Smacking: Apparently occasional smacking does more emotional harm than taking children into care and fostering them to complete strangers

Two stories have really stood out for me this week, and more than demonstrate the problems with this once great nation.

Mother trailed by policeman and warned by council for telling off son at checkout | Mail Online

A mother who reprimanded her children at a supermarket was secretly followed by an off-duty policeman and interrogated by fellow officers who reported her to social services.

Yes, you read that correct. An off-duty policeman decided to follow a woman home, so that he could report her to social services for verbally admonishing her children in public, yes verbally, she didn’t even hit them. If only policemen were so meticulous in their duties when it comes to violent crime.

A recent survey has found that a third of violent crimes are either classed as not warranting further investigation, or wrongly classified. Add to that the fact that 40% of crimes are not investigated at all and it is clear that the police are now nothing more than vote winners, policing only politically important crimes and meeting targets.

The result of not punishing children is clear:

Victim: Beaten until she lost her left eye

Mother blinded after asking drunken yob to stop swearing in front of her 13-year-old daughter | Mail Online

A mother blinded in a sickening attack after she asked a yob to stop swearing in front of her 13-year-old daughter today accused the law of failing victims.

No-one, from their own mothers, right up to the police or courts has the ability to suitably punish kids anymore, meaning that these spoilt little brats are turning into violent, hateful and emotionally defunct animals.

Children are seen, heard but never punished

I remember when the liberal namby pamby’s decided that it was unfair to physically punish children, and they passed a law preventing adults hitting children under the guise of ensuring the safety of children. They assured the doubters that parents could still hit their children, and only those that seriously assault their children would be punished.

It it now clear that ‘assault’ means leaving so much as a red hand print, on legs or buttocks. In this case even the merest threat of physical punishment was enough to warrant Social Services contacting her and giving her a bad parent warning.

Such a warning is no joke, there has been a 38% rise in children being taken into care this year, compared to last year, a huge rise, with more than 25,000 children now being taken into care each year. It doesn’t take much for Social Services to decide to take children away from their parents, and once proceedings have started in the secret family courts, it usually ends in only one result.

Ironically during the same period, the number of young people cautioned or convicted of violent crimes rose by 37%. There are almost a quarter of million violent crimes committed by under 18s each year, yet just 24% of those ever do any ‘jail time’.

Clearly this mentality of not punishing children also pervades the Criminal Justice System.

The Decline of Britain

The average age of young offenders held in custody is tumbling dramatically, as is the average age of young killers, hitting 13 years old this year.

Still, that is no reason to be concerned is it? I am sure that the liberal policies just need a little more time to filter through. After all it has only been 22 years since corporal punishment was banned in schools, and we began sliding down this slippery slope.

Back in the heady days of 1987 the crime rate was relatively low, just 75 indictable offences per thousand people in the UK. Seven years later (the time it takes a child to through primary and secondary school), the crime rate had jumped to an incredible 109 offences per thousand people! God knows what that figure is today as no figures appear to be available, however 28% of those convicted in 2007 were under 18.

Another indicator is the prison population, that stood at a lofty 45,000 in 1987, a decade later it stood at 65,300, today it stands at a staggering 90,000!

More shocking is that in 1960 the prison population was just over 20,000, having increased by around 5,000 (from 15,000 in 1900) in 60 years. In the last 50 years, it has more than quadrupled and cannot be explained away by a larger population. In 1960 just 40 people of out every 100,000 of the population were incarcerated, in 1987 that had more than almost tripled to 110, today it is a staggering 143 people out of every 100,000.

Successive British Governments have managed to taken a largely decent and hard-working society and turn it into a nation of criminals, thugs and murders in less than half a century.  With the vast majority of crimes going unreported (56% were unreported a decade ago), due to a lack of confidence in the police or criminal justice system, and many being misreported, along with Government’s creative accounting (they still claim that the crime is down!), I dread to think what the true crime figure is in Britain.

Nick Griffin: Barmy and not helped by his mad eyed look

BBC NEWS | Politics | Griffin complaint over BBC ‘mob’

BNP leader Nick Griffin is to complain to the BBC over his controversial appearance on Question Time, saying he had faced a “lynch mob”.

I have to admit that this was the strangest question time that I have ever seen, and also the most compelling.

I cannot have been the only one wondering what the crazy one-eyed racist was going to do, and then, when it was clear that Gordon Brown was not going to try and block Question Time, what Griffin would do.

Was it a lynch mob? Of course, but then what did Nick Griffin expect? Whether he believes that he was hard done by and it was biased, these were the questions that the public wanted answering.

The Racist

In the end Griffin came across and a slightly bonkers, babbling buffoon. By the end he seemed to become more and more unhinged and was almost frothing at the mouth. Initially the man came across like the unpopular kid at school, desperately trying to get in with the cool gang by laughing at their jokes, hanging around and behaving in a generally awkward and unsettling manner.

He was shaking at the off and looked terrified, but then, this wasn’t the usual working men’s club full of uneducated underclass, this was the big table. His lies, such as denying he said things, when the video footage was clearly available, and deflecting questions, weren’t going to wash here, and that appeared to be what worried him.

It was a poor performance overall and he managed to demonstrate that his moderate stance was a façade, merely hiding his deep seated hatred. The BBC must have been rubbing their hands in glee when they placed him next to black intellectual, Bonnie Greer, a person who, under Griffin’s true White Supremacist views, cannot exist.

That said, despite his views the monster behaved and treated Greer as an equal. The same cannot be said of Greer who thought it appropriate to turn her back on him throughout the programme, clearly under the impression that being disrespectful to someone because of their views, is different from being disrespectful to someone because of their colour. Prejudice is prejudice and it was clearly an ill thought out move on the part of Greer.

In Britain, at least in my day, we were brought up to respect the views of others, even if we disagreed with them, and treating someone with contempt merely because of their views is wrong. I would never do the same to a Global Warming nut.

Culture

Youseff Bashir and people like him hate Britain, its culture and all it stands for

Despite all Griffin’s failings, his ravings, his inexplicable fits of laughter and disturbed appearance, had he changed ‘race’ to culture, I would have agreed with most of what he said. Does that make me a racist? Moreover, do I care – no. If protecting my culture upsets others – tough, their culture is no doubt protected elsewhere, mine is not. There is a creeping realisation in Britain, predominately but not exclusively amongst whites, that their culture is being eroded.

In schools Christmas is no longer celebrated, but Divali and Eid are. Anything Christian or traditionally British is deemed either too white, or worse, racist. Which is of course dressed up in buzz words such as divisive, or not inclusive or diverse enough.

Griffin’s remark:

“They must acknowledge that Britain always has been, and must remain – and it’s right that it must remain – a fundamentally British and Christian country based on Western democratic values and not on the eternal values of the Qu’ran.”

Is something that many, many people agree with. I am not a Christian, but the Christian values that this country is based on, or at least were during my youth, have made me the person that I am today, hard working and law abiding. I haven’t moved to another country, I still live in the same country that my ancestors did, so why should those core values change, or indeed why should I need to change?

The point is that I shouldn’t, but we are being brow beaten into accepting other cultures being superior to our own and those that speak out are branded racist xenophobes. The problem is that there is no middle ground, there is no one else tackling these issues other than the BNP, the other parties are running scared as after 50 years of promoting ‘multicultural diversity’ they have no idea what British is anymore and are terrified of upsetting a minority.

As a black man pointed out on the show (demonstrating once again that this isn’t just a ‘white’ or ‘race’ issue), it is because no one wants to tackle immigration that the BNP are becoming more popular. They are the only ones talking of preserving British culture.

Immigration

Marek Harcar: Despite having numerous convictions for violence he had no trouble getting into Britain to commit murder. Of course now deporting him would breach his human rights!

I have never heard a convincing argument for a multicultural society. Ironically Bonnie Greer pointed out Rome as a multicultural society that flourished, stating that anyone could become a Roman citizen, regardless of race. Which was true, if they were prepared to serve a decade or more in the army. A test of loyalty and dedication that we should perhaps employ in modern Britain, that way, at least the Gurkha’s who seem to be the only people not allowed to settle here, would be allowed to settle here.

Rome eventually fell due to multiculturalism, the advantages gained by the Marius reforms were slowly diluted as more and more cultures were absorbed into the Empire and the army. By the end the Roman army was a pale shadow of its former self, Rome itself had lost many of its ideals, beliefs (adopting Christianity as the official religion for one), culture and military ethos. In the end relying on other hardy and warlike people to do the fighting for them, who then eventually turned on the weak Romans. After all, why continue to fight to protect the weak Roman culture,  when their own was superior?

There are many obvious parallels to be drawn between Rome and modern Britain but no positives that I can see. Baroness Warsi also tried to explain the positives of multiculturalism/immigration stating that ‘Britain should have the brightest and the best here’, sadly for Warsi and the other proponents of multi-ethnic Britain, it is the polar opposite that is actually happening.

We are getting the criminals, the lazy and the dregs of other societies landing here, people whom, if they were British citizens, would not get in anywhere else but here they are most welcome. People like Marek Harcar and Ali Majlat, who, when arrested,  the police in their home nations were gob smacked that they were ever allowed here. So easy is it to come here that Interpol believes that many of Europe’s most wanted criminals are hiding in plain sight in Britain.

Currently almost 20% of all the criminals locked up in British prisons are foreign nationals, and more than 20% of all British murderers are foreign nationals, this ridiculous situation cannot be allowed to continue.

Baroness Warsi and Jack Straw seemed to like the expression, ‘We cannot just pull up the drawbridge..’, well I’d like to know, if they don’t think they should pull it up now with a quarter of all criminals in Britain immigrants, just when they think it would be a good time to do so? When 50% of prisoners are foreign nationals? 80%? Or when the rest of the world decides to use as a huge Alcatraz and walls us all in?

Deporting those that have no business being here, and stopping immigrants from entering this country would cut the crime and murder rates by 20%, who would not think that was a good idea? People like Jack Straw who have round the clock protection and live in areas not affected by crime. Let’s be honest here, immigrants don’t move to the sort of areas that MPs live in, and they are not eligible for their jobs!

Jack ‘Not in the Face’ Straw

Jack Straw: Teary eyed, like his father was at the thought of having to fight those nasty Nazi’s.

I thought that Jack Straw was quite a decent, opened minded bloke, but I found his talk about Churchill and the Nazi’s sickening. He then later brought up the fact that he was from a family of Jewish immigrants, which made it all the more startling that his father had decided to sit out World War II, and leave the fighting to people like my family.

My grandfather’s brother died protecting Jack Straw’s cowardly father, yet my grandfather is a pensioner struggling on the breadline, whilst Straw, never having had to lift a finger to protect his comforts nor make the ultimate sacrifice like so many others, is now sitting pretty. 

It disgusted me that he thought it OK to lecture someone else about the war, when his family did not make the sacrifices that others did, did not do their duty like others did, but reaped more of the benefits than many of the others. He tried to use his family history to point out positives of immigration but all it did was bury the argument, Straw’s family and father were content to take all the benefits of living in Britain, but not fight to defend those freedoms. Which begs the question of whether modern immigrants would follow the Straw example of loyalty.

Because that loyalty could not be relied upon, during the war in which Straw’s dad excused himself, World War II, they rounded up all the Germans in Britain and kept them in prison camps. The Americans did the same with the Japanese. Today, it would be impossible. With Britain likely to get sucked into a war in Pakistan, and with Pakistan the country of origin for most immigrants in Britain, and also most foreign nationals languishing in prison, it could be a security disaster. Indeed so lax are things here, Al Qaeda or the Taliban could very well run their war from Britain, with less fear of getting caught or even deported if they were.

Much as Straw and the others would have us think that these are simply race issues, they are not. It isn’t just a case of black and white, there are a myriad of issues to do with immigration and not least the erosion of our culture and values but also issues of security, stability and crime. The more that politicians dodge this issue, a fact which was very clear on Question Time once again, the more people will move to the BNP.

Our political leaders have basically said that it is their way or the highway, and I’m not for doing it their way.

Anthony Lionel Blair: The World’s Most Powerful Man

I often wondered what Tony Blair would do after being Prime Minister for 10 years, I mean, where do you go from there in Britain?

I should have known that Blair had bigger ambitions, and with US Presidency not possible, that left only the newly created top job in the world. President of Europe.

It’s not official yet, but it is as good as. Britain of course, had no say in the matter, had it done so, we’d have pulled out of Europe and Blair would be swinging from gallows somewhere by now.

European Super State

Of course he won’t actually be President of Europe (although that’s the unofficial title), but only of the EU, but that will still give him control of over 500 million people. Leaving just 200 million Europeans not under his direct control.

It is beyond belief to most people in Britain that the European super state’s first President, and the one that history remembers most, is going to be the man nicknamed Tony B-liar in his home nation. The man in charge of the richest ’state’ on Earth is going to be the same man that let Gordon ‘Mad Dog’ Brown run the British economy for a decade, and left it a devastated ruin. A man so inept and self centred that he has been ‘Middle East Peace Envoy’ for the past two years and spent barely any time whatsoever in the Middle East; and did nothing during some of the bloodiest years in the Middle East for decades, spending the Gaza War at home/on holiday.

Despite all this he is to be the highest paid leader in the Western World, and with the kind of perks and expenses that make British MPs look like misers and spend thrifts.

A Bigger Army to ruin

Blair, who single handedly turned a struggling and poorly equipped British Army into something barely worthy of the name, is going to have the world’s largest military to play with. Over 2 million service men and women to use as political tools, not to mention the 12,000 tanks (more than any other nation) and more aircraft than any other nation except the US, that he can move around his game board on a whim. No wonder he is already drawing comparisons with Napoleon. 

It is not a case of if Blair will drag Europe into some quagmire of a war somewhere, it is more of case of where has he left to go?

Blair, who did more to bolster the Monarchy that anyone else in decades, merely by making the thought of a ‘President Blair’ so abhorrent, has managed to become a President of Britain by the back door. Which begs the question, is it legal to raise someone above the Monarch and Head of State? For surely if Britain is to become a province of a European state, then the leader of that state has a higher status than the leader of the province?

In other words Blair now has his wish, he now has a higher station than the Queen.

Cameron: Plans to create many more millionaire recruitment bosses.

Tories would force jobless to work – Times Online

DAVID CAMERON is to unveil a plan to get Britain back to work by forcing millions of welfare claimants into training.

I’ve mentioned before that I think that getting the unemployed working for their benefits is a great idea. After all, they have a much better chance of getting a job and presenting a good impression of themselves when they are used to getting up and working all day, as oppose to rising at lunch and spending the day in their pyjamas engaging in slovenly behaviour.

Meeting targets

However I don’t believe that the Tory plan is the right one. This idea that private companies, i.e. employment agencies, will somehow be much better placed to find work for the terminally unemployed, or even just the hard up, is wrong. As anyone who has ever had any dealings with employment agencies knows, they are only interested in bums on seats and meeting targets.

They don’t care about the individual, nor even about finding the right job for the right person, just about filling positions. Sure this may sound ideal, but the unemployed don’t want to work for three weeks, be unemployed again for a month, then employed again etc. People who are unemployed want a job first and foremost, but they want to stay in that job. The idea is to find the unemployed long term, meaningful employment, not short term fixes to make the quarterly figures look good.

The Government currently has a similar scheme with private companies getting paid to find work for the unemployed, and has also had a comparable scheme running for several years with various Chambers of Commerce. It doesn’t work, because the Government, and by the sounds of it the next Tory government, are only interested in setting targets and making the figures look good. These private companies in turn are then only interested in meeting these targets in the quickest and simplest way possible and getting their payouts.

Job Centre Plus

Privatisation: Expect to see less of these, but more companies like Working Links

The only reason such measures are being considered is because Job Centre Plus is so poor at providing the service that it was set up to do. The Job Centre’s very premise was to get the unemployed back to work, now the Government gets third parties to do it.

The original labour exchanges were an idea of Winston Churchill’s, and they were intended to help the unemployed back into work by matching them up with vacancies.

Today, they are basically just used to collect claimant information, little or no effort is made to match a claimant with a job, other than displaying vacancies. Indeed most of the real job matching work is done by private companies under impressive sounding schemes such as Employment Zones or Pathways to Work, and as with most Government schemes, it is an exercise in meeting quotas and ticking boxes. Only those in ‘high priority groups’ are eligible for the schemes, i.e. those with alcohol or addiction problems, single parents etc, in other words, those least likely to benefit from them, but look best on paper.

Many Job Centre Plus locations are closing; processing claims is now being taken over by Benefit Delivery Centres, where fewer and even less attentive people can spend even less time looking over claimant forms. Another example of the lax approach to dealing with unemployment is the fact that claimants are now known as customers! An excellent way of tackling the benefit culture, by making it seem as though claimants are doing the benefits office a favour, rather than the other way around!

Back to work

How hard is it to spend time with individuals to work out their requirements for employment, and then match that? To find their weaknesses and resolve them, such as providing training courses, work experience etc? With a £8 billion a year budget and more staff than the British Army, over 120,000 at the last count, one would think it was relatively simple. Yet the Department of Work and Pensions seems intent on paying others to do their work for them, and it is a lucrative business.

Several years ago now, I was involved with my local Chamber of Commerce in providing the above to claimants on behalf of the Job Centres. It seemed like a good and worthwhile project, helping claimants with their CVs, running workshops about interviews etc and helping them find work that they were qualified for. All pretty basic stuff. Add to this a work placement scheme and it did indeed seem a brilliant way of getting people back to work.

Unknown to me, at least at the time, was that claimants had to be unemployed for at least 18 months to be eligible for this ‘help’ and the course was only mandatory if the person had been unemployed for three years! For each person on the course, the Job Centre paid the Chamber of Commerce the equivalent of one year’s Job Seekers Allowance, at the time about £2000.

They could also get a bonus of about five times that amount when one of the claimants found full time employment whilst on, or immediately after the course! At any one time there were at least 20 people on the course, meaning a payout of £40,000 and a potential bonus of £200,000 and many of these courses were run consecutively. I can only guess at the money being made by private companies now.

The words ‘Gold Mine’ spring to mind. But that said, it was a great way of getting people off benefits, especially as the work placement scheme was for one year and the vast majority were either hired by the company they were working for, or immediately found work upon completely the course.

Unfortunately a year is a long time for politicians, this was cut down to six months when more pleasing targets and figures were needed. A year was deemed too long, when the claimants could do a six month placement and then find work. Needless to say the success rate dropped, but rather than increase it back to year, it was halved again to just three months (worse still, those completing the course had to wait another 18 months to be eligible again so it now took 6 years to get 1 year work experience!).

Three months is next to useless, and the number of claimants finding work plummeted again, however the bonuses did not. It was often remarked by the claimants that the Job Centre would have been better off handing the 5 years worth of ‘dole’ money to the claimant and getting them to find themselves a placement for a year. A thought that obviously never occurred to them.

Good money after bad

In the end disillusioned with the project I left, but I still believe that something similar really could work. The Conservatives proposal is just throwing more money at the problem, and farming the responsibility, and therefore the blame, out to someone else. At the end of the day, these companies will be given tick boxes and targets to meet, and that is precisely what they will do, and nothing more.

You have to remember that it is not really in the companies interests to find long term employment for people, the more people they have through their scheme, the more money they get. Many of the current private companies working in this area have multi-million pound turnovers (some more than £100 million a year), and are increasing this year on year. More often than not, this is because they find the claimants work with agencies, which is normally short term, and they get to cash in on the same claimants several times a year. This is just paying private companies millions of pounds of tax payers money to take advantage of those in desperate straits.

Paying for the right training courses, or providing benefits to people while they work for free at local hospitals, councils, charities etc is the right way to go. After all, even the most work shy will not work for long earning £60 a week, when they could be earning £260 a week doing the same job.

Perhaps a game of blind man’s buff went awry?

Police arrest Muslim community leader | guardian.co.uk

A Muslim community leader who claimed last week to have been abducted from his own home by racists as part of a British National party hate campaign, has been arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice.

The disturbing image of a man being frogmarched from his home at knife-point, and in broad daylight, and thrown into the boot of a car before being driven to an isolated stretch of woodland shocked many; now that image is in tatters as it turns out the supposed religious leader, made the whole thing up!

It is a sad testament to the state of modern Britain that not only was his story believed without any real thought or investigation, but it was lapped up by the papers and was headline news. Whitey being bad always seems to make the headlines.

Web of lies

The problem now is, just when does the truth stop and the deceit begin? He claimed that he had received a threatening letter a couple of months ago, again from unnamed white racists.

This Wednesday I received a threatening letter saying: ‘We don’t want you to carry on at this. We know which school your kid goes to and which car you drive.’

Did he also manufacture the letter himself, just like his wild story of being kidnapped? What about the supposed arson attack?

“On Thursday they set fire to the front door of my home. They used an accelerant. It’s with the police and they are doing all the checks. I’m ok, but my wife and kid are very disturbed. I’ve had to take my kid out of his school. It’s definitely targeted. They don’t want the Islamic community centre in Loughton, I don’t know why.”

Something tells me that it is not just the wife and kids that are disturbed. Did his wife and child know about his plan, or did he delight in fanning their fears of the nasty white man?

Was he just getting getting bored with the pedestrian intimidation methods used by the local racists and thought that he could do better?

More than just the ravings of a madman

Still, he got his face in the papers and much sympathy

No. I think that Noor Ramjanally is more calculating than that:

“I want to say whatever happens we’re staying here. We just need people to know what we are doing. We have got a lot of support- we get about 30 to 40 people every week. They are not going to stop us.”

Clearly he was using this as propaganda in order to bolster his weekly meetings, and most likely garner support for their own mosque in the area.

Obviously when the letter and the arson attack didn’t get him enough support, he had to go further. Perhaps whilst watching an afternoon film on Sunday he was inspired and fabricated his crazy tale:

“He said he was snatched at around 12.15pm and feared he would be murdered during his ordeal. ‘I was at home and the door bell rang. I opened the door and they grabbed my wrists, pulling me out by force,’ he said. ‘It was two white men. They put a knife upon my stomach, and said do what you’re told or you’ll get hurt.’ He said he was then bundled into the boot of a 4 x 4 vehicle, with one of the men holding a knife to his chest.”

Lunchtime on a Monday. Perhaps he didn’t really think this through, after all the police would be likely to ask neighbours what they had seen and when none of them noticed a large 4×4 pull up and two knife wielding, knuckle dragging Neanderthals emerge and drag Noor Ramjanally away, they may have gotten a tad bit suspicious.

Noor Ramjanally also lived in a flat, so I am guessing that there was CCTV of the incident, or should I say a lack of CCTV of the incident. For a community leader, he is lacking a little in the common sense department and clearly didn’t think his mad cap scheme through thoroughly.

Community relations

It may have been half baked, but his intention was clearly to sow discord among  the community, in a much better way than the BNP ever could. I am sure hundreds of whites in the area were needlessly feeling guilty about what poor Noor had been through, indeed:

And after the alleged arson attack, high-profile community figures, including Loughton Mayor Ken Angold-Stephens, religious leaders, teachers and members of the police attended the hall where he holds prayer sessions in a show of support.  Read more

Now Noor Ramjanally has been exposed as a fraud will the same locals be attending BNP meeting to show their support for the maligned local political party? What about all the guilt donations that he no doubt received? Will people get those back?

The police should throw the book at this lunatic, who knows what lengths he will go to to prove that he is being persecuted by whites; not to mention the damage that this man has done to race relations in the area. Imagine if a white person had concocted a story about being attacked and threatened by Muslims?

Indeed the police should be treating this as a race hate crime, he did after all formulate a plan in order to stir up racial tension against whites in his area and as he himself said:

“I have got the whole UK Muslim community behind me now. I am not just on my own.”  Read more

Yes, the whole UK Muslim community against any opposition in the area to a local mosque and a neat way of tarring anyone who opposed it as a racist. I am also sure that a few more extremists were created following this incident, intent on getting their own back on whitey for such an outrage.

Undoubtedly though, all he’ll get is a slap on the wrist, after all the police wouldn’t want anyone to think that they are racist, would they?  They have people like Noor Ramjanally to sow that particular seed.

Leroy Burrell: The nearly man of the 100m

Watching the men’s 100m final in Berlin made me think about another final that really stuck in my head.

It was Tokyo 1991. This was the peak of US dominance in the 100m.

The world record stood at 9.90s held by Leroy Burrell, but Carl Lewis was the favourite for the gold. The buildup was all about Lewis Vs Burrell. Leroy Burrell ran 9.94s in his semi final heat, Lewis ran 9.93s, ratcheting up the tension for the final.

Lewis winning gold in a new WR

The final was an epic, and closely fought battle with records being smashed left, right and centre. Carl Lewis won, with a world record time of 9.86s, Burrell was second in 9.88s and Dennis Mitchell completed the US one, two, three in 9.91s. The USA’s position as the world’s pre-eminent sprint nation seemed unassailable.

Just out of the medals was Linford Christie in a British and European record of 9.92s, behind him was Frankie Fredericks in 9.95s, an African record. Next was Ray Stewart in 9.96s, a Jamaican record. A record that stood for 13 years.

End of an Era

Things went downhill from there. Lewis didn’t make the Olympic team in 1992, due to a dodgy start at the US trials, but Burrell, Witherspoon and Mitchell would be flying the flag and virtually assuring a US one, two and three. In the end however, Christie won, Fredericks was second and Mitchell picked up the bronze. Burrell was fifth, Ray Stewart was seventh, between the two Nigerians.

In the 1993 world final Linford Christie won, beating the Americans into second, third and fourth. Ray Stewart finished last. Stewart was last again in 1995 but it was a Canadian one and two (Donovan Bailey and Bruny Surin – Surin had finished last in 1991 and fifth in 1993) and Ato Boldon of Trinidad in third. 

Christie takes Gold in Barcelona and ends US dominance

Linford Christie finished sixth, just behind the only American, Mike Marsh. It wasn’t much better at the Olympics in Atlanta the following year; Mitchell fourth, Marsh fifth, with Bailey, Fredericks and Boldon getting the medals.

Maurice Greene papered over the cracks in 1997 (with Tim Montgomery), 1999 and 2001 (with Bernard Williams), all three later involved in drugs scandals.

The Olympics in 2000 saw another US champion, Greene, but a Caribbean silver and bronze (Boldon and Obadele Thompson).

2003 saw a Caribbean one and two (Collins and Brown) with Darren Campbell third and then a US world champion in Justin Gatlin in 2005 (but a Caribbean silver and bronze), but Gatlin was caught doping the following year, banned and stripped of his joint world record.

The 2005 final saw two Americans in the final, four from the Caribbean Islands and two Africans (counting Obikwelu). When Olapade Adeniken, David Ezinwa and Frankie Fredericks reached the Olympic final in 1992, there was much talk of being on the cusp of an era of African 100m dominance. Thirteen years later, whilst the shift in dominance was correct, it wasn’t Africa, but the Caribbean Islands that would become pre-eminent.

The Windies

Tyson Gay won the 100m in 2007 and I am sure that many Americans saw this as a return to sprint supremacy, but it wasn’t. Gay was the only American in the final, but once again there were four from the Caribbean.

In Beijing Usain Bolt won, Richard Thompson was second, Walter Dix third. There were six West Indians in the final, two Americans.

In yesterdays final there were five from the Caribbean, two Americans and just one European. Tyson Gay’s run was incredible, but take Gay away from the team and there would have been no US medal, Darvis Patton the only other American finished last.

Bolt in Berlin: 100m races just aren’t as close as they were in Tokyo anymore

Aside from dopers, the last US world record holder was Maurice Greene, in 1999. This is the end of US sprint dominance, at least at the 100m. Winning the US trials no longer even guarantees a place in the final, let alone a medal or the gold, like it once did.

In 1993 I thought that it was a great thing that the US was no longer winning all the medals, now I am not so sure. 

Whilst Usain Bolt’s 9.58s is unbelievable, take Bolt away and the West Indies still have four of the five fastest sprinters in the world, they now truly dominate the sport.

I am not even sure whether to watch the women’s 100m final today, after all a Jamaican one, two, three and four is pretty much a foregone conclusion. Are the Americans, and the rest of the world to follow white men and disappear from top level sprinting altogether?

Jamaica

However this dominance, at least in the men’s 100m, isn’t as recent as we might believe.

World 100m Champions Since 1993

1. Linford Christie
2. Donovan Bailey
3. Maurice Greene
4. Kim Collins
5. Justin Gatlin
6. Tyson Gay

Of all the champions, three were from the Caribbean. Linford Christie was born in Jamaica and moved to London aged 7, Bailey was also born and raised in Jamaica, moving to Canada aged 13. Collins of course was born and raised in Saint Kitts Nevis and Usain Bolt in Jamaica. Silver medallist and former world record holder Bruny Surin was also born and raised in the Caribbean (Haiti).

It is also worth noting that Ben Johnson, the last man before Bolt to stagger the world with an amazing time, was also born in Jamaica. Those that believed that Asafa Powell and Usain Bolt, like the Canadian duo of Donovan Bailey and Bruny Surin, were just a one off and that normal services would resume when they retire, are mistaken.

Michael Frater’s best days may be behind him, but 20 year old training partner of Usain Bolt, Yohan Blake has already run 9.93s. At that age Bolt was running 10.03s. Add to that the likes of Richard Thompson, Daniel Bailey, Marc Burns and many others and it looks as though Jamaican/West Indian supremacy in the 100m is set to continue for quite a while. 

Lemaitre – The Great White Hope.

As of today, the second most popular post on this blog is Fastest White Man. Yes second, it still has some way to go before it surpasses the top post, Bear Grylls A Fraud!

Because of this, and because I haven’t posted anything for a while I’d thought that I would take another look at the Fastest White Man issue as there has been a recent change in the prospects of a sub 10 white sprinter.

Matt Shirvington

Not since Matthew Shirvington ran his 10.03s (which for me is the fastest a white man has ever run) has there been such a resurgence in interest a white man breaking the 10s barrier. The reason? A 19 year old Frenchman by the name of Christophe Lemaitre recently won the 100m at the European Athletics Junior Championships with a new European Junior record of 10.04s.

Only two men under 20 years old have ever run faster – Darrel Brown and Yohan Blake. Darrel Brown ran 10.01s aged 19, today aged 24, his PB is 9.99s. Making a Lemaitre sub 10s seem possible.

But when you consider that a 19 year old Brown (and Lemaitre) ran faster than Tyson Gay, Asafa Powell, Maurice Greene and Usain Bolt at the same age, yet his PB is only 9.99s (compared to 9.77s, 9.72s, 9.79s and 9.69s respectively), you realise that being fast at a certain age is not a reliable indicator of future ability.

For example, Tyson Gay is the fastest man of the year so far, with a time of 9.77s. Aged 19 the best he could run was 10.28s, but he has improved quite a bit since then.

The fastest 19 year old in the world is currently Yohan Blake of Jamaica. He’s a training partner of Usain Bolt and his PB is 9.93, which he ran last month.

The White Master

Perhaps this explains Collio’s sudden rise in form?

Even so all eyes will be on the ungainly runner come Berlin as he is the closest white man for over a decade to the magic 10s barrier. Like Bolt, who is 6′4″, Lemaitre is tall for a sprinter, standing 6′3″ and much was made of Bolt’s height at the Olympics last year as being the basis for his amazing speed. Lemaitre’s fans are hoping that he can use his height in a similar way to Bolt.

As a comparison, Gay is 5′11″, Powell is also 6′3″, Greene 5″9′, Bailey 6′, Lewis 6′3″ and Linford Christie was 6′2″, clearly there aren’t many short, top class sprinters.

Lemaitre is already No.5 on the white all time list, at least technically, but if you remove Woronin’s dubious time and those run at altitude, Lemaitre (whose nickname is Lemaitre blanc – The White Master) is the second fastest white man ever.

This wave of expectation is further aided by the fact that the white all time top ten has had another two entrants this summer. The apparently ageless Simone Collio, who ran a new PB of 10.06s, despite being in his 30th year, placing him 7th (or 3rd) on the all time list, and Ramil Guliyev who ran 10.08s to enter the list at 10 (or 6th).

The White Top 10 6

1. 10.00 (+2.0) Marian Woronin (POL) 09.06.1984 – Dubious
   
2. 10.01A (0.0) Pietro Mennea (ITA) 04.09.1979 – Altitude
3. 10.03A (0.0) Nicolas Macrozonaris (CAN) 03.05.2003 – Altitude
4. 10.03 (-0.1) Matthew Shirvington (AUS) 17.09.1998
5. 10.04 (0.20) Christophe Lemaitre (FRA) 24.07.2009
6. 10.06A (+2.0) Johan Rossouw (RSA) 23.04.1988 – Altitude
7. 10.06 (+1.2) Simone Collio (ITA) 27.012009
8. 10.06 (+1.9) Frank Emmelmann (GDR) 22.09.1985
9. 10.07 (±0.0) Valeriy Borzov (UKR) 31.08.1972
10. 10.08 (+1.3) Ramil Guliyev (AZE) 13.06.2009

Many see this as the summer a white man will belatedly break 10.00s. Although in reality any such feat is likely to be overshadowed by Gay Vs Bolt and most likely a new World Record. A white man breaking the 10.00s barrier and still not making it past the Semi’s isn’t likely to get much press.

EJCH Novi Sad 2009 – M-100m Final Christophe Lemaître 10.04 EJR

In all likelihood, Berlin, like Beijing last year, is not going to be anything special for white sprinters, but the prospects of  a white sub 10.00s look better for Berlin next week than they have for a long time, add to that the Bolt Vs Gay showdown, possible new world records etc and it should be an interesting World Championships.

Ali Dizaei: Another Muslim heading to prison

Muslim prisoners get their own cells after sharing row | Mail Online

A prison has agreed to give Muslims their own cells after they complained about sharing with other inmates.

It amazes me just how many prisoners ‘appear’ to be Muslim; is it a case that Muslims are more prone to crime? Or simply that many inmates find Islam as a way to get an easy ride within the criminal justice system?

Finding God/Allah

Prison may seem an unlikely place to find God, but due to ridiculous laws in this country, getting a religion is how to get ahead in UK jails, and even wider society. About 70% of those in UK prison describe themselves as ‘religious’ although being devout does not apparently stop them committing crimes.

3% of violent offenders in prison class themselves as Buddhists! A religion normally associated with peace and harmony. Compare this to the warrior religion, Sikhism, where Sikh’s do not even make up 1% of violent offenders languishing in prison.

Muslims make up 10% of violent offenders, despite only making up 2.7% of the population. Muslims also make up about 10% of sexual offenders, 13% of robbers, 5% of burglars, 6% of thieves and 21% of fraudsters behind bars.

Most surprising of all is that 15% of all those in prison for drugs offences, are Muslim; despite drugs of any kind, including alcohol, being against their religion. Clearly these ‘Muslims’ are not as devout as they like to claim.

In total Muslims make up 10% of the prison population and rising. Islam is also the fastest growing religion in British prisons, with 15% of all religious inmates following it. Just to re-iterate once again, just 2.7% of the UK general population are Muslims.

Compare that to Christians, who make up 70% of the population, but just 52% of the prison population.

Whilst in itself such information is not evidence that multiculturalism is bad for wider society, as some religions such as Sikhs, Jews and Hindu’s make up far less of the prison population that they do of the general population, it does show that these ‘Muslims’ are either not true Muslims, or that Islam is not entirely the religion of peace it is made out to be.

Demands

This also begs the question, should the UK’s most criminal of religions entitle its followers to make demands?

‘So far around 15 Muslim inmates have been accommodated either by being moved to a cell with another Muslim or put on their own,’ said a prison source. ‘They initially asked for their own wing but this was turned down.’

HMP: Winson Green, Birmingham. Facilities include: workshops, educational facilities, a new healthcare centre and gym. Holds 1450 prisoners, or 350 Muslims.

This is the kind of double standards that I find appalling. White, indigenous people have it drilled into them from birth that they must be tolerant, accept those of other faiths and cultures and allow them freedom to practice their religion and accept their different culture; yet this is rarely reciprocated.

Worse, the powers that be allow this to happen. This is cultural isolation and segregation, if the Home Office or Prison service were to start putting all whites, or all blacks, together there would be uproar and rightly so. But as this is a minority religion it is deemed acceptable to give them special privileges?

Either we are multi-cultural or we are not, there is no place for ’special’ religions, cultures or treatment.

The judge called for a new concept of ‘institutional religious intolerance’ to combat prejudice against Muslim inmates.

Another idiot judge sending totally the wrong message. Religious people do not commit crimes, therefore when a prisoner gets sent to prison the first thing that should be taken away from them are any and all religious rights.

Those rights should have been forfeited when they beat, stole, raped or murdered their way into a British prison.

These special privileges are only going to aggravate the other 33% of prisoners who have no religious safety net, those that are not hypocrites.

One prison officer said: ‘This has caused resentment because it is felt the Muslim inmates are getting special treatment.’

This resentment is then used as an excuse by moronic Judges as justification for more ‘religious tolerance’ when that is precisely the sort of thing that encourages it.

With the number of Muslims in our prisons rising rapidly, this kind of preferential treatment of a religion in which criminality appears more prevalent than any other is sending out entirely the wrong message. And as the number of Muslims in prison increases, the more the resentment and attacks will increase.

Climate Zealot blocking traffic on Westminster Bridge, clearly not realising that traffic standing in jams are more polluting than free moving traffic; but no-one ever said these people were smart, or logical

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | UK ‘must plan’ for warmer future

The UK needs to plan now for a future that will be hotter and bring greater extremes of flood and drought, says Environment Secretary Hilary Benn.

Each time this type of thing is announced it seems that they have to go further and further with their madcap predictions. This is a Government report conducted by the Hadley Centre, which was created purely to look at Global Warming and is completely tax funded.

The Hadley Centre is part of the Met Office and accounts for approximately 13% of its staff, they are hardly going to start saying that Global Warming was a bit of a mix up and that mass redundancies are needed, now are they? No, with each report they have to go to crazier and crazier lengths to justify this cold spell and their very existence.

Bias

This bias is spreading into their projections, take the graph below:

Notice the dip sometime after the year 2000? Virtually right up to where we are now, and then the inexplicable jump later this year/early 2010?

The fact is this is pure guesswork, if not wishful thinking. Temperatures have dropped and there are no indications of any kind of increase looming.

They have covered their backs with large drops after 2010 and again after 2020, just in case there is no big increase, but after 2025 the guess work becomes quite fanciful.

The problem with these kind of models is that they are all based on a certainty that the temperature will always increase, and these enviro-mentalists don’t even consider the possibility that the warming period may be over.

Computer Modelling

Having a computer myself and being curious as to how this process works, I decided to create my own computer model. By feeding into my computer all the relevant information, dates, temperature and adding in pointless guesswork and bias, I set my computer to crunching the numbers.

Amazingly, and a testament to modern computing power, it finished the highly complex and completely random computing modelling pretty quickly. The result is below:

For some inexplicable reason my output was completely different to that created by the Hadley Centre, but then my very existence does not depend on the results.

As you can see the computer was able to predict that we are in fact heading for a mini-ice age. Reaching its peak around 2024, the surface air temperature in the Northern Hemisphere will drop by a third of a degree, which may not seem like much but to steal a phrase from the climate freaks, could well be catastrophic.

This is in direct contrast to the Hadley Centre’s predictions of an increase in temperature by nearly half a degree Celsius (they must  have had their graph upside down!).

Britain won’t have seem the kinds of temperatures like those in 2024 since the 1850s. We’ll be seeing frozen lakes, rivers and canals and perhaps a re-emergence of that popular pastime of ice skating on rivers and lakes. I for one, cannot wait.

The UK Met Office, which led the scientific analysis, says UKCP09 is the “most comprehensive set of probabilistic climate projections at the regional scale compiled anywhere in the world”.

Personally I don’t think that they are worth the paper that they are printed on.

Experimenter Effect

It is almost uncanny that model after model after model bears out the ’scientists’ theories.

Scientists collated data from 400 variations of the climate computer model developed by the Hadley Centre, part of the Met Office.

I am guessing that if MPs were to create a computer model to discover whether they were giving taxpayers their moneys worth, the results would be pretty similar, i.e. the computer models would say that tax payers are getting a bargain!

Needless to say that the enviro-mentalists are clapping their hands in glee at this report.

“It’s great that the government has decided to put together such a scientifically robust analysis of the potential impacts of climate change in the UK,” said Keith Allott, head of climate change at WWF-UK.

But why wouldn’t they? After all this mean millions, if not billions, are going to be handed out in Government grants to Climate Change groups in order to prepare Britain for an event that will never happen.

By that time lots of people will have gotten rich from this cult.

Fast Food Workers? No, modern British Police

A suspect is tasered three times by police before being punched? New York? No, the streets of Nottingham | Mail Online

There was fresh controversy over police methods last night after officers shot a man three times with a Taser gun and punched him repeatedly as he writhed on the ground.

The headline makes a good point, I did indeed believe this to be some US city, such incidents are in the papers on a regular basis (such as the recent tasing of a 72 year old woman), instead it turned out to be my home town.

I am not sure what shocked me more; that my local police have tasers or that those gentleman in navy T-Shirts and body warmers were police officers.

Only in America

It seems that the use of tasers has somewhat passed me by, I knew that some forces were trialling them, but in my naivety I thought that they would never be rolled out across the board and certainly rarely used, after all, this isn’t America. Criminals here rarely carry guns, or even knives, so the need for such a weapon is debatable.

The good old fashioned police truncheon

We have pepper spray (also from the US), expandable batons (again from the US) and now tasers? What are next, guns? I remember when the simple wooden truncheon was enough.

Back then the mere threat of getting brained by a police officer was enough for most people to do as they were told and submit. Those that didn’t were soon coshed into submission.

Sure, they were deadly but then police officers only used them when they had to and when they whipped them out, you knew that they meant business.

Lazy policing

Today police officers wear Batman style utility belts containing everything that they could possibly need – for a riot. This, in my view, has made them lazy. Why bother trying to calm a suspect down when a spray in the face with the pepper spray will incapacitate him? Or a quick blast on the taser?

Neither leave any lasting harm or marks so can be pretty much used with impunity, and apparently they are. It is so much easier for police to shoot first and ask questions later that many of them are doing precisely that, albeit without guns.

The man in the video was already on the ground, already subdued, he just wasn’t doing as he was told, and so he was punished, physically. If two police officers do not know how to cuff a prone man, then what good are they?

At one point there were six police officer holding the suspect down, now, unless he had the strength of ten men, this seems to me to be a tad bit of an overkill, particularly as he had been tasered a couple of times already. The man was rolling around on the floor, drunk by the looks of him, yet still a couple of the officers stood on him and punched him, just to be sure.

About 50 onlookers saw the whole thing and needless to say, whatever respect they still had for the police was washed away watching that performance.

Respect

This isn’t helped one bit by the ridiculous outfits that our police now wear. Once the police uniform was unmistakable, now all the police officers seem to think that they are part of a SWAT unit. I’m not even sure I can tell a traffic warden or even a park warden from a police officer anymore.

Casual uniforms for casual police

We seem to have this problem with uniforms in Britain at present, as if uniforms are somehow bad and create a barrier between ordinary people and those that wear them (and tasers and batons don’t), they are all being slowly changed. Nurses no longer look like nurses, the police look like fast food workers and doctors no longer wear white coats; even soldiers are discouraged from wearing their uniforms.

Constable Marlow: Still patrolling in his original uniform

Uniforms command respect, they are an instant visual identity. Had I witnessed those two men in casual dress attacking a poor drunken man in the street, I would never have realised that they were police officers. They are not even smartly dressed. What happened to hats? To ties? White shirts?

There is nothing old fashioned about looking smart and the old uniform commanded respect, whilst projecting an image of honesty, integrity and trustworthiness, whether justified or not.

I am also sure that pulling on such a well regarded and esteemed uniform meant something to the officers too, and made them try to live up to it and be more cautious in their actions.

It certainly made an impression on Constable Marlow, who still patrols the streets in his home town in his old uniform. A casual modern uniform just nurtures a casual and lazy culture amongst our tin pot police. They are now more interested in just being obeyed than doing the right thing.

Such casual use of what is in effect a torture device (imagine if they used it whilst interviewing suspects, makes waterboarding seem light hearted by comparision), is most worrying. A police officer should never inflict pain on someone merely for non compliance.

Now it seems whilst walking around in crime ridden Nottingham, I am going to have to keep one eye on the ne’er do wells and another eye on the police, lest I get caught up in one of their urban pacifications.