Wednesday - September 10, 2008

Health and safety bosses refuse to cut grass verge - because it’s on a slope.

Dear America, Let me know when you’re as tired of “elf n safety” (Health and Safety) stories, as the Brits are living under them. It just keeps getting funnier worse. Doesn’t it?

I guess you could sub title this, The Brit Taxpayer Dollar at work. Or not.  Jeesh.  They pay for this in council taxes which let me tell you are not too cheap.
As well, for all the jokes about California, the voters some time ago took some control of local taxes on property.  We have referendums on things like this in the USA, something Brits just do not have. And mores the shame.  They can’t even vote (so far) on that eu thing, something many want to be able to do.

The council in this case is so far off the wall it’s silly.  I have seen senior citizens with property here in the village cutting verges on their land all by themselves.
So far, I doubt Winchester will enact this but who knows.  As my Brit wife keeps reminding me, “Is this England we’re in?”

This is
LONDON

Health and safety bosses refuse to cut grass verge - because it’s on a slope

Daily Mail Feed

A stunned mother asked council workmen to cut a patch of overgrown communal grass after her son injured himself on buried broken glass - only to be told it was too dangerous to mow.

Vanessa Crowhurst had rang a local authority hotline after her 11-year old son Jamie slipped and sliced his right shin on hidden shards in the verge.

But officials declined to send out a lawnmower fearing the grass road siding was too much of a hazard to mow due health and safety regulations.

They said workmen might slip and fall too because it was on an embankment - leading to possible legal action.

Today Mrs Crowhurst, 40, who works as a carer, said: ‘I am absolutely outraged at the attitude of the council.

‘Surely the health and safety of the kids is more important.

‘At least the workmen can wear protective clothing. Some other lad could hurt himself.

‘These health and safety laws are political correctness gone mad. The grass used to be cut frequently in the past and if the law has been changed to say ridiculous things like this then it needs to be changed back.’

The incident occurred when Jamie was playing football with friends outside the family home and kicked a ball onto the grass on an embankment. He went to retrieve the ball but slipped and fell cutting his leg on a broken bottle.

‘My son had to have seven stitches in his leg - the cut was directly down his shin so it was very graphic,’ said Mrs Crowhurst, a mother of two from Altrincham, Manchester.

‘It looked like when you cut open your Sunday joint you could nearly see to the bone. He has only had one week of his summer where he could go out and play properly.

‘The grass is so long you can’t see what is in it and there is nothing more attractive to kids when they”re playing than long grass, I know when I was younger I was worse.’

Verge of dispute: The long grass that Trafford Borough Council won’t mow.

Mrs Crowhurst called Trafford Borough Council to complaint about the long grass and its hidden danger.

She was told on the phone that an official would get back to her.

‘Obviously no one ever did so I rang again a week later and was told that a note had been put on my complaint saying “No further action,” she explained.

‘I was then told by the person who wrote the note that it was against health and safety to cut the grass because the incline on the grass was too steep and there was nothing the council could do.

‘I said the grass was full of rubbish and glass and that rats will be the next thing. She told me that if there was glass in the grass then the council’s workers might cut themselves.

‘You can imagine how that sounded after my eleven year old has just had seven stitches and has a scar which will never go.

‘There is absolutely nothing I can do now because the council is not legally required to cut the grass - but I would argue that it should be done morally.

‘And if they can’t maintain the grass then they should pave or tarmac it.’ A spokesman for Conservative-run Trafford Council said: ‘The grass on the embankment is not cut on a regular basis because of the dangers of working on a steep gradient.

‘We are concerned to hear about this incident and are looking at whether the area can be planted out with low growing shrubs to further discourage children from playing in the area.’

http://tinyurl.com/6repdc

Posted by Drew458     on 09/10/2008 at 05:41 AM   
Filed Under: • Daily Life • UK •  
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Secret investments reveal China’s stealthy advance into UK.  Should Brits be worried?

Secret investments reveal China’s stealthy advance into UK Plc

The Chinese central bank, one of the most secretive in the world, is amassing shares in many of Britain’s blue-chip companies.
Malcolm Moore in Shanghai and Mark Kleinman in London report

It was a bitterly cold January day in Beijing, and events at home meant Gordon Brown was entitled to believe the chill would endure. The crisis engulfing Northern Rock, the mortgage lender which months earlier had been forced to seek emergency funding from the Bank of England, would soon need to be resolved; and as far as the media was concerned, Brown was being poorly served by the fact that Sir Richard Branson, one of a clutch of private-sector bidders for the bank, was spending the trip to the Chinese capital in close proximity to him.
# Revealed: Chinese bank’s £9bn raid on British shares

But for the beleaguered Prime Minister, it was not all bad news. As he toured Beijing, taking in the still unfinished Bird’s Nest stadium, Brown was anxious to emphasize what little upside he had to grasp: Britain’s burgeoning trade links with the Middle Kingdom.

“The greatest benefit to China is that we, Britain, will continue to oppose protectionist forces and will remain the foremost advocates of the openness in the world economy, essential not only to China’s prosperity but to the world’s,” he said.

“The biggest benefit to Britain is that we strengthen our place as the destination of choice for Chinese business and Chinese investment. I hope to see Britain benefiting from a large share of investment from China’s £1bn sovereign wealth fund.”

Brown may have been confused about the numbers (the fund in question was capitalised with about $200bn of the country’s vast foreign exchange reserves when it launched last year), but the sentiment was clear: Britain was wide open to Chinese investment.

Little did Brown know how right he was. Since his January visit, when the FTSE100 opened 2008 at 6456.9, Britain’s blue-chip index has fallen nearly 19 per cent to close last Friday at 5,240.7. And while many investors, spooked by the deepening economic gloom in Britain and abroad, have taken fright from equities, Beijing has been piling in.

In total, investment entities either controlled by or affiliated to the Chinese government now own stakes in at least half of the FTSE100, and probably considerably more. 

(FTSE-100, Brit stock market)

An analysis by The Sunday Telegraph reveals today that the People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, owns shares in many of Britain’s household corporate names, including Cadbury, HSBC, the London Stock Exchange, Marks & Spencer and Tesco.

These previously secret investments are in addition to known stakes in BG Group and Drax Group, the energy companies, and Legal & General, Old Mutual and Prudential, the insurers.

In total, the stakes held by the People’s Bank are valued at about £9bn, according to the share prices of the companies concerned last week.

Many of the shareholdings are held through nominee accounts registered in locations including Hong Kong and are technically held by State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), the body which sits within the central bank and has the responsibility of managing the forex reserves accumulated from China’s decades-long exports boom.

A number of other FTSE100 companies say privately they believe the People’s Bank of China to be an investor but have not established the paper trail which leads to the shares’ ultimate owners. Smiths Group, the FTSE100 engineering firm, was this weekend trying to establish with the assistance of JP Morgan, the investment bank, the provenance of a small shareholding believed to be owned by the Chinese government.

Even allowing for the investments which can be established, however, China’s central bank is now a common name among the ranks of ‘institutional’ investors, like the giant pension funds, fund managers and hedge funds, which litter the FTSE.

At £9bn, SAFE is now thought to rank among the top 25 investors in the London stock market, underlining China’s status as a global economic powerhouse

Such ownership of British stocks is nothing new, even among the investment bodies of Middle Eastern and Asian economies which in recent times have become known as sovereign wealth funds.

The Kuwait Investment Authority, for example, has been an investor in BP since the 1980s, while the two principal investment funds of the Singaporean government have become major shareholders in companies including British Land and Standard Chartered.

I have added below just a few of the comments posted by readers of The Telegraph. 

I’ll gladly welcome the Chinese, after all, their food tastes better
Posted by Aaron Powell on September 10, 2008 10:34 AM

In my professional opinion, it’s about time that an eastern country began to call the shots, especially one as industrious as China.

The dominance of the west is fading and politicians and economists alike are beginning to realize the overcasting shadow of China’s rise to power.

Clearly, it’s time for the baton to be handed to China, their country boasts a rich heritage and sooner or later, the nationalists in their government will be ruthless in elevating China to a level superseding what any previous superpower would have dreamed of.
Posted by Anthony Liu on September 10, 2008 10:25 AM

Prudent farm workers saving their cash while the Land owner gets lazy and complacent ? What a lot of nonsense. The Chinese are rich for the same reason that Britain became rich in the halcyon days: through the use of SLAVE labor. You can never compete with that.
Still, if a little pilates at lunch time keeps them all content, who am I to comment.
Posted by Matt on September 10, 2008 10:21 AM

The British, of all countries, shouldn’t fear foreign investment, as the British are the 2nd largest foreign investors in the world. Indeed, many a mining company making billions off the Chinese economic boom is British owned.

Being such an integral part of the globilised economy is what has given the UK its much famed 60 quarters of growth. Long may that continue!
Posted by Cuthbert on September 10, 2008 5:30 AM

you don’t get it people, I’m of Asian descent and have traveled extensively in Asia and know first hand how vengeful and vindictive the Chinese are. they are still looking for payback for Britain controlling china all those colonial years ago. if you don’t stop them now they will eventually enslave your little island. this is dead serious and no joke.
Posted by Rex on September 10, 2008 4:00 AM

This article’s headline and main gist smacks of either ignorance or prejudice. The list just simply indicates a very diverse portfolio, with small percentage holdings in each. Why should you ALWAYS perceive China’s investments as suspect? Just because it’s officially ‘communist’ and thus a potential ‘enemy’ with ‘evil intentions’? Shame on the Daily Telegraph for persisting in such ideological crusades.
If anything, the very fact that China’s private and public sectors are embracing money and capitalism should be great news to all. Once they have a stack in the Capitalist world, they will be further from their self-proclaimed ‘communism/socialism’, and be more integrated into the international framework.
Perhaps, the reason why China’s central bank is dabbling in such investments is that unlike other more skilful and experienced international players, they are still new to the CLEVER idea of forming a separate investment company, which other countries’ governments have done?
Posted by Edwin Heng on September 7, 2008 7:18 AM

http://tinyurl.com/6ndc53

Posted by Drew458     on 09/10/2008 at 04:58 AM   
Filed Under: • Economics • International • UK •  
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More Lunacy From the LunarNuts @ The UN. In Other Words, It’s Moonbat Time.

Do I really have to add anything to this?  Except to ask folks back home in USA, has this story already made the rounds there?

United Nations raises temperature in the office to fight climate change

By Tom Leonard in New York
Last Updated: 6:01pm BST 09/09/2008

The United Nations has been attempting to cut global warming by raising the summertime temperature inside its New York headquarters and forcing occupants to wear lighter clothes.

A month-long experiment approved by the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, to raise the thermostat throughout much of the building from 72 to 77 degrees was so successful that it may become a more long-term policy, said the UN.

Diplomatic dress codes were relaxed as many male staff got rid of their jackets and ties, and women chose sleeveless outfits. Temperatures in the often windowless conference rooms, where most of the negotiating goes on were set slightly lower at 75 degrees.

The initiative, designed to show the UN was serious about curbing energy use that contributed to global warming, saved about 30 million pounds of steam used in the glass-fronted 1952 building’s cooling system.

A UN spokesman said this was the equivalent of 2,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, or 710 transatlantic return flights.

“In view of these concrete results, the secretary general has decided to expand the Cool UN initiative until September 15,” said the spokesman.

A similar wintertime project is already under discussion and officials believe they could save $1 million annually if the temperature changes throughout the year.

However, the thermostats will be on full when world leaders descend on the 39-storey building for their annual ministerial meeting later this month.

UN officials previously said that the deciding factor in whether the arrangement becomes permanent would be its effect on productivity.

Some diplomats welcomed a more uncomfortable room temperature if it discouraged colleagues from dragging out interminable and ultimately fruitless negotiations late into the evening.

However, others warned that diplomats without suits were not taken seriously and that warmer temperatures encouraged delegates’ minds to wander, apparently making them less willing to compromise.

http://tinyurl.com/6dpcqf

Posted by Drew458     on 09/10/2008 at 04:42 AM   
Filed Under: • Stoopid-People • United-Nations •  
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   Tuesday - September 09, 2008

Give me back the apostrophe Ess Damn You

This has been driving me up a wall ... because of Sarah Palin and her latest child, we’ve been hearing quite a lot about Down’s Syndrome in the past week. But everyone is calling it Down Syndrome.  I think that I read this new term 15 or 20 times a day.

I’ve been aware of this malady since I was a small child. And it has ALWAYS been Down’s Syndrome if you were polite and educated. Otherwise it was called mongolism, even though it had nothing to do with Mongolia. That’s just what the guy who identified the genetic abnormality, John Langdon Down, called that variation. But that was back in Victorian Era when people were a lot less sensitive about such things. And had probably never met anyone from Mongolia to begin with.

One cool thing about JL Down was that he came to the realization that, if white people could have afflictions that gave them characteristics of other races (this was 1860 remember) then by extension white people were really no different from non-white people ... therefore slavery was wrong, racism was wrong, and sexism was wrong. Quite the extraordinary leap to a just conclusion ... this guy was no dummy.

Whether it is a genetic difference, a rare bird, an unusual plant ... the discover gets the credit. Down categorized this Syndrome, so it is now, was then, and forever will be Down’s Syndrome. I have not spent my entire life believing a misnomer. You don’t get a choice. It either is Down’s or it is Down. It can not be both. And it is beneath my caring threshold to accept that the double sibilants of the “ ‘s “ and “Syn-” merge together phonetically, therefore concatenation is permissible. Utter rot and nonsense! Tradition and history are on my side. Learn how to read. Learn how to spell. Learn to speak: insert the slightest of pauses between the two words so that you pronounce each of them with dignity. That is what it all comes down to really. Laziness. Rubber lipped speed speaking. Monkey see, monkey do ... monday Sea Monkey poo. By next week the whole world will just call this “DS” and the week after that everyone will be saying “dizz” instead of pronouncing the acronym. At which point it will become Politically Incorrect to use the “D word” (dizzy) to describe a state of temporary physical imbalance ... because people will assume you are mocking the differentially enabled. And you will lose your job over it. So put the apostrophe back right now: your career could depend on it.

Besides, Down Syndrome is when ordinary people start growing pinfeathers. Not the same thing at all.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/09/2008 at 10:39 PM   
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Gordon Ramsay Saves the UK from Invasion

An invasion of King Crabs that is. And he’s doing it one crab at a time. With butter, and a bit of tarragon.

Um, this guy swears an awful lot. But just conversationally. But lookit all them crabbses! Dayum.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/09/2008 at 09:43 PM   
Filed Under: • Adventure •  
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A hoot From Newt

No political movement is truly mainstream in this country until it has at least one country song sung about it.

Newt Gingrich sends out an email today, pointing to Aaron Tippin, who has a song (for sale of course) called Drill Here Drill Now

You can hear a little sample over here. You can also buy the tune for 99¢. Of get the T-shirt!

I give it 2 1/2 stars. It’s a bit singable, but it doesn’t much sound like dance music to me.

Newt then goes on to point out that

In light of President Bush’s July announcement to eliminate the executive ban on offshore drilling, the U.S. Minerals Management Service has decided to initiate a new plan to increase energy production on the outer continental shelf (OCS). As part of the regulatory process, the agency is calling for public comments on offshore oil and gas development through September 15, 2008.

In the meantime, unfortunately, the Democratic Congress is planning votes on bills that would actually make all or part of the offshore drilling ban permanent. Now is the time to let the federal government know we need full and unfettered access to America’s offshore energy resources.

Seems like a good idea. Another few thousand emails couldn’t hurt.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/09/2008 at 06:06 PM   
Filed Under: • Music • Oil, Alternative Energy, and Gas Prices • Republicans •  
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Save the planet by cutting down on meat? That’s just a load of bull . ( The UN doesn’t think so. )

For those who do not know, Boris Johnson is the Tory (Conservative) mayor of London.  He ousted the Communist mayor (really) ‘Red’ Ken Livingston some months ago.

Eat less meat to combat climate change, warns UN

That’s just a load of bull

By Boris Johnson
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 09/09/2008

Look, I hate to be rude to the UN. I don’t want to seem churlish in the face of advice from a body as august and well-meaning as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But if they seriously believe that I am going to give up eating meat - in the hope of reducing the temperature of the planet - then they must be totally barmy.

No, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, distinguished chairman of the panel, I am not going to have one meat-free day per week. No, I am not going to become a gradual vegetarian. In fact, the whole proposition is so irritating that I am almost minded to eat more meat in response.

Every weekend, rain or shine, I suggest that we flaunt our defiance of UN dietary recommendations with a series of vast Homeric barbecues.

We are going to have carnivorous festivals of chops and sausages and burgers and chitterlings and chine and offal, and the fat will run down our chins, and the dripping will blaze on the charcoal, and the smoky vapours will rise to the heavens.

We will call these meat feasts Pachauri days, in satirical homage to the tofu-chomping UN man who told the human race to go veggie.

And the reason I respond so intemperately to his suggestion is that he completely misses the point. Everybody knows the reality, and everybody - every environmentalist, every Guardian columnist - pussyfoots around it.

The problem is not the cows; the problem is the people eating the cows. The problem is us. Oh, Dr Pachauri is quite right to be concerned at the emissions of noxious vapours from farm animals.

As the UN revealed in 2006, livestock make a bigger contribution to the greenhouse effect - to global warming - than every motor vehicle on the planet.

Cows are spreading remorselessly over the earth, as jungle is turned into pasture, and pasture is turned into cud, and cud is turned into the terrible ruminant efflatus that rises from the fields and the farms and swaddles the globe in a tea cosy of methane, 23 times as damaging as CO2.

Livestock now use 30 per cent of the earth’s surface, and farming now produces 37 per cent of the methane created by human activity, and every extra cow means thousands of extra cowpats, each cowpat seemingly innocent enough, but together capable of emitting enough steaming gas to change the composition of the upper air.

Yes, Dr Pachauri is spot on in his analysis. It is his prescription that is absurd. He is quite right that if you want to buy a gas-guzzler 4x4 Range Rover and you want to offset your greenhouse emissions, you just have to pop into the nearest field and assassinate a cow. And he is quite right that if we were to kill all the cows in the world, and all the sheep, we would greatly reduce our methane output.

What he neglects in his argument are the 1.3 billion people whose livelihoods depend on agriculture, and above all he forgets the global population of human beings. It is our appetite for meat that supports those farmers, and it is our insatiable desire for burgers that has called those poor cows into existence.

Why, oh why will the modern UN say nothing about the real issue, the prior issue, the unspeakable truth that is at the heart of deforestation, global warming, the depletion of the seas, the destruction of species and just about every environmental problem that afflicts us?

The biggest threat to the planet is not the lowing of the cows as they take over the Latin American savannah.

It is the dizzying increase in the numbers of people driving those cows and then eating them. The world’s population is up to 6.72 billion, and set to rise to 9 billion by 2050.

Now let me tell you something about the year 2050. It is not that far off. I fully intend to see it in, since I will be a mere 84, and I must say that I do not look with enthusiasm at the prospect of sharing the planet with another 2.3 billion people.

I am sure that they will all each be individually charming and they will all have much to contribute to the intellectual and spiritual life of our species. But they will also make life that much more crowded, sweaty and exhausting than it already is. They will accelerate the urbanisation of the world and the turning of rural south-east England into a gigantic suburbia.

And whatever Dr Pachauri may say, I do not think they will be persuaded to eat nut cutlets. Millions of years of evolution are not to be reversed by a spot of preaching from the UN. Man is an omnivore, culturally and probably biologically programmed to take protein from meat; and those meat animals must be farmed.

We cannot all eat moose, like Sarah Palin. We need cows. Not so long ago I stood in the vast canteen in the Beijing Olympic village and on one side were long salad bars, with virtually no one in the queue.

On the other side, of course, was McDonald’s, where Olympic athletes were lining up to take nourishment from the burgers reviled by right-thinking environmentalists.

Before Dr Pachauri preaches any more sermons against meat, I suggest he gets down to the UN canteen and sees what his staff are eating. Is he really going to snatch that schnitzel from their lips? Of course not.

It is time the United Nations remembered its historic role in campaigning against global overpopulation. There was a time when the UN used to champion female emancipation, education, family planning and all the real solutions to the world’s excessive and intolerable population boom.

It is time the world’s leaders had the wisdom and courage once again to talk the fundamental issue, rather than babbling about our diet. It’s not eating meat

that does the damage. It’s the huge and remorselessly growing number of people who want to eat it.

http://tinyurl.com/5zq277

Posted by Drew458     on 09/09/2008 at 09:38 AM   
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POOR SARKO OF FRANCE,IN THE FUNNIES AGAIN.  IN CASE YOU HAVEN’T READ ABOUT IT,,,,

So, president (France) tries to make nice and make peace over the Georgia/Russia thing which isn’t so funny because ppl are being killed.
Well it turns out that the French translation was faulty, don’t know who did what or what if any the side effects were.
But this toon does tickle.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/09/2008 at 06:38 AM   
Filed Under: • EUro-peons • Humor •  
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Italian politicians ‘praise’ fascist era of Benito Mussolini.

Well now, how ‘bout this?  Tho I am not surprised that many Italians are sick of and tired of the immigrants washed ashore in their country. Tired to tears of the damn gypos and their habits of centuries in undermining social order and training children to become thieves.  And they do.  And so I guess it’s natural to drift to the far right because they seem to be they only ppl talking openly about the problems of gypsies and out of control immigration and what to do about both.  And before anyone says death camp, no.  I haven’t read anything here so far that suggests it.  But I must say, far too many of those immigrants aren’t exactly ppl you want to live next door to.  Unless your house has the security of Fort Knox.  But Italy is an eu member I do believe and these problems are part of the curse of being so.  And so far, only the right is saying so out loud.  Sure, maybe they’re playing at the game of self serve. Don’t know but at least somebody is saying enough already of this pc crap.  Maybe some don’t care for the messenger.  Doesn’t mean what he has to say isn’t valid.

Criticism of the left and gypsies and immigrants should NOT be taken as racial attacks or a desire (although there are always going to be those) who dream of a return to anti-semitic race laws.  As for union busting .... hey. I’m all for that.

Two of Italy’s most senior politicians have sparked a debate about the country’s dark past and uncertain future after voicing sympathy for the fascist era of Benito Mussolini.

By Nick Squires in Rome
Last Updated: 10:35AM BST 09 Sep 2008

The combative right-wing mayor of Rome refused to condemn fascism as evil, while the country’s defence minister paid homage to fascist troops who fought with the Nazis in resisting the Anglo-American landings of World War II.

The minister, Ignazio La Russa, was speaking at an event marking the 65th anniversary of Rome’s resistance to Nazi occupation in 1943 and the role played by anti-fascist partisans.

But he also recalled the “Nembo” parachute division from Mussolini’s fascist “Salo Republic” who fought alongside the Germans against the Allies.

“I would betray my conscience if I did not recall that other men in uniform, such as the Nembo from the Italian Social Republic army, also, from their point of view, fought in the belief they were defending their country,” the minister said.

Hundreds of Italian soldiers and civilians died in September 1943, shortly after an armistice was signed between the Allies and Italy, attempting to stop the Germans from occupying Rome.

The inflammatory remarks, which were condemned by left-wing politicians, intensified a row over comments by Rome’s mayor, Gianni Alemanno, who said that while racial laws passed by Mussolini in 1938 were wrong, it would be too simplistic to condemn fascism as a whole, as an “absolute evil”.

“I don’t think so and I never thought so: fascism was a more complex phenomenon,” Mr Alemanno, 50, once the youth leader of a neo-fascist party, told the Corriere della Sera newspaper during a trip to Israel that included a stop at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

“Many people joined it in good faith, and I don’t feel like labelling them with that definition.”

Opposition MPs and Jewish community leaders accused the mayor of attempting to rewrite one of the darkest chapters of Italian history.

Walter Veltroni, an opposition leader and Mr Alemanno’s left-wing predecessor as mayor of Rome, said that in protest he would resign as head of a commission in charge of building a museum in Rome dedicated to victims of the Holocaust. He said he could no longer work for the commission because Mr Alemanno was also a member.

“Before the racial laws, fascism had erased the freedom of citizens who didn’t share its views. There was only one party in Parliament and unions had been destroyed,” said Mr Veltroni.

The president of Italy’s Jewish Communities, Renzo Gattegna, said it was hard to separate the evil of Mussolini’s anti-Semitic laws from that of the fascist regime itself.

An Italian survivor of Auschwitz, Piero Terracina, added: “Without fascism there wouldn’t have been any racial laws .(It was) a contagious disease.” When Mr Alemanno won Rome’s council elections in April he become the capital’s first right-wing mayor since World War II.

His election, and that of media mogul Silvio Berlusconi as prime minister in the same month, sparked a debate over Italy’s lurch to the right, amid a climate of xenophobia, distrust of immigrants and panic over crime.

A prominent Catholic publication suggested last month that the ‘Bel Paese’ could be witnessing a rebirth of fascism.

Since coming to power five months ago, Mr Alemanno has promised to crack down on crime, expel 20,000 illegal immigrants and raze 85 shanty camps inhabited by Romanian gypsies around the capital.

Once the youth leader of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, he is now a member of the National Alliance, a key ally in Mr Berlusconi’s government.

He was arrested in his youth for hurling a Molotov cocktail at the Soviet embassy in Rome, though later acquitted. He courts controversy by wearing around his neck a Celtic cross, in Italy a symbol of the far right.

Supporters insist that he has evolved from young fascist firebrand to mature centre-right conservative, and Mr Alemanno said earlier this year that he is tired of the “continuing search for [my] dark side”.

But his election in April was greeted by crowds of supporters, among them skinheads, who chanted “Duce! Duce!” and raised their arms in a fascist salute – images which shocked many in Italy and abroad.

http://tinyurl.com/62h4x4

Posted by Drew458     on 09/09/2008 at 05:39 AM   
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Cleaner demands compensation claiming lack of English is disability.

OK, So far she hasn’t won her case.  I very much doubt anyone here at BMEWS would condone cheating ppl on honest labor or taking advantage of same.
But this story really smacks of lawyer(s).
Lack of English? ah huh. 
Does this sound like an immigrant with poor English skills?

“I was fed up with being cheated out of my wages, being lied to, being treated like a child or a half-whit, and being part of a scheme obviously circumventing the minimum wage legislature.” Or does it sound like lawyerspeak?

Oh but wait, she didn’t know how long it took to clean a room and so she was cheated. huh?

A Polish cleaner claimed her lack of English should be classed as a disability as she tried to sue her employers for alleged discrimination.

By Ben Farmer
Last Updated: 9:51AM BST 09 Sep 2008

Izabela Smolarek, 30, was seeking £5,000 in damages from cleaning firm ISS Facility Services Ltd on the grounds of disability discrimination.

She claimed they exploited her inability to understand her job contract by paying her less than the minimum wage for cleaning rooms at a Travelodge in Luton, Beds.

However her case has now been thrown out before reaching an employment tribunal after a judge ruled Miss Smolarek had no physical or mental impairment.

Miss Smolarek, from Hatfield, Herts, said she had agreed to be paid £1.24 for each hotel room she cleaned, but said it was impossible to clean the three rooms an hour necessary to earn the £5.52 national minimum wage.

She claimed her Polish supervisor at the Travelodge, Krizistof Kowalik, had lied to her and the other female Polish employees about how long it took to clean a room.

In her claim statement, she said: “Not speaking and not understanding the language is a disability. It’s like being deaf and mute and illiterate.

“My employer exploited this disability to pay less than the minimum wage.”

Miss Smolarek arrived in England from Poland on October 25 2007 and started work at the Travelodge on November 24. She lasted just over a month at the job and has also claimed she was unfairly dismissed.

Her statement added: “I was fed up with being cheated out of my wages, being lied to, being treated like a child or a half-whit, and being part of a scheme obviously circumventing the minimum wage legislature.

“Brutal or subtle, such discrimination is always dangerous to the principal of equality, a principal so dear to the British soul.”

Her representative, Thomas Klarecki, told the hearing: “The law says you do not have to discuss the reasons for a disability, just the effects of the disability.

“It is not necessary to consider how an impairment is caused. Why Miss Smolarek cannot speak English is irrelevant.”

However, Judge Valentine Adamson dismissed the claim at the hearing in Bedford.

He said: “In the absence of any identifiable impairment, the only point being that the claimant was born in Poland and not a country where English is the first language, I find the claimant’s language difficulties are not capable of being classed as an impairment within the meaning of the Disability Discrimination Act.

“That complaint will be struck off.”

Miss Smolarek continues to claim she was unfairly dismissed by the London-based cleaning firm.

Another pre-hearing review has been scheduled for January 12.

Miss Smolarek is also claiming £981 for unpaid wages, holiday pay and notice pay.

A spokesman for ISS said the company denied the allegations but would not comment further.

http://tinyurl.com/5buxwj

Posted by Drew458     on 09/09/2008 at 05:09 AM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous • News-Briefs • work and the workplace •  
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   Monday - September 08, 2008

Let’s Have An Argument

Potato? Potatoe? Who can really say? (Well, I can. Dan Quayle can’t). But if you’re looking for a discussion ... or an argument ... there is a new web site. They’ve sent me a few emails already, asking for a mention. So, Ok, here’s a mention:

I think there might be some need for a web site like this. Not everyone has the time or the inclination to learn about everything. Most people have a gut feeling about most issues, but I’m certain many of them would like some facts and some more information to back that up. After all, you won’t last long in a big discussion if your only input is “I don’t like it”. It’s possible that OpposingViews.com could give you some reinforcement.

They contacted me because The Gun Thing comes up here at BMEWS quite often. It seems that all of us, so far anyway, have the same views on this one. But that doesn’t mean that some of our readers share them. Well, fear not, “some other readers”, you can voice your viewpoints here ... but I hope you have more information than just your gut feelings to go on, because people will give you an argument. And that is how it should be. So maybe OpposingViews.com can help.

In their email, they mention that

The unique thing about OpposingViews.com is that we have well known experts debating about issues of the day. You can find an argument anywhere, but it’s not everywhere that the debaters are actually vetted experts.

I would point out that almost everyone that I know who is involved even slightly in the Second Amendment “issue” (placed in scare quotes because it isn’t an issue: it’s part of being an American, and until just one or two generations ago was accepted as such. Common knowledge. But common knowledge isn’t very common anymore) has become an expert to a very large extent. We seem to know about a whole slew of court cases, judicial viewpoints, law, firearms knowledge, idiocy at the BATFE, history, etc., and also have a very high awareness of the disinformation campaigns out there, who is behind them, and why. That’s about as expert as you can get without actually working for CSI (and even those guys were weak in the Jayson Williams case).

But what if the question is not guns, but “do mercury preservatives in infant inoculations cause brain damage/ADD/AIDS/Alzheimer’s/Autism (pick one)?” then I’m not really sure. Do they? Don’t they? What kind of research has been done/is being done? How big a sample population are we talking about? What about other countries? How do local pollution levels factor in? Is it worth the risk to have my kids get the shots? What if all the other kids get inoculated, wouldn’t my kid then be safe without the shots? Many public schools require them before letting a child attend, but what if I homeschool? Maybe OpposingViews.com can help me learn the answers to those questions. (although I already know that plenty of BMEWS folks know. I’m pretty sure this one came up a year or two back).

Sure, you can Google all of it up if you have the time. And it can take a lot of time. And you have no way of knowing if what you find is right, wrong, real, or pure BS done up with a lovely green bow. Because Any Fool Can Publish On The Internet. This is what OpposingViews.com is all about. Both sides, right now, from reliable sources. Read, learn, decide. Pretty cool? Or pretty silly? Your call. But look first, then decide.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/08/2008 at 10:21 PM   
Filed Under: • Daily Life •  
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Airliner bomb trial: George W. Bush took decision that triggered arrests. recent update minutes ago

George W. Bush took the decision that triggered the arrests of the suspected airline bombers, it can be revealed, after Britain’s biggest ever terror trial reached its end.

By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent
Last Updated: 9:32PM BST 08 Sep 2008

MI5 wanted to gather as much evidence as possible before rounding up the men who it suspected of planning to attack transatlantic airliners but their hand was forced by the arrest of a key player in Pakistan.

Rashid Rauf from Birmingham was arrested after pressure was exerted on the Pakistani authorities by a jittery White House, US sources have told the Daily Telegraph.

The move threatened to leave members of the suspected suicide gang at large and Scotland Yard had to launch a last minute operation to arrest as many suspects as possible.

It can also be revealed that investigators believe the July 7, July 21 and airlines bombers may have met each other in Pakistan in early 2005 under the tutelage of Abu Ubaida al-Masri, the al-Qaeda commander thought to have taught them bomb-making.

Peter Clarke, the head of the Counter Terrorism Command was not expecting the arrest of the airlines gang and had to fly back from holiday, senior sources have revealed.

The decision was taken just days after MI5 told the FBI that North America was the target for a gang of suicide bombers who were building liquid bombs at a flat in Walthamstow, East London.

Rauf escaped from Pakistani custody in controversial circumstances 16 months after he was detained before he could be extradited to Britain.

Investigators belief Rauf, who was in constant telephone contact with the gang’s leaders as they neared completion of their plot, was the key link with al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

As well as advising the liquid bombers, he had also housed Muktar Ibrahim, the leader of the July 21 bombers, as he learned his bomb-making techniques a year and half earlier.

The Americans got cold feet when they were told that surveillance from an MI5 bug on August 6 2006 revealed the men talking about US cities and they were downloading flight timetables.

The CIA used electronic surveillance to locate Rauf in Bahawalpur in the southern Punjab and, following a meeting in the White House, exerted pressure on the Pakistani security services to move in.

But they put the whole operation at risk because police did not believe they had enough evidence to charge all the men and were relieved to find what appeared to be six suicide videos when they arrested the leaders of the plot in a council car park in East London.

“I was challenged to round them all up in 24 hours and I think I got them all,” a senior police source told the Telegraph.

There may still be others connected with the plot who have not been charged because the plotters allegedly counted 18 possible suicide bombers during the bugged conversation in the Walthamstow bomb factory.

It was only the discovery of the alleged suicide videos when the men were arrested and large quantities of bomb-making equipment buried in a wood which helped secure a conviction against the main players in the plot.

“Without the videos we would have had a problem,” a security source said.

A US security service source told the Daily Telegraph: “We would have been caught completely cold… they were completely off the radar.

“We had no clue about what they were planning and we only found out just before. The guys [in Britain] thought it was a domestic plot.”

A phone tap suggested that one of the senior plotters might be planning to try a dummy run in the middle of August, adding to the pressure from the US, but the British security service was not convinced that would go ahead and wanted to wait.

It was only after the arrests that investigators pieced together the connections between the suspected airline bombers and the failed bombers of July 21 the year before.

Muktar Ibrahim, the leader of the July 21 bombers, had been in telephone contact with Abdulla Ahmed Ali, two months before he launched his attacks.

Investigators believe Rauf was his contact in Pakistan because his friends’ belonging were found in Rauf’s home after his arrest.

The July 7, July 21 and suspected airlines bombs all share common features and the leaders of all three plots were in Pakistan at the same time in early 2005.

The security services believe they were taught bomb-making by abu Ubaida al-Masri, a high-ranking al-Qaeda commander, although the airline bombers probably returned in 2006 for further instruction on liquid bombs.

http://tinyurl.com/6fc3ef

Posted by Drew458     on 09/08/2008 at 03:45 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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Where’s Sarah?

I’ve noticed the MSM playing a game of Where’s Waldo about Sarah Palin. “Why is the GOP hiding her from us?” they ask each other all the time. Gee, I dunno, maybe because of the way you “greeted” her and her family to the national spotlight? Or maybe, as the media darkly suggests, they’ve got her holed away in some library studying up on foreign policy ....

photo rumored to be of Sarah Palin, getting a leg up on the opposition

GET ME OUT OF HERE ...

Posted by Drew458     on 09/08/2008 at 03:24 PM   
Filed Under: • Eye-Candy • Humor •  
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Look across the pond for a lesson in listening to the people .

By Janet Daley
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 08/09/2008

Having spent the past two weeks immersed in American politics (spiritually, not physically), I must try to readjust my eyes for the British domestic scene.

It is not just the difference in scale that is disconcerting - this is a small island, after all, not a continental superpower. It is the sense of a wholly different conception of the relationship between government and people.

Britons snigger at Sarah Palin but in American politics ordinary people call the shots.

After more than 40 years as an American expatriate living in Britain, I have not got over the shock of being in a democratic country where the governing class holds the views of ordinary people in such contempt: the priorities of the public - whether they are uncontrolled immigration, lack of appropriate punishment for criminals, or the outrageous cost of the basic necessities of modern life - can be disregarded or dismissed if the governing elite decides that they are wrong-headed or benighted.

There is almost no sense at all of the principle that underpins the US Constitution: that in a democracy, the will of the majority of the people is sacred.

What prevails in Britain is the received wisdom of the professional political club. And that includes not just those elected to Parliament but their entourages, their party machines and their media hangers-on. Of course, Washington has its insider cabals and its incestuous “inside the Beltway” culture. But no member of Congress who wishes to survive can afford to become as detached and disdainful of popular opinion as members of the British political class openly (and shamelessly) declare themselves to be.

It is a positive point of pride among politicians here to say that they bravely hold out against “populist” demands - which is to say that they willfully ignore and deride the concerns of ordinary people because they are not sufficiently enlightened to be worthy of consideration.

This has produced a problem in deciding how to respond to the great vulgar exercise in mass democracy across the pond, so unlike our own dear patrician system, in which slightly varying species of a patronising, paternalistic elite will tell you what is best for you if you will just be quiet and listen.

From those first caucuses and primaries in which a succession of hopefuls - one of whom was destined to become leader of the most powerful nation on earth - trooped through the living rooms of Iowa and the diners of New Hampshire, it has been clear that this is a democratic process of another order.

Now there is an intruder on the scene who has jumped straight from the hinterland to the threshold of power. Sarah Palin has aroused vituperation of an obscene and disgraceful kind in the United States, but in Britain she is more often depicted as merely ludicrous: where America spits, Britain simply sniggers.

Both reactions are despicable. But the first at least takes her seriously, because even the smuggest US liberal knows that in the great popular process that is American politics, ordinary people will call the shots.

British politicians now duck any direct confrontations with the general public - the only equivalent of American “town hall meetings” are carefully staged events in which the audience is vetted, and packed with hand-picked “questioners”. The days when a prime minister (or even an opposition leader) would make himself available to open assemblies and face down hecklers is long gone.

John Major revived the tradition briefly in 1992 with his soap box, and was rewarded with a surprising victory over Neil Kinnock, whose staff studiously avoided any unscripted encounters with the voters. There is no reason to think that in the next general election there will be much change: the crucial test of a potential prime minister will be not how well he relates to real people, but whether he manages to stand up to Jeremy Paxman.

It’s a game played within club rules: if all the players decide that anxiety about crime ("moral panic") or concern about immigration ("ignorant bigotry") should be out of bounds, then that is where it will stay. And everybody - politicians and media alike - will join in the campaign to re-educate the people out of their nasty obsessions.

I go on about the media because they play such a significant role in this. In Britain, television and radio are heavily regulated in their content: in their news and current affairs coverage broadcasting organisations are required by law to be officially neutral and “balanced”, which effectively means that they must all subscribe to the premises of what constitutes acceptable mainstream opinion (as determined by the “enlightened few").

In the US, where regulation means controlling little more than the dispensing of broadcasting bandwidths, there is a wild proliferation of “talk radio” stations and competing cable news channels, whose political predilections are clear: Fox News on the Right is countered by MSNBC on the Left. The war between them (which in ratings terms is won hands down by Fox News) is explicit and lively.

You pay your money, and you take your choice. You do not feel, if you have views that do not fall within the circumscribed limits of a New York dinner party, that you are being driven out of the public discourse. If there is demand for a certain type of programming, the market will fill it, whether it is for political variety or ethnic diversity.

And just as the free market offers scope for diverse opinion, it also offers real power to the consumer. Americans expect the price of petrol to drop in immediate and precise relation to any drop in the world price of oil. They would be flabbergasted at the idea that a price-fixing conspiracy between petrol companies, combined with a rapacious, over-taxing government, could artificially maintain high prices even when the cost of the basic commodity had fallen.

They would be staggered, too, by the exorbitant prices charged by British energy suppliers, which could persist only in a country that fails to understand how real competition can protect the interests of ordinary people better than overweening government.

But at least Britain still has some sense of the value of mass political participation - unlike the architects of the EU, who have given up on it altogether. Having decided that democracy equalled mob rule, they opted for a return to oligarchy. Britain does not have much time left to decide which political model it prefers.

http://tinyurl.com/6josqq

Posted by Drew458     on 09/08/2008 at 03:22 PM   
Filed Under: • Editorials •  
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