Friday, November 28, 2014



Another scum multiculturalist in Britain

A drunk man who was arrested on a Cuba-bound Thomas Cook flight after threatening cabin crew and passengers was on his honeymoon, it has emerged.

The man, named as Mohammed Khelya, from Blackburn, Lancashire, threatened to kill cabin crew members and passengers. He was so unruly that he forced the plane to divert to Bermuda and was escorted off it by police - with his wife continuing on to Cuba without him.

Khelya had been drinking from a bottle of duty-free vodka before quarreling with his wife when he was taken in handcuffs to the rear of the aircraft and forced its unscheduled landing, prosecutors said.

Appearing on Tuesday at a court in Hamilton, Bermuda's capital, a contrite Khelya pleaded guilty to being drunk on the aircraft and to threatening flight staff.

Khelya, 22, and his wife were among 311 passengers on board a Thomas Cook flight, which set out from Manchester International Airport.

Several hours into the flight, after his wife changed seats to get away from him, Khelya appealed unsuccessfully to a crew member to see her.

'I'm going to kill you and I'm going to kill everyone after,' Khelya told a crew member, using an expletive, according to prosecutors.  When asked to stop drinking, he replied: 'So what if I f*****g am?'

As flight attendants moved a handcuffed Khelya to the back of the plane, he spat at other passengers, compelling crew members to use blankets to protect them, prosecutors said.

He further panicked passengers by taking pictures of the inside of the cabin despite being told it was against flight regulations.

Diverted to the L.F. Wade International Airport, the flight was greeted by police officers, who escorted Khelya off the plane.

On Tuesday, Magistrate Khamisi Tokunbo fined Khelya $2,000 (£1275) for being drunk on the aircraft and another $1,000 (£650)for his abusive behavior towards flight staff. If Khelya fails to pay the fines, he faces four months in a Bermuda jail.

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Double standard over eating disorders and men's health

When John Prescott revealed he had bulimia, the world laughed. Yes, eating disorders are funny. Who knew? The former Deputy Prime Minister had revealed his struggle, no doubt hoping to help others blighted by the condition.

But one award-winning political commentator declared a misdiagnosis, saying Prescott was ‘more likely just a greedy incompetent, who gobbled every treat going’.

This wasn’t an isolated jibe. Feminist website Jezebel produced a What Prezza Was Eating… Daily Guidelines For Men – complete with fat and carbohydrate content. Would women be spoken about like this? Would it be tolerated? No way.

I thought back to Prescott’s revelation in 2008 during the recent uproar over Victoria’s Secret, which launched an advertising campaign called The Perfect Body, showcasing the variety of underwear it sells.

Women were outraged, it seems, because all the models were lithe and toned. US advertising trade publication Adweek reported that within days of posters going up, 10,000 people had signed a petition demanding the company ‘apologise for and amend the irresponsible marketing of your new bra range’.

Complainants said the advert played on women’s insecurities, sent out damaging messages, and failed to celebrate diversity.

Can you imagine if men made a similar response to the David Gandy posters for Marks & Spencer?

Many of the same women who later went on to denounce Victoria’s Secret used their newspaper columns to leer at the images in ways that would make a builder blush. ‘Well done M&S on that autumn ad campaign. I’ve spent most of the past fortnight alternately lusting over David Gandy in his pants and that orange coat. But mainly David Gandy,’ said one.

A broadsheet interviewer spent an entire article making jokes such as: ‘I’ve just buried my face in David Gandy’s underpants… it was heaven.’ And one famous feminist added: ‘It’s nice to see that objectification sometimes runs both ways.’

But a diet of David Beckham and Gandy, or whichever Hollywood muscle man of the moment is gracing the cover of Men’s Health, is unarguably as damaging to male self-perception as The Perfect Body is to females.

More than 1.6million Britons suffer an eating disorder, ten per cent of whom are men. We have to contend with ‘bigorexia’, which sees men pump their bodies with hormones and protein shakes to get a bigger chest and arms.

One leading rugby coach told me that anabolic steroid abuse was endemic among teenage players, desperate to emulate the muscular physiques of their sporting heroes.

And at least two British teenage boys have died over the past few years after taking the banned slimming pill called DNP. One was apparently trying to get a ‘six-pack’.

Ultimately, there is a wider malaise surrounding male health in general. Not only is there a lack of empathy for our health concerns, there is also a lack of medical care. For example, women are screened for breast, ovarian and cervical cancer, which is great. But there’s no screening programme for prostate cancer, even though it kills four times more men than cervical cancer does women.

Research from Cancer Research UK illustrates that men are 16 per cent more likely to develop every form of unisex cancer in the first place, then 40 per cent more likely to die from it. Despite cases of oral cancer having risen by 50 per cent among UK men since 1989 – accounting for almost 2,000 deaths annually – there is no vaccination for young men against HPV, which causes it.

Between 2007 and 2012, NHS Primary Care Trusts in the London boroughs of Haringey, Hammersmith and Fulham, Brent and Camden ‘spent £4,830,095 commissioning women’s services outside the NHS… and nothing on men’s’. It’s a trend that is visible nationally, with female care almost constantly ranked above that of men.

Rather than being the subject of sympathetic public concern or the odd fundraising gala, men are repeatedly told it’s all their fault. But in truth, men aren’t dying sooner because they’re ignorant or proud.

When men don’t discuss their health concerns it’s not because they’re wired this way – it’s because if they say anything, they’ll be greeted with shaming tactics to stop them, just like Prescott.

I shall leave it to Dr Timothy Spector, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at London’s King’s College, to summarise: ‘Compared to women, men have shorter markers of longevity, called telomeres – suggesting there’ll always be a biological difference [which justifies the need for men to get greater care]. The state needs to realise men are discriminated against by the set-up of the current UK system.’ I couldn’t have said it better myself.

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Labour has clearly reverted to being a 1980s-style party of anti-capitalist class warriors obsessed with taxing and regulating everything that moves

When it comes to the public finances, the Tory approach, while imperfect, is hugely preferable to Labour’s. The Coalition wants to get rid of the budget deficit by 2018-19, which while far too late would be a great step forward; Labour, by contrast, only wants to eliminate the current deficit, excluding all capital spending, which means that the Government would still be adding to the national debt. It would eventually balance the whole budget but the target appears to have been slipping.

The Tory position is also far more preferable for another very important reason: the belated return to fiscal rectitude is meant to be reached entirely through cuts and without hiking taxes; Labour is preparing a set of sweeping, nasty tax hikes on homeowners, big companies and high earners.

Unfortunately, the fiscal credibility of all parties has been on the wane over the past six months. In the case of the Coalition, it has presided over a deficit that has been increasing again, rather than shrinking, casting grave doubt on its deficit pledge. Its inability to cut faster and harder also now means that the Tories’ tax cut plans are beginning to lose their credibility. Spending, taxes and the deficit can all be reduced at the same time – but that requires a very tough strategy, a genuine operational grip on government departments and a real understanding of supply-side economics. It is unclear whether a Tory government would have the courage to slash spending by the amount required.

As for Labour, it has clearly reverted to being a 1980s-style party of anti-capitalist class warriors obsessed with taxing and regulating everything that moves. Its war on the City, entrepreneurs and executives would end in tears and damage the country’s fiscal base; its closeness to the unions and other vested interest groups means that it would not be able to reduce spending by anything like enough. The party’s claims that it would raise a significant amount of money through the so-called mansion tax and by hiking the top rate of tax are risible.

It is in this context that George Osborne’s plan to pledge a new law stipulating that the cyclically adjusted current deficit should be eliminated by 2017-18 should be seen. The idea is that this would be unveiled in the Autumn Statement; it is intended to trip up Ed Balls, who realistically would probably only be able to pull this off a few years later. It is a purely political stunt but one that is meant to expose the Labour party as soft on the budget deficit. Labour will be forced to vote against it – and if it were to hold power in a minority government, could end up finding itself in deep trouble.

I have a lot of time for constitutional restraints to the executive’s power to persecute taxpayers. But this particular idea isn’t the best way forward. The difference between the current and overall budget deficit is a very Brownite concept; it allows cunning politicians to say that they are balancing the books while in fact they are still adding to the national debt.

Another problem is that nobody really knows how to adjust deficit figures for the economic cycle. Every economist could come up with a different estimate of the extent of spare capacity in the economy, the trend rate of growth or any other relevant variable. The Government would rely on the Office for Budget Responsibility to rule on whether or not the budget was cyclically balanced, of course, but that wouldn’t necessarily make its verdict right or uncontroversial. A better solution would be to decree that the current budget (if that is what it had to be) would have to be balanced, as long as the economy was still growing. Such a target would be much simpler: barring a recession, the Government would have to spend no more than it raises by 2017-18.

It may well be that no legal restraint will ever stop a government from spending, borrowing or taxing. Figures could always be fudged or laws changed back whenever they start to actually bite. But for those of an optimistic frame of mind, there are plenty of ideas to try to force the Government to be fiscally responsible, many of them discussed in the US over the years.

My favourite would be to limit public spending as a share of GDP, with emergency provisions in case of a recession; another would be to set legally-binding targets for the national debt, again with various caveats in the case of an economic catastrophe. One could construct various combinations of this to ensure that the budget deficit were balanced over a rolling five-year period, and that spending remained under control. Unfortunately, Osborne’s plan isn’t that sophisticated. It’s good politics – and the Labour Party needs exposing – but won’t provide the UK with a sustainable, workable fiscal rule for the long-term.
Paradox of growth

Two good pieces of news on the growth front. First, US GDP: it rose by an annualised 3.9pc in the third quarter, which was pretty good going and faster than expected. Second, world trade: volumes jumped 1.9pc month on month in September, taking the three-month year on year growth rate to 3.4pc. Both these results are really good. Yes, plenty of weaknesses remain, and there are lots of problems, but if we forget all of the usual caveats for a minute the main point here is that the global economy is roaring ahead.

All recoveries are plagued by years of excessive pessimism. In 1997, five years after the UK economy had bounced back from a nasty recession and following quarter after quarter of very strong growth, large swathes of the public still thought the country was in recession, one (of many) reasons why Labour triumphed.

But the disconnect between the public’s generalised negativity – in Britain as well as America – and the real state of the economy is different this time around. There are plenty of rational reasons: in the UK, real wages have been hammered, even if the figures that are usually cited probably exaggerate the extent of the actual decline on existing cohorts. In the US, far fewer people are employed than used to be the case and wages are also under pressure.

Some of this is cyclical but much is structural. Technological change and globalisation are shifting the returns to skills: some workers are able to earn a lot more but others are suffering. It’s the great economic challenge of our times, and yet too many of our politicians have little useful to say on the subject.

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Small dairy farmer battles Florida regulators over ‘misleading’ milk labels

State regulators took on a third generation family-owned dairy farm in one of Florida’s smallest counties and gave it an offer the owners had to refuse: call a natural milk item imitation milk or inject it with additives.

When Mary Lou Wesselhoeft, owner of the Ocheese Creamery, didn’t comply, the result was a stop sale order issued by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

That was two years ago.

Now, Wesselhoeft is taking on regulators with the help of the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm. A federal lawsuit filed last week accuses state officials of infringing on the small business’s First Amendment rights by forcing it to mislead its customers.

In 2012, new food labeling regulations no longer allowed the Ocheesee Creamery’s natural pasteurized skim milk to be called “pasteurized skim milk.” Instead, state officials insisted the creamery call it “Non-Grade ‘A’ Milk Product, Natural Milk Vitamins Removed.”

Wesselhoeft, a Calhoun County resident, said the labeling requirement is confusing and inaccurate.

The only other option was to artificially inject its popular product with vitamin A, effectively undermining the essence of the small business, the lawsuit explains.

Wesselhoeft has for years produced dairy products in ways similar to her family forebearers: glass bottles, grazing grass fed cows and hard work. A Bible verse on creamery’s websites reads, “‘The hills shall flow with milk,’ Joel 3:18.”

The three-employee farm also includes a storefront where guests can peek at how the family bottles its milk.

“Many older people enjoy our items because it reminds them of their growing-up days when milk in glass bottles was the norm,” reads the Ocheesee Creamery website.

But when regulators changed the rules, one of the creamery’s signature items legally became imitation milk.

Natural skim milk is produced by skimming cream off the top of whole milk. The cream contains vitamin A. Since most of the vitamin A is lost in the skimming process, regulators determined Wesselhoeft’s skim product no longer met government standards.

“Your skim ‘milk’ product is therefore nutritionally inferior to the federal standard of identity for ‘milk’ making it less than Grade ‘A,”’ states a Dec. 2013 letter from Gary Newton, head of the state Bureau of Dairy Industry.

Wesselhoeft asserts her product never changed, only the rules.

“The government is censoring me from telling my customers what is in the milk they want to buy,” she said in an IJ statement. “I have a right to label the skim milk I want to sell as exactly what it is: pasteurized skim milk.”

According to the lawsuit, Wesselhoeft offered alternate labels, including “Pasteurized Skim Milk: No Vitamin A Added,” and “Pasteurized Skim Milk: Most Vitamin A Removed by Skimming Cream from Milk.”

The suggestions were denied, but not without a cost.

The farm continues to sell dairy items containing cream, but since the left over skim milk cannot be sold, it’s discarded.

Last month, officials said they would compromise and allow the phrase, “The State requires us to call this,” normally required to be printed ahead of the official skim milk label, to be optional.

“Ordering businesses to confuse their customers is nothing more than flat-out censorship,” said Justin Pearson, managing attorney of IJ’s Florida office. “And consumers suffer when the government forces businesses to replace simple and truthful information with confusing words.”

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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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.

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