Heavy criticism for an academic who said those who display the Australian flag are likely to be racist

I think criticism of her is justified. She did apparently use the term "racist", which is very inflammatory. Many people would see it as including Hitler-type behaviour and she had no evidence that the people she described would endorse such behaviour.

There are many possible gradations of opinion about race-related matters. It may be noted, for instance, that the man who declared war on Hitler (Neville Chamberlain) was himself an antisemite of sorts -- so any implicit or explicit claim that there is such a thing as a monolithic entity called racism is unscholarly.

And any social scientist making or implying such a claim is ipso facto a very low-grade intellect. Though it might be noted that mean minds are common among sociologists. Many of them are still devoted to the writings of an obsolete economist and proven stimulator of hate named Karl Marx. The term "racist" of no use for anything except abuse. I use the term only in mockery of Leftist abuse.

I made some technical remarks about her research on 24th. but readers may also be interested in an alternative to her kneejerk reaction to the old "white Australia policy". See here for a more philosophically sophisticated look at the issues involved

A PERTH professor whose study found people who fly Australian flags on their cars are more racist than those who don't, says she has received over 70 critical emails which include demands that she go back to her "own country".

Brunei-born University of WA Professor Farida Fozdar [Judging by the name she is ethnically an Indian Muslim], who moved to Australia when she was seven, said she was shocked by the national reaction to her study which also spread as far India and the United States.

“Some emails have been quite polite and I’ve been able to reply and we’ve actually had quite a positive interaction out of it which, I really really value," Professor Fozdar said.

"But some are straight out lots of swear words and suggesting that I should go back to where I came from.

“I’ve also had a couple of emails from people implying that I’m the Grinch that killed Christmas and that now nobody is going to fly a flag because they think it shows that they’re racist.”

Professor Fozdar, a sociologist and anthropologist, said that although the study was reported “relatively accurately” in the media, some people have misinterpreted its findings.

“What has struck me most is that the media has reported the research relatively accurately in most cases, perhaps apart from some headlines, but people have taken it up in the wrong way,” Professor Fozdar said.

“People have taken it as though I was saying that anyone who flies a flag on their car for Australia Day is racist and that flying the flag generally is a racist thing to do and that certainly wasn’t what I was saying.”

Professor Fozdar said the study revealed flag-flyers were significantly less positive about Australia’s ethnic diversity than “non-flag flyers” but that the attitude is not shared by all Australians.

“The fact that there were significant differences doesn’t mean that everybody who flys the flag feel negative towards minorities but it means that a larger proportion of them did compared with people that weren’t flying flags,” she said.

Professor Fozdar said many people ignored her findings that the majority of both flag-flyers and non-flag flyers, interviewed by her research team, felt positive about Australia’s ethnic diversity.

“But that’s not what gets picked up by people,” she said. “That statistic was there, in a lot of media reports, but people took out of it that I’m saying they shouldn’t fly a flag for Australia Day because it’s racist and that we shouldn’t celebrate Australia Day. “That was just nowhere in the research and so that is what has surprised me.”

SOURCE






Hysteria and the moral battle to end welfare dependency in Britain

By Simon Heffer

This week’s row about welfare reform threw up several shocking facts. First, the £26,000-per-household cap on benefits that the Government seeks to impose is equivalent to a £35,000 pre–tax salary of someone in work.

Then there was the case of a parish priest who said he worked six days a week and earned £22,000 a year. Since he is in employment he does not qualify for any of the hand-outs (such as free public transport) given to some full-time welfare benefits claimants.

In a letter to a newspaper he rebuked the bishops of his own church who had voted in the Lords against the Government’s benefits cap, which would be set at £4,000 a year more than he earns.

To say that welfare is a perennially toxic subject is one of the great political understatements of our times. However unmerited some people’s financial support from the State is, the threat of its reduction or withdrawal always triggers hysteria from those unthinking elements on the Left — whether in the Labour Party, the Anglican Church or the BBC.

The truth is that, as a country, we have lost sight of the importance of every citizen striving to contribute to society, however modestly, as opposed to making a claim upon it.

As a result, perversely, those who won’t contribute are treated the same as those who do. This injustice means that they are given the right to live handsomely off the labour of the rest of us.

To sustain this grotesque state of affairs, which is an abnegation of society’s most fundamental values, would be unacceptable even in times of plenty. But in a time of economic crisis, it is simply outrageous.

Following this week’s Lords rebellion against the Coalition’s plans to cap the cost of benefit payments, the Mail has highlighted families living on small incomes who are determined to be self-reliant and to avoid becoming trapped in a cycle of welfare dependency.

Sadly, it has also been easy to find examples at the opposite end of the moral scale — people who are perfectly capable of work, but refuse to take or even look for it.

Indeed, earlier this month the media reported that some unemployed people were so idle that they couldn’t even bother to get out of bed in the morning to sign for their welfare benefits.

The fact that such behaviour is now tolerated without retribution is a shameful reflection of the attitudes of those who have governed this country over recent years.

Mercifully, there are influential figures such as Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith and former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey who are determined to end this State-sponsored moral degeneracy.

This week, Lord Carey wrote an article for the Mail in which he said the scale of Britain’s public debt was the ‘greatest moral scandal’ facing the country and warned that the welfare system is rewarding ‘fecklessness and irresponsibility’.

He criticised the bishops who led the Lords rebellion, saying the senior churchmen were encouraging the culture of welfare dependency that led to ‘poverty of aspiration’. He said that they could lay no claim to the ‘moral high ground’.

Meanwhile, Mr Duncan Smith is wrestling to cut the £100 billion annual welfare bill. His initial proposals are modest, not because he lacks radicalism (for he understands exactly what must be done to wean Britain off dependency) but because his party’s Lib Dem coalition partners refuse to concede that the drastic reforms are necessary.

However, Mr Duncan Smith has two advantages that ought to help him carry through his proposals.

First, he has spent years studying the problems of poverty and he knows what he is talking about; what is more, the public trusts him because of that expertise.

Second, the dire economic state of the country means welfare reform is not being embarked upon purely as an ideological exercise. It is an urgent necessity because we have a crippling £1 trillion debt, caused by the last Labour administration, and the Government must make huge savings.

The public understands this and supports attempts to reduce the debt. The Tory Party, which is driving the reforms, is ahead in the opinion polls. This means there has never been a better time to break the culture that makes welfare dependency, for some people, a lifetime career.

Mr Duncan Smith deserves the unqualified support of all taxpayers in his attempts to start the process. The tragedy is that he appears to be fighting an almost lone battle in Westminster.

It is time his fellow Tories gave their public support to his reforms and highlighted the scandal of the way those who refuse to work (being given lavish welfare hand-outs) are treated in comparison with those who do.

Meanwhile, one has only to read the Left-wing media’s coverage of the debate about welfare to see that blackmail is being attempted to get reformers to halt their programme.

First, their opponents argue that any restriction on benefits given to the workshy will inevitably harm the claimants’ children. Also, they warn that some claimants may turn to crime if they lose their benefits.

The way to defeat such specious arguments is to make clear the distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor. Although this is often considered to be a Victorian concept, it was, in fact, first properly defined in 1563, when magistrates were told to differentiate between various types of poor in their parishes.

The deserving were deemed to be those who wished to work but couldn’t find employment. A ‘poor rate’ was levied to raise money to provide them with clothes and food.

Also deemed to be deserving were those too old, young or ill to work. They would be supported in alms houses or orphanages, and children would be offered apprenticeships to ensure that their adult lives were not blighted by poverty.

On the other hand, the undeserving poor were those — such as sturdy beggars — who avoided work. A remedy was found in 1563 when it was agreed that these idlers should be whipped until they saw the error of their ways, or moved on to another parish.

This distinction between deserving and undeserving poor was enshrined in the Poor Law of 1601, which remained until it was revised in the 19th century.

Of course, today’s undeserving poor are no longer whipped. Instead, they are kept in idleness by a state welfare system that gives them little or no incentive to work. Their weekly benefit cheques relieve them of the necessity of begging. Their children, produced regardless of their parents’ ability to provide food and clothing, are used as human shields in the fight against any cuts in welfare.

Surely the Government can devise a proper system that ensures that widows, orphans, disabled and elderly receive the full compassion of the State, while those who live off taxpayers have their life of idleness halted.

There has often been talk of ‘workfare’, a scheme used successfully in America where benefits are paid in return for state-sponsored work. The main obstacle to such a system in Britain has been the trades unions, who feared work would be found at the expense of their members.

The truth is that there are plenty of socially useful and productive tasks that could be done as a condition of receiving benefits.

For some of these people, though, this may require a major change in attitude. For example, people such as the university graduate who recently claimed her human rights had been infringed because she’d been made to work for her jobless benefits as a shelf stacker in Poundland must be made to realise how lucky they are to have gainful employment.

As for the argument that children will come to harm because their parents might lose benefits, that is not true. They would not lose out financially. Their hand-outs would simply be replaced by payments from the workfare scheme. Neither would there be a rise in crime, for the same reason.

Politicians have talked for nearly 20 years, since the time when fellow Tory Peter Lilley did Mr Duncan Smith’s job in the mid-Nineties, of ending the something-for-nothing society.

Even if a few bishops support it, the rest of the country is fed up being taken for a ride. We cannot afford it, literally or morally. Now is the time to deliver on the promise.

SOURCE





Vilified for telling the truth: The Christian GP whose life was made hell after he questioned the legalise drugs campaign

Dr Hans-Christian Raabe is a man of gentle demeanour and firm principle who cares deeply about his patients in the deprived area of Manchester where he works as a GP. Indeed, he chose to serve a community where unemployment is high, drug problems endemic and gang warfare rife because he wanted to make a difference.

‘I wanted to care for people in areas of most need, so I opted to work in a disadvantaged community with a high prevalence of social problems,’ he says. ‘And at the root of many of these problems are drugs.’

‘Every day I see the devastation substance abuse causes to individuals, families and communities. I see huge numbers of patients whose lives — whether directly or indirectly — have been ruined by the misuse of drugs.’

As a result of this first-hand experience — and because he felt a public-spirited compulsion to help tackle a national crisis — Dr Raabe volunteered for an unpaid post on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD).

However, he had barely taken up the three-year voluntary position as a Government adviser when a witch hunt against him began.

Disseminated by internet, the campaign swiftly gathered speed. Then the Home Office weighed in: in February 2011, Dr Raabe was dismissed before he had even had a chance to attend an ACMD meeting. He was given no right of appeal.

What happened? Had he committed a crime so heinous that no amount of self‑justification could exonerate him? Actually, he had not. Dr Raabe, 47, was merely guilty of holding unfashionably uncompromising anti-drugs views — namely that legalising drugs merely normalises their usage, and that we should instead try to create a drug-free society by focusing on drug prevention.

Incredibly, Dr Raabe was also criticised for being a Christian. He was stunned: ‘I was called a bigot, scum and a mad ba****d. I was accused of being a waste of space and of having no qualification to talk about substance abuse.

‘All I’d done was to offer a day or more of my time every week for three years to help improve the drug problem in the UK, and I was subjected to a vile stream of abuse and defamation. The Home Office caved in to pressure from the politically correct brigade. I believe it was spineless of them.

‘When they revoked my appointment I was not given a chance to refute any of the allegations against me. I began to feel as if I was living in a totalitarian regime — in Stalinist Russia or Ahmadinejad’s Iran — not in Britain in 2011.’

For months Dr Raabe, reeling from the shock of the onslaught, considered his position. And then he decided to fight back.

The German-born doctor has been granted permission for a judicial review against Home Secretary Theresa May, which is set to commence later this year, and is being represented by leading human rights lawyer James Dingemans QC.

He hopes to win back his committee post and, in so doing, stand up for Christians, who he believes are becoming increasingly marginalised and excluded from public office. ‘The attack on me was a confirmation that I was doing something right,’ he says. ‘The way I was treated strengthened my resolve to fight my corner.’

His determination was further bolstered this week when the Sentencing Council announced new rules under which heroin and cocaine dealers can be spared prison — serving community sentences instead. This week also saw Sir Richard Branson calling for the liberalisation of drugs laws, claiming three-quarters of young adults had tried cannabis.

The Virgin boss, who has admitted smoking the drug and using cocaine and ecstasy, said it was wrong to criminalise those with drug problems and argued that addicts should be given treatment, not sent to jail.

Dr Raabe fiercely contests this approach. ‘If you legalise drugs, you normalise their use,’ he says. ‘Do we really want to normalise the use of heroin, cocaine, ecstasy and all the synthetic drugs?

‘Those who suggest legalisation is the answer have not learnt from history. It has been tried before and failed disastrously. Sweden and Japan have had painful experiences with legal drugs and, as a result, they have chosen instead to focus on drug prevention. They now have very low rates of misuse.’

Such uncompromising views have earned Dr Raabe enemies, who, he believes, sought to dredge up reasons why he should be sacked from the ACMD.

From the maelstrom of accusations and insults whipped up when he was appointed to the council in January last year, another grievance against him emerged. His opponents exhumed an academic report he co‑authored in 2005, while he was living in Canada, linking homosexuality to paedophilia.

The report, a collaboration between several doctors, was written when the Canadian Parliament was debating whether or not to legalise same-sex marriage, to which Dr Raabe — while he is not against civil partnerships — is opposed.

‘The paper summarised scientific evidence, which was in the public domain, and it was one paragraph, mentioning homosexuality and paedophilia together, which — so the Home Office tells me — caused them “embarrassment”,’ says Dr Raabe.

The offending paragraph states: ‘While the majority of homosexuals are not involved in paedophilia, it is of grave concern that there are a disproportionately greater number of homosexuals among paedophiles.’

However, the Home Office also made essentially the same point in a document it published, which states: ‘Twenty to 33 per cent of child sexual abuse is homosexual in nature and about 10 per cent mixed.’

The irony of this is not lost on Dr Raabe. Even so, it was a Home Office civil servant who phoned him a couple of weeks after his ACMD appointment to question him about the report. ‘Three days later I received a letter from the Home Office saying it was “minded to reconsider” my appointment and asking for my response. I sent a detailed letter back and within two days my appointment was revoked.

‘I was told it was because I could potentially discriminate against gay people; something I have never done either in my professional or private life. I’m not anti-gay.’

There were other complaints against him. He had, it seems, compounded his ‘crime’ by holding firm opinions against legalising of drugs such as cannabis; views which set him at odds with former ACMD chairman Professor David Nutt, who believes that prohibition has failed and advocates a new approach based on teaching young people how to use prohibited drugs more safely.

Professor Nutt was sacked from the ACMD after claiming that ecstasy, LSD and cannabis were less dangerous than alcohol.

Dr Raabe, who has consistently opposed moves to reclassify cannabis from class B to C, holds the opposite view from Professor Nutt. He refuses to take the defeatist stance traditionally espoused by the ACMD — and echoed by the 30 celebrities who last year wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister asking him to consider decriminalising the possession of drugs — that the war against drugs is lost, and that children should be educated in the safest way to use them.

Instead, his aim is to try to create a drug-free society by teaching young people to say ‘no’. He is a member of an evangelical free church and his beliefs and opinions are in line with those of many of the Christian churches, which also seems to have raised hackles.

‘I take a very different view from the ones that have shaped the disastrously unsuccessful drugs policy in Britain,’ he says.

‘I’m a great fan of prevention, which is the approach used in Sweden, where the incidence of drug misuse is among the lowest in Europe. In contrast, Britain has among the highest rates of drug misuse, so current policies are patently not working.

Meanwhile, as an internet furore against Dr Raabe gathered pace, his own staff and patients — the people who use his surgery in the deprived Greater Manchester suburb of Partington and who know him best — rallied in support of him. ‘I’ve had not one negative comment, and many positive, encouraging messages,’ he says.

Meanwhile, the flurry of gratuitous insults from the legalise cannabis lobby continue. ‘It has upset me, but what worries me more is the fact that because I challenged the liberal Establishment, I was seen as a threat and had to be removed. ‘I was sacrificed on the altar of political correctness and have been discriminated against on the basis of my opinion and my faith.

‘However, something similar could happen to anyone of any faith or none if he or she dares to hold views that are not deemed to be politically correct.

The Christian Institute, which is supporting Dr Raabe’s High Court challenge to the ACMD, has called his removal from his post, ‘worryingly like some sort of anti-Christian McCarthyism.’

The Home Office meanwhile, has urged him to retract the views he expressed in the report on homosexuality that caused such uproar.
Should he not have done so?

‘I cannot retract scientific evidence,’ he says simply. ‘And if I did so, I would have to ask the Home Office to retract its own paper, too.’

More HERE






The War on Political Free Speech in the USA

Two years after the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, the campaign to silence opponents is becoming more censorious.

Two years ago the Supreme Court upheld the right of an incorporated nonprofit organization to distribute, air and advertise a turgid documentary about Hillary Clinton called, appropriately enough, "Hillary: The Movie." From this seemingly innocuous and obvious First Amendment decision has sprung a campaign of disinformation and alarmism rarely seen in American politics.

From the start, reaction to Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission has bordered on the hysterical. Rep. Alan Grayson (D., Fla.) called it the "worst decision since Dred Scott"—the 1857 decision holding that slaves could never become citizens. In his State of the Union message, within days of the ruling, President Obama lectured Supreme Court justices in attendance that they had "reversed a century of law" to allow "foreign companies to spend without limit in our elections." Neither statement was true.

In 1907, Congress passed a law—the Tillman Act, named for segregationist South Carolina Sen. "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman—prohibiting corporations from contributing to political campaigns. This law was extended to unions in 1943, and in 1947 a provision of the Taft-Hartley Act extended the prohibition to cover spending done independently of campaigns.

Citizens United overturned only the 1947 independent-spending restriction, not the earlier prohibition on corporate contributions to campaigns. Not until 1990 did the Supreme Court uphold a prohibition on corporate political expenditures independent of campaigns. Citizens United, therefore, overturned not "a century of law," but a precedent 20 years old.

Moreover, the court specifically noted that it was not ruling on the viability of the prohibition on foreign political spending—and earlier this month it summarily upheld a lower-court ruling finding that the prohibition on foreign political expenditures was constitutional.

Meanwhile, regardless of the 1947 federal law, the majority of states—including many of the best governed, scandal-free states such as Virginia, Utah, Oregon, Florida and Washington—have long allowed unlimited corporate spending in state elections.

None of this has slowed the decision's critics. Then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) began a committee hearing in September 2010 by arguing that in his small state, "it's easy to imagine corporate interests flooding the airwaves. . . . The rights of Vermonters . . . to be heard should not be undercut by corporate spending." Vermont has never prohibited corporate spending in state elections, yet it survived with its citizens' rights intact.

Mr. Leahy, at least, limited himself to foolish remarks. His junior colleague, Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), proposed a constitutional amendment last month that would not only prohibit corporations from speaking on political elections, but would prohibit any group of citizens organized "to promote business interests" from speaking about elections. Presumably, this could extend to everyone from the Heritage Foundation and the National Federation of Independent Business to the Republican National Committee and local citizens organizing against a sales-tax referendum.

Because most newspapers are incorporated, UCLA law Prof. Eugene Volokh believes that the Sanders Amendment and a companion bill in the House would even authorize the government to prohibit newspaper editorials about elections.

A national coalition, Move to Amend, seeks a constitutional amendment providing that "artificial entities, such as corporations, limited liability companies, and other entities . . . shall have no rights." The coalition seems oblivious to the fact that this would apply to campaign committees and nonprofits such as the NAACP and the Sierra Club, and would allow legislatures to make the advocacy of Move to Amend's goals illegal for most of the coalition's "endorsing organizations" (which are themselves corporations).

These amendments are based on the leftist cry that "corporations aren't people," but the Supreme Court has never said that they are. "Corporate personhood" is a legal fiction that allows natural people to sue and to be sued, to own and transfer property, and to carry on their affairs as a group. Corporations have rights because the people who own them have rights.

As Chief Justice John Marshall explained nearly 200 years ago in Dartmouth College v. Woodward, corporations allow "a perpetual succession of many persons . . . to manage [their] affairs and to hold property without the perplexing intricacies, the hazardous and endless necessity, of perpetual conveyances for the purpose of transmitting it from hand to hand." The legal concept of a corporate "person" has been with the United States since its founding, recognized in literally hundreds of Supreme Court decisions.

If Move to Amend got its way, police could search businesses, unions, clubs and nonprofits at will, without a warrant. The state could seize business property without due process or just compensation, leaving pension funds and individual shareholders holding worthless stock. Partnerships and corporations would have no legal rights in court. Incorporated churches would have no right of worship.

The absurdity should be obvious. Yet city councils around the country, including New York and Los Angeles, have passed resolutions calling for such an amendment.

Super PACs have become the latest villain du jour of the anti-speech crowd, which plays off the general public distaste for the political rancor that surfaces every election year. Critics including Mr. Sanders say that Super PACs don't disclose their donors and rely on "secret" money. This is simply not true. Super PACs, like the traditional political action committees that have existed for decades, disclose all expenditures and all donors over $200.

There are organizations that spend on politics but don't disclose their donors: traditional nonprofits such as the NAACP, the NRA and Public Citizen. These groups have never had to disclose their donors—and the Supreme Court, over 50 years ago, upheld their right to keep supporters anonymous. But reformers intentionally seek to blur the lines between these traditional groups and Super PACs in order to whip up criticism of Citizens United.

The goal of this misinformation is clear. Reformers, who sit mainly on the political left, and their Democratic Party allies hope to silence voices that they perceive to be hostile to their political interests.

Two years after Citizens United, American democracy seems as robust as ever. This may be what its critics fear most—a vibrant debate that they cannot control and fear they will lose.

The U.S. government argued in Citizens United that it had the right to ban the publication of books, pamphlets and movies that advocated the election or defeat of a candidate if they were produced or distributed by unions or corporations, such as Random House, Barnes & Noble and DreamWorks. That position is the one that deserves scorn. Fortunately, no new amendment was needed to defeat it—only the First Amendment and a Supreme Court willing to uphold it.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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Stepmothers can be MORE loving than a real mum (that's why my stepson chose to live with me)

As a stepfather to three great kids, I can relate to this story. Luckily, I had no stresses like the ones reported below. All the people involved were kind and unaggressive people. And one result is that my stepson (now a man in his 30s) has always got on far better with me than with his own father -- even though his father is a perfectly nice man in my experience of him -- JR

Every woman knows, deep down, that the much-vaunted maternal instinct isn't nearly as 'natural' as society makes it out to be.

In fact in my experience - and I know I will be roundly condemned for this view - this means that some women can even be better at taking care of and understanding a child than his or her own mother.

I am a stepmother - one of a band of much-maligned women who have suffered a bad rap right through history, from the wicked stepmothers of countless fairy tales to TV presenter Christine Bleakley, who is currently wrestling with damned-if-she-does, damned-if-she-doesn’t attempts to integrate herself into the lives of her fiancé Frank Lampard’s daughters.

The latest anti-stepmother brickbat came in last week's Femail, when Kelly Rose Bradford explained that she will never let her son meet his father’s new girlfriend. Kelly wrote acidly about how the thought of another woman ever being a 'parent' to her eight-year-old son left a bitter taste in her mouth.

Her controversial views sparked a phenomenal online response from hundreds of readers condemning her as 'selfish' and 'manipulative' and, in at least one post, suggesting Kelly's child should be removed from her care.

Now, I'm sure Kelly would like me if we met. Beyond the vitriol she directs at her ex's new girlfriend, Kelly seems loyal, smart and kind - attributes many of my friends would also ascribe to me.

And yet, I am Kelly’s worst nightmare, because for seven days a week I am 'mummy' to a child I did not give birth to.

For the last two years, my 15-year-old stepson John has lived full-time with his father Stephen and me. Stephen is a carpenter with his own business, typically working ten hours a day, six days a week.

I run our household and I am raising Stephen's child. John’s mother is allowed access to her son for two weekends each month. There was no fraught custody battle between John's parents - it was all very simple: John just decided he wanted to live with his father and me.

He was seven when his parents separated: it was more than 18 months later that Stephen and I met.

Our early days were full of challenges. For a start, my relationship with John wasn’t always easy. I met him for the first time when he was nine, and remember him playing with his Game Boy throughout my attempts to bond with him over a Coke.

His father, who had made the initial awkward introductions, peered anxiously at us as I tried to make small talk. It was excruciating, so I was lucky that my sister - who is a mother - was there to help make conversation.

If my relationship with Stephen was to go the distance, I had to find a way to get on with John, particularly since Stephen had joint custody then, which meant his son lived with us for one week in two.

Faced with the frightening reality of my new role, I bought virtually every manual published on how to be the ideal stepmum. Do so-called 'natural' mums buy manuals on how to be a good mother, I wonder? I made plenty of mistakes at first. As a TV producer earning a good salary, for example, I showered John with expensive gifts - most of which John told me his mum threw in the bin. Extravagant on my part? Maybe. Unfair to John? Without a doubt.

It was around this time that John developed stress-related problems. During his many days off school - by this time I had gone freelance and spent more time at home - John and I grew closer.

'At times I wasn't sure if his biological mother's behaviour was rooted in genuine concern for her child’s welfare, or was merely an act of jealous spite'

Then Stephen and I got married when John was 11. We were in love - and still are - and beyond happy. The only blight on our relationship was John’s mother.

From the moment I moved in with Stephen and we became a family, I felt she wanted me out of her son's life.

At times I wasn't sure if her behaviour was rooted in genuine concern for her child’s welfare, or was merely an act of jealous spite. Sadly, John witnessed harsh telephone conversations between his parents, hot-headed reactions to emotionally fuelled text messages, and angry scenes at the door during hand-over each week.

As my stepson observed the dubious actions of his mother, he was also developing his own opinions about the situation.

He always turned to me for solace. I mopped his tears, cuddled him until he fell asleep and made his favourite hot chocolate.

The stress of the situation also had a devastating impact on my husband, who visibly aged as he was bombarded with insulting name-calling on change-over day.

My attempts to make peace proved futile. My husband's ex wouldn’t accept me, and refused even to refer to me by my name. Instead she called me 'the tart' - and still does.

We live in France, where the courts deem that, at 13, a child whose parents are separated or divorced is old enough to decide which parent they want to live with. A month before his 13th birthday, John said he wanted to live with us. We helped him engage a lawyer - my husband, his ex and I were not allowed to be party to their discussions - then he had his day in court.

He'd had enough of his mother bad-mouthing his father and interfering in our lives. Perhaps most poignantly of all, John said in his witness statement to the judge that he’d had enough of his mum’s spiteful remarks about me.

The court judgement ruled that John should live with his father and me.

It seems unjust that society regards stepmothers like me with fear and suspicion - especially since we’re on the increase, with nearly one in three households in the UK now a stepfamily.

Biological mothers complain about sacrosanct boundaries being crossed by stepmothers who, they argue, overstep the mark when caring for their children.

But I think they’re just picking a fight out of jealousy. It is ridiculous for biological mothers to claim they're the only ones with the know-how to love and mother their offspring.

In my own family, we've always lived by the belief that it takes a community to raise a child.

I had a happy upbringing: both my parents worked full-time, so I regularly stayed with aunts, neighbours, my uncle and grandmother. Things didn’t change when my parents divorced.

'It is ridiculous for biological mothers to claim they're the only ones with the know-how to love and mother their offspring'

My stepmother and stepfather are, and always have been, two of my biggest allies in life, and my parents wouldn’t have dreamt of imposing draconian restrictions on my relationships with them.

Step-parenting expert Dr Lisa Doodson has some simple advice. She says: 'Stepmums can be hugely beneficial to children, but biological mums can sometimes feel threatened by having someone so close to their children.

'My advice is to stop worrying. Stepmums can be an extra source of support to the children.

'We all have different skills, and children can benefit from having additional adults to guide and support them. Sometimes it can be an advantage for children to have an adult who isn't Mum or Dad, but who they can talk to.'

Don't think I’m gloating or sitting pretty with my ready-made family. I am 40, but for the last five years I’ve had to delay my desire for a family of my own because the situation with John’s mother has been so volatile.

I take my maternal role in John’s daily life seriously and, for me, his welfare and happiness comes first.

Now we have become a solid family. John finally feels secure, and is doing well at school.

It's only now that Stephen and I can think about adding to our family and, fingers crossed, bringing another life into the world.

Meanwhile, I am busy with John. Last year I counselled him through his first romance. If John's mum could find it in her heart to forge a relationship with me, I could share these precious memories with her.

What I probably wouldn't share with her is that it's me who ensures he buys his mother presents at Christmas, and who reminds him to call her on her birthday.

Now and again John has called me Mum, but I don't make a big deal of it. I don't correct him, or tell him not to.

I know he's not my child, but that doesn’t stop me loving and caring for him. A child has one set of biological parents, but I’d argue that I, and many stepmothers like me, bring something very special indeed to the lives of the children we 'inherit'.

And many of us make better mothers than the women who actually go by that name.

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The Leftist gospel constantly preached in the schools and elsewhere ("There is no such thing as right and wrong") bears fruit

The other morning I woke to find a voicemail message on my mobile phone, beginning with the words: ‘This is the police station at Charing Cross. As it turned out, the message was to inform me that some honest soul had handed in my sister’s wallet, which she had dropped at Embankment Underground station on her way to her early shift at the BBC World Service that morning.

The police had looked diligently through her business cards, finding mine among them, and since my surname matched the one on Catherine’s credit cards, they guessed rightly that I would know how to get in touch with her.

My faith in human nature was instantly restored, and I felt a stab of guilt at having suspected our blameless boys of having got into trouble.

All the parties concerned had come out of the incident well — from the kind stranger, probably on his way to work, who had gone to the trouble of handing the wallet in, to the police who took such care to see it returned to its rightful owner.

As the cynics (or realists) among you may guess, there’s a depressing sequel to this story. But I’ll keep that until the end.

For now, I’ll just say that after my initial amazement that someone in central London had been honest enough to hand in a bulging wallet, I began to wonder why I should really have been surprised at all. After all, I know that if I found somebody’s wallet, I would certainly take it to the nearest police station.

I would have done so even before my own was stolen by a sharp-suited pickpocket in Rome this summer — when it came home to me what a devastating loss a wallet can be in this high-tech age, when our whole lives are encoded in electronic strips on plastic cards.

What’s more, I’d be 100 per cent happy to bet the entire contents of my new one — restocked with cash and plastic after days spent cancelling and reapplying for everything — that the enormous majority of people reading this article would do the same good turn for their fellow man, without so much as a passing thought to pocketing his property. (Well, perhaps just a nanosecond’s thought before our innate honesty kicked in.)

But it seems that we’re in a shrinking minority, you and I. For a disturbing report from the newly established Centre for the Study of Integrity at Essex University finds that honesty is going out of fashion in modern Britain, as increasing numbers of our fellow subjects think it acceptable to lie and cheat.

In my book, the two most striking findings of the survey are that the under-25s are twice as likely to condone dishonesty as the over-65s — and that while women are slightly more honest than men, integrity in both sexes bears no relation to social class, education or income.

I hope I’m not being too hard on my sons’ middle-class friends when I say that neither discovery surprises me in the least (while the second one should explode once and for all the patronising libel that the poor are more likely to be dishonest than the better off).

To illustrate what I mean, I remember one occasion when several of one of my son’s teenage friends came round to take him off to town for a party. I asked my boy if he had enough money for his train fare and one of his friends told me: ‘It’s OK. They leave the station gates open at this time of night and there’s never anyone around to check.’ He said this in a matter-of-fact way, to a stuffy middle-aged man he hardly knew, as if he was just passing on a helpful tip.

It didn’t seem to occur to him that he was proposing that my son should join him and the others in committing the crime of defrauding the Southern Railway Company of about £25. Or if it did, it simply didn’t occur to him that this was wrong. As far as he was concerned, it was a morally neutral matter — and if there was no chance of getting caught, it would be downright silly to pay.

It’s the same with internet piracy. God knows how many people are at it, each carrying around stolen albums worth hundreds or even thousands of pounds on their iPhones.

To them, it’s a victimless crime — and no doubt countless teenagers will tell you, with a look of insufferable piety, that they support Wikipedia’s protest against U.S. plans to crack down on ‘free information’.

But to those of us, musicians and others, who rely on our intellectual property to feed our families, it doesn’t feel victimless at all. Heaven knows, however, it’s not only the young who seem increasingly unable to spot the difference between right and wrong, between behaving with integrity and not-getting-caught.

Think of the legions of Incapacity Benefit claimants who are miraculously cured as soon as the summons to a medical check drops on to the doormat. Or the swelling numbers of motorists, encouraged by shyster lawyers, who claim for undetectable whiplash injuries after minor car crashes — so pushing up premiums for the rest of us.

As for why the nation seems to be losing its moral compass, I imagine the decline of religion — and with it, the fear of eternal damnation — must have something to do with it. So, too, must the increasing leniency of earthly punishments for dishonesty.

But shouldn’t we also lay much of the blame for its spread on the collapse of integrity in public life? I’m thinking, of course, of the orgy of larceny that was the MPs’ expenses scandal.

I’m thinking, too, of the vast rewards reaped by unpunished bankers for parcelling up bad debts and selling them on to the unsuspecting.

And I’m thinking of the endless lies — from the monstrous whoppers told by Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell when they took us to war against Iraq, to the knee-jerk fibs told by so many MPs, whose first instinct when they find themselves in a hole is to try to lie their way out of it.

But I’m in danger of sounding hideously priggish. Like most of us, I’ve told many a lie in my time, ranging from the white (‘I absolutely love the jumper you gave me’), to the off-white nod to the boss suggesting that, yes, I paid close attention to the Foreign Secretary’s interview on the Today programme this morning.

To be honest, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t even bother to hand in a sum of less than £20 if I saw it lying the street. I’d probably just leave it there — and let someone else wrestle with his conscience. But a wallet .... now, that’s different.

Which brings me at last to the sequel to my sister’s tale. When she lost her wallet at Embankment station, it contained just over £40 cash. When she collected it from the police station — you guessed it — the money had gone. I told you it was depressing.

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Why I let my son dress like a girl for five years...and why for his sake I put a stop to it

By Lorraine Candy (Editor-in-chief of British Elle magazine)

As a toddler, my son Henry used to sleep in a nightie, after I gave up on trying to wrestle him into pyjamas. Later, he took to calling himself Stephanie, Jean, Olive or, most frequently, Miss Argentina.

His favourite game was wearing his elder sisters’ sequin party dresses while running his imaginary boutique ‘Slinx’ or greeting customers in his hairdressing salon ‘Slapchicks’ (God knows where he got that name from).

Once, aged three, his penchant for dressing as a girl even landed us in A&E, where a patient doctor had to remove Barbie’s earring from inside Henry’s ear canal. ‘Which one is it?’ asked the doctor, meaning which ear. ‘The pink one with gold round the outside,’ he replied.

Visitors to our house assumed I had three girls because he rarely wore boys’ clothing at home. He said he preferred to wear something ‘more comfortable’: dresses, skirts, tights or princess costumes.

At first I let him get on with it, because it seemed to make him happy. My husband rolled his eyes at the sight of his chubby, short-haired boy squeezed into a tutu. ‘He’s just in touch with his feminine side,’ I told him.

But essentially we were in agreement —‘banning’ anything in the early years is the route to rebellion later. So we let him dress as he pleased, and indulge his ‘feminine’ side.

And his love of all things girly started to colour other aspects of Henry’s life too. He refused to go to football club because he didn’t like the uniforms, despite my explanation that even the girls wore the club’s outfit. ‘Shorts are for boys,’ he would protest.

You may assume, from all this, that I’d be in favour of what has been termed ‘gender neutral parenting’ — raising a child as neither boy nor girl, but giving it free rein to express itself in whatever way he or she chooses.

That was the approach taken by Beck Laxton and Kieran Cooper. They’re the couple who made headlines last week for raising their five-year-old son, Sasha, as ‘gender neutral’. Like me, they allowed their little boy to dress in girls’ clothes and play with girls’ toys.

But unlike me, it seems Sasha’s parents’ ‘experiment’ formed part of their wider ideology, using it to examine whether ‘boy/girl’ stereotyping could be bypassed altogether.

I know, from my own experience, that some children do not conform to the conventional behaviour expected of their gender anyway. But I know also that there came a time when I had to put a stop to my boy’s ‘girlish’ instincts. I knew it was my duty as a parent to make it stop — for reasons I will come to later.
Little angel? Unlike Lorraine's son, five-year-old Sasha is being raised as 'gender neutral'

Little angel? Unlike Lorraine's son, five-year-old Sasha is being raised as 'gender neutral'

So where had my Henry’s love of girls’ clothes come from? To start with, my husband and I found it hard to understand. I turned to parenting books, they indicated that it was probably because Henry worshipped his two older sisters (now aged eight and nine) and wanted to be ‘in their club’.

Apparently, all children need to ‘belong’; they crave positive recognition as they develop between the ages of three and seven. They seek the approval of their peer group to make them feel secure so they can develop with confidence.

Before he started school, Henry’s sisters were his peer group. Dressing like them was his way into their world, where he felt safe. They wore nighties, so he wanted one too.

When he was a toddler, this was fine. Other toddlers pay no heed to what fellow miniatures wear. But older children do. When Henry was four, I noticed that the older children of some of my friends would laugh at his feminine attire.

I couldn’t bear to watch him run off red-faced to change. Of course, he didn’t fully understand why people laughed at him. But I did. And I began realise how, as he grew older, his cross-dressing would become a habit which enabled others to hurt him. I had to stop that happening.

My husband and I decided to wait until Henry’s fifth birthday in November to break the news to him that there would be no more sequins, no more Slapchicks or Miss Argentina. We tried building up to it gently, mentioning it every now and then so he would know what was coming.

Then one night last November, we packed away his nightie and the dresses for good. ‘From now on, you need to wear boys’ clothes and sleep in boys’ pyjamas,’ I told him.

He was mildly upset but not unduly worried. He didn’t fully understand why he could no longer dress in the clothes he loved, but since starting school in September, he had become more aware of the difference between boys and girls anyway.

‘Can I still do it on special occasions?’ he asked. We said he could — but he hasn’t asked since.

The fact he had a new baby sister helped. ‘These are Mabel’s things now,’ we told him.

Actually, it was me who grieved most. I was sad to say goodbye to the alter ego he’d created (and accessorised so stylishly) with such joy. I think my husband was relieved — and Henry’s two older sisters were pleased that he’d stop ferreting through their jewellery boxes.

Some may see my decision as pandering to convention. But I didn’t make this decision because I was scared of what the future holds for a boy happy in his feminine skin or because I believe cross-dressing is wrong. Remember, I work in fashion.

No, I made this decision because although I truly wish fashion’s liberal and inclusive attitude extended to all other industries, it just doesn’t. Allowing my son to continue down his feminine path would only incur ridicule and hurt.
A video of Sasha Laxton talking about how 'silly' it is to have girls' and boys' colours was put on You Tube by his mother

A video of Sasha Laxton talking about how 'silly' it is to have girls' and boys' colours was put on You Tube by his mother

This is what confuses me about parents like Sasha’s. He has been hailed as an experiment in breaking stereotypes, but who would want to expose their child to possible derision for the sake of their political beliefs?

Yet, they are by no means alone. Last year, the US parents of a five-year-old boy called Dyson wrote a book called My Princess Boy and appeared on live TV with him in a ballet outfit.

He was to be the poster boy for a radical change in gender thinking, they said — as he sat there supremely uninterested in the discussion. Meanwhile in Canada, another five-year-old called Storm is being raised gender neutral. In Sweden they have two-year-old Pop, while one Swedish nursery has instigated a ‘gender neutral’ policy referring to the children as ‘friends’ rather than him or her.

Of course, a more open-minded attitude to gender can be a positive thing — whether in childhood, to counteract Disney’s ridiculous glorification of Cinderella (a world where blondes are good, brunettes are bad and falling in love makes everything better), or in adulthood, to help challenge the ‘gender gap’ between male and female rates of pay in the workplace.

I would happily ban all those wretched pink-frilled dolls that fill the shelves of supermarkets across the land, mini ironing boards and kitchen utensils (who wants to be a indoctrinated into domestic drudgery that early, boy or girl?).

Perhaps if there were gender- neutral schools in every borough then Sasha, Dyson, Storm and Pop would be welcome trailblazers for a new way of thinking. But in the real world, schools separate boys and girls for many sensible reasons.

It’s a huge responsibility for children as young as five to be expected to change this thinking. And a little arrogant of parents, who don’t work in the field of child care or child psychology to assume they can do this through a lone child.

But perhaps the most important point is that many of these attempts to unburden children from the constraints of gender are misguided. Dressing up is what pre-schoolers do. You may think your toddler is striking a blow for feminism or his future right to wear women’s clothing in public but he’s not — he’s just playing a game.

You may think you are giving him the rare freedom of ignoring society’s expectations of his gender but actually he’s just thinking: ‘Whoa, sequins! They look cool’.

No child expert has advocated this as a resolution to gender stereotyping and its consequent inequalities. While they say it’s unlikely to be damaging (as long as the child is not forced to dress a certain way), it probably won’t have the effect these parents desire either.

But we should also remember that in today’s world of rapid, global information, these images of Sasha and all those YouTube videos of Dyson will live for some time. They’ll be there for all to see whether these boys like it or not. They have had no choice in the matter — is that really fair?

Wouldn’t it be better for parents to encourage schools and nurseries to talk more about gender and how it affects their charges as they grow rather than to put such a burden on very young children.

And perhaps more importantly, parents like Sasha’s should remember these precious early years belong to their children, not to them.

SOURCE






Israel's shameless Arabs

Arab parliamentarians endorse tyrants, terrorists while slamming 'undemocratic' Israel

“The shahid is honored throughout the history of nations. He is the one who blazed the trail for us. No value is more noble than martyrdom," Knesset Member Ahmad Tibi waxed poetic a few days ago on the occasion of “Palestinian Martyr Day.” Of course, he did not forget to present the obvious flip-side, whereby in Israel “the real terrorist murderer is considered a hero or a minister.”

Immediately after that, Tibi made sure to make it clear to all his fans that "Israelis are ignorant with regards to the term 'shahid' and misunderstand it. It refers to anyone who was killed by the occupation for the homeland or died for a national cause." That is, there is the active, bogus type of martyr, who seeks to slaughter as many Jews as he can. Then there is the real martyr, the passive, noble type, the most amazing and glorious of all human beings, which only incurable Israeli ignorance fails to appreciate.

Former Palestinian leader Arafat apparently only referred to them, the passive martyrs, when he spoke of Shahids, just like his former advisor Tibi, who did the same while serving in Israel’s Knesset.

The Talmud says that when a person keeps repeating an offence, it’s as though he receives permission to keep doing it. And so, Mr. Tibi can praise the qualities of the martyr while at most prompting weak journalistic protest, and then go back to that same Israeli media in the role of Dr. Tibi and express his amazement about the very question regarding his right to endorse Shahids.

Tibi can also slam others as if he was the lowliest chauvinist, while hurling crude sexual hints at MK Anastasia Michaeli, and at the best prompt a minor reprimand from the media and from various women’s rights groups, which on normal days would harshly slam any harm done to women, by certain men that is.

Gaddafi's friends

Similarly, Hanin Zoabi and other Arab parliamentarians can put their trust in the guardians of Israeli democracy in the media, High Court, academia and the cultural world every time they write a forward to venomous anti-Semitic books, as Zoabi just did in her forward to anti-Semitic British writer Ben White’s book. These Arab MKs also board various Gaza-bound ships or visit Hamas leaders or enlightened Arab rulers such as Gaddafi, may he rest in peace.

Indeed, Arab MKs use these opportunities to talk about Israeli injustice, the apartheid regime adopted there, and the racism that has spread everywhere. Mostly, they explain in their visits to such models of democracy like Hamas or Libya how un-democratic Israel is.

Yet nonetheless, even if only a handful of Israel’s Arabs crossed the lines (for example, “only” some 200 Arab Israelis were involved in terror attacks in the years 2001-2004 that claimed the lives of 136 Israelis,) the vast majority of the Arab sector regularly votes for the same representatives, who view the eradication of the Zionist enterprise and Jewish State as their utmost mission, while serving as members in the Jewish State’s parliament.

Still, we’ll always find the good Jews among us who will keep explaining to us that the involvement of Arab Israelis in terror, their hugely disproportionate share of crimes (in 2011, Arabs were involved in 67% of murders in Israel,) illegal construction or road accidents is all our doing. We are the ones who sinned and mistreated the Arabs. We are the ones at fault, rather than Tibi, Zoabi, or any other Arab victim.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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Archbishop blasts clerics who oppose welfare reform and declares REAL moral scandal is our £1 trillion debt

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey today launches an astonishing attack on the five bishops trying to derail the Government’s £26,000-a-year benefit cap.

In an article for the Daily Mail, Lord Carey insists the sheer scale of Britain’s public debt – which yesterday hit £1trillion – is the ‘greatest moral scandal’ facing the country and warns the welfare system is rewarding ‘fecklessness and irresponsibility’.

He is scathing about all opponents of the proposed limit on benefits – who include Labour peers and Liberal Democrat rebels – but reserves his most outspoken criticism for the Anglican bishops, who led the rebellion in the House of Lords.

He said they encouraged the culture of welfare dependency which led to ‘poverty of aspiration’, and warned them that they could lay no claim to the ‘moral high ground’.

‘If we can’t get the deficit under control and begin paying back this debt, we will be mortgaging the future of our children and grandchildren,’ he writes.

Lord Carey hails Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith as a ‘committed Christian’ who is trying to reform a welfare system which is ‘fuelling vices and impoverishing us all’.

Downing Street insisted last night that its plan to impose an annual limit on welfare payments would be implemented ‘in full’ despite the dramatic defeat in the Lords. Labour leader Ed Miliband’s decision to try to derail Government plans for a cap, designed to ensure workless households cannot receive more than the average working family, was branded a ‘total disaster’ by his own shadow ministers.

Amid accounts of chaos and confusion in the run up to a crunch vote, several frontbenchers expressed despair that the party had appeared to put itself on the side of benefit claimants over working families.

Labour issued a tortured explanation of its stance, claiming it did not in fact support bishops’ plans to exclude Child Benefit from the cap, but wanted an opportunity to return the legislation to the Commons to make different amendments.

In his attack on the bishops, Lord Carey says it is clear that the welfare system ‘desperately’ needs to be reined in and insists it is ‘obvious’ that employment must pay more than a life on benefits.

‘Considering that the system they are defending can mean some families are able to claim a total of £50,000 a year in welfare benefits, the bishops must have known that popular opinion was against them, including that of many hard-working, hard-pressed churchgoers,’ he writes.

‘Yet these five bishops – led by the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds – cannot lay claim to the moral high-ground.

‘The sheer scale of our public debt, which hit £1trillion yesterday, is the greatest moral scandal facing Britain today. If we can’t get the deficit under control and begin paying back this debt, we will be mortgaging the future of our children and grandchildren.’

Lord Carey is particularly scathing about the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, the Rt Rev John Packer, who led the Lords revolt by invoking the Bible and Jesus’s concern for children. ‘I can’t possibly believe that prolonging our culture of welfare dependency is in the best interests of our children,’ he writes.

The Cabinet discussed Monday night’s defeat in the Lords when it met yesterday. It agreed to reverse the amendment when the legislation returns to the Commons.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said: ‘I think the vast majority of people think it is fair to say that you can’t receive more in benefits than if you were to earn £35,000 before tax.

He added that the Government had already increased out-of-work benefits by 5.2 per cent for this year, saying: ‘We want to make sure that those who are vulnerable are properly supported but that at all times in the welfare system there are incentives to work and that it pays to work.’

But Enver Solomon, policy director at the Children’s Society, warned the Government not to ignore the Lords’ vote. He said: ‘Children should not be held responsible and penalised for the employment circumstances of their parents.’

Labour peers backed the bishops’ amendment, to exclude Child Benefit from the cap, despite the party saying it supported the principle. It said it would aim to add additional safeguards when the proposals return to the Commons.

But one Labour frontbencher said: ‘Do you imagine my constituents are going to understand the idea that we support a cap but have voted against it? They will just think we support unlimited handouts for people out of work. It is a total disaster.’

Conservative Deputy Chairman Michael Fallon said: ‘Ed Miliband has failed the key test of his leadership. He has promised to “take the tough decisions” on reforming welfare. But his party in the Lords supported a wrecking amendment to ensure that some families get thousands of pounds more in benefits than the average family earns by working.’

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Eight out of ten Brits claiming benefits ARE fit to work, according to new incapacity tests

Eight out of ten people tested for new incapacity benefits were found to be fit for work, official figures revealed yesterday. The Department for Work and Pensions decided that 57 per cent of claimants were no longer eligible for the hand-outs. A further 21 per cent could carry out some sort of work with the right support.

Just one fifth of claimants – 22 per cent – were found unable to do any form of employment.

Around 1.5million people who have been claiming Incapacity Benefit are being reassessed for its replacement – the Employment Support Allowance – to see if they are able to carry out work.

The latest figures show the numbers claiming ESA and Incapacity Benefit have dropped to their lowest level since 1996 following the introduction of the tests.

There are still 2.6million people claiming the benefits, nearly a million of whom have been on them for more than a decade.

Figures relating to claims lodged between March and May last year show that 38 per cent were dismissed at the first stage – before face-to-face assessments were carried out – while 48 per cent were subjected to further consideration. A further 14 per cent of claimants are still being assessed.

The latest analysis also shows there has been a decrease in the number of people claiming for drug and alcohol-related conditions – from 105,110 in May 2010 to 100,120 in May last year.

Employment Minister Chris Grayling said: ‘These reforms are changing the landscape of our country. ‘By concentrating on what people can do, we will help people back into work and out of the trap of benefits that has blighted communities.

‘We want to help everyone who can be in work to get there, not just for themselves but for their children. It is clear that the majority of new claimants to sickness benefits are in fact able to do some work.’

But critics have warned that the new testing regime is flawed – and a report by MPs on the work and pensions select committee recently found that large numbers of seriously unwell claimants have been wrongly refused support and high numbers of appeals have proved successful.

Prime Minister David Cameron has insisted the new system is much better at putting people through their ‘paces’.

Claimants who pass the first stage of assessment are then placed in three groups: Those who need permanent support, those who might be able to work after a few months and those fit to work. If placed in the latter category they are told to resubmit a benefits application – but this time for Jobseekers Allowance.

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Sisterhood beware - silencing ideas stymies progress

When debate is marked by personal vitriol, people opt out and keep quiet -- comment from Australia

I have long considered myself a feminist and been disturbed by the parts of the sisterhood who operate like the nasty in-group in primary school. You can't be our friend because you don't wear the right pink dress. You can't be our friend unless you toe the approved party-line on abortion, childcare or sexual clothing. It is astounding to watch grown women engage in exclusionary behaviour that most of us outgrew by age 10.

But they have been at it again in the debate over the feminist credentials of Melinda Tankard Reist.

Anne Summers wrote in The Sunday Age that Tankard Reist can't be in the feminist club because she is pro-life. Summers said the core principle of feminism is women's independence, financial and reproductive. That might be Summers' definition, but it's not mine, nor would it be many other women's. Definitions aside, why can't Summers just reiterate the arguments in favour of free, legal and safe abortion, instead of seeking to ostracise someone with whom she disagrees? "You're not my friend" does not counter any anti-abortion argument. It is a non-sequitur.

Kate Gleeson, an Australian Research Council Fellow in politics at Macquarie University, then called for Tankard Reist to explain herself in The Age - in particular her work for former senator Brian Harradine.

Gleeson said that many feminists were "suspicious" of Tankard Reist because she "identifies as a pro-life feminist". Lots of people have advised politicians with whose policies many of us disagree. Why Tankard Reist has to explain herself any more than any other adviser is beyond me. And why any of us should be "suspicious" of her just because she thinks differently from us beggars belief. I don't believe in god but I feel no need to be suspicious of those who do.

Like Tankard Reist, I have been on the receiving end of the self-appointed sisterhood's ire. I used to write about motherhood and childcare; about the importance of women having time away from work to care for their own children; about the need for child-friendly work practices, as opposed to employer-friendly long hours of care and short periods of leave. Ideas that are commonplace now, but 15 years ago, fresh out of '80s feminism, were rare, if not among mothers, at least in public forums.

I used to write about that, but not now. I stopped because along with other academics I know, I couldn't be bothered dealing with the vitriol, as opposed to refutation of ideas. The insistence on playing the player, not the ball. I stick to property law these days. My ideas on strata schemes don't seem to leave anyone reaching for their garlic and crucifix.

The problem with exclusionary vitriol is that it lowers the level of public debate.

First, many people, much smarter and more insightful than me, step out of the arena. Public debate is carried on by the small pool of people thick-skinned enough to weather, or perverse enough to like, the nastiness. Now that unaccountable bloggers, sneering and abusing from the safety of their bedrooms, have entered the fray, the pool of contributors to civil public debate is even smaller.

Second, shooting the messenger fails to engage with the question at hand. "You're wrong because you don't think like us" only convinces the converted.

Finally, silencing ideas stymies progress. The essence of any functioning democracy is the ability to get as many ideas on the table as possible and then thrash them out without fear or favour. The humility to admit that you might be wrong, that someone might be able to change your mind by presenting you with a new idea, is the hallmark of a healthy intellect.

The alternatives to democratic debate are cults or repressive religions. Devotees want to be told what to think and tenets of faith must not be questioned, on threat of excommunication. I have often thought this is what some women want from feminism.

I do not know Tankard Reist and I am not pro-life, but I defend her right to express her opinions, call herself a feminist and prosecute her beliefs. That includes her right to advise senators with whom I might also disagree.

The real test of tolerance is tolerating those with whom we strongly disagree. And we will never have a right to express our own contested ideas if we do not defend others' rights to do the same.

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Australians love one thing more than beer - freedom

That must be sour news to Leftists

WE love our beer, we love our beaches and we love our barbecues. But, like the swaggie who sprang into the billabong back in 1895, we love our freedom most of all.

We asked you to name the three things that made it great to be an Aussie, and got more than 15,000 responses. Sam Kekovich can rest easy: barbecues, meat and mates all got significant support.

But freedom topped the list - and there was daylight between that and the second most popular response, beer.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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Hands off Hungary!

Brussels’ culture war against the ‘white savages’ of Hungary is destroying democracy and helping to boost reactionary right-wingers

By Frank Furedi, a reformed far Leftist who was born in Hungary

Thirty or 40 years ago, the way that the EU and the IMF are behaving towards Hungary would have been described as a classic example of neo-colonial pressure. Unlike Greece, Hungary is not simply being lectured about the need to sort out its economy - it has also been subjected to a veritable culture war. As far as the EU and the Western media are concerned, the real crime of the Hungarian government is not so much its inept economic strategy as its promotion of cultural and political values that run counter to what is deemed correct in Brussels.

The Brussels bureaucracy has long regarded Hungary as a society in danger of being engulfed by white savages. In 2006, when people in Budapest rioted against their corrupt government, the EU and sections of the Western media described the demonstrators as right-wing mobs posing a threat to democratic values. At the time, Brussels weighed in to support its man in Budapest, Ferenc Gyurcsany, the Socialist prime minister. The fact that Gyurcsany had lied to cover up the scale of Hungary’s massive budget deficit, and that he had admitted his dishonesty to some of his close colleagues, did not stop his mates in the EU from singing his praises. Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, president of the Party of European Socialists, was quick to rush to Gyurcsany’s defence, claiming he was the ‘best man to make the reforms that Hungary needs’.

What the Western media overlooked was that the corrupt Gyurcsany government was complicit in creating the conditions for mass demoralisation and cynicism. It was this EU-backed regime that did much to unravel and damage public life in Hungary. Gyurcsany’s humiliating electoral defeat in 2010, and the triumph of Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party, meant that the EU’s placeman was replaced by an autocratic nationalist and populist prime minister.

As has been widely noted by the media, the legislative programme of the Orban government is a product of autocratic ambition. Its economic programme is a confused mix of pragmatism and nonsense – privatisation of industry, slashing welfare benefits while nationalising people’s pension schemes, and so on. In the domain of politics, the Orban government’s key impulse is to centralise control over the key institutions of public life, including the media and the judiciary. The Orban government has also passed new electoral laws that seem designed to entrench its power for years to come. This authoritarian approach is justified by the government in the name of upholding traditional Hungarian values. The new constitution reads like a caricature of a 1930s Balkan autocracy. It is thoroughly anti-liberal (in the classical sense of that term) and appeals to the Christian heritage of Hungary, the family and the nation.

Critics of this illiberal constitution rarely acknowledge that, for all its flaws, it is the first Hungarian constitution to be enacted within a parliamentary framework after a free election. In other words, this constitution has been put together by a government with a massive democratic mandate. Moreover, the Western media overlook the democratic deficit that preceded the Orban regime - namely that the earlier constitution of Hungary lacked any democratic mandate. The pre-Orban constitution was enacted on 20 August 1949 as part of the consolidation of the Moscow-dominated Stalinist regime in Hungary. No one in the EU appears to think it odd that an undemocratically enacted constitution imposed on Hungary by a former superpower should be considered morally superior to one based on a democratic mandate.

But then, the EU itself has no inhibitions about imposing its values on to its target audiences. It, too, does not want its constitutional proposals held up to public scrutiny. Sometimes it rules by decree and refuses people’s requests to hold any referenda on EU-related matters, on the basis that the issues are far too complex for ordinary people to understand. Evidently, the EU commissioners have read their Voltaire. To recall – it was Voltaire who praised the Russian absolute monarch Catherine the Great’s invasion of Poland and celebrated her ability ‘to make fifty thousand men march into Poland to establish there toleration and liberty of conscience’. The EU does not have 50,000 men but it does have many other resources for executing its culture war. Voltaire was tragically mistaken in his belief that deploying coercion was a legitimate tool for forcing people to change their beliefs – but at least he actually believed in tolerance and freedom of conscience. In contrast, the EU technocracy has little time for genuine tolerance.

Moreover, a genuine democratic ethos is not something that the European Commission is particularly passionate about. Its offensive against the Hungarian government has little to do with defending democratic rights. When it finally decided to match its threats of sanction with action, Brussels appeared to be most concerned about the fate, not of Hungary’s electorate, but of its unelected central bankers, unelected judges and the technocrats who run the data-protection agency. On 17 January, Brussels dispatched three letters of formal notice, warning the Orban regime to alter or get rid of recently enacted laws which failed to guarantee the independence of these three institutions. It seems that Brussels technocrats, who cherish their independence from the electorate, are annoyed by the Orban government’s self-serving attempt to cut their colleagues down to size.
What’s next for Hungary?

Faced with enormous economic and political pressure from the EU and the IMF, it appears the Hungarian government is ready to compromise and is likely to alter legislation that undermines the independence of the central bank, the data-protection agency and the judiciary. However, such a compromise will neither solve Hungary’s domestic problems nor restrain the EU from continuing to wage its culture war against this nation.

The Hungarian economy is in dire straits and the Orban regime faces growing hostility from an increasingly desperate electorate. Numerous commentators have pointed out that as a result of the massive scale of economic dislocation and disquiet about the new draconian laws, the Orban government has lost some of its electoral support. The large anti-government demonstration held in Budapest in early January was presented as proof that the base of support for Orban has eroded.

The reality is that, at present, there is no credible democratic alternative to Orban. Opposition to the new constitution, and to the Fidesz regime more broadly, has been both opportunistic and incoherent. A placard on the January demonstration summed up the problem. Written in English, it said: ‘Hey Europe, sorry about my prime minister.’ Clearly, the author of this placard was not addressing the people of Hungary but rather the Western media. Similarly, a statement written by 13 former dissidents protesting against the Orban government’s actions was clearly intended for foreign consumption. It ended with the line: ‘The desperate situation of present-day Hungary should be a warning for all of us: if Europe is prepared to help Hungary, it will also help itself.’

Sadly, imploring Europe to help opponents of the Orban regime is really a statement of irresponsible impotence. Brussels has no political role to play in Hungary other than to use undemocratic coercive pressure against a freely elected government. Worse, by appealing to foreign institutions to sort out Hungary’s domestic problems, the opposition betrays the same democratic deficit that it claims to see in the Orban government. The most likely result of this call for help from Europe will be to reinforce nationalist resentment at external interference. At a time when a sense of national victimhood has widespread resonance, the opposition’s plea for external intervention is likely only to confirm this prejudice.

In the present circumstances, the main beneficiary of the Orban government’s difficulties is not the Socialist opposition but the very unpleasant xenophobic Jobbik Party. It is likely that Jobbik – ‘the movement for a better Hungary’ – now enjoys greater electoral support than the Socialist Party. Jobbik has succeeded in mobilising a significant section of the people who have lost out in the process of transition from the former Stalinist regime to the corrupt post-Communist one. Unlike the ageing constituency of the Socialist Party, many of the supporters of Jobbik are young and relatively energetic. Jobbik’s platform consists of a mixture of populist xenophobia - against Roma people and Jews - with a nineteenth-century reactionary embrace of parochialism and national self-sufficiency. However, when I talked to a group of Jobbik voters last October, what struck me was not their nationalist fervour but their powerful conviction that they had ‘lost out’, had been forgotten and treated with contempt by institutions they could not trust. They support Jobbik because this movement reminds them that they exist.

To a significant extent, the relative success of Jobbik is a legacy of the wasted years of the post-Communist era. During this time, successive governments refused to settle scores with Hungary’s Stalinist past. The new elite – which had strong links with the previous nomenklatura – had one priority: securing its self-interest. Its alliance with the EU technocracy helped to foster an illusion of a reforming prosperous liberal democracy… but as we now know, the reality was far more complicated.

The most useful contribution that Europeans can make to help Hungary is to resist the temptation to ‘help’. It is up to the people of Hungary to determine their political future and hopefully to embrace the values of an open society. Most important of all is the need to recognise the right of people to work out for themselves the norms and values they wish to live by. That’s why the advocates of EU cultural correctness need to be told: ‘Hands off Hungary!’

SOURCE





What We've Lost

Alan Sears

It’s the time of year when thoughts turn more concertedly to the ongoing tragedy – and travesty – of abortion. Activists count back to the January 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade and produce new calculations on how many lives have been ended prematurely through the deliberate choice of their mothers—and with the often enthusiastic cooperation of medical professionals who have found their own ways of reconciling the destruction of life with their Hippocratic oath. (The latest addition tells us that a number roughly equivalent to the population of California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, and Arizona has been subtracted from the human race.)

Partisans of “a woman’s right to choose” rejoice, taking shelter in the assertion that the decision to abort a child is a personal one, between a mother and … well, really, no one. A father’s rights are no longer any more sacred than the life in the mother’s womb, parents are often legally required to stand aside, and doctors these days are on hand less to offer medical counsel than to facilitate the mechanics or chemistry of destruction.

On that score: chemistry is rapidly trumping mechanics, as the efficiency of the abortionists grows. Planned Parenthood is making new fortunes in blood money through the increasingly widespread use of “tele-med” abortions, which negate the presence or participation of medical staff. An expectant mother simply steps into a room, confirms to a doctor via a video chat her determination to abort, follows his directions to press a specific button, and – voila! – a drawer pops open with two pills inside. “Take one now and one tomorrow,” the doctor says. No muss, no fuss … no baby.

Such simplicities make it easier for the body count to accumulate, and there, too, the abortionists are at an advantage, for as Joseph Stalin reminded us, “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” The more babies that die, the less unbearable the death of one more … a hundred more … a thousand more becomes. Abortionists know better than most that nothing succeeds like excess.

Stalin, though, had nothing on Shannon Dea, co-president of Planned Parenthood’s Waterloo Region, in Canada, who recently declared that “Medical science is irrelevant to the question of when a fetus becomes a human being – that matter is a legal and philosophical one, not a medical one.” But what, exactly, is to be gained by wading into debate with those who deem undeniable truth – and even facts – irrelevant?

Nothing, likely. But for the general benefit, let us consider one particular philosophical implication of all those lives, quenched in the womb. The roughly 53 million children aborted since 1973 equals about 17 percent of America’s current 312 million-plus population. Nearly one-fifth of us, simply taken out of the equation … the equation being our culture, our communities, our daily interactions, our myriad accomplishments as a people.

How would any of us begin to estimate the cost of losing not just the lives, but the extraordinary impact of one-fifth of our nation’s people? What diseases have gone untreated because the mind that could have isolated the necessary bacteria or virus never lived to see a laboratory?

Across those two lost generations, what outstanding leaders of business or industry, what eloquent voices of religion or politics, have been forfeited to a mother’s choice? What paradigm-shifting ideas and insights … what soul-stirring art and music and language … what heroic explorations and athletic accomplishments have never transpired because the unique imaginations and wills and endurances that would have achieved them were vacuumed from a woman’s womb?

How many of those aborted had within them the one-of-a-kind vision that might have accomplished peace … rolled back poverty … broken down racism … staved off tyrants and terrorists … translated, transformed, transcended some aspect of our civilization in a way no one ever had before?

A mind like Einstein’s … the eloquence of Martin Luther King, Jr. … the wisdom of Washington … the physical grace of Baryshnikov … these come along maybe once or twice in a generation. In our arrogance and near-sightedness, did we forfeit our most gifted ones to the expediencies of a self-centered, sex-obsessed culture?

We may never know – but we can wonder. In city after city, as child after child is destroyed without coming to fruition, what are we costing ourselves – and our own children and grandchildren? The abortionists are half right: abortion is as personal as a decision gets.

But it’s about far more – so very, very much more – than any woman’s “right to choose.”

SOURCE





Anti-social behaviour isn't a crime... it's just a nuisance: How lazy British police forces are failing to record and investigate offences

Muggings, burglaries and even rapes are being written off by police who wrongly record that no crime has taken place, a report says today. In some forces, up to one in four crimes is not being investigated properly because officers mistakenly choose to drop the inquiry.

Complaints of anti-social behaviour are being particularly badly handled with many crimes mislabelled as simply 'nuisance', a snapshot study has found. As a result, offences of harassment and disorder are airbrushed out, vanishing from official crime statistics with no hope of ever being solved.

Overall, officials discovered that most forces failed to record around one in ten crimes properly. In cases of anti-social behaviour, only a 'low number' of crimes were recorded and police remain poor at identifying repeat and vulnerable victims.

The failings come despite an outcry in the wake of cases such as the death of Fiona Pilkington and the murder of Garry Newlove.

Ministers want police chiefs to identify repeat victims and increase their response to low-level incidents which blight the lives of thousands. The latest figures are revealed after a review of police computer systems by officials at Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary.

It examined whether crimes were recorded properly in the first place and if cases were later incorrectly written off under the category 'no crime'.

A valid example of a 'no crime' would be when a motorist calls police to report vandalism but it is later found that masonry fell from a roof and damaged his car.

The HMIC review found that, on average, 87 per cent of 'no crimes' were correctly recorded last year, compared with 64 per cent in 2009.

Crimes considered included violent attacks, robbery, rape, burglary, vehicle crime and anti-social behaviour.

Decisions in cases of violence were correct 84 per cent of the time and in rape the average was far higher at 90 per cent. Officials found that some forces incorrectly recorded up to a quarter of all reports as 'no crime'.

These forces were the Metropolitan Police, Avon and Somerset, Leicestershire, Staffordshire and West Yorkshire. The best force was Thames Valley Police, where 100 per cent of 'no crime' decisions were appropriate.

The survey looked at almost 5,000 records from 43 forces in England and Wales and the British Transport Police.

Officials said they are concerned that police call handlers may be the weak link in the chain because it is not easy to check their decisions.

Fears have been raised that police may be tempted to record disputed incidents as 'no crime' to improve performance or simply because they are too hard to solve.

But that means victims are unlikely to receive the same level of support and police fail to build up a picture of repeat offences and crime hotspots.

Last night Tory MP Priti Patel said: 'The fact that police are prepared to write off serious crimes almost needs to be investigated itself – it is dreadful. How can they justify this to victims of crime?

'Clearly there are police forces out there failing in their duty to protect the public and give support to victims to protect them. They need to learn from those doing the right thing.'

Vic Towell, of HMIC, said: 'These results show that forces understand the importance of making correct “no crime” decisions, particularly for the more serious crime types. While the majority do well, the variation between the best and worst remains too wide and needs to improve.'

Policing Minister Nick Herbert said: 'We commissioned this report to shine a light on recording practices and there are issues in some forces which need to be addressed.'

Two years ago the head of HMIC, Sir Denis O'Connor, warned that police are failing to get to grips with a tidal wave of anti-social behaviour.

He said the true number of loutish incidents could be twice as high as the 3.6million estimated by the Government.

The problem was highlighted by the death of Miss Pilkington, who killed herself and her disabled daughter after being tormented by thugs.

Police were heavily criticised after it emerged she made 33 calls for help before setting fire to her car in a layby near her Leicestershire home in 2007.

The murder of Mr Newlove, who was kicked to death after confronting teenagers outside his Warrington home in 2007, also showed the terrible toll of yobbery.

The research comes hard on the heels of news that year-on-year crime fell in some of the cities worst hit by the August riots. Senior officers admitted that looting and disorder may have only resulted in a handful of offences because of the way crimes are recorded.

SOURCE






Fury as British Defence Dept. fires hundreds of troops in job cuts... but not one penpusher

Public servants are a specially protected class just about everywhere

Not a single penpusher has been sacked under Ministry of Defence job cuts despite the 'grotesque' axing of hundreds of troops, a damning report reveals today.

MPs say it is 'stark and shocking' that no bureaucrats have been made compulsorily redundant yet 40 per cent of the military personnel culled were forced out.

In a scathing attack on the MoD, the Commons defence select committee hints that civil servants might also have received a better voluntary redundancy package.

'The MoD should consider whether the terms offered to either the military or civilian staff [were] fair or appropriate,' the MPs' report says.

The committee also criticises the claim by top MoD mandarin Ursula Brennan that civilians were more likely to apply for voluntary redundancy because they were more 'flexibly employable'. The report says: 'This runs contrary to our experience.'

Under the Government's Strategic Defence and Security Review, unveiled in 2010, the Forces must lose 17,000 personnel by 2015 – 7,000 from the Army and 5,000 each from the RAF and Royal Navy.

The MoD will eventually lose around 32,000 civil service posts. Ministers have been ordered to make £4.7billion of savings within four years and to plug a £38billion equipment overspend.

Some 2,900 servicemen and women were selected for the first tranche of redundancies last year, with the Army and RAF each losing 920 posts, and 1,020 being cut from the Navy.

But only 60 per cent applied for redundancy, meaning around 1,200 members of the Forces were sacked. A second round of 4,200 cuts was announced last week.

By comparison, not one civil servant has been forced to quit the MoD in the first two redundancy rounds, set to total 15,000 penpushers. Instead, all volunteered to leave.

The report says: 'For military redundancies to be compulsory in 40 per cent of cases, yet for civilian redundancies to be compulsory in none, is so grotesque that it requires an exceptionally persuasive reason, which we are yet to hear.'

MPs say Forces personnel should be retrained in areas of the military where there are shortages, such as bomb disposal, logistics and healthcare.

Labour defence spokesman Jim Murphy said ministers were treading a 'thin line between callousness and carelessness' over the job cuts. 'Thousands of service personnel are being unceremoniously sacked,' he said. 'It is essential that the painful impact of David Cameron's decisions is minimised wherever possible.

'The committee are right to suggest retraining for all those made compulsorily redundant.'

The MPs' report – into the MoD's annual report 2010–11 – also expresses dismay that the National Audit Office spending watchdog had refused to give the seal of approval to the department's accounts for the fifth successive year.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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