How an Australian Leftist government looks after blacks

A Leftist State government is abandoning poor children who have vision and hearing problems

There has been only passing mention of this in the media so I thought I might flesh it out a little.

Ever since 1911 Queensland has had specially trained nurses going around all the schools testing children's vision and hearing and keeping an eye out for any other health problems that they might detect.

This has been especially important in lower socio-economic areas where parents are often not alert to such problems in their children or do not have the confidence to do anything about problems that they are aware of. In such communities the nurse can often galvanize action on a child's vision or hearing loss at an early age and thus remove very large roadblocks to the child's educational progress.

This has been particularly so where Aboriginals (native blacks) are concerned as hearing loss is something of an epidemic among Aboriginal children and the parents are usually far too timid to do anything about it.

So what is the latest from Queensland Health on the centenary of this invaluable service? They are cancelling it. As a substitute they have agreed to pay local GPs a small sum to carry out such testing on anyone who comes in for it

So for a start they have just lost the Aborigines. Many Aborigines won't be alert to the problems concerned and in any case will rarely have the confidence to approach local GPs about such problems. The people who need the assistance of school nurses the most are now having it taken away from them.

And few GPs have the experience and equipment to do a job as good as the job that the specialized nurses do.

And it will just lengthen the already long waits to see a doctor in lower socio-economic areas. In such areas it can take a couple of weeks to get an appointment with a GP. So Queensland Health is just putting a new burden onto already overstretched GPs and stretching out waiting times for appointments even further.

So why is Queensland Health doing this dastardly deed to the poor families of Queensland? Budget cuts. They have spent hundreds of millions on getting their botched payroll system working and the money has got to come from somewhere.

But why take it away from frontline services? 20 years ago the school nurses had only a couple of employees in addition to the nurses themselves. Now there is a great bureaucracy that is more numerous than the nurses. If there have to be cuts, why not cut back the bureaucracy to what it was 20 years ago? The sevice ran perfectly well for many decades without a huge bureaucracy on top of it and could easily do so again.

But Leftist goverments regard their bureaucracies as sacred for some inscrutable reason so that is the last thing they will consider. I guess it gives them a feeling of power to have so many people dependant on them. Pity about the poor, though.

The Minister for Health in the Queensland State government is Hon. Geoff Wilson MP

You can email him here




America’s new racists

by Walter Williams

The late South African economist William Hutt, in his 1964 book, "The Economics of the Colour Bar," said that one of the supreme tragedies of the human condition is that those who have been the victims of injustices and oppression "can often be observed to be inflicting not dissimilar injustices upon other races."

Born in 1936, I've lived through some of our openly racist history, which has included racist insults, beatings and lynchings. Tuskegee Institute records show that between the years 1880 and 1951, 3,437 blacks and 1,293 whites were lynched. I recall my cousin's and my being chased out of Fishtown and Grays Ferry, two predominantly Irish Philadelphia neighborhoods, in the 1940s, not stopping until we reached a predominantly black North or South Philly neighborhood.

Today all that has changed. Most racist assaults are committed by blacks. What's worse is there're blacks, still alive, who lived through the times of lynching, Jim Crow laws and open racism who remain silent in the face of it.

Last year, four black Skidmore College students yelled racial slurs while they beat up a white man because he was dining with a black man. Skidmore College's first response was to offer counseling to one of the black students charged with the crime.

In 2009, a black Columbia University professor assaulted a white woman during a heated argument about race relations. According to interviews and court records obtained and reported by Denver's ABC affiliate (Dec. 4, 2009), black gangs roamed downtown Denver verbally venting their hatred for white victims before assaulting and robbing them during a four-month crime wave.

Earlier this year, two black girls beat a white girl at a McDonald's, and the victim suffered a seizure.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel ordered an emergency shutdown of the beaches in Chicago because mobs of blacks were terrorizing families. According to the NBC affiliate there (June 8, 2011), a gang of black teens stormed a city bus, attacked white victims and ran off with their belongings.

Racist black attacks are not only against whites but also against Asians. In San Francisco, five blacks beat an 83-year-old Chinese man to death. They threw a 57-year-old woman off a train platform. Two black Oakland teenagers assaulted a 59-year-old Chinese man; the punching knocked him to the ground, killing him.

At Philly's South Philadelphia High School, Asian students report that black students routinely pelt them with food and beat, punch and kick them in school hallways and bathrooms as they hurl racial epithets such as "Hey, Chinese!" and "Yo, Dragon Ball!" The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund charged the School District of Philadelphia with "deliberate indifference" toward black victimization of Asian students.

In many of these brutal attacks, the news media make no mention of the race of the perpetrators. If it were white racist gangs randomly attacking blacks, the mainstream media would have no hesitation reporting the race of the perps. Editors for the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune admitted to deliberately censoring information about black crime for political reasons. Chicago Tribune Editor Gerould Kern recently said that the paper's reason for censorship was to "guard against subjecting an entire group of people to suspicion."

These racist attacks can, at least in part, be attributed to the black elite, who have a vested interest in racial paranoia. And that includes a president who has spent years aligned with people who have promoted racial grievance and polarization and appointed an attorney general who's accused us of being "a nation of cowards" on matters of race and has refused to prosecute black thugs who gathered at a Philadelphia voting site in blatant violation of federal voter intimidation laws.

Tragically, black youngsters – who are seething with resentments, refusing to accept educational and other opportunities unknown to blacks yesteryear – will turn out to be the larger victims in the long run.

Black silence in the face of black racism has to be one of the biggest betrayals of the civil rights struggle that included black and white Americans.

SOURCE





British abortion charities could be banned from advising women on whether to have a termination

Britain's abortion laws could be tightened to ban providers from also serving as counsellors for women considering whether to have a termination. It would be the first significant change to the law for more than 20 years, following concerns that women are not getting independent advice at a time when they are vulnerable.

Under plans being considered by the Government, charities which provide abortions could be stripped of their automatic right to provide counselling. Instead women would be referred to an ‘independent’ therapist or organisation before they could have a termination.

Dozens of MPs are backing the move led by former Labour minister Frank Field and Conservative Nadine Dorries, a former nurse. Mrs Dorries, Mid Bedfordshire MP, believes it is vital to remove the conflict of financial ‘vested interest’ that exists for abortion providers in the procedure going ahead.

But abortion charities argue the move would delay women getting the help they need and there is no evidence the system is not working. Just a fifth of women seeking advice choose not to have an abortion. At present, charities including the British Pregnancy Advisory Service and Marie Stopes, offer women counselling before they make a decision on termination. All women must have a consultation.

Under amendments already tabled to the Health and Social Care Bill, counselling would have to be provided by a statutory body or a private organisation that does not itself provide abortions and has no financial interest in the outcome.

However, new legislation may not be necessary as the Department of Health suggested yesterday that existing ‘legal mechanisms’ may be able to achieve the same objective.

Mrs Dorries said she was concerned minor changes would not protect women and there was ‘huge public support’ for a tightening of the law. ‘Legislation is required to prevent abortion providers establishing subsidiary counselling organisation to circumnavigate the new requirement,’ she added.

‘My intention is for vulnerable women to have access to the best possible care as quickly as possible, for counselling to be optional, independent and to present no delay whatsoever to the abortion process.

Official figures show there were 189,100 abortions in 2009, slightly down on the previous year. In 1990, the Abortion Act was amended to lower the time limit from 28 to 24 weeks. Attempts last year by MPs to shorten the 24-week limit failed.

Ann Furedi, of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, said: ‘We are extremely concerned to learn that the Department of Health is reviewing care pathways for women considering abortion and looking into a ban on counselling by abortion providers.

'In recent years, delays for women in need of abortion care have been reduced significantly, and last year nearly 80 per cent of procedures took place within the first ten weeks of pregnancy.

‘Pregnancy Advisory Bureaux run by charities like BPAS that offer abortion are already licensed and regulated by the Secretary of State, and must conform to a core set of principles regarding the information and counselling.’

In May, the Government appointed pro-life charity Life to a new sexual health advisory forum, but prevented BPAS from taking part. BPAS said it had been ‘disinvited’.

The Department of Health said it ‘wants women who are thinking about having an abortion to be able to have independent counselling’. ‘We do not believe it is necessary to set out this requirement in primary legislation as the necessary legal mechanisms already exist.’

SOURCE






Tax break call for married couples: Tory MPs urge £1,500 reform on British PM

Conservative backbenchers yesterday tried to push David Cameron into giving tax breaks to married couples. At least ten MPs backed a Commons amendment which would allow husbands and wives to share income tax allowances – a reform that would benefit the couples by up to nearly £1,500.

Their aim was to lever the Prime Minister into making good his longstanding pledge to shore up marriage. Mr Cameron repeated his promise in his speech on feckless fathers earlier this month when he declared: 'I want us to recognise marriage in the tax system so, as a country, we show we value commitment.'

Among the Conservatives backing the amendment were senior backbenchers Edward Leigh and David Amess, Congleton MP Fiona Bruce, and Witham MP Priti Patel.

A supporter said: 'David Cameron and other senior Conservatives repeatedly expressed their commitment to recognising marriage in the tax system during the last Parliament. 'This was a key policy response to the challenge of social breakdown – the Broken Britain phenomenon – and became an important manifesto pledge. 'The commitment got into the Coalition agreement, but no action has yet been taken.'

Critics say the decline of marriage is a central factor behind rising social disruption and family break-up. Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has warned that this costs the country £100billion a year.

The rebel backbenchers yesterday put down an amendment to the Finance Bill which is setting Chancellor George Osborne's March Budget into law.

A transferable income tax allowance would mean that a working husband could take over the tax-free allowance of a wife who stayed at home to bring up children, or vice versa. It would be worth up to £1,495 to a one-earner couple.

The backbench initiative, which is unlikely to become law, was attacked by Labour. During Labour's years in power the last tax break for husbands and wives, married couples allowance, was removed, and the importance of marriage eroded to the point where officials were told to remove the word from public documents.

Labour Treasury spokesman David Hanson said: 'It is astonishing that at a time when millions of families and pensioners are being hit hard by deep spending cuts and tax rises, the first priority of David Cameron's restless Tory backbenchers is unfair tax cuts only for a few.

'And the proposed multi-billion pound marriage tax break would penalise those who are separated, widowed or divorced – many of whom are already being hit hard by cuts to tax credits and childcare support.'

Mr Cameron is thought to be holding back on a firm promise of tax breaks for married couples on the grounds that the country cannot afford it. Calculations by the Centre for Social Justice think-tank suggest it would cost £600million to give a transferable tax allowance to married parents of young children, and £3.2billion to extend it to all married couples.

In the run-up to last year's election, Mr Cameron said: 'I just think as a society, saying that marriage is a good thing and celebrating it and encouraging it, including through the tax system, is something that most societies do in Europe. It's very sensible for us to do as well.'

The idea also appeared in the the Coalition agreement which says that a transferable allowance for married couples will be introduced. But it gives no details or timetables, and it allows the Lib Dems to abstain on any vote to bring it in.

The Lib Dems have threatened to oppose the measure, and have successfully insisted that their own policy of raising the personal allowance to £10,000 must take priority.

SOURCE





Senior Australian police police are demanding prosecutors appeal the aquittal of Muslim liar

SENIOR police are demanding prosecutors relaunch legal action against the veiled Muslim woman cleared of lying about being attacked by an officer.

Deputy Commissioner Nick Kaldas told The Sunday Telegraph new material had emerged about the case over the past few days and a fresh appeal had to be mounted against the acquittal of Carnita Matthews.

"The NSW Police Force is obviously disappointed with the outcome of the appeal," Mr Kaldas said. "The force will examine the judge's reasons for his decision and has requested the Director of Public Prosecutions consider another appeal. "NSW Police will examine further information that has come to light in the media since the appeal judgment."

Ms Matthews was sentenced to six months' jail in November for falsely accusing a policeman of attempting to rip off her niqab during a random breath test conducted in June.

An appeal court last week quashed the conviction on the grounds there was no proof she was really the veiled woman who walked into a police station to make the complaint, a few days after the alleged incident.

Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione, who has been at a conference in Europe, will meet Police Minister Mike Gallacher this week to discuss possible law changes that could give police the power to fingerprint veiled women, or insist upon removal of headgear including helmets or veils.

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 or 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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