Wednesday, February 29, 2012


Black British Leftist caught lying to her party

But they still love her. They prefer myth to reality. Rather like the American Left's belief in forged documents being "fake but accurate"

It was among the most emotional speeches at last year’s Labour Party Conference. A young anti-crime campaigner, Narraser Gordon, was given a standing ovation from MPs including Tessa Jowell and Yvette Cooper when she movingly told how eight members of her family had been murdered.

But now it has emerged that most of the ‘victims’ the campaigner claimed had died are in fact alive and well.

After Miss Gordon was forced to admit using ‘misleading’ words in her speech, Labour officials were criticised for not checking her story before she was presented to the conference last September.

The 24-year-old, a member of the Bristol West Labour Party, took to the stage in Liverpool to address the party faithful and accused the Coalition Government of carrying out PR stunts rather than tackling the important issues.

She told the audience last September: ‘I am here to talk about why our young people are dying before they can see the age of 21. ‘We are here to challenge young people in asking the important question: Why join a gang, use a gun, or use a knife?’

She continued: ‘This is an issue that is causing a huge problem across the UK, including London, Liverpool, Nottingham, Birmingham and in my own area Bristol – with eight of my family members being murdered there. I am not a celebrity, I am simply a young person who has had enough of seeing family members, friends and other lives being taken before they can succeed in life.’

In a subsequent newspaper interview, Miss Gordon, of Easton, Bristol, gave two examples of genuine victims to whom she had links. One, Leon Plummer, who was stabbed to death in the city in 2002, was her cousin, although the pair had never met. She said another, 17-year-old Shevon Wilson, who was killed in September 2009, was a friend of hers.

But a BBC current affairs team making a documentary about Miss Gordon’s work began investigating her claims to have lost eight members of her family to knife and gun crime, and say it emerged that most of the people she claimed had been murdered were actually alive. They claim she was also found communicating on Facebook with some of the people she had insisted were dead.

When questioned by the BBC, Miss Gordon admitted that the majority of the people she told them about had not been murdered. Yesterday she said she ‘may have used words which could be seen as misleading’ and expressed ‘regret’.

She told the regional Inside Out programme, broadcast last night on BBC One: ‘I have lost three family members and five very close friends who I consider as family. ‘I realise I may have used words which could be seen as misleading and I do regret this.’

She then bizarrely claimed that she had changed the names in her story to shield the families of the ‘real’ victims, explaining: ‘I do admit that the names originally given to [the BBC] were false. This was done to protect the families of my friends that I have lost.

‘But I was not corresponding with anyone on Facebook, I rarely talk to people on Facebook.’ Miss Gordon, who met Labour leader Ed Miliband when he came to Bristol after last summer’s riots, stood for the party during the 2011 local council elections.

She was said to be in London yesterday and is currently working on a campaign calling for more funding for community activists.

Last night Phil Gaskin, regional director of Labour South West, said: ‘She has not been suspended and we will not be making any further comment on the matter.’

The ‘star’ of the same Labour party conference at which Miss Gordon spoke last year was 16-year-old Rory Weal. The schoolboy was feted as a ‘hero’ after his impassioned speech telling how the welfare state saved his family from ruin.

But the Daily Mail revealed that he was actually the privileged son of a millionaire property developer, and attended private school until his father’s business went bust.

SOURCE






More than one in 10 rape allegations is being dismissed by British police

Just to secure a higher conviction rate and meet their famous bureaucratic "targets"

The Criminal Justice Joint Inspection study claims that in some cases, officers are wrongly recording that “no crime” had been committed. It warns that target cultures have put forces under pressure to keep recorded crime to a “minimum”

The report states that the “performance management regime of the past” overvalued what could be measured, with forces asked to concentrate on producing figures on the proportion of rape allegations solved.

It is suggested that this could lead to genuine reports of rape being written off as if they had never occurred.

The study says police should only end an investigation with a “no crime” classification, removing the allegation from records, if they receive additional evidence that it did not take place. “If there is any doubt, the crime remains recorded.”

The report by HM Inspectorates of Constabulary and the Crown Prosecution Service states: “If crimes of rape are incorrectly removed from crime figures, services to victims are reduced and offenders left at liberty to commit further offences.”

But Home Office figures show 2,131 rape claims were “no crimed” in 2010-11 – nearly 12 per cent of the total. In Kent the figure was 30 per cent. By contrast, just 3 per cent of GBH [Grievous Bodily Harm] allegations were later re-classified as no crimes.

The inspectors looked at about 100 records of various crimes in each police force and found that 11 per cent of them had been “incorrectly ‘no crimed’”.

The ACPO lead for rape and serious sexual offences, Chief Constable Dave Whatton, said: “This review rightly acknowledges improvements in recent years to the way victims of rape are treated. Improvements in specialist training of officers, introduction of early evidence kits, better access to sexual assault referral centres and significantly improved crime recording practices have assisted the policing response. But we know that there is no room for complacency.”

Yvette Cooper, Shadow Home Secretary, said: “The Joint Inspectorate’s report shows how important DNA evidence and forensics are for solving rape cases, and how they should be used more to improve conviction rates.

“Why then is the government going in the opposite direction, taking 17,000 rape suspects off the DNA database and closing the forensic science service with no proper service in its place?

SOURCE





The attack on FreeFaith.com shows the intolerance of religion's enemies

By Cristina Odone

When I was 30, and the new editor of the Catholic Herald, I went to interview the – now late – Auberon Waugh at his club, The Academy. In the course of a long dinner and many many glasses of excellent wine, I told him I didn't think I'd stay in journalism for long: I wanted a nice easy life, and I'd probably drift into writing novels sooner rather than later. Bron didn't believe a word of it, needless to say. He assured me that I could have a very easy life as a hackette (those were the days when the industry was still thriving): "Just don't stick your head above the parapet."

Easier said than done. Over the years, I've grown more, not less, passionate about certain issues; keeping schtum has grown impossible. Unfortunately for me, the positions I hold on a whole gamut of issues (abortion, gay marriage, faith schools) run counter to the liberal establishment. This has pitted me against the likes of Polly Toynbee (you can listen to our ding-dong on the Today programme), Richard Dawkins, the National Secularist Society and – most viciously of all – Johann Hari.

I've recovered from having my Wikipedia entry manipulated by Hari (still no apologies from the discredited hack) but now I face a new foe: a sophisticated hacker who has disabled FreeFaith.com, my website promoting (irony of ironies) tolerance.

Like so many Britons, I have taken tolerance for granted. It's everywhere, after all: in the legislation establishing gay rights and in the laws protecting faith schools.

Suddenly, though, a BA employee was banned from wearing a cross to work; Catholic adoption agencies forced to accept gay adopting couples; an elderly couple banned from fostering because of their views on homosexuality. Tolerance was suddenly no longer a given, but a battle: atheists wanted to impose their views on the rest, and persecute anyone who disagreed.

The tone of the debate made me uneasy: with every intervention, the anti-religious, and in particular anti-Christian, tone grew more strident. I decided I couldn't sit by as a cherished principle was trampled; yes, I could write about the new intolerance in this blog, and in the paper; but I wanted to dedicate more time and energy to the defence of faith.

I approached Tim Montgomerie, founder of ConservativeHome, last summer with the idea of setting up a website to defend tolerance of and between the faiths. Tim, the most inventive and generous of intellectual entrepreneurs, immediately assured me of his support, organised meetings with Paul Goodman (editor of ConHome) and Paul Waugh (editor of PoliticsHome), and taught me the basics of website design. He aso came up with a name for the site.

In the website I covered the obvious issues – anti-semitic attacks in Britain, anti-Christian court cases, the plight of Egyptian Copts, the martyrdom of Christians accused of apostasy in the Middle East. It generated some traffic. Most comments were viciously anti-religion, but I didn't mind: at least someone was reading it.

Now, they can't. Last Friday, a sophisticated hacker embedded a malicious code in my FTP access, and disabled FreeFaith.com. I'm not pointing any fingers, but a review of the Tweets my appearance on Question Time prompted, reveals that my faith earns me some vicious enemies. The programme did not raise any religious questions; nor was I introduced as a Christian or even as the ex-editor of the Catholic Herald; yet the tweets are all about my being a "theocrat" and a "Christian apologist". As such, I must be condemned – and silenced. So much for tolerance. So much for an easy life.

SOURCE




Santorum rejects the separation of church and state

It isn't in the constitution so he is entitled to -- but it is vastly "incorrect" in Leftist circles

Rick Santorum, the ultraconservative presidential hopeful, has intensified his Christian rhetoric as he rejected John F Kennedy's promise to maintain an absolute separation between church and state as an idea that "makes me throw up."

The appeal to the party's Christian base – dismissing the famous 1960 campaign speech by President Kennedy to keep his Catholic faith out of politics – represents a further lurch to the right in the acrimonious battle to find a Republican candidate to face Barack Obama in November.

"I don't believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute," said Mr Santorum, an evangelical Catholic who would become the second Catholic to win the White House after President Kennedy.

"The first substantive line in the [Kennedy] speech says, 'I believe in America where the separation of church and state is absolute," the former Pennsylvania senator told ABC News, "You bet that makes you throw up."

His remarks came on the eve of Tuesday's crucial primary in Michigan where Mr Santorum is hoping to upset the Mitt Romney, the long-time front-runner, who finds himself is scrambling to win his 'home state'.

An aggregate of polls by Real Clear Politics has put Mr Romney two points clear in the Rust Belt state, which several senior Republican figures have said the former management consultant must win if his claim to be the man only who can beat Mr Obama is to retain credibility.

Mr Santorum has surged to the front of the Republican nomination contest in recent weeks with a message of social conservatism, attacking Obama health care reforms that obligated religious-affiliated hospitals and schools to provide contraception to employees.

However in a year where the economy is uppermost in most American's minds, it remains far from clear that the appeal to conservative social issues will prove a winning formula for Mr Santorum.

"One place Santorum may have hurt himself in the last week is an overemphasis on social issues," said Public Policy Polling (PPP), observing that 69 per cent of Michigan voters were concerned with economic issues this year compared to only 17 per cent who picked social issues.

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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