It had to happen...

Great story in the Daily Mail's Ephraim Hardcastle today.

London Tonight reported on a newborn lamb and asked its viewers to name the creature.

Ninety-five per cent of votes went to one name and the show quietly dropped the idea.

The name: Mohammed.

Here they come...

The Guantamo Four are arriving in Britain today despite the fact that none of them are British.

The BBC runs profiles of the foursome but fails to explain how they came to be arrested in the first place.

Brief extracts and a question or two:

Jamil el-Banna, a mechanic, is a Jordanian. He has been detained in Cuba since early 2003 following capture in Gambia in November 2002. The father-of-five has never seen his youngest daughter who was born in April 2003.
Why did he leave his pregnant wife to go to the Gambia?

Libyan-born Omar Deghayes grew up in Brighton, was privately educated and studied law at British universities. Amnesty International said he wanted to be a human rights lawyer. (Of course he did.) But he dropped out of university and travelled to Afghanistan, where he married and fathered a son. Mr Deghayes was arrested in Pakistan shortly after the fall of the Taleban and was transferred to Cuba.
Why did a private schoolboy travel to Afghanistan? I doubt it is the destination of choice for most students on gap years or even drop outs. If he was after some artificial enlightenment (which as a good Muslim he would not be allowed) there are enough drugs available in this country without resorting to travelling to a backward society thousands of miles from "home".

Abdulnour Sameur is an Algerian army deserter who came to Britain in 1999. He was granted refugee status in 2000. He lived in south Harrow, London. He was given leave to remain in the UK but travelled to Afghanistan because he found it hard to live as a good Muslim in Britain.
Why? Thousands of others seem to manage combining Islam with living in this country.

Shaker Abdur-Raheem Aamer, originally from Saudi Arabia, had been living in the UK since 1996. He is reported to have travelled to Afghanistan in August 2001 to carry out voluntary charity work.
As you do, because there are no charities in this country. Although, he was a bit unlucky going there just a month before the Twin Tower terror attacks.
He lived in London with his wife and three children, all British citizens, and worked as an interpreter for a firm of solicitors. A fourth child has been born since his capture. He has never seen her.
He must be wondering who the father is...
At least he is on his way back to Saudi Arabia. How long before he is back in the UK?

Only in Wales...

A Welsh stationery firm has been sacked after it produced a calendar that accidentally omitted St David's Day.

The calendar appeared on a leaflet about leisure services in Ceredigion and includes other international festivals.

A council spokesman said: "Ceredigion County Council has thoroughly looked into this matter and apologises for any distress caused."

Distress caused? Are these council idiots so removed from reality that they believe "distress" will be caused by leaving a date off a calendar in a country that until recently sent almost every man down a mine?

Meanwhile, in other news in the principality Richard Brunstrom, chief constable of North Wales, has tested the security of his police headquarters in Colwyn Bay, Conwy, currently being refurbished at a cost of £3.4m, by breaking in.

Is there anything this buffoon will not do for publicity?

EU - The Truth

Is it not time for the truth about the EU to be revealed?

It is a stitch up between France and Germany because they are still furious that the USA respectively saved them and beat them in two world wars.

Revenge is a dish best served cold and now the French and the Germans are getting their knives and forks ready.

Brown lets down the country

Yesterday, Gordon Brown signed the EU Constitution despite having conspicuously failed to give the British people the referendum he and Labour promised in the 2005 General Election manifesto.

The constitution will still be debated by the Houses of Commons and Lords but to what end? Even if they decide that it is not in Britain's best interests (and it isn't) what good will that do? Does anyone seriously think that the EU will turn around and say, "Okay chaps, we made a mistake. We will abandon the whole idea"?

The only way to get out of this mess is to get out of the EU.

Black's was not a victimless crime

Earlier this week Conrad Black, Baron Black of Crossharbour, was sentenced to six years (give or take) in prison for fraud and obstructing justice.

The right wing historian Andrew Roberts, a friend of Black, railed at the sentence saying, "This was a victimless crime."

One thing Black's malfeasance wasn't was a victimless crime.

Black's behaviour directly affected thousands of lives. His actions led to his newspapers being sold to the Barclay twins. Hundreds of people were summarily sacked or made redundant causing hardship to their families.

English for English schools...not American

And on the subject of education: when will the Americanisation of schools stop?

Why are exams now called SATs?

No more testing time for schools...

The Daily Mirror reports that "high-pressure exams" for 11-year-olds will be scrapped according to Children's Secretary Ed Balls.

Children sit English, science and maths tests on the same day at the end of junior school. Now they will be able to sit them "when they feel ready".

Another example of children being mollycoddled - what is wrong with testing? The 11-plus didn't harm children because in those days there was a real education to be had, not just the chance to be socially engineered.

It's apparently part of (yet another) overhaul of the education system. The Mirror reports that "Pupils as young as four will also get to learn a modern foreign language that could include Urdu or Mandarin. And teachers will be urged to work lessons into other parts of the school day by translating lunch menus and taking the register in another language."

Yes because saying that will help when reading out a list of names!

Guantanamo Four have no place in Britain

On Friday it was announced that four "British residents" would be released from Guantanamo Bay within weeks.

The four "Britons" are Omar Deghayes, Jamil el-Banna, 55, Sameur Abdenour, 34, and Shaker Abdur-Raheem Aamer, 39.

Abdenour claims he was sold to the Americans after travelling to Afghanistan and admits obtaining false identity papers. El-Banna was arrested in Gambia after he went there, he claims, to meet a shipment of machine parts to be used to set up an edible oil factory. Deghayes lived in Brighton but moved temporarily to Afghanistan, as you do. Aamer moved to Britain in 1996 but in 2001 he was apparently working for a Saudi charity in Afghanistan!

None of the men are British nationals: Deghayes is Libyan; el-Banna is Jordanian; Abdur-Raheem Aamer is a Saudi; Abdenour is an Algerian army deserter - so why has Gordon Brown asked for their release?

The Pentagon says that all four men are dangerous. They claim that el-Banna is a leading recruiter and financier for al-Qaeda; that Deghayes is an al-Qaeda associate and Abdenour has undergone combat training in Afghanistan.

Abdur-Raheem Aamer is returning to his native Saudi Arabia but the others are coming to London. Again, why? If they have to be released, they should be returned to their own countries. We have enough people already here with a hatred of this country without importing more.

Let's use phone taps and abandon 42 days' detention

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, has announced that she wants to hold terror suspects without trial for 42 days, up from the current 28 days' internment.

Last night on BBC TV's Question Time, an audience member asked why phone tap evidence could not be used in court.

Baroness Ashton, leader of the House of Lords, repeated the excuse that if it was used then the security services would have to reveal how it is carried out.

Why?

When someone appears in court for speeding or jumping a red light, the police don't explain how a Gatso works.

If there is tape of Muhammed telling Abdul he wants to blow up a nightclub to "kill the slags", what does it matter how it was obtained?

Refuse collectors are not supposed to refuse to collect

Some media commentators wonder why we rarely win any sporting events. We still hark back to 1966 for our last (only) major football win and to 1977 for the last time we had anything to cheer about in tennis.

It could be something to do with the fact that we are raising a nation of wimps - children who are told that everything has value and that nothing is second class (especially not their education).

The Health & Safety Executive refuses to let anyone take even the slightest risk. Their mantra seems to be "What do you want to do? You can't."

And now binmen in Havant, Hampshire are are told that they cannot pick up black bags of Christmas rubbish in case they hurt themselves.

Local people, who usually put out household rubbish and recycling on alternate weeks, had wanted extra collections over Christmas.

The council agreed to let them put out a black bag alongside their wheelie bin. But the dustmen decided to ignore the bags and used the council's own rules as their rationale. The rules state that only rubbish in wheelie bins is to be collected while any other rubbish must be left.

Council leader David Gillett said the binmen are wrong. He added: "They've picked up bin bags for the last 100 years and it hasn't bothered them. Why are they suddenly worrying about it?"

In fact, Councillor Gillett is wrong. It wasn't that long ago that dustmen used to go into people's back gardens, hoist metal bins onto their backs and carry them to the dustcart. It is only in the wimpy times that we live in that councils decreed that bins must be plastic and then that householders must leave a bin bag or wheelie bin "on the edge of their property" without any thought for the housebound or feeble.

In addition, when the PC brigade decided that binmen should be renamed "refuse collectors" - we didn't realise that meant that sometimes they would just refuse to collect.

More madness in Europe

If ever there was a reason to withdraw from the madness that is the European Court of Human Rights then the ruling that said a convicted murderer should be able to father a child by his ex-jailbird wife is it.

Kirk Dickson and his wife Lorraine met via a prisoners' pen pal scheme - he was convicted of murder and is serving life for kicking a man to death for refusing to hand over cigarettes, and she was inside for a £27,000 benefits fiddle.

The court decreed that the British government was wrong to stop the couple becoming parents and that it was a denial of their human rights. Further, it awarded them €5,000 in damages and €21,000 in costs.

How can becoming a parent be a human right? What about the child? What chance will it have? The court said that a public interest in punishment and the upbringing of the child was merely "public opinion".

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Mrs Dickson said: "I know some people think that Kirk should have thought about whether he wanted children before he committed murder, and others think I shouldn't have married someone serving a life sentence if I wanted another child."

Another child? She already has three children. It was her failure to declare maintenance payments from her first husband when making fraudulent benefits claims which got her sent down in the first place. She was already bankrupt and had convictions for deception and conspiracy to defraud.

This is just another example of the perverse nature of our "partners" in Europe and the sooner we leave them to it, the better.