Young boy wishes to join Girl Scouts

I suspect ideologically-motivated pressure from the mother on this poor kid

Bobby Montoya is a 7-year-old boy from Denver. Unlike a lot of young boys, Bobby has no desire to join the Boy Scouts. Instead, he wants to be a Girl Scout.

We first saw Montoya's story over at 9news.com. The NBC affiliate reports that when the boy's mother, Felisha Archuleta, tried to sign her son up for Girl Scouts, a troop leader told her no.

Archuleta spoke with 9News about the incident. "I said, 'Well, what's the big deal?' She [the troop leader] said, 'It doesn't matter how he looks; he has boy parts, he can't be in Girl Scouts. Girl Scouts don't allow that, [and] I don't want to be in trouble by parents or my supervisor.'"

Reporters with 9News contacted Girl Scouts of Colorado about Montoya's application, which prompted the group to release a statement: "Our requests for support of transgender kids have grown, and Girl Scouts of Colorado is working to best support these children, their families and the volunteers who serve them. In this case, an associate delivering our program was not aware of our approach. She contacted her supervisor, who immediately began working with the family to get the child involved and supported in Girl Scouts. We are accelerating our support systems and training so that we're better able to serve all girls, families and volunteers."

We placed a call to Rachelle Trujillo, vice president of communications at Girl Scouts of Colorado, for further clarification. She replied with this statement: "Girl Scouts is an inclusive organization, and we accept all girls in kindergarten through 12th grade as members. If a child lives life as a girl and the family brings the child to us to participate in Girl Scouts, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her. Girl Scouts of Colorado respects the privacy of all girls and families we work with. When a family requests membership for their daughter, we do not require proof of gender, we respect the decisions of families."

So it would seem that Bobby will get his wish. Gender-identity issues are becoming more common, especially among young children--which makes it more likely that the policy of the Girl Scouts will face future tests in the months and years ahead.

SOURCE






British father-of-two beaten up and left for dead by Pakistani gang for being white

Probably Bangladeshi Muslims. They're the most aggressive group

A father-of-two was subjected to a racist and brutal attack by a gang of Asian men who targeted him - simply for being white. Andrew Goodram, 31, suffered a punctured lung and two broken ribs after the gang of four thugs shouted: 'white b*****d' at him before subjecting him to a vicious assault.

During the assault Mr Goodram, a labourer, was repeatedly kicked in the head, face and body at Queens Park in Bolton, Greater Manchester. One of his attackers then stood over him and stamped on his chest causing what police described as 'significant injuries'.

The beating only came to an end when one of the men decided the group should leave and they all ran off in different directions.

Mr Goodram, a father of two managed to stagger home after the assault but had to spend six days in hospital.

Greater Manchester Police yesterday confirmed that the attack, which took place at 7pm on October 19 was being treated as a racially motivated incident.

Mr Goodram who has two sons said: 'I was in such terrible pain after the attack, I was yelping and my eyes were watering. 'I'm scared now and when I see groups of Asian people. This attack has changed how I feel about going out. 'When I'm walking around especially on my own I feel intimidated and worried I might get attacked again.

'The fact is, I am not racist, I have got loads of Asian friends, and I'm really saddened that this has happened to me. 'I do believe the attack was racially motivated because I am white but I don't understand why. 'I thought we are supposed to live together in peace'.

On the night of the attack, Mr Goodram was taking a shortcut through the park when he encountered four Asian men - who were with four friends. As he walked past, one said: 'what did you say you white b*****d'?' before launching the attack. Mr Goodram added: 'I carried on walking and put my hood up and ignored them, but then they jumped me and I was pulled to the ground. 'They were kicking me and hitting me and one of them twisted my arm behind my back. 'One of them jumped on me and, when I winced in pain, they ran off.'

Police say the attackers were Asian and aged between 20 and 30. One of the men has been described as in his early 30s, 6 ft 2in, of heavy build, with a bald head and a thin 'lined' beard. He was wearing a dark hooded top with tracksuit bottoms and white NIKE trainers. Mr Goodram was unable to describe the other members of the group.

A spokesman from Greater Manchester Police said: 'The victim was walking through the park at about 7pm when he was attacked by a group of Asian men. 'The man was repeatedly kicked in the head, face and body, one of the men stood over him and stamped on his chest causing significant injuries. 'Racist abuse was shouted at the man before the attack.

'One man in the group shouted for them to leave and they all ran off in different directions. 'A group of four men are wanted for the assault'.

SOURCE




British PM's plans to fine criminals on benefits a third of their handouts

It's unlikely that he will have the spine to actually do this

Convicted criminals on benefits could be stripped of more than a third of their handouts under radical plans announced yesterday. The maximum amount they will have to pay in fines will be raised from £5 a week to £25 in a bid to deter welfare claimants from a life of crime.

David Cameron approved the plans following public anger about the summer riots in London and other major cities. More than one in three of those convicted of looting and violence were living on taxpayer-funded state handouts. Around 200 of the rioters were on disability benefits. ‘Frankly they were taking the mickey,’ a senior Government source said.

The current £5 limit on contributions towards fines is widely seen as a derisory sum that is ignored by criminals on benefits and does little to deter them from breaking the law.

Ministers believe the new system will send a stronger signal that criminal behaviour will be met with meaningful economic sanctions.

A fine of £25 a week represents 37 per cent of the weekly £67.50 Jobseeker’s Allowance. It is nearly half the £53.45 paid to jobless claimants under the age of 25.

The amount taken away each week will still be decided by the courts, but the Prime Minister made clear that he expects them to use the new powers.

He said: ‘People need to understand that if they commit a crime they will face the consequences. ‘The system as it stands is far too soft and does not send the right signal. I am determined to see responsibility and fairness restored to the welfare system, and this policy does precisely that.’

The changes will be introduced in 2013 when the Government’s Universal Credit scheme, replacing most existing out of work and disability benefits, is up and running. The new rules on fines will apply across the board to claimants of all types.

The move is controversial since the Government has a legal obligation to provide a minimum level of support to those on welfare, but Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said it was important to take a stand.

He said: ‘I do not want to leave people without any means of supporting themselves. But equally, individuals must know that they cannot commit crimes that impact on the livelihoods and communities of hardworking people without consequences.

‘The summer riots showed that, for many people, the present system didn’t make them think twice about what they were doing.'

SOURCE






The majority of Brits now want out of this bloated EU dictatorship, we at least need a referendum

A tumultuous week for the European Union, and our relations with it, included the publication on Monday of a remarkable opinion poll. It showed a majority of the British respondents in favour of leaving the EU: 49 per cent, against 40 per cent who wished to stay in.

How times have changed. When the same polling organisation, ICM, asked that question ten years ago, only 19 per cent wanted to go, while 68 per cent wanted to stay.

The intervening decade has forcibly acquainted the British public with many of the unpleasant realities of rule from Brussels. It has reminded people that a developed, supposedly sovereign democracy like Britain ought to be able to make its own decisions about matters of fundamental importance.

Thanks to the EU, this is not always so. Europe can over-ride our justice system. It can over-ride our immigration policy.

It inflicts regulation on us that suppresses growth and prosperity. It costs taxpayers and businesses an extraordinary amount of money.

Above all, the EU’s inability to govern itself with probity and economic prudence has made it an object of our contempt. It is not just that fraud and corruption prevent its accounts being signed off year after year: it is also that its arrogant belief in a one-size-fits-all currency has gone horribly and predictably wrong, with serious consequences for all EU member states, in or out of the euro.

It has been clear for years that many feel our submission to Brussels has gone too far, and that there should be a renegotiation of our relationship to allow for key powers to be repatriated to Westminster.

The new ICM poll suggests that frustration at thus far being denied such a renegotiation has forced more people towards outright opposition to the EU.

The EU and its propagandists have always been effective at pressuring the citizens of member states into believing that any attempt to leave the warm embrace of Brussels would result in disaster, with the offending nation suffering isolation, penury and irrelevance.

However, a pamphlet published this week by David Campbell Bannerman, a Tory MEP, seeks to argue (against party policy) the contrary. Its title says it all: ‘The Ultimate Plan B: A Positive Vision Of An Independent Britain Outside The European Union.’

Coinciding as it does with the ICM poll findings, his thesis deserves to be studied carefully. Firstly we need to break out of the mindset that anyone who tries to make the case for Britain leaving the EU is mad — or, to judge from the contempt in which such a view is treated on certain BBC programmes, downright evil.

Mr Campbell Bannerman’s strongest argument is that there would be no economic downside to our departure. As the EU sells more to us than we do to it, it would be very much in its interests to enact a free trade agreement with us were we to leave. In 2009, our trade deficit — the excess of what we bought over what we sold — in manufactured goods with the EU was a shade under £35 billion.

Better than that — and here, at last, there is something to be said for the 2007 Lisbon Treaty — such a free trade agreement would not be a matter of conjecture. Article 50 of Lisbon requires the EU to make a trade arrangement with any nation deciding to leave it.

So the claim that there would be inevitable and large job losses is cast into doubt. He also argues that — with the ascent of China, India and Brazil — Britain would do well to leave a trading bloc whose share of world GDP is forecast to fall to 15 per cent in 2020, down from 36 per cent in 1980.

Just as the EU took no account of its role in a post-Soviet world, it seems incapable of understanding how to remain competitive in relation to rising powers such as China.

Britain also enjoys trading relationships elsewhere in the world that are not shared by other EU countries. We send 18 per cent of our exports to the U.S.: Germany sends only 7 per cent. And the biggest external investor in Britain is America.

Mr Campbell Bannerman rests much of his case for leaving the EU on the liberation it would bring from over-regulation of every aspect of our lives — one of the reasons for the EU’s poor competitiveness. He says that more than 100,000 regulations and directives have been imposed upon us since we joined the EU in 1973.

For example, the working-time directive — designed to limit the number of hours we can work, and which is estimated to cost £11.9 billion a year in lost productivity — would go if we left the EU. So, too, would a host of environmental orders such as the EU renewables directive, which insists we derive 20 per cent of our energy from renewables such as wind power, at an estimated £22 billion a year.

The Open Europe think tank reported last year that EU regulations had cost Britain £124 billion since 1998. This figure is not a partisan invention, but based on the Government’s assessments.

But the truth is the ‘bonfire of regulations’ that ministers talk about would be possible only if we left the EU or had a successful renegotiation to repatriate such powers.

This week, as desperation mounted among eurozone leaders, Angela Merkel has taken up Nicolas Sarkozy’s line that the peace of Europe is preserved only by the existence of the EU. In fact, as Mr Campbell Bannerman points out, the peace of Europe has long been preserved by Nato with its huge American involvement.

He also dismisses as a myth the idea that British influence in the world would disappear if we left Europe. Our membership of the G8 and G20, our seats on the UN Security Council, the World Trade Organisation and the IMF are not dependent on our being in the EU.

We remain one of the top ten manufacturing nations in the world. We have the sixth largest economy, and London (despite EU attempts to handicap it) remains the world’s financial centre.

Leaving the EU, Mr Campbell Bannerman says, would mean ‘Britain would take back control over its own destiny, defence, economy, foreign relations, environment, transport, fishing, farming and market controls’.

It would also avoid the proposed Financial Transactions tax that the EU proposes, and which our Prime Minister has called ‘an attack’ on the City of London.

Britain would save its net contribution to the EU of £6.7 billion a year. This equates to 44 new hospitals, 268 schools or 62 bypasses a year; or a penny off income tax or VAT.

Those who argue that withdrawal need not damage Britain have a right to put their case. Instead of dismissing them as ‘cranks, gadflies and extremists’, as Michael Howard did when leading the Conservative Party, it might be politic to debate the points that now even a Tory MEP makes.

If Mr Cameron believes what he says about the importance of the UK being in the EU, he will take the advice of this newspaper and call a referendum on whether or not the public would like him to renegotiate our terms of membership.

This might, at least, buy him some goodwill — by making the country feel not just that he’s aware of the depth of feeling on the issue, but also that he is prepared to do something about it.

He should see that a persistent refusal to do this is hardening sentiment in this country and in his own party against Europe, and against a political class that seems resolved to ignore public opinion.

And he should realise that the longer he leaves it before allowing us a say, the worse the outcome is likely to be for him.

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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