6:42pm
Despite last week’s Appeal Court judgment instructing the British government to de-proscribe the Iranian resistance group the PMOI (also known as the Mujahedin Khalq Organization) which I reported here, Britain is still on its craven knees before the tyrants of Iran. The Tehran Times reports:
Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Monday summoned British Ambassador Geoffrey Adams to ‘strongly protest’ against a UK Court of Appeal ruling that supported the removal of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization from Britain’s list of banned terror organizations… Adams rejected claims that Britain had revised its policy on the MKO, saying, ‘We still regard the organization as a terrorist group.’ He expressed support for Iran’s view on the MKO’s ‘terrorist nature’ and said he would convey Iran’s protest to the British government. ‘As the British secretary for foreign
...
Continue reading...
Email to a friend |
Permalink |
Comments (27)
6:04pm
The invariably idiotic Commons Schools Select Committee says school tests at 7, 11 and 14 (SATs) are damaging children’s education. As the Telegraph reported, apparently the SATs have meant that not only are teachers ‘teaching to the test’ by focusing on SATs at the expense of education but, according to evidence to the committee from educationists, they make children feel so inadequate they destroy pupils' self-esteem, cause them to drop out of school and become mentally ill.
Oh for heaven’s sake -- what an insult to the intelligence. We’re talking here about bog-standard tests to ensure that pupils have achieved the rudimentary basics of education, and we’re being told they are the equivalent of child abuse. If teachers are ‘teaching to the test’, all that shows is that they are rotten, incompetent teachers.
...
Continue reading...
Email to a friend |
Permalink |
Comments (7)
9:53pm
I am just astounded by the Labour by-election campaign in Crewe and Nantwich. First, and most disgustingly, as has been ricocheting around the blogosphere, a Labour leaflet pretending to be a Tory party application form (subtle, eh?) asks:
Do you oppose making foreign nationals carry an ID card?
Since no-one has ever suggested that ID cards would be targeted particularly at foreign nationals, this appears to be a bizarre, indeed incomprehensible, attempt to play the race card.
But what’s really amazing about the Labour campaign is its strategy of portraying the Tory candidate Edward Timpson as a caricature toff, just because his family is wealthy. Reverting to class war like this really does show the depths of the party’s intellectual bankruptcy. It’s as if Blairism never happened. Labour are behaving like the apocryphal person who was stuck in the...
Continue reading...
Email to a friend |
Permalink |
Comments (24)
2:30pm
The Evening Standard reports:
Boris Johnson today promised to be more careful on his bike after he was filmed cycling through six red lights, failing to stop at a zebra crossing and mounting the pavement.
I have lost count of the times I have been forced to fling myself out of the way of cyclists jumping red lights or failing to stop for pedestrians on crossings. Their antisocial and dangerous, not to say unlawful, behaviour is exceeded in awfulness only by their arrogance. The belief that unchallengeable (if self-appointed) moral superiority precludes any possibility of doing anything wrong, thus putting a halo on harmful behaviour, is a defining characteristic of the left. But here is the People’s Boris (not to mention Leader Dave, another cycling sinner) descending into this self-same pit of moral blackness. Just goes to show — put a cycle helmet on someone and the inner lunatic is suddenly revealed.
Email to a friend |
Permalink |
Comments (23)
2:02pm
Credit where credit is due: the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, got it absolutely right yesterday in his excellent article for the Mail on Sunday about the iniquitous Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, which is being debated in the Commons today. The headline row over the Bill during the past few days has been about the abortion amendments, a development which is as regrettable as it was predictable. It was always likely that these amendments — to bring down the upper time limit for abortion from 24 weeks to anything between 20 weeks and twelve — would overshadow other provisions in the Bill which are far worse. In particular, these are the go-ahead for ‘saviour siblings’, where babies are conceived for the sole purpose of using bits of their body to cure their siblings of disease; abolishing...
Continue reading...
Email to a friend |
Permalink |
Comments (18)
12:28am
I’ve just caught up with Jeremy Bowen’s documentary on the birth of Israel which was transmitted last Sunday evening.
Sigh.
Most of what I want to say about it is said in this
critique by Honest Reporting. I would just make a couple of additional points.
The first is that, like so much journalism about Israel, this programme failed to acknowledge the true perfidy of the British in reneging on the terms of the Mandate they were given to (re-)establish a Jewish National Home in Palestine. First, in 1921/2 Churchill unilaterally gave away three quarters of Palestine to the Hashemites to create Jordan; then the UK sought to appease Arab terrorism (so what’s new?) by reneging on its undertaking to encourage Jewish immigration into Palestine, even while the Holocaust was unfolding in Europe, and...
Continue reading...
Email to a friend |
Permalink |
Comments (210)
Previous
