Wednesday, October 05, 2016



Multiculturalist is jailed for life for reducing a father-of-two to 'a vegetable' after stabbing him through the heart in a savage road rage attack



A driver has been jailed for life after brutally stabbing a father-of-two through the heart and leaving him in a 'vegetative' state following a savage road rage attack.

Leeds Crown Court heard Davern Pinnock stabbed Jumaine Miller, 33, in the chest, arm and back after he had confronted him over his anti-social driving in West Yorkshire in October last year.

Despite suffering devastating injuries, Mr Miller drove himself to hospital but he remains in a 'vegetative, minimally conscious state' almost a year later and his condition is unlikely to improve.

His family said they may never get over his injuries and Pinnock's 'lack of remorse'.

At the time of the attack 20-year-old Pinnock was on license from prison following a previous road rage attack in which he beat a father and son with a baseball bat.

Labelling him a 'dangerous man, prone to unpredictable violence', the judge jailed Pinnock for life.

Horrified motorists watched the savage attack unfold at a busy set of traffic lights.

Mr Miller bravely climbed back behind the wheel to drive himself to hospital -unaware he was close to death due to his injuries.

He survived the attack following life-saving surgery but later developed problems which led to devastating brain injuries.

Mr Miller and a friend had been driving their cars through Pudsey, between Bradford and Leeds, shortly before the tragedy on October 18 last year.

Mr Miller, from Bradford, had been angry over the way Pinnock was driving and trailed him. He demanded an apology but Pinnock, who had a female passenger in the car with him, sped off.

Mr Miller caught up with him again at a roundabout and during a second confrontation was stabbed in the chest, back, and arm.

The court heard his brain injuries have left him barely unable to communicate and totally dependent on others to look after him.

His fiancée Leanne Cox said in a victim impact statement: 'He was my world, my smile, my best friend, my security, my everything.'

A family statement from his sister added: 'The combination of Pinnock's lack of remorse, together with my brother's poor life chances is something my family are struggling to come to terms with.

Pinnock, of Huddersfield, denied wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm - claiming he had acted in self defence - but was convicted at a trial in May this year.

Today he was jailed for life and ordered to serve a minimum of eight years by Judge Tom Bayliss who told him: 'You are a dangerous individual who will be prone to further episodes of unpredictable violence in the future.

'This was a deliberate, premeditated stabbing to a vulnerable part of the body and your victim suffered life-threatening injuries.

'I am quite satisfied, having observed you throughout the trial, that you have no remorse for what you did. 'You are in my judgement, a very dangerous man.'

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Mother being persecuted for being normal

She wants to be with the man who fathered her child and does not want to give up her own daughter to an unrelated person

A lesbian mother who left her wife and ‘abducted’ their daughter to start a new life with a sperm donor has broken her silence to claim the two-year-old is ‘better off with me’.

Lauren Etchells, 31, a teacher who grew up in South Tyneside, is the subject of an international arrest warrant after breaking a court order to fly out of Canada with daughter Kaydance.

She was joined by a second child, born in April, and the baby’s biological father Marco van der Merwe – a sperm donor she was in a relationship with. But after publicity about the case last week, Etchells contacted a newspaper to speak out and criticise what she described as ‘political correctness’.

Her wife Tasha Brown has made desperate pleas for the safe return of her daughter to Canada.

The couple’s turbulent custody battle drew headlines when Miss Brown went public almost five months after Etchells fled on a flight to Gatwick airport.

She is thought to have moved on to France and then the Middle East, but has allegedly broken off contact with Mr Van der Merwe and 'hasn’t heard from him for months'.

In an email to The Times, in which Miss Etchells refused to give any details which would disclose her whereabouts, she tried to explain her decision to go on the run.

‘This whole case has been about gay rights and not about what is good for my child,’ she said. ‘At some point the system needs to look at the straight facts and see that Kaydance is better off with me instead of getting blinded and caught up in political correctness and bureaucracy.

‘Breaking up her family, separating her from her mother and brother and the man she knows as her father is going to do far more psychological damage to her than growing up not knowing… Miss Brown.’

Miss Brown, 43, and Miss Etchells met online in 2008 and married in Canada in 2012. Etchells had been living in the country since her father Brian emigrated for work in electrical engineering.

The couple’s turbulent custody battle drew headlines when Miss Brown went public almost five months after Etchells fled on a flight to Gatwick airport

The couple decided to have a baby together and because Miss Etchells was younger, it was decided she would carry it. Kaydance was born in 2014 using a sperm donor they found online.

However, he refused to be the donor a second time when the couple decided to have another baby in the summer of 2015.

IT expert Mr van der Merwe – a university friend of Miss Etchells – took on the responsibility, but Etchells and Miss Brown split up before the baby was born.

Speaking to the Mail last week, Miss Brown said: ‘I was such a fool. I was played by Lauren. I welcomed Marco into our life because I thought he was no threat to our marriage and it would help us have more children as we had always planned.’

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'I'm quietly thrilled': Tony Abbott backflips on Brexit opposition

Former prime minister Tony Abbott appears to have backflipped on his opposition to Britain's exit from the European Union, telling a London audience he was "quietly thrilled" Brexit had succeeded.

Mr Abbott broke with conservative eurosceptic ranks to support Remain prior to the poll. "Britain's challenge now is to save Europe, not leave it," he wrote in a piece for Rupert Murdoch's The Times.

But in a speech delivered at a high-powered business breakfast on Monday, the former PM changed his tune, conceding a latent desire to see his country of birth leave the union.

"First a confession: I was one of the many luminaries to warn Britons against Brexit. Unlike most of them, though, my argument was not that Britain needed Europe but that Europe needed Britain," he began.

"And unlike most, I'm not sulking because Britons failed to take my advice. Now that it's happened, I'm quietly thrilled that the British people have resolved to claim back their country."

Mr Abbott said that while Britain's departure from the EU would certainly be felt on the continent, there was "no reason" it should be harmful for the world's fifth-largest economy and Europe's second-largest military power.

He observed that British markets had largely seen positive growth since the country's voters opted, in late June, to abandon the European project it had helped create in the 1970s.

Mr Abbott said Brexit would enable Britain to pursue free trade deals that were "absolutely free" rather than simply freer than the status quo, citing the prospect of an ambitious FTA with Australia.

Such a deal should entail the complete abolition of tariffs and quotas on all goods traded between the two countries - with no exceptions, he said. "There should be no need for tortuous negotiation and labyrinthine detail," he said.

Brexit would also allow Britain to join the North American Free Trade Agreement to create a North Atlantic Free Trade Area.

"In this way, Brexit could begin a process leading to genuinely freer global trade rather than protectionist trade blocs," Mr Abbott urged.

On Sunday, British Prime Minister Theresa May imposed a March deadline for triggering what is known as Article 50, an official notification that Britain will leave the EU. The process would be completed by 2019, she told the Conservative party's annual conference.

Mr Abbott, ousted as Australian prime minister by Malcolm Turnbull in September last year, is completing a series of speaking engagements in conservative circles in Europe.

He recently told a conference of eurosceptics in Prague that Europe needed to turn back asylum seeker boats as Australia had successfully done under his prime ministership.

In that speech, Mr Abbott acknowledged he had been a "reluctant Remainer", but said that following the Brexit vote "all of us have to respect the people's verdict and make the most of it".

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Biting back at the political correctness brigade in Australia

IT appears that the tide of political correctness that has engulfed Australian society in recent years (less so in Queensland than the southern states) may be in retreat.

Two recent events suggest that this is so.

The first is the debate over the use of shark nets at Ballina and on the NSW north coast.

The second is the dramatic decline in the popularity of the Baird coalition government in NSW, primarily due to Premier Mike Baird’s decision to ban greyhound racing in that state.

The genesis of both these events lies in the lobbying of so-called “animal rights activists” — a particularly fanatical branch of the political correctness brigade. (The term animal rights is a misnomer, only human beings can possess rights).

The original decisions not to install nets to protect surfers and swimmers from sharks (despite numerous attacks and deaths in the Ballina area) and to ban greyhound racing came about as a result of Premier Baird’s capitulation to the animal rights lobby.

“Animal rights” ideology has serious consequences — deaths, injuries and the destruction of people’s livelihoods — but political correctness demands that such consequences be accepted and/or ignored.

Until recently it was virtually impossible to have a proper public debate about these issues, and politicians who opposed the doctrines of political correctness were reluctant to speak out.

This is understandable. Political correctness is well entrenched in certain sections of the media, academia and in large corporations and its proponents are expert in conducting vicious campaigns on the internet designed to destroy and render unemployable anyone who disagrees with them. Even powerful media figures like Eddie McGuire cower and apologise profusely in the face of such campaigns.

The recent debates over shark nets and greyhound racing, however, have broken new ground.

These debates have actually focused on the flawed premises of the animal rights programs and, more importantly, a number of politicians have publicly joined the fray on the side of common sense.

On the shark net issue, commentators have written articles pointing out that the fundamental premise of the “animal rights” campaign — namely that there is no qualitative difference between human beings and animals and that both should be treated in the same fashion — is patently false.

They have also pointed out that the alternative taxpayer funded, high tech solutions advocated by the animal rights lobby — for example the use of drones and a shark app — are wildly expensive and ineffective. (One can just picture a young surfer off Ballina pulling his dripping wet iPhone out of his board shorts to learn from the shark app that he is to be devoured by a white pointer in approximately 10 seconds).

More importantly, a number of politicians have made public statements to the same effect. Josh Frydenberg, the Federal Minister for the Environment, stated that the safety of humans should prevail over the welfare of sharks and urged Premier Baird to install shark nets on the north coast of NSW. The Queensland Premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, offered to assist Baird in extending the Gold Coast shark net system (which has reduced shark attacks to nil) down the NSW coast.

On the greyhound issue, sections of the media have been even more outspoken. A substantial media campaign is being waged in Queensland and NSW to force Premier Baird to reverse his decision to ban greyhound racing. As well as pointing out the unfairness and dire economic consequences of the ban, media commentators have also pointed out that the ban may well lead to additional cruelty to greyhounds and that the compensation package will cost NSW taxpayers a fortune.

Many politicians have criticised the decision, including Prime Minister Turnbull (who pointed out that rabbits — used in live baiting — are a pest which farmers had been killing for years) and Luke Foley, the NSW Opposition Leader. Baird has also been strongly criticised by members of his own party and National Party politicians. In fact, it appears that Baird and the Leader of the National Party may well be facing a mutiny if the greyhound ban is not reversed.

The public outcry on both of these issues has also been significant.

Ordinary voters, by and large, do not subscribe to the doctrines of political correctness, and certainly not in their most extreme animal rights form. They know, as a matter of common sense, that human beings matter more than animals, and they quite rightly resent funding expensive, futile schemes to satisfy the selfish wishes of minority groups.

Recent polls show that Premier Baird’s approval ratings have plummeted dramatically, and his government may well lose the upcoming Orange by-election.

The other thing that the recent polls reflect is that voters deeply resent the unilateral imposition of policies upon which they have not been consulted and for which they have not specifically voted.

These recent events show how important it is for commentators, politicians and voters to oppose government policies based on doctrines of political correctness.

If each of the above groups, particularly politicians, forcefully oppose such policies then it is possible to prevent fanatical fringe groups from imposing their extreme views on the general community.

It remains to be seen, however, whether political correctness is sufficiently in retreat to compel Premier Baird to reverse his policies on the use of shark nets and the banning of greyhound racing.

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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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