Megrahi welcomed home in August by Muamar Gadaffi’s son and designated successor, Saif al-Islam

The Telegraph reports that unidentified “senior official” source has revealed that predictions of the Lockerbie bomber’s imminent demise have proven inaccurate.

So much for the “within three months” legal basis for his compassionate release. Of course, we already knew that compassion had nothing to do with this. It was simply a sordid sale of justice by Labour in return for an oil deal.

The health of the Lockerbie bomber has “not deteriorated” since his release from prison three months ago – despite doctors’ assessments that he would have died by now, a senior source has told The Sunday Telegraph.

Megrahi, who is suffering terminal prostate cancer, was sent home to Libya to die after medical experts concluded in a report on July 30 he had just three months left to live. The time span was crucial because only prisoners with three months or less to survive are eligible for release on compassionate grounds.

The disclosure will reignite the row over the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds despite his conviction for the murder of 270 people when Pan Am flight 103 exploded in mid-air over Lockerbie in 1988.

Within three weeks of the medical examination by Professor Karol Sikora, one of Britain’s leading cancer specialists, Megrahi was put on a plane and sent home to Tripoli to die.

But three months on from Prof Sikora’s diagnosis, Megrahi is well enough to “walk and talk” and shows no sign of deterioration, according to a senior source involved in his release.

The source told The Sunday Telegraph: “His condition has not deteriorated in three months. He is pretty much in the same way as he was when this all started. He is just as he was. There is nothing that leads anyone to believe he is in any different condition to when he left Scotland.”

Andrew Neather, a former speechwriter for Tony Blair, Jack Straw, and other Labour panjandrums, revealed recently, in a column in the Evening Standard defending Labour immigration policies, that Labour ministers encouraged massive Third World immigration out of a desire to change the character of the British nation, as well as in order to insult the political right while enlarging its own constituency. Labour’s policy was deliberately concealed from its own supporters, because it was recognized that many core Labour voters would not approve.

SkyNews:

Labour ministers deliberately encouraged mass immigration to diversify Britain over the past decade, a former Downing Street adviser has claimed.

Andrew Neather said the mass influx of migrant workers seen in recent years was not the result of a mistake or miscalculation but rather a policy the party preferred not to reveal to its core voters.

He said the strategy was intended to fill gaps in the labour market and make the UK more multicultural, at the same time as scoring political points against the Opposition.

Mr Neather worked as a speechwriter for Tony Blair and in the Home Office for Jack Straw and David Blunkett.

“Mass migration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural,” he wrote in in the London Evening Standard.

“I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended – even if it wasn’t its main purpose – to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date.”

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The Telegraph:

The “deliberate policy”, from late 2000 until “at least February last year”, when the new points based system was introduced, was to open up the UK to mass migration, he said.

Some 2.3 million migrants have been added to the population since then, according to Whitehall estimates quietly slipped out last month.

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It is difficult to read all this, which is obviously perfectly true, and grasp that changes in fashionable opinion mysteriously came to pass resulting in our living in a time in which it is only too probable that the people able to rise to the top leadership positions in Western societies are highly likely to have a deeply negative view of their own country’s history and institutions, and even of their own people. So negative a view that they would be committed not to the preservation of their own country’s values, institutions, and character, but to their elimination.

WorldNetDaily:

Just one week before Michael Savage was scheduled to debate via video link at the Cambridge Union in England, the co-presidents of the two-century-old society informed the top-rated radio host they have canceled the event.

…(T)he invitation from the Cambridge Union Society for the Oct. 15 debate was issued in July after Savage was banned from entering the United Kingdom by Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government along with Muslim extremists and leaders of hate groups.

In an e-mail today to Savage producer Beowulf Rochlen, Cambridge Union leaders Julien Domercq and Jonathan Laurence wrote, “It is with great regret to inform you of the difficult decision we have taken to cancel the event.”

Domercq and Laurence pointed to problems with the cost and feasibility of setting up the necessary video link, but they also cited “legal issues.”

“We have reconsulted with our counsel, and been informed that there are numerous legal issues with Dr Savage speaking here,” they wrote, “and so because of all of the technical, financial and legal problems involved, we have come to the reluctant conclusion that the event cannot proceed.” …

The July 2 invitation to the debate said the Cambridge Union had been following his case “with great interest” and believed he was “more qualified than anyone to talk about the subject of political correctness in American and Britain.”

The student society at the University of Cambridge wanted Savage to speak for the opposition in a debate titled “This House Believes Political Correctness is Sane and Necessary.”

The society, founded in 1815, has hosted the likes of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and American presidents Ronald Reagan and Theodore Roosevelt.

The cancellation of speaking appearance by controversial political figures on the right at student debating forums at elite universities as the result of pressure from on high has quite a long tradition.

I don’t think much of Michael Savage, née Weiner, myself, but this sort of thing only ever happens to controversial speakers from the political right. The most loathsome communist, the most extreme anti-humanity environmentalist, the noisiest representative of any kind of leftwing craziness can be allowed to speak on campus. Columbia can even host Mahmoud Ahmedinejad for a speech denouncing the United States.

An invitation to George Wallace to speak at the Yale Political Union was canceled by union officers under direct pressure from Yale President Kingman Brewster in the early 1960s. A decade later, the administration intervened again, forcing the YPU to rescind an invitation to speak to William Shockley. That second time, Yale conservatives determined to test free speech at Yale simply passed the responsibility for the invitation from one captive student organization to another, as the Yale administration continued to try forcing a cancellation. When the event actually was held, leftwing activists prevented Shockley from speaking at all. The embarrassment of a second public address at Yale (the left had also forcibly shut down a speech by General William Westmoreland a bit earlier) prevented from happening by force provoked a serious reexamination of Yale University’s commitment to free speech by the Woodward Committee, which issued a report strongly affirming the principle of Free Expression.

The Woodward Report resulted in Yale being one of relatively few major universities to escape the adoption of politically correct civility codes.

It sounds like the Cambridge Union caved in the face of pressure from the Labour Government rather than from the University. Free expression in Britain is clearly in trouble not merely at the university but at the national level.

Patrick, at Popehat, describes how Britain’s police these days protect young thugs by arresting old ladies with walkers for confronting them.

Renate Bowling, a 71 year old widow who escaped to the free world from East Germany, is now a common criminal. She had the poor judgment to “poke” a 17 year old hooligan who was part of a gang throwing rocks at her house. While in America or any other sane country Ms. Bowling would have been let off with a warning, Ms. Bowling is not so fortunate.

She has the bad luck to live in the world’s worst nanny state.

The Crown Prosecution Service today defended its decision to take legal proceedings against a 71-year-old woman who prodded a 17-year-old youth in the chest.

Renate Bowling, of Thornton Cleveleys, Lancashire, confronted the boy in the street after stones were thrown at her home.

The disabled widow, who walks with a steel frame, said she thought it was a “joke” when police arrived at the scene and arrested her for jabbing the teenager with her finger.

While the Crown, which undoubtedly prosecuted this vicious criminal for the sake of the children, claims there was no evidence that the youth who received this vicious jabbing threw the rock, it ignores Ms. Bowling’s own account, in which she saw the boy standing in the street, in the direction from which the rocks had been thrown, and later hiding behind a wall. Ms. Bowling had to toddle out with her walker to confront the little monster. …

What sort of country raises entitled young hooligans, who abuse old ladies by pelting them with stones and calling them “German whores”? Hooligans who run to the police when they’re beaten up by the old ladies? What sort of country tolerates, encourages, and condones this sort of behavior?

Hat tip to Will Wilson.

This is a bit older, slightly nicer version of the Boy Scout Knife I used to carry back during the Consulate of Plancus.

You see how these things work?

There’s a little accident, and first they come and take away your cannon. Next, before long, they won’t even let Boy Scouts carry pocket knives. The utter and complete emasculation of society is a slippery slope process.

Telegraph:

New advice published in Scouting, the official in-house magazine, says neither Scouts nor their parents should bring penknives to camp except in “specific” situations.

Scouts have traditionally been taught how to use knives correctly, using them on camping trips to cut firewood or carve tools.

At one point Scouts were allowed to carry a sheath knife on their belt as part of their uniform although this is no longer the case. In recent years the Scout Association guidance has been that parents should carry knives to camps or meetings.

Dave Budd, a knife-maker who runs courses training Scouts about the safe use of blades, wrote that the growing problem of knife crime meant action had to be taken.

“Sadly, there is now confusion about when a Scout is allowed to carry a knife,” he wrote. “The series of high-profile fatal stabbings [has] highlighted a growing knife culture in the UK.

“I think it is safest to assume that knives of any sort should not be carried by anybody to a Scout meeting or camp, unless there is likely to be a specific need for one. In that case, they should be kept by the Scout leaders and handed out as required.”

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Even farther back, before WWII, there used to be an official Boy Scout sheath knife. It seems to have been an adaptation by a different company (Ka-Bar? Camillus?) of the old Webster Marble Woodcraft pattern.

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British Scouting Commissioner says story is unfair, Update 9/9:

Wayne Bulpitt, UK Chief Commissioner, says the Daily Mail’s Sunday edition used “a few selective statements and quotes some out of context.”

There’s no story here, Bulpitt claims. Why! We’ve been discouraging scouts from carrying pen-knives for years.

A Mail on Sunday journalist approached us on Friday having read the latest guidance we issued in Scouting Magazine/online in December 08 and April 09 on advising Scouts on the situations in which they can use a knife as part of normal Scout Activities. He was looking to make the story into “Scouts Ban knives shocker”. The media team took them through the facts and sent them links to our various documents and magazine articles giving him the following info,

– The Rules changed about wearing knives with uniform in 1968
– We have issued regular guidance to the Movement on this matter ever since 1968 e.g. early 1980’s , 1996, 2008 and 2009 (the latest being the magazine article in April/May)
– We need to support leaders with information to help them support young people

Despite making these facts available the Mail on Sunday published the piece, They used a few selective statements and quotes some out of context..

A number of newspapers this morning (Times, Telegraph, Express, Mirror, Sun) have taken the text from the Mail on Sunday (without talking to us) and have run with the story.

I’m not especially moved by Mr. Bulpitt’s complaints personally, but I thought he was entitled to a place on the record.

Leftwing baby boomers will really have have something to look forward to under Obamacare, look at what Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice –You have to love the acronym!) is doing for patients there.

Telegraph:

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.

Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away. …

The warning comes just a week after a report by the Patients Association estimated that up to one million patients had received poor or cruel care on the NHS. …

The scheme, called the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), was designed to reduce patient suffering in their final hours.

Developed by Marie Curie, the cancer charity, in a Liverpool hospice it was initially developed for cancer patients but now includes other life threatening conditions.

It was recommended as a model by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), the Government’s health scrutiny body, in 2004.

It has been gradually adopted nationwide and more than 300 hospitals, 130 hospices and 560 care homes in England currently use the system.

Under the guidelines the decision to diagnose that a patient is close to death is made by the entire medical team treating them, including a senior doctor.

They look for signs that a patient is approaching their final hours, which can include if patients have lost consciousness or whether they are having difficulty swallowing medication.

However, doctors warn that these signs can point to other medical problems.

Patients can become semi-conscious and confused as a side effect of pain-killing drugs such as morphine if they are also dehydrated, for instance.

When a decision has been made to place a patient on the pathway doctors are then recommended to consider removing medication or invasive procedures, such as intravenous drips, which are no longer of benefit.

If a patient is judged to still be able to eat or drink food and water will still be offered to them, as this is considered nursing care rather than medical intervention.

Dr Hargreaves said that this depended, however, on constant assessment of a patient’s condition.

He added that some patients were being “wrongly” put on the pathway, which created a “self-fulfilling prophecy” that they would die.

Jules Crittenden comments on the not-wholly-unexpected confirmation via a leak to the Times of London that, yes, Virginia, the Labour Government really did trade the Lockerbie bomber for a BP oil deal.

Remember when the United States and Britain used to make murderous, terrorism-supporting dictators tremble? They even made Moammar Ghadafi cry uncle and the Iranians bring their nuke program to a temporary halt back in 2003, when they took out Saddam. It was another time, when people used to say it was all about blood for oil. We didn’t actually get any oil for that blood. But in a new, gentler time, apparently it’s possible to swap mass murderers for oil. Think of the possibilities.

The Arab News reports on a case of domestic discord in Laith, Saudi Arabia, which demonstrates exactly why the Archbishop of Canterbury’s assertion that the adoption of “aspects of Sharia law” was inevitable in Britain led to widespread criticism.

A 10-year-old bride was returned last Sunday to her 80-year-old husband by her father who discovered her at the home of her aunt with whom she has been hiding for around 10 days.

A local newspaper said the husband, who denies he is 80 in spite of claims by the girl’s family, accused the aunt of meddling in his affairs. “My marriage is not against Shariah. It included the elements of acceptance and response by the father of the bride,” he said.

He added that he had been engaged to his wife’s elder sister and that this broke off as she wanted to continue with her education. “In light of this, her father offered his younger daughter. I was allowed to have a look at her according to Shariah and found her acceptable,” he said.

Contemporary Britain is competing very seriously with California in the contest for the best nonsensical ideas applied in daily life.

Newcastle’s onebestway, a small design and marketing firm facing tough economic times, took serious steps to deal with the crisis. It hired a swami, excuse me! a business psychologist, to help in improving morale.

The Telegraph reports:

David Taylor, a business psychologist, told workers at design and marketing onebestway, in Newcastle upon Tyne, that a Naked Friday idea would boost their team spirit.

He was called in to help the firm after six staff members were forced into taking redundancies at the start of the credit crunch.

Mr Taylor told them that, by stripping off their clothes, staff could also strip away inhibitions and talk to each other more openly and honestly.

He said: “Inviting an organisation to go naked is the most extreme technique I’ve used. It may seem weird but it works. It’s the ultimate expression of trust in yourself and each other.”

Despite some initial reluctance, nearly all the staff took off all their clothes – except for one man, who wore a posing pouch, and one of two female workers, who kept on black underwear.

Sam Jackson, 23, the house manager, was the only woman to go fully naked. She said: “It was brilliant. Now that we’ve seen each other naked, there are no barriers.

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The Daily Mail reports that careful preparations had to be made, but assures us that the experiment proved a grand success.

During the week leading up to the strip-off, the workers were encouraged to photocopy parts of their bodies to make them more confident about themselves.

A nude model was also brought in for the workers to sketch and talk to.

Sam added: ‘It took a week of David being in the office for us to build up courage. The first few steps were very nerve-wracking, but once I got to my desk and got used to it, I felt totally comfortable.

‘It was emotional but we found we were much more able to talk to each other honestly – and have been since. The company

Managing Director Mike Owen, 40, said: ‘We’re either brave or mad. But I did tell everyone they didn’t have to do it -only if it felt right.’

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Naked Office, a television program which filmed all this, will be aired July 9th on Virgin1.

Malvern Priory

The heathen in his blindness bows down to wood and stone.

—Reginald Heber.

Preservationism in Britain, as practiced by the official quango, English Heritage, in the case of Malvern Priory is determined to block the repair or replacement of ill-designed wooden Victorian bell frames, invisible to public and now warped, at the price of condemning the exercise of the far more ancient English tradition of change ringing to desuetude.

Here is the problem with enlightened regulations generally: those in charge of applying them are commonly too ill-informed and unwise to understand what is important and what isn’t. I remember my former New England town debating a proposal to surrender similar sweeping authority to a local historic district, whose officers could tell us what color we could paint our house and whether we could repair our porch. But the authorities in charge would have been the same clueless housewives who arranged to have our Main Street’s ancient slate sidewalk pulled up and replaced with synthetic, and who thought it a good idea to install halogen lights on the steeple of our Congregational meeting house.

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The Telegraph:

The bells of Malvern Priory could fall silent for the first time in more than 650 years because English Heritage has refused to allow bellringers to replace ageing parts.

The historic bells, which include one that dates from 1350, desperately need new frames to be installed high inside the tower.

However, English Heritage objected because it believed the A-frames from 1887 needed to be preserved.

There were no objections to updating the frame from the parish, the general public, the Victorian Society, or the Council for the Care of Churches.

However, English Heritage has stood its ground and took the case to an expensive and special consistory court hearing where the chancellor of the diocese heard the evidence and ruled the frames must stay.

Without the necessary replacement frames, the bell ringers say it is now just a matter of time before the bells become too difficult to ring.

The tower band is getting older and locals are concerned at the prospect of “The Exercise” not being practised in the Worcestershire spring town if new ringers can’t be trained there.

Campanologists across the country now fear the ruling might prevent other parishes taking on the might of English Heritage, and that other historic towers could fall silent.

The Victorian A-frames are now accepted to be a bad design and they were not in use for long.

Birmingham Post

Times

Eton tie

The BBC quotes an industry association report identifying the latest breakthrough in British mollycoddling: replacing dangerous, capable of individual expression knotted ties with clip-ons.

Clip-on ties are replacing knotted school ties as schools worry about health and safety, says a survey of school uniform suppliers.

The Schoolwear Association says 10 schools a week in the UK are switching, because of fears of ties getting caught in equipment or strangling pupils.

There are also claims that clip-on ties can stop pupils from customising the size of the knots in their ties.

Uniforms are an “instrument of social levelling,” says the association. …

The emergence of clip-on ties is part of a growing sensitivity towards health and safety, says the association, along with modifications such as high-visibility trimming on scarves.

Clip-on ties take away the risk of pupils having accidents with their knotted ties.

Schools have raised concerns about ties catching fire in science lessons, getting trapped in technology equipment or ties getting caught when pupils were running.

Clip-on ties also allow schools to create a more standardised appearance, says the association, stopping pupils from being more creative in how they wear their ties.

There is something perfectly embodying modern leftist thought in the combination of motives here: sniveling cowardice joined with leveling conformity.

The Telegraph reports that the modern litigation society has arrived in the British rural village, and traditions like cricket on the green may soon become its casualty.

A county court is to rule whether a homeowner can stop his local village cricket team playing because of the threat of players knocking a six on to his roof or into his garden.

In a long running dispute that has more the hallmarks of a bitter divorce than a neighbourly dispute, a judge will be asked to hand down a legal ruling that will have implications for amateur cricketers up and down the country.

It centres on Shamley Green, near Guilford in Surrey, where cricket has been played on its village green for 169 years, despite roads running through the playing area and the backs of houses dotting the boundary.

But four years ago, when Mike Burgess moved into a bungalow on the edge of the boundary and just 25 yards from the crease, all that changed.

Aware that a crisp, square leg pull could run under his gate or through his hedge; or a slog could arrow straight onto his roof, he issued a set of demands that would protect his bungalow.

After a flurry of arguments, legal letters and even a session of independent mediation, Mr Burgess is now asking the court to issue an injunction against the club, preventing it from playing on the green until his demands are met.

They include calling for the club to put up 25ft high nets around his property to protect it from any stray balls, and for players to be declared out if they hit it so hard it clears the nets and hits his property. He also wants a health and safety risk assessment to protect other homeowners and the general public while a match is on.