavours and the MCA is very grateful for his past activities and work in the Coastguard Rescue Service. However, the MCA is very mindful of health and safety regulations, which are in place for very good reasons.

“Above all our responsibility is to maintain the health and welfare of those who we sometimes ask to go out in difficult and challenging conditions to affect rescues. The MCA is not looking for dead heroes. As such, we ask our volunteers to risk-assess the situations they and the injured or distressed person find themselves in, and to ensure that whatever action they take does not put anyone in further danger.”

London Times:

Stiles and kissing gates are the latest aspects of country life to fall victim to political correctness.

They have been a familiar feature of the landscape for centuries, but local authorities now believe that installing them along footpaths and rights of way is a breach of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.

This law requires public services to make “reasonable adjustments” to allow disabled access.

A number of councils have identified stiles and kissing gates as obstructions for people with mobility problems or with visual impairments. Some want stiles banned and kissing gates replaced by larger ones that allow wheelchair access.

Hat tip to Walter Olson.

The Daily Mail published some valedictory political remarks, excerpted from George McDonald Fraser’s memoir and testament The Light’s On At Signpost.

When 30 years ago I resurrected Flashman, the bully in Thomas Hughes’s Victorian novel Tom Brown’s Schooldays, political correctness hadn’t been heard of, and no exception was taken to my adopted hero’s character, behaviour, attitude to women and subject races (indeed, any races, including his own) and general awfulness.

On the contrary, it soon became evident that these were his main attractions. He was politically incorrect with a vengeance.

Through the Seventies and Eighties I led him on his disgraceful way, toadying, lying, cheating, running away, treating women as chattels, abusing inferiors of all colours, with only one redeeming virtue – the unsparing honesty with which he admitted to his faults, and even gloried in them.

And no one minded, or if they did, they didn’t tell me. In all the many thousands of readers’ letters I received, not one objected.

In the Nineties, a change began to take place. Reviewers and interviewers started describing Flashman (and me) as politically incorrect, which we are, though by no means in the same way. ...

Political correctness is about denial, usually in the weasel circumlocutory jargon which distorts and evades and seldom stands up to honest analysis.

It comes in many guises, some of them so effective that the PC can be difficult to detect. The silly euphemisms, apparently harmless, but forever dripping to wear away common sense – the naivete of the phrase “a caring force for the future” on Remembrance poppy trays, which suggests that the army is some kind of peace corps, when in fact its true function is killing.

The continual attempt to soften and sanitise the harsh realities of life in the name of liberalism, in an effort to suppress truths unwelcome to the PC mind; the social engineering which plays down Christianity, demanding equal status for alien religions.

The selective distortions of history, so beloved by New Labour, denigrating Britain’s past with such propaganda as hopelessly unbalanced accounts of the slave trade, laying all the blame on the white races, but carefully censoring the truth that not a slave could have come out of Africa without the active assistance of black slavers, and that the trade was only finally suppressed by the Royal Navy virtually single-handed.

In schools, the waging of war against examinations as “elitist” exercises which will undermine the confidence of those who fail – what an intelligent way to prepare children for real life in which competition and failure are inevitable, since both are what life, if not liberal lunacy, is about.

PC also demands that “stress”, which used to be coped with by less sensitive generations, should now be compensated by huge cash payments lavished on griping incompetents who can’t do their jobs, and on policemen and firemen “traumatised” by the normal hazards of work which their predecessors took for granted.

Furthermore, it makes grieving part of the national culture, as it was on such a nauseating scale when large areas were carpeted in rotting vegetation in “mourning” for the Princess of Wales; and it insists that anyone suffering ordinary hardship should be regarded as a “victim” – and, of course, be paid for it.

That PC should have become acceptable in Britain is a glaring symptom of the country’s decline.

No generation has seen their country so altered, so turned upside down, as children like me born in the 20 years between the two world wars. In our adult lives Britain’s entire national spirit, its philosophy, values and standards, have changed beyond belief.

Probably no country on earth has experienced such a revolution in thought and outlook and behaviour in so short a space. ...

My generation has seen the decay of ordinary morality, standards of decency, sportsmanship, politeness, respect for the law, family values, politics and education and religion, the very character of the British.

Oh how Blimpish this must sound to modern ears, how out of date, how blind to “the need for change and the novelty of a new age”. But
don’t worry about me. It’s the present generation with their permissive society, their anything-goes philosophy, and their generally laid-back, inyerface attitude I feel sorry for.

They regard themselves as a completely liberated society when in fact they are less free than any generation since the Middle Ages.

Indeed, there may never have been such an enslaved generation, in thrall to hang-ups, taboos, restrictions and oppressions unknown to their ancestors (to say nothing of being neck-deep in debt, thanks to a moneylender’s economy).

We were freer by far 50 years ago – yes, even with conscription, censorship, direction of labour, rationing, and shortages of everything that nowadays is regarded as essential to enjoyment.

We still had liberty beyond modern understanding because we had other freedoms, the really important ones, that are denied to the youth of today.

We could say what we liked; they can’t. We were not subject to the aggressive pressure of specialinterest minority groups; they are. We had no worries about race or sexual orientation; they have. We could, and did, differ from fashionable opinion with impunity, and would have laughed PC to scorn, had our society been weak and stupid enough to let it exist.

We had available to us an education system, public and private, that was the envy of the world. We had little reason to fear being mugged or raped (killed in war, maybe, but that was an acceptable hazard).

Our children could play in street and country in safety. We had few problems with bullies because society knew how to deal with bullying and was not afraid to punish it in ways that would send today’s progressives into hysterics.

We did not know the stifling tyranny of a liberal establishment, determined to impose its views, and beginning to resemble George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth.

Above all, we knew who we were and we lived in the knowledge that certain values and standards held true, and that our country, with all its faults and need for reforms, was sound at heart.

Not any more. I find it difficult to identify a time when the country was as badly governed as it has been in the past 50 years.

We have had the two worst Prime Ministers in our history – Edward Heath (who dragooned us into the Common Market) and Tony Blair. The harm these two have done to Britain is incalculable and almost certainly irreparable.

Hat tip to Walter Olson.

The next sound heard ringing out over Oxford’s dreaming spires may not be church bells, but the ullulations of the Mohammedan muezzin summoning the faithful to pray five times (not three times) a day.

Public proclamations (in Arabic) that “There is no God but Allah” and that “Mohammed is the prophet of God” may well strike some as signals of Islamic domination, which the battles of Tours and Vienna ought to have effectually prevented.

The Daily Mail reports resistance:

Muslim plans to broadcast a loudspeaker call to prayer from a city centre mosque have been attacked by local residents who say it would turn the area into a “Muslim ghetto”.

Dozens of people packed out a council meeting to express their concerns over the plans for a two-minute long call to prayer to be issued three times a day, saying that it could drown out the traditional sound of church bells.

But a spokesman for the Central Mosque said that Muslim’s also have the right to summon worshippers.

Dr Mark Huckster, who lives in Stanton Road and works at East Oxford hospice Helen House, told the Oxford Mail: “The proposal to issue a prayer call is very un-neighbourly, especially in a crowded urban space such as Oxford.

“I have lived in the Middle East and a prayer call has a very different feel to church bells and I personally found the noise extremely unpleasant, rather disturbing and very alien to the western mindset.”

He added: “If an evangelical Christian preacher proposed issuing sermons three times a day at full volume there would be an outcry.

“There could be a sense of ghettoisation of East Oxford. Cowley Road would have a Muslim flavour and could become a Muslim ghetto which is contrary to what we want in a multicultural society.”

Dr Huckster was among six residents speaking in opposition to the plans, revealed in the Oxford Mail in November.

Allan Chapman, who lives in East Oxford, said: “We are concerned with civil liberties and civil peace and the right to be able to live in our own space.

“I do not want preaching at. It is not the tradition of this country or the tradition I subscribe to.

“I find this totally, utterly unacceptable and I plan to do whatever I can to stop it.”

Daily Mail:

A grandfather has been given a prison sentence for racial harassment after calling a Welsh woman “English”.

Mick Forsythe used the term during an argument over a scratched car in his Welsh home town.

He called the vehicle’s owner, Lorna Steele, an “English bitch”.

She and her husband took great offence at the jibe and decided to take him to court.

The 55-year-old former lorry driver was found guilty of racially aggravated disorderly behaviour, and received a ten-week prison sentence suspended for 12 months.

Yesterday Mr Forsythe attacked the prosecution as a waste of time and money.

“I find it unbelievable that I’ve been prosecuted for this,” he said.

“I’m originally from Northern Ireland so I’m an adoptive Welshman.

“I’ve travelled all over Europe as a lorry driver and never had any problems with anybody and now they’re officially calling me a racist.

“It’s political correctness gone mad.

Daily Mail:

Teachers at a primary school have been ordered to dress up as Muslims to promote multi-culturalism.

The West Midlands school is belatedly celebrating the Muslim festival of Eid and told its pupils and teachers to don traditional Muslim dress for the day.

All 257 pupils, most of whom are Christians, and 41 teachers – two of whom are Muslims – dressed up.

A morning assembly was held to mark the event and an afternoon party was strictly for women only, because Muslim husbands object to wives mixing with other men.

Sally Bloomer, head of Rufford primary school in Lye, West Midlands, told The Sun: “I have not heard of any complaints. It’s all part of a diversity project to promote multi-culturalism.”

But a relative of one of the staff reportedly said: “Who would put their job on the line? They have been told they have to embrace the day to show their diversity. But they are not all happy.”

The British National Party’s Home Affairs correspondent observes

I imagine that Rufford Primary School in Lye in the West Midlands will be one of schools that are not going to celebrate a traditional Christmas this year.

Via Red Planet Cartoons and Death By 1000 Papercuts.

The Daily Mail offers a glimpse into what kind of policies Labour may have in store for Britain in future.

Christmas should be downgraded in favour of festivals from other religions to improve race relations, says an explosive report.

Labour’s favourite think-tank says that because it would be hard to “expunge” Christmas from the national calendar, ‘even-handedness’ means public organisations must start giving other religions equal footing.

The leaked findings of its investigation into identity, citizenship and community cohesion also propose:

• “Birth ceremonies”, at which state and parents agree to “work in partnership” to bring up children

• Action to “ensure access” for ethnic minorities to “largely white” countryside

• An overhaul of Britain’s “imperial” honours system

• Bishops being thrown out of the House of Lords

• An end to “sectarian” religious education

• Flying flags other than the Union Jack.

The report by the Institute for Public Policy Research was commissioned when Nick Pearce, now head of public policy at Downing Street, was its director.

IPPR has shaped many Labour policies, including ID cards, bin taxes and road pricing.

The report robustly defends multiculturalism – the idea that different communities should not be forced to integrate but should be allowed to maintain their own culture and identities.

Gethin Chamberlain (Neville’s grandson?), in the Telegraph, talks to a senior officer of the British Army in an era of Labour Government, who tells him that they are “tired of fighting,” have concluded that their cause was wrong, have been bled white by 171 casualties, and are ready (in the glorious tradition of Percival of Singapore) to give up.

It was as astonishing an admission as any that has emerged from the lips of a British officer in the four and a half years since the tanks rolled over the Iraqi border. The British Army, said the man sitting in a prefab hut in Britain’s last base in the country, were tired of fighting.

“We would go down there [Basra], dressed as Robocop, shooting at people if they shot at us, and innocent people were getting hurt,” he said. “We don’t speak Arabic to explain and our translators were too scared to work for us any more. What benefit were we bringing to these people?”

The officer — one of the most senior in Iraq — agreed to speak to The Sunday Telegraph only on the highly unusual condition of anonymity, but he made clear that what he said reflected a major change in British tactics. “We are tired of firing at people,” he said. “We would prefer to find a political accommodation.” ..

For Britain, in southern Iraq, it is all but over. It tried force, and ultimately had to admit that force failed. Since March 2003, 171 British men and women have lost their lives in the war.

British commanders can only hope that the Iraqis have more luck. But if, as the British mantra now runs, the answer is “an Iraqi solution to an Iraqi problem”, the question that must now be asked is why it took so long to reach that conclusion, and whether it should have been reached much earlier, at a cost of far fewer British lives.

Let the bands play Monty Python’s Ballad of Brave Sir Robin as that “senior officer” marches (or scuttles) away.

Packing it in and packing it up
And sneaking away and buggering off
And chickening out and pissing off home
Yes, bravely he is throwing in the sponge

Britain’s Navy no longer rules the waves. Decades of defense cuts have reduced the once proud fleet which commanded all the world’s seas to a modest NATO auxiliary force specializing in anti-submarine warfare.

Now, the Telegraph reports that Labour intends to reduce the Navy by more than half.

Ministers have drawn up confidential proposals to slash the number of ships in the Royal Navy, The Sunday Telegraph can disclose.

The Ministry of Defence has produced a plan to decommission five warships from next April, which would reduce the Navy’s capability to the level where it could carry out only “one small-scale operation”.

Separate documentation from inside the department suggests that the total number of ships in the Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary could fall from the present level of 103 to 76 in 2017 and only 50 in 2027 — a reduction of more than half. ...

under the plan the Navy, once the pride of the Armed Forces, would be unable to provide anything like the 1982 Falklands task force.

Telegraph:

Police are considering charging a 10-year-old boy with a race hate crime after he was beaten by a Slovakian woman with an iron bar.

Jake Stedman needed hospital treatment after the attack in Chatham on Friday, when he was allegedly beaten around the head and neck after being chased down an alley, and was left with two black eyes.

But police are now looking into claims from the 35-year-old woman who allegedly attacked him and who is currently on police bail, that he made racist remarks by telling her “to go back to her own country”. ...

If charged with racially aggravated assault, Jake, who has only just reached the age of criminal responsibility, would become the youngest person in the country to face a race hate charge.

“It is very early stages but we are investigating whether the boy should face any charges,” said a police source.

”There have been allegations that he used racist language and it is necessary for us to investigate the claims.” ...

The incident occurred as Jake and his friends were playing outside a local convenience store when a group of four Slovakian women passed by.

The boys allegedly called out to the women and threw soft fruit at them. ...

“Medway Police will continue to monitor the situation and work in partnership with other agencies and we are treating these matters extremely seriously.”

Ch Insp Peter Wedlake, of Medway Police, said: “We won’t tolerate racially motivated offences, whoever they are committed by.”

And they’ll soon have cameras everywhere, so they can catch you hunting with dogs or name calling.

Hat tip to Walter Olson.

The BBC has a story demonstrating that the surrender of common sense to zero tolerance policies in service of therapeutic state paternalism is an international phenomenon.

Supermarket staff refused to sell alcohol to a white-haired 72-year-old man – because he would not confirm he was over 21.

Check-out staff at Morrisons in West Kirby, Wirral, demanded Tony Ralls prove he was old enough to buy his two bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon.

Mr Ralls asked to see the manager who put the wine back on the shelf.

The grandfather-of-three said he had refused to confirm he was over 21 as it was a “stupid question.”

Mr Ralls, a retired insurance firm regional manager, said he expected the store manager to resolve the situation but he was disappointed. ...

The pensioner abandoned his shopping on the conveyor belt and left the store – but not before demanding a complaints form and phone number for Morrisons’ headquarters. ...

A Morrisons spokesman said: “We take our responsibility with regard to selling alcohol very seriously and all our stores operate the Task 21 scheme, which addresses the difficulties our staff face in being able to determine if a customer is legally old enough to buy alcohol.

“To further limit any element of doubt staff at the West Kirby store are required to ask anyone buying alcohol to confirm that they are over 21.”

Richard Munday, in the London Times, notes the impact of bien pensant gun control policies on British crime.

We are so self-congratulatory about our officially disarmed society, and so dismissive of colonial rednecks, that we have forgotten that within living memory British citizens could buy any gun – rifle, pistol, or machinegun – without any licence. When Dr Watson walked the streets of London with a revolver in his pocket, he was a perfectly ordinary Victorian or Edwardian. Charlotte Brontë recalled that her curate father fastened his watch and pocketed his pistol every morning when he got dressed; Beatrix Potter remarked on a Yorkshire country hotel where only one of the eight or nine guests was not carrying a revolver; in 1909, policemen in Tottenham borrowed at least four pistols from passers-by (and were joined by other armed citizens) when they set off in pursuit of two anarchists unwise enough to attempt an armed robbery. We now are shocked that so many ordinary people should have been carrying guns in the street; the Edwardians were shocked rather by the idea of an armed robbery.

Hat tip to Frank A. Dobbs.

The Telegraph:

A black dustman (what we would call a garbage man in the USA) has been banned from wearing a St George’s Cross bandana because council officials say it could be regarded as racist.

Matthew Carter, 35, who was born in Barbados, used the headgear to keep his dreadlocks out of the way while he was on his rounds in Burnley, Lancs. He had done so for seven months before his photograph appeared in a local newspaper. A number of local people complained, and his superiors called him.

“I received a verbal warning,” Mr Carter said yesterday. “They told me the St George’s Cross was not allowed to be seen on any clothing we wear because it could be considered offensive and racist.” ...

Mr Carter still wears a bandana but one that bears the image of a skull and crossbones.

Now that’s much better.

Prince Charles proposed a number of historic names with local associations for the names of streets in a newly developed portion of Poundbury, Dorset.

The Prince’s suggestions included the names of a number of soldiers and sailors from Dorset, who served in the Dorset Regiment, or were otherwise connected to Dorset, and were awarded the Victoria Cross;

(descriptions from London Times)

Private Samuel Vickery, of the 1st Battalion Dorsetshire Regiment who was awarded the Victoria Cross for the rescue of a comrade under enemy fire in India in 1897.

Seaman Joseph Kellaway, a Dorset-born Royal Navy boatswain, won the Victoria Cross in the Crimea in 1855 after taking on 50 Russians almost single-handed. He landed in a small boat on the shores of the Sea of Azov with orders to burn some haystacks and a farm building. Within minutes Kellaway and four seamen from HMS Wrangler were surrounded by soldiers. Despite a furious onslaught of musket fire Kellaway, 29, went to the aid of two wounded comrades and held off the Russians until his powder ran dry. Kellaway, was presented with the newly instituted Victoria Cross by Queen Victoria at a ceremony in Hyde Park.

Captain Lionel Queripel, of the 10th Parachute Battalion, was wounded in the face and arms by withering German fire during nine hours of fierce fighting at Arnhem in 1944. He was awarded a posthumous VC for fighting on with hand grenades and a revolver to cover the retreat of his men. He was not seen alive again.

Captain Gerald O’Sullivan won the VC for leading an attack on a Turkish trench during the Gallipoli campaign in 1915. He was killed two months later.

a Dorset survivor of the Charge of the Light Brigade;

Trooper Thomas Warr, who died in Dorchester in 1916 aged 87, was one of the last survivors of the Charge of the Light Brigade when the British cavalry was cut to pieces by Russian guns during the Battle of Balaclava in 1854. Old Tom died penniless in Dorchester in 1916 and was soon forgotten but his grave was refurbished before a special ceremony by his old regiment last year.

a troopship, saved from fire by the Dorset Regiment;

Sarah Sands was a troop ship which caught fire in the Indian Ocean in 1857. Queen Victoria honoured the Dorsets who helped to fight the blaze.

and the WWII battle of Kohima and the Peninsular Campaign of the Napoleonic Wars in which the Dorset Regiment served.

But the Dorchester town planning committee rejected the proposed street names, contending that naming streets for war heroes, acts of bravery, or victories might offend someone and would set a dangerous precedent.

Dorset Echo

Chairman of the planning committee, Fiona Kent-Ledger said:

From the start of the Poundbury development the Duchy had a policy of using names from Duchy farms and estates, such as Highgrove House and Hascombe Court, and that’s a nice connection – we like to keep a theme.

“It’s quite a sensitive subject as there are people in Dorchester who have lost loved ones in past and recent conflict.

“We can’t continue to name streets after people, once one street is named the floodgates are open.” ...

“It’s not for political reasons or the fact we’re celebrating war, it’s just trying to be practical about where names are used because once they’re there, they’re there forever.”

Max Davidson thought the council’s decision “smacked of feeblemindedness.”

And veterans thought the decision was an insult.

Mr Julian, who fought in Korea with the Dorsets – now amalgamated into the new West Country regiment The Rifles – said he was furious with the decision.

He said: “This is an insult to the memory of those soldiers who fought and died. It’s a disgrace to the county.

“I bet those people who took this decision have never fought in a campaign. ...

He said only three former members of the Dorset Regiment who fought in the Second World War are still alive – and that the rejection was an insult to them as well.

He said names forwarded to the town council for consideration included Kohima, the Second World War battle that saw the Dorsets in the forefront to get the Japanese out of India. The regiment was awarded battle honours for its part in this action.

Mr. Julian found the council’s explanation for its decision unpersuasive.

He said: “Tell that to the young soldiers whose bones still lie out at Kohima. I’m incensed about it.”

Michael Hodges, in Time Out London, looks ahead with optimism to London’s Islamic future.

Islam is not an alien religion to London. At the end of World War I the city sat at the heart of an Empire that had 160 million Muslim subjects, 80 million in India alone. London was the largest Islamic capital in the world. Forty years later and the end of the Empire, unrest and war and poverty in south Asia had lead to mass immigration to the mother country and London became a Muslim capital in another sense.

According to the 2001 census there are 607,083 Muslims living in London (310,477 men and 296,606 women). The majority of Muslims live in the east of the city and, by 2012, the Muslim Council of Britain estimates that the Muslim population of Tower Hamlets, Newham, Waltham Forest and Hackney will be 250,000. There are plans afoot (though no formal application has yet been submitted) to build the UKs biggest mosque – capable of welcoming 40,000 worshippers – near the 2012 Olympic site, a move which has prompted predictable outrage from some quarters. Consequently, Muslim disillionment with a reactionary and often ill-informed press is at an all time high.

But rather than fear the inevitable changes this will bring to London, or buy in to a racist representation of all Muslims as terrorists, we should recognise both what Islam has given this city already, and the advantages it would bring across a wide range of areas in the future. ...

Islam offers Londoners potential health benefits: the Muslim act of prayer is designed to keep worshippers fit, their joints supple and, at five times a day, their stomachs trim. The regular washing of the feet and hands required before prayers promotes public hygiene and would reduce the transmission of superbugs in London’s hospitals.

Alcohol is haram, or forbidden, to Muslims. As London is above the national average for alcohol-related deaths in males, with 17.6 per 100,000 people (Camden has 31.6 per 100,000 males), turning all the city’s pubs into juice bars would have a massive positive effect on public health. Forbid alcohol throughout the country, and you’d avoid many of the 22,000 alcohol-related deaths and the £7.3 billion national bill for alcohol-related crime and disorder each year.

‘The world is green and beautiful,’ said the prophet Muhammad, ‘and Allah has appointed you his guardian over it.’ The Islamic concept of halifa or trusteeship obliges Muslims to look after the natural world and Muhammad was one of the first ever environmentalists, advocating hima – areas where wildlife and forestry are protected. So we could expect more public parks under Islam, but halifa also applies to recycling: in 2006, 12,000 Muslims attended a series of sermons at the East London Mosque explaining the theological evidence for a link between behaving in an environmentally sustainable way and the Islamic faith. ...

Application of halal (Arabic for ‘permissable’) dietary laws across London would free us at a stroke from our addiction to junk food, and the general adoption of a south Asian diet rich in fruit juice, rice and vegetables with occasional mutton or chicken would have a drastic effect on obesity, hyperactivity, attention deficit disorders and associated public health problems. As curry is already Londoners’ and the nation’s favourite food (see our Brick Lane food feature), it would be a relatively easy process to encourage the adoption of such a diet. Not eating would be important as well. The annual fasting month of Ramadan instils self-discipline, courtesy and social cohesion. And Londoners would benefit philosophically and physically from even a short period when we weren’t constantly ramming food into our mouths. ...Each Muslim is obliged to pay zakat, a welfare tax of 2.5 per cent of annual income, that is distributed to the poor and the needy. If the working population of London, 5.2 million, was predominantly Muslim this would produce approximately £3.2bn each year. More importantly, everyone would be obliged to consider those Londoners who haven’t shared their good fortune. London would become a little less cruel.

Under Islam all ethnicities are equal. Once you have submitted to Allah you are a Muslim – it doesn’t matter what colour you are. End of story.

What would Richard Coeur-de-Lion say?
——————————————————
Hat tip to David Ross.

Model Michelle Marsh signing a ‘regulation’ silhouetted image of herself on a Harrier

The Daily Mail reports that the enforcers of Political Correctness are worried that the traditional pin up images might offend women and Muslims.

The risque images of women that have decorated warplanes since the First World War have been scrubbed out.

The Ministry of Defence has decreed they could offend the RAF’s female personnel.

Officials admitted they had no record of any complaints from the 5,400 women in the RAF.

But commanders are erring firmly on the side of caution and “nose art“, as it is known, has been consigned to the history books. ...

The decision to ban the images followed a visit by glamour models to southern Afghanistan before Christmas. During the trip they signed paintings of themselves on RAF aircraft.

Commanders decided the images were sexist and insisted there was no place for them in the modern armed forces.

There was also concern that they could cause offence in a muslim country where until 2001 all women were forced to wear the head-to-toe burkha in public.

Can you picture the RAF during WWII banning cartoon images on planes because they might offend the German or the Japanese?

The London Times reports:

Middle-class wine drinkers will be the focus of government plans to make drunkenness as socially unacceptable as smoking, The Times has learnt.

Under the plans published today, a fresh audit is to be conducted by the Government into the overall costs of alcohol abuse to society and the National Health Service.

“We want to target older drinkers, those that are maybe drinking one or two bottles of wine at home each evening,” a Whitehall source said. “They do not realise the damage they are doing to their health and that they risk developing liver disease. ...

The move comes as The Times has been told that the British Medical Association is to investigate measures used in other countries to curb excessive alcohol consumption. Doctors’ leaders are also calling for pubs and restaurants to display warnings stating how many units of alcohol are contained in drinks served by the glass.

Today’s strategy, by the Home Office and the Department of Health, broadens the Government’s offensive against excessive drinking, with the focus moving beyond teenagers and the binge-drinkers to include those regularly sipping wine at home.

As part of the strategy, ministers wish to highlight the increasing burden that drink-related disease is placing on the NHS, which four years ago was estimated to be costing between £1.3 billion and £1.7 billion. Ministers want drunkenness in public to be as socially unacceptable in ten years’ time as smoking or drink-driving is today.

Last night Ian Gilmore, President of the Royal College of Physicians, gave his full support to the focus on the health costs of heavy drinking. “We really need the spotlight more on health. While crime and antisocial behaviour is important it’s too easy to concentrate on that because it’s somebody else causing the trouble.

“When you look at health it’s more uncomfortable because there’s a very significant percentage of the population already drinking at potentially hazardous levels.”

With alcohol costing 54 per cent less in real terms than in 1980, Professor Gilmore, a liver specialist, also called on the Chancellor to raise drink taxes.

Socialized medicine demonstrably involves the surrender of private liberty to the nanny state now in charge of paying your doctor bill.

The Telegraph has a story illustrated the price of free socialized health care.

Smokers could be denied routine operations on the NHS unless they quit a month before surgery.

Christopher Hitchens has an article in Vanity Fair describing how Britain has “move(d) from cricket and fish-and-chips to burkas and shoe-bombers in a single generation.”

The British have always been proud of their tradition of hospitality and asylum, which has benefited Huguenots escaping persecution, European Jewry, and many political dissidents from Marx to Mazzini. But the appellation “Londonistan,” which apparently originated with a sarcastic remark by a French intelligence officer, has come to describe a city which became home to people wanted for terrorist crimes as far afield as Cairo and Karachi. The capital of the United Kingdom is, in the words of Steven Simon, a former White House counterterrorism official, “the Star Wars bar scene,” catering promiscuously to all manner of Islamist recruiters and fund-raisers for, and actual practitioners of, holy war. ...

My colleague Henry Porter sat me down in his West London home and made me watch a documentary that he thought had received far too little attention when shown on Britain’s Channel 4. It is entitled Undercover Mosque, and it shows film shot in quite mainstream Islamic centers in Birmingham and London (you can now find it easily on the Internet). And there it all is: foaming, bearded preachers calling for crucifixion of unbelievers, for homosexuals to be thrown off mountaintops, for disobedient and “deficient” women to be beaten into submission, and for Jewish and Indian property and life to be destroyed. “You have to bomb the Indian businesses, and as for the Jews, you kill them physically,” as one sermonizer, calling himself Sheikh al-Faisal, so prettily puts it. This stuff is being inculcated in small children—who are also informed that the age of consent should be nine years old, in honor of the prophet Muhammad’s youngest spouse. Again, these were not tin-roof storefront mosques but well-appointed and well-attended places of worship, often the beneficiaries of Saudi Arabian largesse. It’s not just the mosques, either. In West London there is a school named for Prince Charles’s friend King Fahd, with 650 pupils, funded and run by the government of Saudi Arabia. According to Colin Cook, a British convert to Islam (initially inspired by the former crooner Cat Stevens) who taught there for 19 years, teaching materials said that Jews “engage in witchcraft and sorcery and obey Satan,” and incited pupils to list the defects of worthless heresies such as Judaism and Christianity. ...

It’s impossible to exaggerate how far and how fast this situation has deteriorated. Even at the time of the Satanic Verses affair, as long ago as 1989, Muslim demonstrations may have demanded Rushdie’s death, but they did so, if you like, peacefully. And they confined their lurid rhetorical attacks to Muslims who had become apostate. But at least since the time of the Danish-cartoon furor, threats have been made against non-Muslims as well as ex-Muslims (see photograph), the killing of Shiite Muslim heretics has been applauded and justified, and the general resort to indiscriminate violence has been rationalized in the name of god. Traditional Islamic law says that Muslims who live in non-Muslim societies must obey the law of the majority. But this does not restrain those who now believe that they can proselytize Islam by force, and need not obey kuffar law in the meantime. I find myself haunted by a challenge that was offered on the BBC by a Muslim activist named Anjem Choudary: a man who has praised the 9/11 murders as “magnificent” and proclaimed that “Britain belongs to Allah.” When asked if he might prefer to move to a country which practices Shari’a, he replied: “Who says you own Britain anyway?” A question that will have to be answered one way or another.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Daily Express:

School chiefs are today under fire for banning pupils from wearing crosses in class while allowing the jewel­lery of other faiths.

Christian groups and politicians condemned the education bosses and accused them of ­“double standards”.

The officials have told headteachers to ban jewellery except in “exceptional circumstances” when schools need to be “sensitive” towards other faiths. The “exceptions” include lockets worn by Muslims and Hindu bracelets.

But even Muslim leaders have join­ed the condemnation, arguing that all religious groups, including Christian­s, should be treated the same.

The guidance, issued to headteachers in Croydon, south London, has echoes of the row last year over Nadia Ewedia, the British Airways employee who eventually won her long battle to wear a cross at work.

“Where rights are in competition, some rights win out. So we have a situation where gay rights trump Christian rights and in some areas, Muslim rights seem paramount.”

Tory education spokesman David Willetts said: “People who issue these guidelines don’t understand how much resentment they generate by their clumsy attempts to respect every religion except Christianity.” ...

A document issued by the Muslim Council this year said taweez amulets have religious significance for those who wear them and should not be considered as jewellery. It said schools should allow the symbols, which contain verses from the Koran, to be worn discreetly

The Croydon school guidance says the religious items that can be worn are: Rakhi, a cotton bracelet worn by Hindus; kara, a metal bracelet put on the arms of Sikh children when they are young and is impossible to remove; and taweez, religious lockets worn by some Muslim pupils on a string around the neck, arm or stomach.

Complete article

Lionel Shriver, in the Wall Street Journal, describes how environmentalism is used by Government in Britain to justify reduced services, fee increases, and more totalitarian surveillance.

As they campaigned for midterm regional elections on Thursday, the biggest issue that British politicians met on doorsteps was a load of rubbish. Specifically, one load of rubbish, where before there were two. Pressed to meet European Union targets for reducing landfill volume, many local councils now collect refuse only once every two weeks. As flies and vermin gather while food scraps achieve a fine perfume, residents have grown so enraged that bin-men are under repeated physical attack.

The logic of fortnightly collections—if you can follow it—is to encourage recycling. Lest widespread consternation over garbage seem petty, fortnightly collections now emblemize a broader source of indignation: the U.K. government’s self-righteous “green” justifications for reduced services on the one hand, and thievery on the other.

Halving the frequency of waste removal conveniently saves money. A host of other new “green” measures in the U.K. will make money: $200 fines for poorly separated recycling, or microchips implanted in wheelie bins to weigh residential refuse—dragging Britain’s surveillance culture to a new low, and facilitating charges for waste disposal by the kilo. Furious that they are already paying once for this service through local taxes, some householders have ripped the microchips from their bins.

The premier example of having to pay twice for the same dispensation, all under the guise of environmentalism, is the British government’s proposal to bring in “road pricing,” unveiled last December. This literal highway robbery would charge motorists up to $2.56 per mile to drive on roads whose construction they had paid for to begin with. Announcement of the scheme stirred the complacent, slow-to-anger British public to circulate an Internet protest petition that secured 1.8 million signatures.

And little wonder. Since the average British commuter travels 9.6 miles each way, a nine-to-fiver in a built-up area would pay $50 a day for the privilege of going to work. The Sunday Telegraph calculates that even in moderately populated Yorkshire, where the first pilot programs are planned, road-pricing would cost the average family $6,000 a year. ...

Environmentalism has become the fashionable fig leaf to cover for extortion. If a tax is “green” it is “for the sake of the planet,” and fairness doesn’t come into it. Neither, apparently, does greed. Hence Britain’s petrol duty—the fourth highest in the world at over $4 a gallon plus 17.5% VAT levied on both the fuel and the duty ( in the U.K., even taxes are taxed)—has nothing to do with sticky fingers; it’s to confront the all-purpose bogeyman of global warming.

Mayor Ken Livingstone has installed a “congestion charge” for central London. At $10 per day at inception, the charge has risen to $16 in three years; the area covered by the charge doubled in February. Mr. Livingstone further proposes that high carbon-emission “Band G” vehicles—not only SUVs, but smaller sedans like the Ford Mondeo—be charged instead £25 per day, and be excluded from the 90% residents’ discount. That’s fifty bucks—every weekday, if you live or work in the congestion zone, or $13,000 a year. Richmond council has followed suit, tripling the cost of parking for Band G cars to £300—meaning even outside of central London it will cost close to $600 a year to park in front of your own house. But that’s ok! It’s for the sake of the planet.

Britain pursues monetarily punitive policies to advance environmental goals. Expediently, punitive fiscal policies line treasury coffers. They not only disproportionately penalize the less well off, and stultify economic growth; these fees, fines, duties, and charges lurking on every corner also create a larger social climate of oppression, resentment, and paranoia.

Mark Steyn identified the author as “an American lady novelist in London and a Guardian columnist of conventionally leftie views” writing under a nom de plume, but he complimented and linked her column, and added the following comments.

It’s not enough that the average Briton is captured on closed-circuit TV cameras in his car, in the street, in the shopping mall, and even in country lanes where the rural constabulary have hidden them in trees to catch illegal fox hunters. Now the government is monitoring his garbage. If they ever take up Sheryl Crow’s all-we-are-saying-is-give-one-piece-a-chance toilet-paper rationing, you can bet the enforcers will mandate CCTVs in every bathroom if not microchips in the bowl.

If George Bush put a microchip in your garbage under the Patriot Act, there’d be mass demonstrations across the land. But do it in the guise of saving the planet and everyone’s fine with it.

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds (for the Mark Steyn item).

The Daily Mail reports:

Polygamous husbands settling in Britain with multiple wives can claim extra benefits for their “harems” even though bigamy is a crime in the UK, it has emerged.

Opposition MPs are demanding an urgent change in the law, claiming that the Government is recognising and rewarding a custom which has no legal status and which is “alien” to this country’s cultural traditions.

Officials said yesterday a review was now under way into whether the state should continue to pay out income support, jobseeker’s allowance and housing and council tax benefits to ‘extra’ spouses.

Islamic law allows a man to take up to four wives, providing he can provide for them fairly and equally. But British law only ever recognises one spouse, while bigamy is punishable by up to seven years in jail.

However, if a husband and his wives arrive and settle in Britain having wed in a country where polygamy is legal, then the UK benefits system recognises his extra wives as dependents and pays them accordingly.

The Department of Work and Pensions admitted yesterday it had no figures on how many families are claiming for multiple wives.

John O’Sullivan describes the increasingly critical response to Britain’s humiliation.

if the Brits noticed the Iranian insult, they might have to do something about it themselves (or in company with the United States). They were saved from this awful possibility by the Iranian release of their captives. For a single day there was an outburst of national rejoicing. Newspapers and television showed the military captives, clutching their “gift” bags, alongside a smiling Iranian president under headlines of relief and celebration.

Why did it remind me of Princess Diana’s funeral? It seemed that Brits, once a tough-minded nation marked by self-control, had been transformed into touchy-feely devotees of a loose and self-forgiving emotionalism.

Then the mood changed.

This change was helped along by the murder that day of four British soldiers, two of them women, by a roadside bomb in Basra. Prime Minister Tony Blair cited them as victims of the same terrorism that had held the 15 Brits hostage. On the following day the Daily Mail put their photographs on the front page under the headline “Heroes,” relegating the 15 to the inside pages and a lesser status.

Suddenly the earlier mood of rejoicing seemed cheap and self-delusional. The leading military commentator, Sir Max Hastings, wrote an influential article—“Heads Must Roll”—arguing that the episode had been a mixture of military incompetence and national humiliation.

Others took up his theme, calling for a naval Board of Enquiry. Hard questions began to be asked: Why had the helicopter protecting them flown away when Iranian military vessels were nearby? Why had the British commander not asked other vessels under his command, including U.S. ships, to intervene? Why had the 15 cooperated so readily with Iranians?

Britain’s Ministry of Defense, under siege, retaliated in an ingenious way: It exempted the 15 captives from the usual restriction on service personnel selling their stories to the media—only to have to backtrack after an outcry against it. Doubtless the defense ministry had reckoned that their tales of being subjected to psychological warfare and forced to sleep in tiny cells would play well with a British public in an emotional state. But the Dianification of Britain had not gone quite that far.

There was a firestorm of criticism. Families of the dead soldiers criticized the payments—some as high as $200,000. Not all the 15 agreed to sell their stories. One said the idea was undignified. And while this reaction was building, the Iranians released footage of the 15 captives playing table tennis and tucking into hearty dinners.

No one likes this. Commentators in the media and the blogosphere make pointed comparisons with previous British (and American) captives who resisted more resolutely. But they have difficulty in explaining exactly why the 15 should have behaved in a more manly way. After all, isn’t this how post-imperial Sensitive Man is supposed to behave?

The crisis has held up a mirror to the new post-imperial and Dianified Britain—and the Brits don’t like their own reflection.

Read the whole thing.

Former RN Officer Toby Harnden observes that the behavior of some British Naval personnel recently was a bit less that England traditionally expects.

In case you missed it, let me give you the highlights of what our brave sailors had to say. Leading Seaman Faye Turney opted for The Sun and ITN (“I chose The Sun because it is the Forces’ paper. You are always on our side. I trust you.” – Oh, nothing to do with the reported check for the sum of £100,000 then?)

Little Operator Maintainer Arthur Batchelor, 20, nicknamed “Mr Bean by his dastardly captors, was bought by The Mirror for an “undisclosed sum”. Good thing the Iranians didn’t think of offering them cash – who knows what they’d have done.

Readers, if you were brought up on tales of Horatio Nelson and Winston Churchill, if you believe Britain is still Great and should be feared in the world, then steel yourself.

Read the whole thing... and weep.

Mark Steyn suggests that the defense of Britain might well be better handled by its football fans than by its government.

Watching Tottenham Hotspur fans taking on the Spanish constabulary at a European soccer match the other night, I found myself idly speculating on what might have happened had those Iranian kidnappers made the mistake of seizing 15 hard-boiled football yobs who hadn’t got the Blair memo about not escalating the situation.

Instead, as we know, the mullahs were fortunate enough to take hostage 15 Royal Navy sailors and Royal Marines. Which were which was hard to say upon their release. The Queen’s Navee had been demobbed. The token gal was dressed up as an Islamic woman and the 14 men had been kitted out in Ahmadinejad leisurewear. Which is not just a ghastly fashion faux pas but a breach of the increasingly one-way Geneva Conventions. But they smiled and they waved. Wave, Britannia! Britannia, waive the rules! ...

The Associated Press reported the story as follows: ‘’Analysis: Hope For More Iran Compromises.’’

Well, if by ‘’compromise’’ you mean Tehran didn’t put them up for a show trial and behead them, you might have a point. With this encouraging development, we might persuade them to wipe only half of Israel off the map, or even nuke some sparsely occupied corner of the Yukon instead. With the momentum of this “compromise” driving events, all manner of diplomatic triumphs are possible.

Tony Blair was at pains to point out that the hostages were released ‘’without any deal, without any negotiation, without any side agreement of any nature.’’ But he’s missing (or artfully sidestepping) the point: Tehran didn’t want a deal. It wanted the humbling of the Great Satan’s principal ally. And it got it. Very easily. And it paid no price for it. And it has tested in useful ways the empty pretensions of the U.N., the EU and also NATO, whose second largest fleet is now a laughingstock in a part of the world where it helps to be taken seriously. ...

Even if there is more going on than meets the eye, what meets the eye is so profoundly damaging to the credibility of great nations that no amount of lethal special ops could compensate for it. Power is only as great as the perception of power. The Iranians understand that they can’t beat America or Britain in tank battles or air strikes so they choose other battlefields on which to hit them. That’s why the behavior of the captives gives great cause for concern: There’s no point training guys to be tough fighting men of the Royal Marines when you’re in a bloody little scrap in Sierra Leone (as they were a couple of years ago) if you allow them to crumple on TV in front of the entire world.

So in 2007 the men of the Royal Navy can be kidnapped and “the strong arm of England” (in Lord Palmerston’s phrase) goes all limp-wristed and threatens to go to the U.N. and talk about drafting a Security Council resolution. Backstage, meanwhile, deals are done: An Iranian “diplomat” (a k a Mister Terror Kingpin) suddenly resurfaces in Tehran after having been reported in American detention, his release purely coincidental, we’re told. But it’s the kind of coincidence that ensures more of your men will be kidnapped and ransomed in the years ahead. And, just to remind the world who makes the rules, six more British subjects were killed in southern Iraq even at the moment of the hostages’ release. The Iranians have exposed America’s strongest ally as the soft underbelly of the Great Satan.

The most noticeable feature of the last two weeks has been the massive shrug by the British public. Some observers attributed this to the unpopularity of the Iraq war: Those nice mullahs wouldn’t be pulling this stuff if Blair hadn’t got mixed up with that crazy Texas moron. But it seems to me a more profound malaise has gripped them—the enervating fatalism of too many people in what is still a semi-serious nation with one of the world’s biggest militaries up against an insignificant basket-case …Looking at the reaction to this incident by the United States, European Union, United Nations et al., Iran will conclude that the transnational consensus will never muster the will to constrain its nuclear ambitions.

Europeans and more and more Americans believe they can live in a world with all the benefits of global prosperity and none of the messy obligations necessary to maintain it. And so they cruise around war zones like floating NGOs. Iran called their bluff, and televised it to the world. In the end, every great power is as great as its credibility, and the only consolation after these last two weeks is that Britain doesn’t have much more left to lose.

Read the whole thing.

The Telegraph reports:

Hardliners in the Iranian regime have warned that the seizure of British naval personnel demonstrates that they can make trouble for the West whenever they want to and do so with impunity.

The bullish reaction from Teheran will reinforce the fears of western diplomats and military officials that more kidnap attempts may be planned.

The British handling of the crisis has been regarded with some concern in Washington, and a Pentagon defence official told The Sunday Telegraph: “The fear now is that this could be the first of many. If the Brits don’t change their rules of engagement, the Iranians could take more hostages almost at will.

“Iran has come out of this looking reasonable. If I were the Iranians, I would keep playing the same game. They have very successfully muddied the waters and bought themselves some more time. And in parts of the Middle East they will be seen as the good guys. They could do it time and again if they wanted to.”

Americans also expressed dismay that the British had suspended boarding operations in the Gulf while its tactics are reassessed.

“Iran has got what it wants. They have secured free passage for smuggling weapons into Iraq without a fight,” one US defence department official said.

It is also clear that the Iranian government believes that the outcome has strengthened its position over such contentious issues as its nuclear programme. Hardliners within the regime have been lining up to crow about Britain’s humiliation, and indicated that the operation was planned.

Iran’s ability to humiliate the West, recover captured agents provocateur, and break Western blockades at will, simply by repeating its well-known tactic of hostage-taking is good news for the hard-liners in Iran. But not everything is black, those British naval personnel hostages will all be permitted to sell their stories to the media and make a bundle.

NY Post:

England expects that every man will do his duty,” said Admiral Lord Nelson off Cape Trafalgar in October 1805. ...

We strain to imagine what the old sea dog would have made of that sorry gaggle of British sailors and Marines – waving and smiling, decked out in cheesy duds and clutching swagbags stuffed with goodies from the mullahs: books, candies, pistachio nuts and even a bud vase or two.

How sweet.

Which is probably the best that can be said of their 13 days in Iranian custody. If there has ever in history been a faster, more humiliating submission to Stockholm Syndrome, we’re unaware of it.

No doubt, being plucked out of one’s rubber raft at gunpoint and passed into an Iranian captivity of uncertain duration was a harrowing experience.

But aren’t British service personnel trained for this sort of thing?

Well, actually, that’s a secret.

“We’re not releasing the details of the training any of the services go through under those conditions,” said a Defense Ministry spokesman, “because if we do that, then it would make it easier to interrogate them.”

Easier than what, we wonder.

Read the whole thing.

Depkafile also yesterday revealed the terms of the probable deal.

A secret British military delegation arrives in Tehran, as Ahmadinejad pushes for an immediate military confrontation with the UK and US —April 3, 2007, 7:01 PM (GMT+02:00)

DEBKAfile’s exclusive sources continue coverage of the top-level Iranian debate on how to dispose of the 15 British captives seized on March 23.

The fierce – often strident – debate between pragmatists and radicals prompted supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who leads the first camp, to order president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who speaks for the radicals, to call off his planned news conference on Tuesday, April 3. The president had intended to unveil an important advance in the national nuclear program; he certainly did not mean to augur a breakthrough in the 12-day hostage crisis.

In the ongoing debate, the president and his radical followers seek to use the British captives to goad the British, followed by the Americans, into a limited military confrontation in the Persian Gulf. Iran would then exploit its local edge to teach the West that it is not worth their while to mess with the Islamic Republic in a full-blown war or count on trouncing it easily.

DEBKAfile’s sources in Tehran report that it is hard to predict which way the dispute will go. There were moments on Monday and Tuesday when it looked as though the Khamenei line for ending the crisis, backed also by supreme national security advisers Ali Larijani, would prevail. Larijani came out Monday night with the encouraging statement that there was no need to put the captured British sailors on trial and the crisis could be solved through bilateral diplomacy. He said a delegation might come to Tehran to review the points at issue.

Tuesday, a British military delegation did indeed arrive secretly in Tehran.

Larijani’s statement was the outcome of back-channel talks between Tehran and London, partly by videoconference, in which the British promised to de-escalate their tone and calm the situation, in return for an Iranian pledge that the captives would not be tried.

London allowed the 15 sailors to admit they had trespassed into Iranian waters, while Tehran agreed to suspend further television footage. London also offered to help work for the release of the five Revolutionary Guards al-Quds Brigade officers captured by US agents in Baghdad. One of them, second secretary at the Baghdad embassy, Jalal Sharafi, was indeed set free Tuesday.

The British even offered to obtain for Iran information on the whereabouts of the missing Iranian general Ali Reza Asgari, believed to have defected to the West in February.

Our sources add that the radical faction of the Iranian leadership is still working hard to derail the positive diplomatic track and use the crisis to bring about a military escalation in the Gulf. Ahmadinejad is supported in this by the Revolutionary Guards commander Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi and RG Navy chief, Gen. Morteza Saffar. They are stirring up public opinion to back them up in the hope of bring the supreme ruler round to their view – so far without success.

To further this campaign, the president’s followers organized Sunday’s protest at the British embassy in Tehran and had the Bassij (the RGs civilian militia) round up a student petition at Iran’s 266 universities and colleges for putting the 15 British sailors and marines on trial and executing them. This would have been a provocation that the British could not pass over without drastic action.

Spook86 also thinks that an exchange is underway.

As we predicted more than a week ago, resolution of the British hostage crisis may well hinge on the fate of those five Iranian “officials,” arrested by the U.S. military in Iraq back in January. The five were nabbed during a raid on a non-accredited Iranian diplomatic facility in Irbil, in Iraq’s Kurdistan region. Tehran insists that the officials were engaged in consular work, but military officials claim that the Iranians are linked to a military faction that provides support for terrorists in Iraq.

Today, an Iranian diplomat emphasized that release of the five would be helpful in securing freedom for 15 British military personnel, who were taken captive on 23 March. The Brits were abducted while conducting anti-smuggling operations in the Shatt al-Arab Waterway, along the Iran-Iraq border.

“We are intensively seeking the release of the five Iranians,” the Iraqi foreign ministry official said. “This will be a factor that will help in the release of the British sailors and marines.”

Tehran’s efforts to link the British hostages to its own detainees underscores the importance of that raid in Irbil, and suggests that the captured “officials” were more than mere diplomats. Since their arrrest, coalition forces have scored a number of victories against Iranian-supported terror networks, and Tehran wants to get these “consular officials” back before they can divulge more information.

And sadly, some sort of swap could be in the works. Another Iranian diplomat, captured in Baghdad two months ago, has apparently been released.

Read the whole thing.

We don’t know for sure at this point, but it certainly looks as if Blair has knuckled under to the mullahs.

Christopher Booke reports that Secretary of State for Health Patricia Hewitt has issued a strong condemnation of Iran’s propaganda photographs of captured British hostages.

It was deplorable that the woman hostage should be shown smoking. This sends completely the wrong message to our young people.

Hat tip to Chuck.

Sun Times:

On this 25th anniversary of the Falklands War, Tony Blair is looking less like Margaret Thatcher and alarmingly like Jimmy Carter, the embodiment of the soi-disant “superpower” as a smiling eunuch.

But this is a season of anniversaries. A few days ago, the European Union was celebrating its 50th birthday with the usual lame-o Euro-boosterism. I said up above that the 15 hostages are “British subjects.” But, as a point of law, they are also “citizens of the European Union.” Even Oxford and Hoover’s Timothy Garton Ash, one of the most indefatigable of those Euro-boosters, seemed to recognize the Iranian action was a challenge to Europe’s pretensions. “Fifteen Europeans were kidnapped from Iraqi territorial waters by Iranian Revolutionary Guards,” he wrote. “Those 14 European men and one European woman have been held at an undisclosed location for nearly a week, interrogated, denied consular access, but shown on Iranian television, with one of them making a staged ‘confession,’ clearly under duress. So if Europe is as it claims to be, what’s it going to do about it?’’

Short answer: Nothing.

Slightly longer answer: The 15 “European” hostages aren’t making that much news in “Europe.” And, insofar as they have, other “Europeans”—i.e., Belgians, Germans and whatnot—don’t look on the 15 hostages as “Europeans” but as Brits. Europe has more economic leverage on Iran than America has. The European Union is the Islamic Republic’s biggest trading partner, accounting for 40 percent of Iranian exports. They are in a position to inflict serious pain on Tehran. But not for 15 British servicemen. There may be “European citizens,” but there is no European polity.

OK, well, how about the United Nations? Those student demonstrators want the execution of “British aggressors.” In fact, they’re U.N. aggressors. HMS Cornwall is the base for multinational marine security patrols in the Gulf: a mission authorized by the United Nations. So what’s the U.N. doing about this affront to its authority and (in the public humiliation of the captives) of the Geneva Conventions?

Short answer: Nothing.

Read the whole thing.

According to the Russians, the balloon goes up next weekend.

Daily Mail:

Worried parents are buying their children body armour to protect them from knife attacks.

A firm that supplies stab and bullet-proof vests to government agencies around the world said it had been flooded with orders following a series of brutal knife murders on Britain’s streets.

VestGuard UK said it had received more than 100 calls from parents in London alone. It normally receives only one or two inquiries nationwide each year.

Some 60 jackets, costing between £300 and £425, have been sold – with parents saving up to buy the armour.

The American approach is cheaper, and more permanently effective.

The Telegraph finally reaches the conclusion which has been obvious to many Americans all along: Gun control laws impact only law-abiding citizens. The criminal, who has already decided to commit robbery or murder, will hardly shrink from the footling addition of an additional charge of illegal gun possession.

For James Andre Smartt-Ford, 16, Michael Dosunmu, 15, and Billy Cox, 15, the hand-wringing by police and politicians over the escalation of gun crime comes a little late: all three have been shot dead in south London over the past 10 days…

We have… the toughest gun control laws in the world. They have actually proved strikingly ineffectual.

Gun crime has doubled since they were introduced. Young hoodlums are able to acquire handguns – either replica weapons that have been converted, or imports from eastern Europe – with ease. With no dedicated frontier police, our borders remain hopelessly porous. The only people currently incommoded by the firearms laws are legitimate holders of shotgun licences, who are subjected to the most onerous police checks.

... what a price we are paying.

Amazing!

Hat tip to José Guardia.

The Guardian reports that a British Channel 4 investigative report demonstrates that preaching of jihad, Wahabi extremism, and Islamic supremacism is still going on today in prominent mosques all over Britain. Is anyone really surprised?

An undercover investigation has revealed disturbing evidence of Islamic extremism at a number of Britain’s leading mosques and Muslim institutions, including an organisation praised by the Prime Minister.

Secret video footage reveals Muslim preachers exhorting followers to prepare for jihad, to hit girls for not wearing the hijab, and to create a ‘state within a state’. Many of the preachers are linked to the Wahhabi strain of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia, which funds a number of Britain’s leading Islamic institutions.

A forthcoming Channel 4 Dispatches programme paints an alarming picture of how preachers in some of Britain’s most moderate mosques are urging followers to reject British laws in favour of those of Islam. Leaders of the mosques have expressed concern at the preachers’ activities, saying they were unaware such views were being disseminated.
At the Sparkbrook mosque, run by UK Islamic Mission (UKIM), an organisation that maintains 45 mosques in Britain and which Tony Blair has said ‘is extremely valued by the government for its multi-faith and multicultural activities’, a preacher is captured on film praising the Taliban. In response to the news that a British Muslim solider was killed fighting the Taliban, the speaker declares: ‘The hero of Islam is the one who separated his head from his shoulders.’

Another speaker says Muslims cannot accept the rule of non-Muslims. ‘You cannot accept the rule of the kaffir [non-Muslim],’ a preacher, Dr Ijaz Mian, tells a meeting held within the mosque. ‘We have to rule ourselves and we have to rule the others.’

The 12-month investigation also recorded a deputy headmaster of an Islamic high school in Birmingham telling a conference at the Sparkbrook mosque that he disagrees with using the word democracy. ‘They should call it … kuffrocracy, that’s their plan. It’s the hidden cancerous aim of these people.’ The Darul Uloom school said it no longer employed the teacher and that one of the reasons he resigned ‘was the incompatibility of many of his opinions with the policies of the school’.

Philip Howard, late of the Black Watch, in today’s Wall Street Journal, editorializes about Britain’s Labour Government’s cheese-paring over minor and trivial expenses attendant upon keeping up the traditions of Britain’s fighting Highland regiments.

The British Army has (created) a shortage of kilts for its Highland Regiment. It has ordered only 320 ceremonial kilts for 5,000 Jocks, so they are having to share, which is not a comfortable business for the buttock-swinging, elite warriors…

This dire deficiency of the kilt has arisen because last August the British Army, in its infinite wisdom, decided to amalgamate its remaining Scottish regiments. No doubt there were sound strategic and logistic reasons for this, on the ground that bigger is cheaper to administer. But it destroyed the ancient traditions and symbols of tribal families…

The Royal Scots were the First of Foot and Right of the Line. They claim to be the oldest regiment in the British Army, nicknamed Pontius Pilate’s Bodyguard. The legend goes that Pilate’s Roman legionary dad married a Highland lass from Fortingal in Perthshire. The Royal Scots wore trews (tight tartan breeks) rather than the kilt, because they were a Lowland Regiment. When they were in French service as “Le Régiment de Douglas”, a dispute arose with the “Régiment de Picardie” as to which was the senior. The French Colonel claimed that his regiment was on duty on the night of the Crucifixion. To which the Colonel of the Royal Scots replied: “Had it been our shift that night, we wouldna hae slept at our post.”

Read the whole thing.

St. George, patron saint of England

The Telegraph reports that, in 2006, there were born in England and Wales 2,833 babies called Mohammed and 1,422 called Muhammad for a total of 4255, versus only 3386 named George.

The Church of Our Dear Lady in Dendermonde, Flanders (Belgium) features a late 17th century pulpit, sculpted in wood by Mattheus van Beveren, upheld by angels who are treading underfoot the false prophet Mohammed, who is leaning on the Al-Koran.

The Guardian reports that Britain’s clueless Conservative Party is contemplating trying to outflank Labour… to the left!

One of David Cameron’s key policy advisers will urge the party today to abandon its Churchillian and “out of date” ideas about the welfare state, the Guardian has learned. Greg Clark, who is overhauling the party’s approach to poverty at the Tory leader’s request, will urge Conservatives to look to the (leftwing) Guardian commentator Polly Toynbee rather than the wartime leader.

His proposals are likely to infuriate many in the grassroots – and in the Tory press – but they suggest the party is seeking to outflank the government in surprising areas, as they have already done by campaigning as champions of the NHS.

Mr Clark, a shadow minister and confidant of the Tory leader who has been working on the party’s comprehensive policy review, argues that the Tories must attack inequality.

In a paper being published today, he writes: “The traditional Conservative vision of welfare as a safety net encompasses another outdated Tory nostrum – that poverty is absolute, not relative. Churchill’s safety net is at the bottom: holding people at subsistence level, just above the abyss of hunger and homelessness. It is the social commentator Polly Toynbee who supplies imagery that is more appropriate for Conservative social policy in the twenty first century.”

What Britain needs is a return to red-blooded Thatcherism, not a cowardly revival of 19th century Bismarckian-style efforts to compete with leftism in bribery of the canaille.

The Evening Standard has news of Britain’s Labour Government’s latest crime fighting initiative.

Parents could be forced to go to special classes to learn to sing their children nursery rhymes, a minister said.

Those who fail to read stories or sing to their youngsters threaten their children’s future and the state must put them right, Children’s Minister Beverley Hughes said.

Their children’s well-being is at risk ‘unless we act’, she declared.

And Mrs Hughes said the state would train a new ‘parenting workforce’ to ensure parents who fail to do their duty with nursery rhymes are found and ‘supported’.

The call for state intervention in the minute details of family life followed a series of Labour efforts to reduce anti-social behaviour and improve educational standards by imposing rigorous controls on the lives of the youngest children.

Mrs Hughes has established a national curriculum to set down how babies are taught to speak in childcare from the age of three months.

Her efforts have gone alongside a push by other ministers to determine exactly how parents treat their children down to how they should brush their teeth…

This autumn is likely to see an extension of parenting orders that can force parents to attend parenting classes so that they can be used on the say so of local councils against parents.

For the first time, parenting orders are likely to be directed against parents whose children have committed no criminal offence.

The threat of action against parents who fail to sing nursery rhymes was unveiled by Mrs Hughes as she gave the first details of Mr Blair’s ‘national parenting academy’, a body that will train teachers, psychologists and social workers to intervene in the lives of families and become the ‘parenting workforce’.

We’ve all heard of “the nanny-state,” but really!

British Police warned a jeweller not to distribute to neigboring jewellers pictures of a thief captured on the shop’s video camera, because doing so would infringe the woman’s human rights.

It seems to me that I’ve already linked and quoted, or at the very least already read, Michael Bywater’s jeremiad, in today’s Telegraph, about the infantilization of modern Britons, but I know people who will like it, so here it is again.

My grandfather was born in 1888 and he didn’t have a lifestyle. He didn’t need one: he had a life.

He had a hat and a car and a wife and two sons and a housekeeper and a maid and a nanny for the children, and the housekeeper had a dog and the dog had a canker and lived in a kennel.

My grandfather read Charles Dickens mostly. Sometimes they went on holiday. His house was furnished with furniture…

Dr Chand didn’t have a lifestyle either. Nobody had a lifestyle then, because there was nobody to tell them to, and anyway they were too busy having lives.

They were grown-ups. They went about their business. In my grandfather’s case, it was seeing patients and making them better, where possible…

I suspect that my grandfather’s life was real in a sense that my father’s life hasn’t quite been, and my life is not at all.

A 14-year-old British schoolgirl, who had been in the hospital the previous day, was denounced for racism by her teacher, who proceeded to file a police complaint. The young girl was ultimately arrested, fingerprinted, and placed in a jail cell for three and a half hours.

Her offense? She had complained of being placed in a study group with five Urdu-speakers with whom she could not communicate, and asked to change groups.

Her teacher at Harrop Fold High School in Worsley, Greater Manchester, reportedly shouted and screamed at her: “It’s racist, you’re going to get done by the police.”

The girl was placed in isolation, and a complaint of committing a section five racial public order offence was lodged against her by her teacher via the full-time police officer stationed in her school. A week later, the bobbies arrived to take the young lady into custody.

She was ultimately released without charges, and permitted to transfer to a different science class.

The Daily Mail reports:

Headteacher Dr Antony Edkins said: “An allegation of a serious nature was made concerning a racially motivated remark by one student towards a group of Asian students new to the school and new to the country.”

“We aim to ensure a caring and tolerant attitude towards people and pupils of all ethnic backgrounds and will not stand for racism in any form.”

Reuters reports that a British Art Gallery is eliminating some nudes from a surrealist exhibition in order to avoid offending Muslims.

For years now, the liberal elites have been explaining that it was essential that the grossest obscenities be not only exhibited but governmentally subsidized, or the freedom of artistic expression would be fatally compromised. The crucifix, regardless of any possible offense to Christians, immersed in urine; the Virgin Mary depicted in elephant dung, constituted artistic statements which had to be accorded public space and defended.

It seems perfectly clear at this point that believing Christians, and people serious about aesthetic values, just needed to threaten to slap some of these phoney bastards around, and then it would have been: Good bye, Andres Serrano! Adieu, Chris Ofili!

A London gallery has decided not to show some works of art because it fears they would upset Muslims, a curator said on Friday, a week after a German opera house canned a Mozart production for the same reason.

The director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery decided to remove works by surrealist artist Hans Bellmer from an exhibition the day before it was due to open, one of the museum’s curators, Agnes de la Beaumelle, told Reuters.

“The motive was simply to not shock the population of the Whitechapel neighbourhood, which is partly Muslim,” she said.

The Whitechapel area in east London is home to many ethnic minorities including a large Bangladeshi community.

The gallery issued a statement saying that some works were not included in the exhibition because of space constraints but declined to comment specifically on what Beaumelle said….

Bellmer’s work includes dolls of naked young girls.

The Telegraph reports that a Muslim visitor has been invading wards containing British soldiers wounded in Afghanistan, threatening and haranguing injured men who are in no position to defend themselves.

A paratrooper wounded in Afghanistan was threatened by a Muslim visitor to the British hospital where he is recovering.

Seriously wounded soldiers have complained that they are worried about their safety after being left on wards that are open to the public at Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham.

On one occasion a member of the Parachute Regiment, still dressed in his combat uniform after being evacuated from Afghanistan, was accosted by a Muslim over the British involvement in the country.

“You have been killing my Muslim brothers in Afghanistan,” the man said during a tirade.

Because the soldier was badly injured and could not defend himself, he was very worried for his safety, sources told The Daily Telegraph.

A relative of the Para said the man had twice walked on to the ward where two other soldiers and four civilians were being treated without once being challenged by staff.

“It’s not the best way to treat our returning men,” he said. “They are nervous that these guys might attack them and, despite being paratroopers, they cannot defend themselves because of their injuries.”

The Mail notes the passage of another key mile post on the road to British Dhimmitude.

A Muslim police officer has been excused from guarding London’s Israeli Embassy after he objected to the duty on ‘moral grounds’.

PC Alexander Omar Basha – a member of the Metropolitan Police’s Diplomatic Protection Group – refused to be posted there because he objected to Israeli bombings in Lebanon and the resulting civilian casualties of fellow Muslims.

In a move which has caused widespread astonishment at Scotland Yard, senior officers in the DPG agreed that that PC Basha should be given an alternative posting.

The officer, who carries a gun, is now thought to be guarding another embassy.

Critics accused Met chiefs of bowing to political correctness, saying the decision set a dangerous precedent.

If a particularly-observant Pathan PC claimed a moral obligation to behead Salman Rushdie, would he be granted compassionate leave to go and do so out of respect for his conscience? Perhaps British thugs also will soon be accorded the same cordial recognition by the Government of their own distinctive religious traditions, and will be permitted to strangle the occasional commuter in honor of Kali.

The Mail also reports on the overthrow by political correctness disease of the reasoning powers of the hierarchy of Church of England.

Church of England leaders warned yesterday that calling God ‘He’ encourages men to beat their wives.

They told churchgoers they must think twice before they refer to God as ‘He’ or ‘Lord’ because of the dangers that it will lead to domestic abuse.

In new guidelines for bishops and priests on such abuse, they blamed “uncritical use of masculine imagery” for encouraging men to behave violently towards women.

They also warned that clergy must reconsider the language they use in sermons and check the hymns they sing to remove signs of male oppression.

The recommendation – fully endorsed by Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams – puts a question mark over huge swathes of Christian teaching and practice.

It throws doubt on whether the principal Christian prayer should continue to be known as the Lord’s Prayer and begin ‘Our Father’.

It means well-loved hymns such as Fight the Good Fight and Onward Christian Soldiers may be headed for the dustbin.

The rules also throw into question the role of the Bible by calling for reinterpretations of stories in which God uses violence.

From the Nottingham Evening Post:

In today’s secular society you could be forgiven for not knowing which direction Christian graves face.

Ancient tradition shows they should look east in anticipation of the second coming of Jesus Christ.

But all headstones at the new £2.5m High Wood Cemetery in Bulwell will be plotted to face north-east, in line with Islamic faith.

Muslims believe the dead look over their shoulder towards Mecca, towards the south-east.

Despite there being separate sections at the cemetery in Low Wood Road for different faiths, the council wanted to give a tidy, linear appearance.

Only on special request can families have graves with headstones facing in a different direction.

Socialism is the philosophy of sissies, and now that everyone (including Socialists) recognizes that Socialism applied economically is a disaster, the energies of ameliorists tend to find outlet, not in the levelling of wealth, but in the elimination of any imaginable form of risk.

The New York Times reports that even Bill Callaghan, head of Britain’s Health and Safety Commission

believes that many of the decisions made in the name of health and safety in Britain are indeed asinine. These include schools requiring children to wear protective goggles when playing with nuts that have fallen from trees; schools banning bandages because of fears of latex allergies; and village fairs forbidding people to sell homemade cakes in case they contain contaminated eggs.

But the commission is blamed for them anyway. It set up a myth-busting page on its Web site explaining, for instance, that it was not involved in the decision last April to cancel a St. George’s Day breakfast in Wiltshire, after local officials ruled that the volunteer cooks were not formally trained in egg preparation…

Children who leave their coats and bags in special containers on field trips to the Science Museum in London, for example, are instructed by posted signs not to put anything on the lids, on account of Health and Safety rules. People buying cups of tea on British trains are ordered to carry them in paper bags for safety reasons — whether they want to or not.

Sailing down the placid Thames a year ago as part of the celebration marking the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, the actor playing Lord Nelson was required to accessorize his vintage admiral’s outfit with a contemporary life preserver, which tended to spoil the effect.

Nor are the Health and Safety Commission offices, at the end of Southwark Bridge in East London, immune to dispensing their own cautionary advice. Along with security passes, visitors are issued photocopied pamphlets offering instructions on how to identify the sound of the fire alarm (a “continuous ringing of bells”); where to go if a fire does break out (convene at the location marked on the map on the back); and what to do if they feel sick or fall down (there is a first-aid room on the first floor; all injuries, “no matter how minor,” must be reported).

Do you suppose Etonians are still allowed to play the Wall Game?

Hat tip to Frank Dobbs.