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.