The plight of Strabane’s street drinkers will not be shoved down a side alley, the Chairman of Strabane Council has warned.

Jarlath McNulty was speaking after comments were made on a radio station this week regarding the town’s street drinkers and plans to open a drop-in centre.

A scoping document has been completed. The Council together with other agencies have identified a location and have spoken with the street drinkers. They are now putting together a funding package.

If funding can be secured, the centre would be situated in Strabane town centre and would provided facilities including showers, tea and coffee and access to a professional counsellor.

It would not however provide over night accommodation.

Well now, isn’t that nice of them? Apparently “street drinking” is such a problem there that the local gov has analyzed the issue and decided that there are two entire classes of street drinkers!

“The street drinkers need our help, not our criticism.”

The drop in centre is a project that has been developing behind the scenes for some time now and involves a range of bodies, including the Housing Executive, the PSNI and the Derry based project Foyle Haven.

It has broken on-street drinkers down into two groups, chronic on-street drinkers and the Friday and Saturday drinkers.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/28/2008 at 09:25 PM   
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Paging Doctor McStupid

Here it is Peiper. I couldn’t find it at the papers you mentioned, but it was over at the Strabane Chronicle.

Naturally the larger part of the news article is about the planned lawsuit.  Gosh, I hope the kid is Ok. That’s what matters, isn’t it? Isn’t it?

An Artigarvan mother is seeking legal advice over a blunder which saw her four-year-old daughter sent home from hospital with the wrong leg in plaster.  The shocking blunder happened on Friday evening, after four-year-old Megan Jack was knocked off her scooter as she played outside her Liscurry Gardens home in the village.  Realising the ankle was broke, Megan’s mother Rose immediately rushed her daughter to Altnagelvin’s Accident and Emergency department.

wrong leg

Speaking on Tuesday, Rose explained: “They did an x-ray on her right leg, where the bone was sticking through the ankle. But then they plastered the left leg. I was so tired that I didn’t even notice. But when we got home, Megan was still in a while (wild?) state and I tried to get her settled and gave her Nurofen. But then I noticed that the plaster was on the wrong leg and I said to my son about it.”

“I phoned Altnagelvin to check and they laughed at me. I couldn’t believe it,” she said.

The mother-of-four has been so outraged at her treatment by Altnagelvin staff that she intends to consult her solicitor on the matter.

“I had to go back to the hospital to have the plaster changed the same night and they just laughed at me again. I’m glad they find it funny because I didn’t and I will be speaking to my solicitor about this. The attitude of Altnagelvin when I phoned them was ridiculous and if I could have taken Megan to another hospital, be it Coleraine or Belfast, I would have. What has angered me the most is that they made a joke out this. You never think something like this could happen and you trust these people with your life. I took my daughter to hospital for help and I got laughed at.”

“They let me and Megan so badly down and at this point legal action is the only course of action open to me,’ Rose said.

When contacted the Western Health and Social Care Trust yesterday refused to be drawn on the possibility of legal action being taken against them. A Trust spokesman told the Strabane Chronicle that the matter had been investigated and was being treated very seriously.

I wonder who set the kid’s ankle in the first place? I bet it was one of them foreign doctors. Probably this guy:

Sorry, It Was the Wrong Foot

JIZAN, Saudi Arabia, 2 December 2007 — A careless doctor put a cast on the wrong foot of a child suffering from a broken leg, Okaz reported. The doctor insisted on putting the cast on the right foot of the child claiming that he knew best because he was the doctor. He decided the child’s right foot was broken just by feeling it and not X-raying it. The father returned home with his child thinking that the doctor had done his job, but was shocked when he later discovered that the wrong foot had been treated. The father then angrily returned to the hospital where the errant doctor corrected his mistake.

Just how hard is it to ask a kid which leg hurts? Or to do some simple diagnosis, like touching it? Or seeing which leg goes sideways, or is all swollen? The Saudi story is bad enough, but the English one, a compound fracture, that takes the cake. What they both should take is the medical licenses. Forgive the pun, but bone heads like these two docs the world doesn’t need!

Strabane is in the north end of Ireland, between Donegal and Londonderry, well west of Belfast

Posted by Drew458     on 08/28/2008 at 08:55 PM   
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Killer so dangerous even police officers are warned not to approach him.  Law & Order ? Where?

RCOB .... what a crock.  Can not understand how shrinks could have this animal out loose. 
Can anyone tell me why this is a life worth keeping?  Oh yeah ... must be careful as he isn’t really guilty cause he be sik and also he be black wid a name nobody can pronounce so he have de cibil rights thing ya knows.  Victims? What victims?  Oh, you mean this poor sik boy? Wait, can say boy anymore can we?

Folks like this really need to be taken out immediately for the safety of the general public at large.  It should never , ever be ppl like him at large. Dead, yeah. At large? Never!

On the street: The WPC killer so dangerous even police officers are warned not to approach himBy Stephen Wright
Last updated at 9:46 AM on 26th August 2008

Police have been warned of the dangers of approaching a dangerous schizophrenic who is back on the streets just ten years after being locked up indefinitely for killing a WPC.

Magdi Elgizouli, 40, who has a deluded hatred of the police, has been granted leave from a secure psychiatric unit four hours a week in preparation for his permanent release.

He is also allowed out a further five hours each month to visit his brother.

Mental health chiefs say they believe Elgizouli’s psychiatric condition has improved significantly since he killed WPC Nina Mackay, and have granted him supervised release to help reintegrate him back into society.

However, police disagree, and an urgent message has been issued under Scotland Yard’s ‘officer alert system’ warning that Elgizouli is a grave threat to officers’ safety and should not be approached.

WPC Mackay’s father - retired Metropolitan Police Chief Superintendent Sidney Mackay - has also reacted angrily after belatedly learning that Elgizouli has been given leave from St Bernard’s Hospital in Southall, West London.

Jobless drifter Elgizouli stabbed his daughter to death with a seven-and-a-half-inch kitchen knife as the 25-year-old went to arrest him at a flat in Stratford, East London in October 1997.

Moments before her death, WPC Mackay removed the body armour that could have saved her life because the protective vest was hampering her movement.

At the time, Elgizouli was in breach of bail conditions for assaulting a police officer and possessing an offensive weapon, a knife, 11 days earlier.

Victim: Nina Mackay was knifed to death in October 1997
In April 1998, he was detained indefinitely and ordered to be sent to Rampton maximum security hospital in Nottinghamshire after admitting manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

The Old Bailey heard he had been ‘very ill’ at the time of the killing because he had refused to take the necessary medication for his illness.

Since being locked up, Elgizouli - who was born in Britain but is of Sudanese origin - is said to have responded well to treatment. He is now a patient at a secure unit in St Bernard’s as preparations are made for his eventual release.

In a letter to the Mental Health Review Tribunal, WPC Mackay’s father said: ‘Can I remind you that the death of our daughter remains as painful today as when it happened over ten years ago?

The opportunity for her to visit us for five hours per month would be overwhelming. That is not going to happen and our sentence continues unabated.

‘I am well aware the changes to Elgizouli’s condition are preparatory to his ultimate release into the community and I will do my best to ensure that those responsible are subsequently held accountable if he disappears or some dreadful happening occurs.

‘A little more openness about your intentions, unpalatable as we may find them, would be much appreciated in the future.

We remain the living victims of this dreadful event and owe it to the memory and love we bear our daughter not to see her death disappear as another statistic for an academic to ponder over, while the person responsible resumes his life as if nothing happened.’

Mr Mackay told the Daily Mail: ‘This is a man who became psychotic-through the use of cannabis and has expressed hatred for the police.

‘In the run-up to the death of my daughter, he refused to take his medication and jumped bail. I cannot believe he has changed much in the intervening years.’

An MHRT official said the patient’s ‘overall care rests with the detaining hospital’.

In a letter sent to Mr Mackay earlier this month, the Ministry of Justice said that, for confidentiality reasons, it could not confirm any details about Elgizouli.

An official added: ‘It is not the case that leave indicates discharge is imminent.’

Mr Mackay’s grief was compounded five years ago when the Home Office ruled his daughter would not be honoured for her courage by receiving the Queen’ s Gallantry Medal.

http://tinyurl.com/5g8j8m

story with photos at the link

Posted by Drew458     on 08/28/2008 at 01:51 PM   
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You would have thought she could find a bikini to fit… (she doesn’t fit it, she overflows it)

You would have thought she could find a bikini to fit… designer Stella McCartney’s costume takes the strain By Donna Mcconnell
Last updated at 3:28 PM on 28th August 2008

Stella McCartney revealed her wild side on holiday in Mallorca, in a brief leopard print bikini.

The usually well-covered designer, who made her name clothing the rich and famous, showed little of her usual reserve as she stripped off to enjoy the sun while on a family holiday.

But for a designer who made her name as the purveyor of high quality clothing, it seems she failed to get a bikini to adequately contain her.

Tight fit: Designer Stella McCartney’s bikini offers little coverage and her bust is threatening to spill out as she holidays in Mallorca

Stella’s teeny triangle bikini strained to contain her chest, and the black bikini bottoms appeared to be distinctly Brazilian in style as they bared plenty of bottom flesh.

And later Stella appeared to be struggling to maintain her dignity after she waded into the water, as her less than ample chest spilled out of the bikini top.

Despite the lack of coverage, the designer who is married to magazine publisher Alasdhair Willis, certainly looked stunning in her bikini, despite giving birth to her third child in January this year.

The couple have three children together, Miller, three, Bailey, 20 months and Beckett, eight months.

Swim queen: The usually reserved Stella wades into the waters in her Brazilian-style bikini which showed off plenty of bottom flesh

Stella and her family are holidaying in Majorca, and have been seen enjoying the sights, and a day out at the local aquarium.

The ardent supporter of animal rights recently showed the courage of her convictions, after threatening legal action when a leading fashion house featured a model wearing lingerie from her collection beneath a mink fur coat.

Stella - who refuses to use fur or leather in her own designs – is said to have hit the roof and threatened legal action after spotting one of her bras in the advert for Hockley, a fur boutique based in Mayfair.

Malfunction: The bikini finally failed to hold the fashion designer as she spilled out of the leopard print number on the beach

The offending ad appears in the latest issue of Vogue and shows a model in a black lace McCartney bra draped in a £6,450 full-length mink black and white ‘Atlas’ coat accessorised with a leather belt.

‘Stella went absolutely ballistic when she saw it,’ a source at her store in Mayfair told The Mail on Sunday.

‘I have never seen her so angry. She hit the roof and said that she planned to sue.’

For more views of lady Stella ... link.

http://tinyurl.com/5muuov

Posted by Drew458     on 08/28/2008 at 01:16 PM   
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Seuspected remains of a Second World War airman have been found dangling from a tree in the jungle

Body of WWII airman found dangling from a tree
The suspected remains of a Second World War airman have been found dangling from a tree in the dense jungles of Papua New Guinea.

By Nick Squires
Last Updated: 5:43PM BST 28 Aug 2008
The remarkable discovery, which has yet to be confirmed by military authorities, was made by astonished trekkers walking the Kokoda Trail, a tortuous mountain path which witnessed intense fighting between Japanese and Australian forces in 1942.

The skeleton of what is thought to be a World War II pilot hangs in the jungle canopy along the Kokoda Track

“I couldn’t make it out at first. It wasn’t until the wind blew that you could really see (that) it is in a harness. There are goggles and it appears to be caught up in cables, so presumably it is an airman,” said trekking guide David Collins.

The moss-covered remains, barely visible in the dense jungle foliage, were initially spotted by an Australian police officer who was on a trek led by Mr Collins.

He was using a telephoto lens to photograph exotic plants in the tree tops when he saw a jumble of cords and bits of parachute harness surrounded by creepers and palm leaves.

“We had a few police officers on the 19-man trek. One was taking photos with a large lens of the trees and flowers,” said Mr Collins, a firefighter who works part-time as a trekking guide for Melbourne-based adventure company No Roads Expeditions. “He then discovered what looks like the remains of a body.” Photographs taken by the trekking party show a dark object hanging about 45ft above the ground.

The trekkers marked the tree from which the object dangled so that it can be easily found again.

If confirmed as a human body it is likely to be the remains of an Australian, American or Japanese airman, left undisturbed in the forest for more than 60 years.

Papua New Guinea witnessed intense air and land battles during the Second World War as the Allies finally halted Japan’s southwards advance and began a massive counter-attack across the South Pacific.

The Australian military is preparing to send representatives to Papua New Guinea to investigate the highly unusual discovery and US and Japanese authorities are checking their records of missing airmen.

A spokesman for the Australian Defence Force said the location of the find, about half-way along the 60 mile-long Kokoda Track, is close to a flight path regularly used by Allied aircraft and that several aircraft went missing in the region.

The track crosses the precipitous Owen Stanley Range of mountains, which forms the spine of Papua New Guinea.

In 1942 poorly trained Australian militia troops were deployed to halt 6,000 advancing Japanese soldiers who intended to take the strategic town and colonial capital of Port Moresby, regarded as a springboard for the invasion of Australia.

Months of fighting along the treacherous jungle trail were marked by hand-to-hand combat, night time ambushes, illness and even cannibalism, as starving Japanese soldiers ate the flesh of dead Australians.

In what has been described by one historian as “a knife fight out of the Stone Age”, the Australian “diggers” eventually repelled the Japanese and drove them out of New Guinea.

The track has become popular with Australian hikers, trekking firms and even corporate incentive groups.
http://tinyurl.com/5ukpyt

Posted by Drew458     on 08/28/2008 at 12:36 PM   
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AN AMERICAN MOST AMERICAN NEVER HEARD OF. BUT LEAVE IT TO THE BRITS TO KNOW.

An obit on a brilliant American scientist and I’ll bet it isn’t covered like this in most American papers at home.

Wouldn’t hurt any of you guys to read this. 

Thomas H Weller
Medical research scientist whose work on the polio virus was rewarded with a share in a Nobel Prize.

Last Updated: 10:04PM BST 27 Aug 2008

Thomas H Weller, who has died aged 93, shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1954 for his work with the three-man team which made possible a vaccine against polio.

Weller shared the prize with John F Enders and Frederick C Robbins, two colleagues at the Boston Children’s Hospital. Their discovery in 1949 that the poliomyelitis virus could be grown outside human or monkey nerve cells led four years later to the development of Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine.

The importance of their achievement should be seen in the context of the immediate post-war period, when polio was much feared, particularly as it usually afflicted children and could cause paralysis and death. In 1952 there were some 58,000 cases in the United States; in England and Wales in 1955, before immunisation became available, there were nearly 4,000 reported cases.

Before Enders, Robbins and Weller carried out their research it had been thought that the polio virus would grow only in the nerve tissues of humans and a few species of monkey. The three scientists demonstrated that strains of the virus could also be grown in tissue cultures, allowing scientists to study it under a microscope and observe its behaviour.

The immediate effect was to improve the speed of diagnosis. Then in 1953 Salk announced that he had used the Boston team’s technique for growing the polio virus in cultures of non-nervous tissues to come up with a vaccine. This was administered by injection; a few years later Albert Sabin developed his more effective, orally-administered vaccine.

In 1954 – the year in which Weller, Enders, and Robbins won the Nobel Prize – there were 28,000 cases of polio
in the United States. Less than a decade later there were only 121.

In 1955 Weller also isolated and grew the causative agent of chicken pox and shingles; and in 1963 he and three other researchers isolated the virus that causes German measles.

Thomas Huckle Weller was born at Ann Arbor, Michigan, on June 15 1915. His father was chairman of the pathology department at Michigan University, where Thomas was a student before going on to Harvard Medical School to read Pathology, Bacteriology and Medicine.

During the Second World War Weller was attached to a US Army laboratory on Puerto Rico that was responsible for malaria control at American bases in the Caribbean. Then in 1946 he became a research fellow in paediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital and began working with Enders at the new research division of infectious diseases. Robbins joined them the next year.

Weller was also widely respected for his work in the field of tropical medicine. He was appointed Richard Pearson Strong Professor of Tropical Medicine at the Harvard School of Public Health in 1954, and remained professor emeritus until his death on August 23.

From 1953 to 1959 he was director of the commission on parasitic diseases at the American Armed Forces Epidemiological Board. He headed the department of tropical public health at Harvard from 1954 to 1981, and was a past president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene – he was awarded that organisation’s Walter Reed Medal in 1996.

Thomas Weller is survived by his wife, Kathleen, and two sons and a daughter.

http://tinyurl.com/5jttsx

Posted by Drew458     on 08/28/2008 at 11:37 AM   
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Pope’s fury as crucified frog statue goes on display at Italian museum.

Okay so it isn’t a real froggy but that isn’t the point.

You don’t have to be Catholic or even a Christian to understand the pope’s feelings on this. Or any religious Christian for that matter.

I am not posting the image but it’s at the link provided below.

Pope’s fury as crucified frog statue goes on display at Italian museum

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 3:42 PM on 28th August 2008

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An Italian museum has defied Pope Benedict by refusing to remove a statue of a crucified green frog clutching a beer mug and an egg.

The Vatican had condemned the modern art sculpture as blasphemous.

The board of the Museion museum in the northern city of Bolzano voted it was a work of art, however.

The board decreed it would stay in place for the remainder of an exhibition.

The wooden sculpture by the late German artist Martin Kippenberger depicts a frog about 1 metre 30 cm (4 feet) high nailed to brown cross and holding a beer mug in one outstretched hand and an egg in another.

Called “Zuerst die Fuesse,” (Feet First), it wears a green loin cloth and is nailed through the hands and the feet in the manner of Jesus Christ. Its green tongue hangs out of its mouth.

Kippenberger’s works have been shown at the Tate Modern and the Saatchi Gallery in London and at the Venice Biennale, and retrospectives are planned in Los Angeles and New York.

Museum officials in the northern bi-lingual Alto Adige region near the Austrian border said the artist, who died in 1997, considered it a self-portrait illustrating human angst.

Pope Benedict, who is German himself and was recently on holiday not far from Bolzano, obviously did not agree.

The Vatican wrote a letter of support in the pope’s name to Franz Pahl, president of the regional government who opposed the sculpture. Pahl released parts of the letter, which said the work “wounds the religious sentiments of so many people who see in the cross the symbol of God’s love”.

Pahl, whose province is heavily Catholic, was so outraged by the sculpture of the pop-eyed amphibian that he went on a hunger strike to demand its removal and had to be taken to hospital during the summer.

“Surely this is not a work of art but a blashphemy and a disgusting piece of trash that upsets many people,” Pahl said.

“This decision to keep the statue there is is totally unacceptable. It is a grave offence to our Catholic population,” he said.

Art experts defended the work.

“Art must always be free and the artist should not have any restrictions on freedom of expression,” Claudio Strinati, a superindendent for Rome’s state museums, told an Italian newspaper today.

(right Claudio. agreed. and ppl also have the right to an opinion that says something is no more then degenerate crap created by a diseased mind)

http://tinyurl.com/6s37s6

Posted by Drew458     on 08/28/2008 at 10:51 AM   
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News For The Gullible

While most cats are known for their ability to land on their feet, some in China may soon be able to glide to safety on their mysterious wings.  A tabby from the Qingyan province in China recently sprouted a pair of fur-covered wings on his back during a hot-weather spell, the U.K.’s Daily Mail reported.  Immediately, the unique kitty became a spectacle to behold, as visitors flocked to see the unusual feline.  One cat owner, identified only as Feng, claimed her pet’s wings were the result of stress from too many females desiring to mate with him, the Mail reported.

But the owner later grew fearful that the tabby would either be stolen by envious admirers or that it would fly away and decided to cut one of the two flappers off, World Entertainment News Network said.

Cats with wings can be explained through several scientific explanations, including leg deformities, huge mats of hair or a condition known as feline cutaneous asthenia or FCA, which causes the cat’s skin to grow in heavy folds on its back or shoulders, online magazine Cryptozoology reported.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/28/2008 at 09:55 AM   
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MUSLIM CITY COUNCIL CHIEFS IN UK WANT A BAN EVEN FOR NON-MUDSLIMES DURING RAMADAMN

How about this latest from a member of the ROP.  I hope they all freekin die!

These SOBs just can’t be happy unless and until EVERYONE is under their greasy unwashed collective thumbs.

Screw em all!  I hope the Brits will not cave in to this latest bit of BS!  I don’t believe they will on this one.

Yeah ... It RCOB time.  OK, it isn’t the entire country this one idiot is talking about but. As I see it it’s simply the first of how many future demands to be made.
No doubt this a-hole won’t get his way but even asking is an outrage.  Imagine if you will the reaction of this minority (for now) group if they were asked to observe a Jewish or a Christian practice for a month?

Muslim council chiefs ban ALL members from ‘tea and sandwiches’ in meetings which take place during Ramadan

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 1:04 PM on 28th August 200

Muslim council leaders have sparked outrage after trying to ban all councillors eating in meetings until sunset during the holy month of Ramadan.

Politicians have hit out after the move to impose hardline Islamic rules on non-Muslim colleagues throughout September.

The bombshell has been dropped by Labour chiefs of the notoriously loony Tower Hamlets Council in east London.

The storm was sparked by an e-mail sent to all councillors this week highlighting arrangements for Town Hall committee meetings next month, which marks the Muslim fasting period of Ramadan.
The memo said that new council leader Lutfur Rahman and his deputy, Siraj Islam, had requested that meetings be kept to a minimum to accommodate fasting councillors.

They have also urged all other councillors to resist eating until the breaking of the fast at sunset.

Cllr Stephanie Eaton, leader of the Lib Dem group on the left-wing East End authority, said she would be ignoring the new Ramadan regime.

She insisted the new Labour leadership was favouring one religious group over others.

Cllr Eaton said: ‘The Liberal Democrats have enormous respect for the contribution of all faith groups and cultures to the life of the community of Tower Hamlets.

‘But we fervently believe that the rules of any one religion should not be imposed upon others.’

It is the first time such a request has been made and it comes as Ramadan falls earlier this year during the longer daylight hours.

(bet it won’t be the last either)

Council bosses have also ordered that the town hall’s business agenda should be reduced, with only seven scheduled committee meetings for the entire month, to deal with the Ramadan restrictions.

(Sure thing. Give in to keep the peace on another issue and keep on toadying. Kick em out of this country is the answer. They DO NOT BELONG HERE!)

Officers have also been barred from arranging any more and been told to explore ways of dropping some of the scheduled seven.

Those going ahead generally start at about 6.30pm.

So with sunset due to fall just after 7.30pm at the beginning of September and around 6.30pm by the end of Ramadan, the breaking of the fast will take place during meetings.

At those points, there will be 45-minute adjournments to allow members to eat and pray, council leaders have ordered.

But it is the arrangements for the food and other refreshments that has angered Cllr Eaton and the rest of her party, which includes two Muslim councillors.

Normally tea, coffee and sandwiches are set aside for councillors to nibble at during evening meetings.

But during Ramadan these will be reduced and complemented by special Muslim food packs containing chicken, lamb and vegetarian snacks.

But in his email, John Williams, the council’s head of democratic services, said: ‘It is requested that members do not partake of any refreshments until after the Iftar refreshments are served.’

Cllr Eaton said that was going too far. Speaking on behalf of all her stunned party colleagues, she said: ‘I was rather disconcerted to see that the arrangements put in place for Ramadan, which we support for Muslim colleagues, have been imposed upon all councillors. 

‘We object to the request that non-Muslim councillors observe the fasting rules for Ramadan.

‘This sends out the wrong message to our community.Our community consists of a huge number of different religions, all of which should be valued, and no one religion should be accorded more status or influence than others.

‘Freedom of belief is an important human right, and we Liberal Democrat councillors, Muslim and non-Muslim, agree that this request is inappropriate.’

Cllr Eaton has also written to Town Hall bosses about her concerns that their move ‘will not enhance community cohesion and asking for their reassurance that no faith is given any particular status or priority in the operation or decisions of the council’.

Council bosses said their arrangements were in place ‘where it is not reasonable to expect members observing Ramadan, and who are required to attend a formal committee or other meeting, to travel home in time for sundown in order to break fast and undertake prayers’.

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic Lunar looney calendar and the holiest of the four holy months. It begins with the sighting of the new moon after which all physically mature and healthy Muslims are obliged to abstain from all food, drink, gum chewing, any kind of tobacco use, and any kind of sexual contact between dawn and sunset.

http://tinyurl.com/5bwctl

Posted by Drew458     on 08/28/2008 at 09:45 AM   
Filed Under: • Religion • RoPMA • Stoopid-People • UK •  
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A CALL TO THE POLICE. QUICK PLEASE, THERE’S A BURGLER HERE. REPLY, SOLVE THE PROBLEM YOURSELF.

Hey, not a joke.  Apparently that’s the message in reply to a 999 call to the police.  999 in UK is 911 in USA.

999 call answered with police text saying: solve it yourself
A couple who dialled 999 to report a burglary at their neighbour’s house received a text message from police asking them to investigate it themselves.
By Gordon Rayner Chief Reporter
Last Updated: 3:23AM BST 28 Aug 2008

A couple who dialled 999 to report a burglary at their neighbour’s house received a text message from police asking them to investigate it themselves.

Cambridgeshire Constabulary contacted Lloyd and Suzanne Bishop an hour after their 999 call to explain that it was too short-staffed to send anyone to the scene.

The message read: “Lloyd. Following on from your call earlier on to the police, please can you contact us if you are able to establish what has been stolen and where from?

“At this time we’re struggling to get the police to attend general calls for service, many thanks.”

Mrs Bishop, 29, from Cambridge, said she was “gobsmacked and disgusted” by the response after she and her husband saw a man smashing a padlock on their neighbour’s shed before jumping over a fence.

She said: “To text the person who calls and ask them to investigate what had been stolen, broken into and who did it is just incredible. It gives burglars the idea that they can get away with it because the police aren’t going to send anyone out. What message does that send to my neighbours here? Is it pointless to call police if you see someone breaking in?”

Mrs Bishop and her husband, who are full-time carers for their two-year-old daughter Lizzie, who has special needs, were woken at 5am on Sunday by the sound of the padlock being smashed and saw a man in a white T-shirt running off. Mr Bishop, 33, immediately called police and was assured that officers would check the area for the culprit.

He said: “I would have thought they should have been able to catch a man in a white T-shirt as there couldn’t have been many running around the area at five in the morning. The police are asking us to do their job. It makes you wonder what we pay our taxes for.”

Despite his reservations, Mr Bishop did as he was asked, and looked into the shed, which did not appear to have had anything taken from it.

A Cambridgeshire police spokesman, said: “Due to the number of emergency calls we were unable to send an officer straight to the scene.

“All calls have to be graded by their urgency and, unfortunately, at this time there were a number of incidents, including reports of disorder and assaults, which police were attending.

“A text message was sent to the caller to explain that officers were unable to attend immediately and we apologise if this disturbed them.”

A spokesman from the Taxpayer’s Alliance said: “It is shocking to think things have got so bad that police are texting people to ask them to be volunteer sleuths.”

http://tinyurl.com/5av77z

Posted by Drew458     on 08/28/2008 at 08:53 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime • Daily Life • UK •  
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   Wednesday - August 27, 2008

Another Criminal Mastermind

     

An Illinois man who police say held five people hostage in a Fort Madison motel was arrested after he sent two of his hostages on a beer run.

Police say 33-year-old Jason Slagel, of Moline, Ill., is charged with five counts of false imprisonment and going armed with intent. They say Slagel pulled a knife during an argument Tuesday night with another man and told the people in the room that they wouldn’t be allowed to leave.

One man was cut and Slagel had a cut on his hand, but police say the injuries weren’t serious.

Police say that after awhile, Slagel got thirsty and sent two of his hostages out for beer.

After the hostages left, they called police and Slagel was arrested without incident.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/27/2008 at 11:48 PM   
Filed Under: • Crime • Humor • Typical White People: Stupid, Evil, Willfully Blind •  
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Hope nobody needed the potty

Sixteen guests took part in a four-course dinner Monday at a table attached to a crane with steel cables high above the ground in Berlin. The event, called Dinner in the Sky, was organized by the German adventure experience company MyDays and takes place in cities across Germany. (Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Posted by Drew458     on 08/27/2008 at 11:40 PM   
Filed Under: • Fun-Stuff •  
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Looks like Denver needs about 6 new cops

And let’s hope they’ve got a few million bucks just sitting around gathering dust ... because they’re going to get their asses sued off, big time. So long cops, you just lost your jobs.

Police in Denver arrested an ABC News producer today as he and a camera crew were attempting to take pictures on a public sidewalk of Democratic senators and VIP donors leaving a private meeting at the Brown Palace Hotel. Police on the scene refused to tell ABC lawyers the charges against the producer, Asa Eslocker, who works with the ABC News investigative unit.

(Click here to watch video of the arrest.)

A cigar-smoking Denver police sergeant, accompanied by a team of five other officers, first put his hands on Eslocker’s neck, then twisted the producer’s arm behind him to put on handcuffs.

A police official later told lawyers for ABC News that Eslocker is being charged with trespass, interference, and failure to follow a lawful order. He also said the arrest followed a signed complaint from the Brown Palace Hotel.

Eslocker was put in handcuffs and loaded in the back of a police van which headed for a nearby police station.

Video taken at the scene shows a man, wearing the uniform of a Boulder County sheriff, ordering Eslocker off the sidewalk in front of the hotel, to the side of the entrance.

The sheriff’s officer is seen telling Eslocker the sidewalk is owned by the hotel. Later, he is seen pushing Eslocker off the sidewalk into oncoming traffic, forcing him to the other side of the street.

It was two hours later when Denver police arrived to place Eslocker under arrest, apparently based on a complaint from the Brown Palace Hotel, a central location for Democratic officials.

During the arrest, one of the officers can be heard saying to Eslocker, “You’re lucky I didn’t knock the f..k out of you.”

Eslocker was released late today after posting $500 bond.

A producer for ABC News was arrested today as he and a camera crew set up on the sidewalk outside the Brown Palace Hotel.

Asa Eslocker was arrested for trespass, interference and failure to obey an lawful order.

He was being processed from the Denver City Jail and is expected to be released on $300 bail, said his attorney Tom Kelley.

Eslocker is investigating the role of corporate lobbyists and wealthy donors at the convention for a series of Money Trail reports on ABC World News.

“The Brown’s security guy got all upset and was telling them he owns the sidewalk around the Brown Palace,” Kelley said.

“There’s a vast difference between his story and the story cops are telling,” Kelley said. “He was set up on a public sidewalk. He was doing an investigative piece and was told he could not be on the public sidewalk in front of the Brown Palace Hotel. We don’t think that should have happened.”

Not exactly “recreate ‘68” but you knew there would be some heavy handed goonery going on in Denver. I gather a Code Pink person got knocked down somewhere too, but I saw the video and she was begging for it. This is a different situation altogether.

I usually don’t have the smallest amount of respect for news people. But the thing is, they have the right to do what they do. That whole bothersome 1st Amendment stuff. So when a news crew is out on a public sidewalk taking pictures of things that are going on in public, you leave them alone. You don’t go all bully-boy on them. Especially if you’re a cop moonlighting as a security guard for a hotel while wearing your cop uniform. And especially not if the newsies catch the whole thing on video. But I have even less respect for Idiot Cops. And you know they’re out there. By the hundreds of thousands. Well, 5 or 6 less by Monday is my guess. And that’s the least that should be done. With the post-911 militarism of many police forces, the power trip thing has gotten out of hand for too many of them. This was another example, albeit a small one.

via Insty

Posted by Drew458     on 08/27/2008 at 09:52 PM   
Filed Under: • Jack Booted Thugs •  
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