UK Commentators

Almost Lost - Detroit ...

2009-11-03T19:09:00.003Z

Hard times in the former Motor City. As City Journal reports :

Today, officials estimate, the city contains an astonishing 70,000 abandoned structures—many of them houses, but also some commercial properties. In downtown Detroit alone, a local newspaper identified 48 office buildings with “no outward sign of life.”

That’s not surprising, considering how many people have fled Detroit over the decades. Over the last half-century, the city’s population has shrunk by 50 percent, from about 1.8 million people to fewer than 900,000. Since 2000, the city has lost 35,000 residents. Detroit officials acknowledge that they see little prospect for a population turnaround soon.

The Sweet Juniper blog pictures some of the empty homes :

Can't see that happening in the former Motor City of Brum, no matter how far down the tubes it goes - this country's just too crowded. When we were over the water a couple of years back we saw abandoned houses outside Bakersfield (CA) and in Arizona - not to mention in Death Valley Junction, a place which has seen better days.

Also in CJ - The Mexicanization of American Law Enforcement as drug cartels extend their corrupting influence northward.

Evidently Savile Town - more unpleasantness in Dewsbury :

Insp Jenny Thompson, of Dewsbury police, described the attack on Mr Dyson as “nasty” and appealed for witnesses. She said she did not believe Savile Town was a ‘no-go’ area at night despite a number of unrelated incidents recently.

Sad in every sense - a young man killing himself on a bike he shouldn't have been riding, and the ensuing txtspk tributes/debate.

Brilliant

2009-11-02T18:29:00.002Z

While I do have some sympathy with MPs over the idiocy that's now taking over the expenses saga (what's wrong with employing your wife ? Do you have to sack your secretary if you marry her?) , I'm not quite sure that we're late-30s Germany yet, with MPs as Jews.

Ross has the perfect line for the MP who drew this infelicitous parallel.

More Nutt ...

2009-11-02T10:16:00.004Z

Blimey. The Tories are right about something. As Conservative Home puts it :

The Conservatives - who also disagree with the ACMD position on cannabis - backed the decision to sack Professor Nutt. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling issued this statement:
“This was an inevitable decision after his latest ill-judged contribution to the debate but it is a sign of lack of focus at the Home Office that it didn’t act sooner given that he has done this before.”

As I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong) Nutt offered advice, HMG didn't take it, Nutt threw toys out of pram. Not by publishing figures which showed (I leave methodology etc out of it*) that cannabis was less dangerous than alcohol/fags, something which is quite possible, but by explicitly saying the decision was wrong. At which point you can see why Alan Johnson lost patience with him. How can you ask someone for advice if the deal is that you HAVE to accept it or the adviser will go public on his disgreements ? At that point you may as well hand over policy to the adviser and democracy goes out of the window.

(* As for his brilliant insight that ecstasy is less dangerous than horse-riding, shooting up smack is a lot safer than climbing in the Himalayas - something which the government has no intention of outlawing. Therefore why on earth is heroin illegal ?

And anyone who thinks scientists are a bunch of disinterested, non-political types doesn't know anything about the history of science. Scientific disputes can be some of the nastiest around and can make politics look almost clean.

And on skunk, see the comments to my earlier post. That weed is a lot more powerful than the stuff Jacqui Smith used to smoke and Bill Clinton failed to inhale.)

UPDATE - Professor Bruce Charlton (of whom more in a day or two) on foolish people of high intelligence. Love the ending :

I should in all honesty point-out that I recognize this phenomenon from the inside. In other words, I myself am a prime example of a ‘clever silly’; having spent much of adolescence and early adult life passively absorbing high-IQ-elite-approved, ingenious-but-daft ideas that later needed, painfully, to be dismantled. I have eventually been forced to acknowledge that when it comes to the psycho-social domain, the commonsense verdict of the majority of ordinary people throughout history is much more likely to be accurate than the latest fashionably-brilliant insight of the ruling elite. So, this article has been written on the assumption, eminently-challengeable, that although I have nearly-always been wrong in the past – I now am right….

Seeing Is Believing

2009-10-30T21:28:00.002Z

I wonder how long this ebay ad will stay up ... (via)

Nutt ...

2009-10-30T18:31:00.003Z

It's amazing how stupid an intelligent man can be. Prof Nutt sounds a bit of a Richard Dorkins - a very clever chap who has trouble understanding people.

Earlier this week Prof Nutt used a lecture at King's College, London, to attack what he called the "artificial" separation of alcohol and tobacco from illegal drugs.

The professor said smoking cannabis created only a "relatively small risk" of psychotic illness, and claimed those who advocated moving ecstasy into Class B had "won the intellectual argument".

Public concern over the links between high-strength cannabis, known as skunk, and mental illness led the government to reclassify cannabis to Class C last year.

In the past, Prof Nutt has also claimed that taking ecstasy is no more dangerous than riding a horse.

Now it's perfectly true that if alcohol had just been synthesised in the lab for the first time, and tobacco and smoking had just been brought across the sea from some exotic empire (note that King James I (VI of Scotland), while disapproving, didn't criminalise tobacco use), it's likely they would be made illegal. On a strict damage-from-use basis, the Prof stands on unassailable high ground.

But that isn't where we find ourselves. Smoking has a 400-year history in these islands - the use and abuse of alcohol goes back to our prehistory. Dope as a mainstream drug goes back thirty or forty years (yes, I know about Queen Victoria, laudanum and all that), ecstasy 20 or so. There's a cultural reason why riding a horse is socially acceptable round my way and dropping an E isn't - people have been doing the former for a lot longer.

(There's a useful little paper on alcohol and history by Prof Virginia Berridge here. And wasn't James I full of good logic and observation ? 'oftentimes in the inward parts of men fouling and infecting them with an unctuous and oily kind of soot as hath been found in some great tobacco-takers that after their death were opened').

The Old Boy (and Girl) Network

2009-10-30T15:22:00.003Z

I blogged a while back on how the old-boy network worked for Jon Snow.

Tom Utley, son of the great T.E, on media recruitment 30 years back :

My surname was no hindrance to me, either, when I embarked on my father's trade as a journalist. If I remember rightly, there were 1,200 applicants in my year for just a dozen places on the Mirror Group Graduate Editorial Training Scheme.
But by dropping a name or two, I wormed my way on to the shortlist of about 30 of us, who were put up in a London hotel and subjected to three days of interviews, American- style personality tests and written exams.

At the end of this elaborate palaver, it turned out that no fewer than seven of the 12 successful candidates, including me, had close relations who worked in Fleet Street and were friendly with one or more of the Mirror journalists and executives who'd interviewed us. Indeed, it has often struck me since that they could have dispensed with the trouble and expense of all those hotel rooms and personality tests and simply asked us one question: 'Do I know your father?'

Not so for David Warren :

I was fully 16 before landing my first "serious" job, from which I now count the anniversary. This was as a copy boy, at the long-defunct Globe and Mail, in their long-since demolished art-deco offices on King Street, Toronto. (There is still a newspaper published under that name, but it appears unrelated to the one I used to work for.)

The job came via Clark Davey, later a publisher of the Ottawa Citizen. In 1969, he was managing editor of the Globe. I walked rather boldly into his office, to announce my willingness to do any job. And by sheer luck, I correctly answered his one skill-testing question, viz., "Are you on drugs?"

White Cities ?

2009-10-30T01:02:00.003Z

New Geography on the progressive towns of America - the Portlands, Austins and Seattles.

Why is it that progressivism in smaller metros is so often associated with low numbers of African Americans? Can you have a progressive city properly so-called with only a disproportionate handful of African Americans in it? In addition, why has no one called these cities on it?
As the college educated flock to these progressive El Dorados, many factors are cited as reasons: transit systems, density, bike lanes, walkable communities, robust art and cultural scenes. But another way to look at it is simply as White Flight writ large. Why move to the suburbs of your stodgy Midwest city to escape African Americans and get criticized for it when you can move to Portland and actually be praised as progressive, urban and hip? Many of the policies of Portland are not that dissimilar from those of upscale suburbs in their effects. Urban growth boundaries and other mechanisms raise land prices and render housing less affordable exactly the same as large lot zoning and building codes that mandate brick and other expensive materials do. They both contribute to reducing housing affordability for historically disadvantaged communities. Just like the most exclusive suburbs.

I guess it's just Ben and Chloe in an American context.

Education News - Burnley

2009-10-29T23:39:00.005Z

Remember Building Schools for the Future, the giant social engineering project which shut all the (de facto segregated) secondary schools in Burnley and opened five new ones, with catchment areas cunningly designed to produce a 'mixed' school population ? Half of which schools then headed for special measures ?

The idea was to improve social cohesion - a noble aim even if kids pay the price in worse education. Can't make a rainbow omelette without breaking a few lives, and all that.

So they've built all these shiny new integrated schools, which we will doubtless be paying for for years - they're PFI-funded. What's going to happen to the old ones ?

Er ...

The former Burnley College building has been targeted to get a 1,500-pupil Muslim boarding school for girls.
A leading charity has announced it wants to take over the vacated college in Ormerod Road and it hopes to attract girls from all over Europe.

If it goes ahead it will be one of the few Muslim girls’ boarding schools in the country.

Hmm. Were I a Burnley native whose kids have been moved I'm not sure I'd be totally chuffed by this (a/c/t the comments the school will be Barelvi, rather than the more fundamentalist Deobandi). And the new schools are costing approximately £250m. The old college has apparently been sold for less than £2m. Was the building put on open sale, I wonder ? Doubtless time will reveal all.

Gods Battle Successfully Against Stupidity

2009-10-29T07:52:00.000Z

I've wondered oft time before whether HMG know what they're doing. When they announced the cessation of all Territorial Army training for six months I was convinced they'd taken leave of their senses.

OK, the recession Labour produced has led to a recent rise in Army recruitment - presumably on the basis that you can learn a trade, and that while you may get shot or blown up at least you'll get paid in the interim. But the military compact is a long-term one - and to kick the volunteers, of all people, in the teeth seemed insane from both a short and a long-term perspective.

Short term - at any one time there are 500-odd TA personnel - part-time volunteers - in Iraq or Afghanistan. We need these people and we need them with decent morale. It's a blunder.

Long term - I keep hearing that we'll be expected to be in Afghanistan for decades, in the mighty struggle to get little Nooria to school and make Afghan democracy like the UKs, but with more all-women shortlists. IMHO it would be cheaper to wait a few years until UK democracy is more like Afghanistan's, but that's by the by. We should value highly those men and women who willingly give their own free time (and sometimes much more) to defend our country. In many families and many parts of the country there's a tradition of service. A tradition is much easier to break than to recreate.

I was pleased to see a few Labour MPs like Lindsay Hoyle put their heads above the parapet - and I'm pleased that the whole thing's now been reversed, and no cuts are to be made, although this episode will not be forgotten by TA members or families. But I still wonder what kind of system - and more, what kind of person - could have produced that idiotic decision in the beginning ?

Immigration - a smoking gun ?

2009-10-28T10:12:00.005Z

Here's the original Andrew Neather piece - you can see where he's coming from from the title. Key section (my emboldening) :

So why is it that ministers have been so very bad at communicating this (benefits of immigration - LT. I must admit I thought they talked of nothing else)? I wonder because I wrote the landmark speech given by then immigration minister Barbara Roche in September 2000, calling for a loosening of controls. It marked a major shift from the policy of previous governments: from 1971 onwards, only foreigners joining relatives already in the UK had been permitted to settle here.

That speech was based largely on a report by the Performance and Innovation Unit, Tony Blair's Cabinet Office think-tank. The PIU's reports were legendarily tedious within Whitehall but their big immigration report was surrounded by an unusual air of both anticipation and secrecy.

Drafts were handed out in summer 2000 only with extreme reluctance: there was a paranoia about it reaching the media. Eventually published in January 2001, the innocuously labelled "RDS Occasional Paper no. 67", "Migration: an economic and social analysis" focused heavily on the labour market case.

But the earlier drafts I saw also included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural. I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended - even if this wasn't its main purpose - to rub the Right's nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date. That seemed to me to be a manoeuvre too far.

Ministers were very nervous about the whole thing. For despite Roche's keenness to make her big speech and to be upfront, there was a reluctance elsewhere in government to discuss what increased immigration would mean, above all for Labour's core white working-class vote. This shone through even in the published report: the "social outcomes" it talks about are solely those for immigrants. And this first-term immigration policy got no mention among the platitudes on the subject in Labour's 1997 manifesto, headed Faster, Firmer, Fairer.

The results were dramatic. In 1995, 55,000 foreigners were granted the right to settle in the UK. By 2005 that had risen to 179,000; last year, with immigration falling thanks to the recession, it was 148,000. In addition, hundreds of thousands of migrants have come from the new EU member states since 2004, most requiring neither visas nor permission to work or settle. The UK welcomed an estimated net 1.5 million immigrants in the decade to 2008.

Part by accident, part by design, the Government had created its longed-for immigration boom. But ministers wouldn't talk about it. In part they probably realised the conservatism of their core voters: while ministers might have been passionately in favour of a more diverse society, it wasn't necessarily a debate they wanted to have in working men's clubs in Sheffield or Sunderland.

In part, too, it would have been just too metropolitan an argument to make in such places: London was the real model. Roche was unusual in that she was a London MP, herself of east European Jewish stock. But Labour ministers elsewhere tend studiously to avoid ever mentioning London. Meanwhile, the capital's capacity to absorb new immigrants depends in large part on its economic vitality and variety. There's not a lot of that in, say, south Yorkshire. And so ministers lost their nerve.

I hope it's not too late now, post-Question Time, for London to make the case for migration.

And here's his backtracking :

Somehow this has become distorted by excitable Right-wing newspaper columnists into being a "plot" to make Britain multicultural. There was no plot. I've worked closely with Ms Roche and Jack Straw and they are both decent, honourable people whom I respect (not something I'd say for many politicians). What's more, both were robust on immigration when they needed to be: Straw had driven through a tough Immigration and Asylum Act in 1999 and Roche had braved particularly cruel flak from the Left over asylum seekers.

Rather, my sense was that the nervousness came primarily from No 10. According to my notes of one meeting in mid-July 2000, held at the PIU's offices in Admiralty Arch, there was a debate about whether the report should be published by the PIU or by the Home Office: the PIU didn't think the Prime Minister wanted his "prints" on it. From Tony Blair, the man who took us to war in Iraq on a lie - and who later fired the faithful Roche on a whim, months before she lost her seat thanks to the war - I don't find that particularly surprising.

Perhaps the lesson of this row is just how hard it still is to have any sensible debate about immigration. The Right see plots everywhere and will hyperventilate at the drop of a chapati: to judge by some of the rubbish published in the past few days, it's frankly not hard to see why ministers were nervous. The Left, however, will immediately accuse anyone who raises immigration as an issue as "playing the race card" - as the Government has on several occasions over the past decade.

Both sides need to grow up.

A creditable effort, but that moggy still won't quite get back in the bag. You can call it a 'plot' or not, but I don't think the label matters. It's not a smoking gun as in proof of a conspiracy - cos there ain't one. You don't need a conspiracy when people think alike. But ...

a) this isn't exactly a new phenomenon. I wish I could find the Guardian piece from four or five years back - I think in the days when Michael Howard led the Tories and I think written by Peter Preston, which celebrated an area of multicultural London (can't remember where - South-East?) as a triumph over the Right - in the sense of 'you've lost, it's too late - that old culture - and those old people - has gone for ever, you can't ever bring it - or them - back'.

And of course he's quite right - as is the anonymous PIU author who spoke of rendering the arguments out of date. How can even a moderate argue that successful mass immigration is possible with assimilation into a self-confident host culture (as in the USA up to the mid-70s) when there's nothing left to assimilate to. What host culture is left in East London or Woolwich?

b) it's not a conspiracy as in a cunning plan put together by the Bilderberg Group, the Freemasons or the Zionists. It's what happens when a culture collapses and is replaced by another culture - the triumph of the sixties cultural revolutionaries, many of whose younger adherents wouldn't even recognise themselves as such. Hasn't Britain always been like this ?

I happen to think that 'our' current culture is (along with 'our' current fertility) unsustainable in every sense, and sooner or later will be shown by events (probably not very nice ones) to be so.

At which point our rulers (and their children) will discover that the USA (or perhaps New Zealand) isn't the greatest evil on the planet after all, and get on the planes out.

A wee postcript. I get peeved with the occasional 'blood on the streets' stuff some rightie commenters post. Imagine my surprise to see leftie Dave Osler post this apocalyptic vision, way beyond Enoch Powell's terse classical allusion, on Liberal Conspiracy. Dave, if it's so good, why's it so bad ?

UPDATE - the Magna Mater Melanie applies the traditional shoeing and tells it like it is :

Let me spell this out again very slowly.
The neo-Nazi British National Party now has two MEPs, one million votes and a claim to a place in the legitimate political life of Britain principally because a very significant proportion of the electorate believe that Britain’s culture and identity are being steadily transformed by mass immigration...

Don't worry, the Tories'll fix it !

There could scarcely be a more profound abuse of the democratic process than to set out to destroy a nation’s demographic and cultural identity through a conscious deception of the people of that nation. There could hardly be a more worthy issue for the Conservative party to leap upon. Yet the Tories’ reaction so far has been muted...

You amaze me. Despite having many decent people, the Cameronians are in charge. They're not called Blue Labour for nowt. Don't expect the BNP to vanish the way the National Front did after 1979.

Melanie also notes the backtracking in Trying To Stuff The Cat Back Into The Bag.

I've Never Seen Anything Like It In My Life

2009-10-22T15:47:00.004Z

I've managed to avoid posting on it so far, but I cannot believe the amount of coverage the BBC are giving the BNP this week. I don't think I've heard a single news bulletin since the weekend where they didn't get a mention. Some kind of mass hysteria seems to be sweeping the liberal psyche - a moral panic on a grand scale. Could McCarthy's America or seventeenth-century Salem top this?

Today it ranged from Laura Janner Klausener (any relation to Greville ?) on Thought For The Day :

For me, a helpful way to understand conflict is to think in terms of perpetrators, victims and bystanders. In the context of provocation by extremists, we know who'd be the perpetrators and who'd be the victims but most crucial are the bystanders. The bystanders will be the spectators at home, watching "Question Time", some may be cheering, or others tutting and shaking their heads. Some may want to switch off completely.

There's certainly only one anointed victim for tonight's entertainment. Didn't the Fall have a record called 'Live At The Witch-Trials' ?

And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness:

And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited ...

I digress. From that, to - at lunchtime - Victoria Derbyshire on R5 asking some hapless BBC executive words to the effect of 'will you be able to sleep in your bed at night knowing you've facilitated all the racist attacks which are going to happen" ?

The salivating ex-decents of Hebden Bridge are doomed to disappointment, I fear.

Tonight in the pub, by no means a bastion of bigotry, nevertheless much chat from sundry locals about Nick Griffin appearing tomorrow on Question Time. Much was seriously depressing. He "has a point" say people I have thought were decent. Many, it seems, will be watching with anticipatory glee.The ratings are likely to go through the roof- for entirely the wrong reasons.

My money is on the whole thing being called off after a series of bomb scares. Martin McGuiness wasn't at the Labour Conference for his health, you know.

UPDATE - Telegraph live-blogging includes this spot-on quote from Conservative Home's Tim Montgomerie.

7:23pm Conservativehome director Tim Montgomerie tells Sky that the only thing that will undermine the BNP is a mainstream party which opposes unbridled immigration.

More Telegraph - Richard Preston (any relation?) :

"Only hours to go now until the fascist takeover ..."

Bestwood Update

2009-10-20T22:23:00.003Z

Remember Bestwood, Notts - the former mining community which was run by a criminal gang and which had 200 arson attempts in a year in just three streets ?

It may just be a coincidence, but a young man from Raymede Drive, one of those three streets, is on trial charged with murder and arson :

A teenager has been charged with murder after the raging fire that destroyed a home in Bulwell. The fire claimed the life of grandmother and volunteer care worker Sue Southern (54), whose body was found in the charred wreckage of the home.

Now William Rowbotham (18), of Raymede Drive, Bestwood Estate, has been accused of starting the blaze. Rowbotham was arrested soon after the fire, which broke out on South Snape Close in the Snape Wood area of Bulwell in the early hours of last Thursday morning.

Trial continues. This is a public information post.

Wroughton Hammer Attack - School Sued

2009-10-20T22:10:00.002Z

Mail :

A white schoolboy was battered with a claw hammer in an attack at a school where politically correct teachers were afraid to deal with racial tensions, the High Court has heard.

Henry Webster, aged 15, suffered a fractured skull and brain damage after being set upon by a gang of youths during a fight on the school tennis court in 2007.

In the six years beforehand it is alleged that staff looked the other way during a string of incidents involving ‘radicalised’ Asians.

Teachers were too anxious about being seen as bigoted to intervene as a ‘culture of racist bullying and harassment’ built up around a 30-strong gang called the ‘Asian Invasion’.

At the same time, white pupils were branded ‘racist’ by the headmaster and given harsher punishments than Asians, the High Court was told.

Fourteen youths, some of whom were pupils, have already been jailed over the attack on Mr Webster but it was not prosecuted as a racially motivated attack.

However, his family have now brought a civil action against Ridgeway Foundation School near Swindon, Wiltshire, claiming there was a negligent failure to maintain proper discipline and deal with racial tension.

They are also seeking compensation of up to £1million.

Posts (mostly straight pastes of the local papers, as local news sites tend not to keep the stories) on the Wroughton Hammer Attack here. It's just worth repeating some of the comments on the local website :

From A Ridgeway Pupil at 1.44 :
"I am one of the pupils and i know full well why they made they attack, the "asian invasion" want to be the new maffia, the kids in our year and school are always bragging about their cousins fights and how they aren't to be messed with; thus thinking this, they think they are above everybody else and can do what they like. At school they are given VIP treatment, they say jump and the teachers say "how high," and the reason why they did this to Henry was because they barged into one another, accidental, in the corridor at morning break. Whilst three of the year nines (apart of the asian invasion) were provoking a fight, Henry laughed at them and tried walking away, with the three of them still at it, he pushed them off of him and carried on walking. Then the three boys contacted their families and suddenyl the push turned into a "punch" to the face because he was pakistani.
So tell me, this isn't racially motivated and that was a decent reason to do what he did."

From Ridgeway Pupil at 2.03:
I find it disguisting that all he has been given is GBH. I attended school on friday and through whatever means (internet and work of mouth) these older Asian Invasioners said "if we see your face on the news or name in the papers, we will do the same to you and it will be worse." Students are too scared to attend school, whitnesses (200+) are tramatised and parents are outraged. This has been going on for long enough, it started off they physically and verbally bullied the younger white boys, they then brought knives into school, they taunted other indian boys who aren't apart of the gang, calling them "white wannabes" and betrayers, and only a couple a months ago one of their dads assulted a teacher and put a kid in hospital. All linked, all formulating from racism and never ever named and shamed. Nothing was done when a cousin who was in their 20s broke a year 11s jaw so i ask you, if they get away with this AGAIN what will be next? Death is what. The head has quoted on a day to day basis of the running of Ridgeway, there is no racism, which is complete and utter bull. It infuriates me that the teachers try brainwashing everybody who isnt apart of this group that it isnt racism when we try voicing about this group, bu the minute they accuse any others of racism, numerous people are expelled and excessive, unneeded action is ALWAYS taken. It infuriates me completly and the school are too scared to take fair a just action against them incase they are labelled "racist."

From worried at 7.22 pm 14 Jan :
I have two children at this school, and I have been hearing about this so called "Asian Invasion" group from them for some time now. I feel ashamed that I played down the stories that my children have brought home because I honestly thought that they must be exaggerated, (surely if they had been true then the Head would have acted accordingly to stamp out such racist behaviour). I feel have let down my kids by not complaining to the school before this had to happen, but more importantly, I am angry that all of the kids at Ridgeway have been let down in this way because those in charge did not have the skills, the vision, or the courage to deal with this racial hatred before it went this far.

The Rest Is Silence

2009-10-20T20:46:00.003Z

Indie :

When Charlene Downes disappeared from her Blackpool home in the winter of 2003, her mother, Karen, put her faith in the police to find the 14-year-old.

Six years later, there is still no trace of the girl, who is now presumed murdered. Yet despite a lengthy investigation and a Crown Court trial, no one has been convicted of killing the teenager. And, because of a litany of mistakes by detectives investigating the case, it is now unlikely anyone ever will be.
Yesterday, the police watchdog, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) ruled that covert surveillance evidence gathered against the two main suspects in the case was flawed. This means that the evidence can never be submitted in court.
The IPCC said that Lancashire Constabulary's investigation was "handled poorly and unprofessionally" and that the evidence contained a "catalogue of errors which undermined the court case". Seven detectives will be disciplined.
Karen Downes has given up all hope of justice for her daughter. "Whoever killed Charlene must be laughing their heads off," she said. "I feel really let down that the police put us through this trauma when they must have known there were problems with the evidence. To me this just means they will never catch who killed my daughter. They've got no evidence at all now, have they?"
The IPCC report relates to the May 2007 trial of Iyad Albattikhi, who was charged with murdering Charlene, and Mohammed Raveshi, who was charged with helping Mr Albattikhi dispose of the body.
During the trial, the jury was played taped conversations in which Mr Albattikhi, who ran a takeaway restaurant in the seaside town, joked that he killed the girl, that she was "chopped up" and her body had "gone in the kebabs". In another excerpt, he said: "I killed her, I killed a girl ... I was just angry." His co-accused was heard on the tapes saying: "There is nothing left of her. She was here, she died, there really is nothing."
The jury failed to reach a verdict. A retrial was set for April 2008. However, while preparing for the second trial, senior police officers raised issues with the surveillance evidence, much of which had been obtained by a police informant, David Cassidy, who had worn a wire-tap device when speaking to Mr Albattikhi and Mr Raveshi.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) was notified, as was the IPCC. The second trial was abandoned when the CPS offered no evidence against the men. Mr Albattikhi and Mr Raveshi, who say they have never met Charlene, were released.
Yesterday, after an 18-month investigation, the IPCC revealed that the flaws in the evidence included the fact that much of the recorded tape and video evidence was not properly transcribed, that the officers working on the investigation were "inexperienced and untrained" and that the informant, Mr Cassidy, was not properly briefed and so therefore asked the suspects leading questions.
One officer will face a disciplinary hearing, one has received a written warning and five will be given words of advice. Two other detectives retired before the investigation was completed and so cannot now be dealt with by the IPCC. A 10th, who has also retired but is still employed in a civilian capacity, will have his position considered.
Naseem Malik, the IPCC commissioner for the North-west, said: "Six years since the disappearance of Charlene, her parents are no nearer to knowing what happened to their daughter. I cannot imagine how distressing this must be for them. The failings in Lancashire Constabulary's investigation can only have compounded that distress. Lessons must be learned ... to ensure such failures cannot happen again."
The disappearance of Charlene, who would be aged 20 now, exposed a dark side to Blackpool's holiday resort image. During the trial, the court heard that Charlene was one of a number of girls who frequented local takeaways and performed sex acts on male employees in exchange for food and cigarettes.
The tragedy has also taken its toll on the Downes family. A week after the trial collapsed, Karen Downes was arrested for stabbing her husband, Robert, during an argument. He did not press charges, saying he understood his wife lashed out because of grief and distress.
Last month, Charlene's older sister Emma, 24, went on trial for racially assaulting Iyad Albattikhi's brother, Tariq, at a nightclub. The charge was dropped when she admitted a lesser charge of common assault, accepting she slapped the man once. She was stopped from doing so a second time when he grabbed her hand and told her: "It's got nothing to do with me."
Karen Downes is still angry. She has criticised the police for not doing enough to find her daughter, saying that Charlene's working-class upbringing meant that her disappearance was not taken seriously.
"I often wonder," her mother says, "if she had been from a posh family and was having piano lessons, would they have tried harder to find her?"
Even yesterday's announcement that the police officers whose conduct during the investigation effectively scuppered any hope of a prosecution will be disciplined has not sated her anger.
She told The Independent: "I have only just come to terms with the fact that Charlene is dead. It's very hard to accept, but I know deep down that she must be dead because she would have been back by now if she wasn't.
"I've been told I'll get an apology from the police but I don't want them to say sorry. An apology is not going to find my daughter. The fact that some police officers will be punished is no consolation. I want to know what the police plan to do now. But I know the answer: nothing. There is nothing they can do. Unless they find her body and it has DNA or some sort of forensic evidence, there is no way they will be able to convict anyone now."

God rest her soul. Other posts on the Charlene Downes murder here.

A Small Postette

2009-10-20T08:52:00.001Z

at Biased-BBC.

From Whence Hails Huhne ?

2009-10-19T21:04:00.006Z

Everyone knows about Lib Dem Lembit Opik’s Estonian heritage, featuring astronomer and meteor guru Ernst Opik - not to mention great-uncle Oskar sieg-heiling through WW2 as a senior member of the puppet Estonian government set up when the Germans arrived.

But Chris Huhne is a bit of a mystery man out of nowhere. Nothing about his parents on wikipedia or any other bio that I’ve seen. Most politicians are only too pleased to tell you about how they got all their values from great-aunt Gertie. Where's the hinterland ? (Lib dem leader and fellow Westminster old boy Nick Clegg has an interesting background too).

Huhne is a pretty unusual surname in the UK – according to the National Trust names site (which shows the geographical distribution of UK surnames) there were fewer than 100 Huhnes on the 1998 electoral register. The FreeBMD genealogy site (which isn't a complete record) shows only two male Huhnes born in the UK between 1837 and 1983 - Paul Harry Huhne in St Pancras in 1903 and Peter I Huhne (with an umlaut) to Harry P and Mrs Huhne (nee Hancock) in Hendon in June 1926. There aren't even very many in Germany - Huhne does have a bit of a Teutonic ring to it.

Whence do his forebears spring ? Or did he just leap into existence fully-formed ?

(Update - maybe the Huhnes are related to the Hoons - perhaps this one)

Update 2 - everything.com :

Christopher Murray Paul Huhne was born on the 2nd July 1954, although strangely enough, Huhne appears to be somewhat circumspect about his family origins. As far as can be ascertained he was born Paul-Huhne, which was certainly the surname he was known under at Westminster School, and the one under which he appeared when his demyship at Magdalene was announced in The Times in 1971. Understandably for someone who was later active in the Labour Party, he then seems to have dropped the double barrelled 'Paul-Huhne' in favour of plain 'Huhne'.

His father Peter Ivor Paul-Huhne was a businessman who, although originally a Conservative, became interested in Liberal politics as a consequence of the invasion of Suez in 1956, and married a Margaret Ann Murray of Toronto, and was himself the only son of Mr H Paul-Huhne who ran the British Electrical Resistance Company for many years and also married a Canadian from Toronto. His mother was an actress known under the name of Ann Murray, the high point of whose career appeared to be an appearance as the 'motorist' in the UK made Psychomania (1973). Chris Huhne himself once claimed that she played Clark Kent's mother in one of the Superman movies, but this claim appears to be nothing more than a figment of Huhne's imagination.

Robert Kirby 1948-2009

2009-10-18T19:31:00.003Z

I mentioned a while back Harry Robinson's work with Nick Drake and Sandy Denny, but most of Nick Drake's string arrangements were done by Robert Kirby, a fellow Cambridge student when they met.

Times obituary :

At this stage, Kirby’s ambitions in music extended no further than becoming a music teacher at a public school: “doing the choir, a bit of Gilbert and Sullivan,” as he put it many years later to Drake’s biographer, Patrick Humphries. Five Leaves Left was well enough received by the critics but sold abysmally. Yet despite the poor sales, the cheque for his work was sufficiently substantial to persuade Kirby to leave Cambridge and embark upon a full-time career as an arranger. One of his favourite stories concerned a parting shot to one of his disapproving tutors at Cambridge, who told him that his work sounded like a television commercial. “Gosh, as good as that,” was Kirby’s well-aimed response...

Finding it increasingly hard to make a decent living as an arranger, he took up a career in marketing.

I liked the recorders and strings he did for Vashti Bunyan, on whom I blogged here.

Baby-Mamas

2009-10-16T22:36:00.003Z

I can remember definitely one, possibly two girls at Bromsgrove High School having babies (and leaving).

US blogger Sandra Rose on the US high school where 115 out of 800 girls are pregnant. Lordy. Their Prom must be really something.

The school is the Paul Robeson High School. I don't think the great man would be impressed.

I suppose this Robeson song would be most appropriate for the story. But lets have this, which my mother - a great Robeson fan like so many in 1930s South Wales - often sang to her little ones.

(via Booker Rising)

Friday Night Is Boogaloo Night

2009-10-16T20:05:00.003Z

No, no, no - Pedro Gutierrez aka Pete Terrace aka the King of the Boogaloo (also featured here and here).

Pete could play in a more jazzy Latin style too. This is pretty cool.

What's Been Happening, Then ?

2009-10-15T11:21:00.002Z

Three biggish things struck me over the last fortnight.

The BBC and their - not exactly an about-turn, but certainly a halt - on global warming :

What happened to global warming?

By Paul Hudson
Climate correspondent, BBC News

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

That doesn't mean the BBC (or I) have abandoned the principle that chucking large amounts of CO2 into the air is not a wise thing to do without knowing the possible consequences. But once again the existing climate change models seem to have failed - as so often before. Doubtless they will be tweaked until once more they match the latest data, but this is, in the words of the late Sir Fred Hoyle :

“Bloody bad science,” growled Alexandrov. “Correlations obtained after experiments done is bloody bad. Only prediction in science.”

“I don't follow.”

“What Alexis means is that only predictions really count in science,” explained Weichart. “That's the way Kingsley downed me an hour or two ago. It's no good doing a lot of experiments first and then discovering a lot of correlations afterwards, not unless the correlations can be used for making new predictions. Otherwise it's like betting on a race after it's been run.”

On a related issue, it seems we're not going to run out of fossil energy quite yet - a good thing too, given our nuclear shambles and our green dreamworld.

Energy crisis is postponed as new gas rescues the world

Engineers have performed their magic once again. The world is not going to run short of energy as soon as feared. America is not going to bleed its wealth importing fuel. Russia's grip on Europe's gas will weaken. Improvident Britain may avoid paralysing blackouts by mid-decade after all.

The World Gas Conference in Buenos Aires last week was one of those events that shatter assumptions. Advances in technology for extracting gas from shale and methane beds have quickened dramatically, altering the global balance of energy faster than almost anybody expected.

Tony Hayward, BP's chief executive, said proven natural gas reserves around the world have risen to 1.2 trillion barrels of oil equivalent, enough for 60 years' supply – and rising fast. "There has been a revolution in the gas fields of North America. Reserve estimates are rising sharply as technology unlocks unconventional resources," he said.

This is almost unknown to the public, despite the efforts of Nick Grealy at "No Hot Air" who has been arguing for some time that Britain's shale reserves could replace declining North Sea output.

The advances involve shattering rocks deep underground, freeing the gases they contain. We might even see a self-sufficient United States once more.

Last but by no means least, the Government are actually rattled enough about the decline of their white working class vote (and the rise of the BNP vote) to try and do something about it.

Wrapping himself in the Union Flag doesn't seem to have worked for Gordon. We have moved into a new phase of the Canute-like struggle against demographic reality and human nature.

A £12m programme to connect with resentful white working-class communities in 130 wards across England and undercut rightwing extremism was launched today by the communities secretary, John Denham.

He insisted it was not the role of the state to combat the BNP. But he said the Connecting Communities programme would address legitimate fears and concerns that if neglected could prove fertile territory for extremism.

The first 27 areas named in the scheme included parts of Bromley and Barking and Dagenham, in London, parts of Birmingham, Stoke and Nottingham, as well as Milton Keynes, north Somerset and Poole, in Dorset. They were identified under criteria including cohesion, crime and deprivation, perceived unfairness in the allocation of resources and feedback from local people.

The funding will be used to give local people the space to air grievances and ensure that the way housing, education, healthcare, jobs and training are allocated do not cause resentment...

He said the communities involved were the least likely to have prospered when the economy was booming and were the most vulnerable to the recession. "It's not surprising that they may question whether they are being fairly treated and to worry that others are, unfairly, doing better. Not entirely surprising that feeling unfairly treated can lead to resentment or worse."

Denham said it was necessary to make clear that the government was committed to making sure that every community in every corner of the country knew it was on their side. "No favours. No privileges. No special interest groups. Just fairness," he promised.

Trouble is, when you say to a community that you're 'on their side', who are the other side ? If you're on everyone's side then you're not on anyone's side.

I'll be interested to see what the Connecting Communities initiative actually does with the money.

"The funding will be used to give local people the space to air grievances" - and then you'll call them racists. How much space can you get for £12 million ? And as for it not being the role of the state to combat the BNP, look at the initial list of recipients - Blackburn, Barking (4 areas), Stoke, Broxbourne etc. It'll be interesting to compare them with local council election results.

When immigrant communities riot, or let off bombs of Tube trains, the concern of the Government, not necessarily having much clue about what's going on at street level, is to find 'community leaders' or minority organisations to throw money at. Throw enough money and a feisty firebrand can be tamed, although at an organisational level that didn't work too well with the Muslim Council of Britain.

But there are only one set of people who declare themselves to be the voice of white Britons. I don't see any of our £12m heading in that direction. Instead, according to the usually well-briefed 24Dash site "individuals will be encouraged to act as community champions or tenants and have a bigger say in local issues. This will help build up the confidence and self-esteem of residents so that they feel that they can regain control over their estates, their lives and their futures."

The rest of the money will be thrown at the usual suspects :

"There will be investment in councillors and other leaders and frontline staff to support their confidence and skills in addressing these problems and help them shape the strategy for their area."

The 24Dash report looks like a straight paste of a Government handout and is interesting for that reason. The message is that there isn't actually a problem other than a load of dreadful myths that need to be refuted. This one will run and run, with much dark humour to be mined therefrom. It isn't really funny, though.

Not Dead, Just Sleeping

2009-10-15T09:48:00.003Z

Apologies for the non-existent posts of the last fortnight - a bust computer and a lifestyle change have both played their part. I'm taking a few (two or three inshallah) months out of work to do other things - mostly house and garden stuff, but hopefully some walking and visiting too.

When I gave up being an employee some years back to go freelance I'd intended to take a break then - having been working full-time for some 30-odd years. But someone offered me some work straight away and I thought I'd better take it - then someone else offered more when the first job finished and so on. I've been fortunate - never actually had to send my CV out to anyone or search for work - which I will be doing come December. My latest project finished last month and it seems a good time to take the long-postponed break.

You'd think I'd be blogging more, not less - but it doesn't seem to work like that. After a day bashing a computer or nailing down business requirements blogging time feels like earned time - after the kids have finished homework. It feels a little odd after all these years getting up in the morning and not having some eight hours of task to perform for a third party - be it boss or (latterly) client. Instead I choose my own tasks - admittedly from a monstrous list. An old house and a large garden offer plenty to do. Fences, paths, drive, convert old kitchen into study, paint the external walls, repoint the inglenook and install a woodburner - and Susan would like a walled garden if I have the time.

Anyway, I'm feeling virtuous (and sweaty) enough for a post or two. Current task is putting a damp proof course in the oldest (no foundation, timber-framing) part of the house. Some genius before us had plastered straight up over the (damp) supporting bricks to the timber frame of an internal wall - then hidden it behind skirting. The plaster has acted like a wick and the timber is damp enough to need cutting out in places. A builder friend took a look yesterday and a two-pronged strategy agreed. Where the supporting bricks are crumbly and damp enough they'll be removed and replaced with new brick, new concrete bed and a proper plastic DPC - but you can only do this to one or two at a time, as the bricks hold the timber up which holds the wall up ! Elsewhere a DPC will be injected into the mortar - won't last forever but better than nothing. Injection DPCs used to be a professional job but the latest products are silicone pastes which can be injected with a low-pressure gun.

All good fun. I've just laid a small concrete bed and there's time for a post while it dries and before I head for Screwfix to pick up some DPC plastic.

High Speed Music

2009-10-02T19:59:00.002Z

Don't come any faster than this - watch Paul Warren on fiddle - or shorter either. But no one-chord wonders here :

What An Unfortunate Name ...

2009-10-02T19:02:00.003Z

It sounds more like the sort of practice that Harriet Harman would deplore being advertised on the Web.

(Best of order in the comments, please)

Guardian Morality

2009-10-02T14:27:00.003Z

This blog, eighteen months back :

Oh Lordy - "Disability Hate Crime". I suppose the idea is that although the current criminal justice system is totally unable to enforce existing laws on anti-social behaviour - witness the tragic fates of Christine Lakinski and the Pilkington family - they hope to add the disabled to the list of "protected species" aka designated victim groups.

The Guardian :

Although much of the abuse centred on the taunts about the children's disabilities, police failed to recognise it as a hate crime rather than simple antisocial behaviour, which would have made it a far higher priority.
The inquest heard that at the time of Pilkington's death, Leicestershire police had not implemented the Home Office guidance on hate crimes issued two years earlier.
Hinckley and Bosworth council's community officers visited Pilkington but never learned until after she was dead that anyone in the family was disabled.

And if poor Francecca Pilkington hadn't had a disability ? If she'd been harassed 'because she was there' ? Then she could go hang as far as the Guardian, the local authority and the police were concerned.

(via Dalrymple : "the seriousness of an offense committed in Britain now depends upon who the victim is. If a person is not of an identifiably protected group, he or she is not entitled to police intervention against abusive stone- and bottle-throwing youths. He is not entitled to protection at all. The Guardian’s article appears to accept that such behavior, so long as it targets a member of an unprotected group, is merely undesirable—“anti-social” rather than obviously criminal")

UPDATE - Aaarghh !

"Pilkington case may be a Lawrence moment for disability hate crime"

You Have Been Warned

2009-10-02T09:40:00.002Z

Some people on 'the Left' gave up on democracy a long time ago - both Cherie Blair and Helena Kennedy are on record as saying that they saw the law as a more effective method of bringing about radical social change than dull old vote-grubbing - and when you look at the helplessness of the law-abiding and the empowerment of the criminal today, who's to say they were wrong ?

(incidentally, if anyone out there has mp3s of Ms Kennedy's recent 4 part R4 'Jeopardising Justice' series, please get in touch - I didn't record them and should have done)

Still, that dull old campaigning stuff played its part, and Labour have been in power for 12 years, arriving with massive goodwill and expectation, soon to leave with the hatred of many and the bitterness of their own supporters.

Laurie Penny has been to the Labour conference :

On Tuesday I walked along the seafront with Hilary Wainwright (another public school leftie) and John McDonnell whilst those two seasoned old campaigners- veterans of 1968, feminists and formerly die-hard Labour activists - mused that the future of the left lay in direct action.

John McDonnell is a fan of the IRA ("it's about time we started honouring those people involved in the armed struggle") and has called for the lifting of the UK ban on the LTTE, more usually known as the Tamil Tigers.

It remains to be seen what manner of 'direct action' Mr McDonnell has in mind. Can't say we've not been told, though.