Sim-O

Alan Johnson…

Mr Johnson added that “the crimes he is accused of are far from trivial” and said Mr McKinnon “should be tried fairly for them in a court of law and in the country where the impact of those crimes were felt”

What the fuck is this? Some one should be tried “in the country where the impact of those crimes were felt”?

Is this some kind of new international diplomatic rules? Never mind where the law was broken, it’s where the crime has an effect that matters now is it?

Hmm. Maybe the Brazilian authorities would like to have a word with a couple of the Mets’ sharp shooters who have had an impact on the lives of a certain family in Brazil.

The Daily Mail hasn’t earnt itself the nickname The Daily Fail for no reason. This one is an epic.

Apparently some failed asylum seekers are to be allowed free health care on the NHS, that is currently denied to them. Sorry, I should’ve said ‘proposed’. They’re not currently allowed, and it isn’t definately going to happen.
It’s just a proposal.

According to the Daily Mail, the headline goes…

A million failed asylum seekers will get free NHS care in human rights U-turn

A million people will get NHS treatment. That is an assertion of fact. But it’s not a fact. It’s a proposal.

Digging deeper, but not much deeper. In fact only as far as the first line of the story itself…

NHS treatment will be available for tens of thousands of failed asylum seekers to ensure their human rights are honoured, it was announced yesterday.

So it’s not a millon failed asylum seekers, after all. it’s only tens of thousands. Not quite so shocking that number, is it?

The number has dropped significantly because certain criteria would need to be fullfiled, rather than just any asylum seeker. They would need to be destitute with children and various other things. So the proposal’s not open to all.

Strolling through the article the figures get a little more specific still…

There are understood to be around 450,000 failed asylum seekers who have not left the country, although only 10 or 20,000 are directly affected by the new rules.

So there is ‘understood’ to be less then half a million failed asylum seekers in the country and only just tens of thousands at the biggest guess or estimate.
Just think a little about what is being told here.

There are 450,000 failed asylum seekers. What proportion of total applications these failures are I don’t know.
Lets take the bigger 20,000 number that would be directly affected by the proposals. Which means that approximately 4.5% of failed asylum seekers are affected (for the better, remember).

But for the headline to be correct, 50x more failed asylum seekers would need to be eligible, which if it stayed at the same rate would mean there would have to be 22,500,000 failed asylum seekers. Let that sink in for a moment.

Twentytwo and a half million. Failed. Asylum seekers. A number equivalent to a third of the population of Britain.

As I said earler I have no idea of the proportion of total asylum applications the failed ones make, but how many applications are gonna be needed to get a failure rate of 22.5 million?

And where did this original one million figure come from?

According to the Mail, MigrationWatch.

Notes:

1. I originally came to this Mail article via a post on the BNP site. That article says pretty much the same thing but with out the 10-20,000 figure and a bit more pro-BNP propaganda.
2. I just realised that there is no time scale mentioned, either. Are these figure for a five year period? A year? Month? Half a week?
3. I hope my maths has not let me down

In April, the BNPs’ definition of British in their Language and Concepts Discipline manual, of which I took a copy of at the time, came out in the news.
It looks like this event prompted the BNP to update their manual, as it was written in 2005. This update completely passed me by.
Thanks to Dave Cole, it has been brought to my attention.

So what are the changes?

So you don’t have to sully yourself by going to the BNPs’ site, I have copies of the manuals:
BNP Language & Concepts Discipline Manual (July 2005)
BNP Language & Concepts Discipline Manual (updated April 2009)

It’s a long post so I’ve tucked them neatly below the fold, but my impression is that this new document is from a party much more comfortable with itself. There are only thirteen rules in the new pamphlet, as opposed to twentytwo in the old.

The old manual had a lot of negative in it, statements that began ‘we are not…’. Nine out of twentytwo rules begin ‘The BNP is/does not…’. The new manual is a lot more positive in its’ wording: Three out of thirteen start in the same way.

With the positivity comes confidence. A confidence that it doesn’t need to explain itself or deny what it thinks it isn’t, or at least what it doesn’t want us to think it is.
In the old manual the BNP felt it needed to deal with accusations of racism and fascism. In the new, the charge of racism is dealt with, swiftley, but the only mention of fascism is in a description of the European Union.

The BNP has been working hard to clean up it’s image, this updated version, drafted before the European elections in June is part of that. This, along with the collapse of the main parties vote in the Euro Elections means that they are on a high at the moment and in a good place to capitalise on their good fortune that has put them in Europe.

That fortune needs to be reversed.

When the crunch comes, power is the product of force and will, not of rational debate.

~Nick Griffin, Leader of the British National Party

» Read the rest of this entry «

A bunch of authors are up in arms about having to register on the Vetting and Barring Scheme, a database of people cleared for and barred from working with children.

The four, Philip Pullman, Anne Fine, Anthony Horowitz, Micheal Morpurgo and Quentin Blake, seem to have taken it personally…

I’ve [Pullman] been going into schools as an author for 20 years, and on no occasion have I ever been alone with a child. The idea that I have become more of a threat and I need to be vetted is both ludicrous and insulting.

I’m sure Philip Pullman has never been a threat to any child and won’t be in the future, but this database is not directed at Pullman, personally. What does he want? An exemption? Be insulted then, Mr Pullman.
Would Philip say the same about a caretaker that has been doing the job for 20 years and never been alone with a child?

When it [the VBS] becomes essential, I [Anne Fine] shall continue to work only in foreign schools, where sanity prevails.

Itspeeseegornmaaaditellsya!!1!!

Murpurgo (who the…?)…

Writers don’t go to schools for the money, they do it because they want to bring their stories to children and make readers of them. The notion that I should somehow have got myself passed in order to do this is absurd

No, I’m sure writers don’t go into schools for the money. But neither does the chap that volunteers to go in to my childrens school and help with their reading. He hasn’t even got a vested interest in them reading as he is not an author. The chap at my kids school does it because he wants to help, you know, put something back into society, do some good. He has to register on this database too. What’s so different between Murpurgo and him?

Horowitz…

A child who admires a writer has a great belief in that writer as a good human being,” he said. “If you say the guy who’s writing this book could be a sick pervert and we’ve got to protect you from him, you’re not exactly sending out the most positive message.

What about sports people, musicians, and all sorts of other ‘professions’ that kids admire?
When a someone visits a school, like a writer would, do kids sit there wondering what perversions that visitor has? Of course not. Will they be wondering if the school has checked whether the visitor is on this new register? No, they won’t. Primary school aged kids won’t even know about the VBS and secondary school aged kids might know about it but if the amount of visitors we had when I was at school is anything to go by, they’d have forgotton all about it by the time someone comes round.

I’m not arguing in favour of this new scheme, just the narcissitic, self-centred way these whinging scribes have shown how thin a skin they have to take it personally. To think of themselves as above others in the view that it shouldn’t apply to them.

Writers are no different to anyone else. If you’re going to argue against something like this, put forward proper reasons why it is a bad idea, not reasons why it shouldn’t apply to you.

I’ve just been on the Official Practice Citizenship Test site*. What a strange set of questions to ask before letting someone become British.

(*Wordpress is making me out to be a liar. I haven’t just been on it, that was last night but the bloody post didn’t publish for some reason.)

What the fuck has question 1 got to do with anything?

In the 1980s, the largest immigrant groups were from the West Indies, Ireland, India and Pakistan.

True or False?
How many people know how many Parliamentary constituencies there are? Why would anyone need to know that? That is question three, btw.
Another true or false question: Six…

Ulster Scots is a dialect which is spoken in Northern Ireland.

No disrespect to whoever speaks Ulster Scots, but why does anyone need to know that?
Married women, when did you get the right to divorce your husbands? Number eight, that one. Not just a pointless question that shows knowledge of how to be a good citizen but badly worded too. How can an unmarried woman divorce? And who is a married woman going to divorce? It’s not the gardener, is it?

And it goes on and on. Either inane questions that serve no purpose and few of the indigenous population (I use that phrase in the sense of people who already live here, not the BNP mythical sense) know, or care, or questions that wouldn’t look out of place in an instruction book on how to use Britain properly, that again, not too many of the locals would be able to answer.

Question eleven…

The number of children and young people up to the age of 19 in the UK is…?

Who gives a shit? How is that going to stop an immigrant from offending someone, or getting run over or finding a fucking job?

The percentage of people in the UK in 2001 who said they were Muslims was…

Why is this question in there (Q12)? Is it to remind the Muslim immigrants just how few Muslims there are in the UK? Just to , y’know, remind them not to try anything?What purpose does it serve to have someone know how many Muslims there were in the UK in 2001?

Q18…

Schools must be open for…

I’m British. I’m a parent of school aged children. I don’t know how many days a year schools must be open for. Maybe I should. I do now but will it make me a better person or fulfil any civic duties better?
The final question, question 24…

Which of the following statements is true?

• The governing body of the EU is the Council of the European Union
• the governing body of the EU is the Council of Europe

Shouldn’t that be in a European citizenship test?

All that’s happening here is that the government has issued a standardised set of approved useless facts that people should know, but can only enforce them on some people.

What would be more help would be, I don’t know, mentors or something. Someone that the new arrival can call for help with anything, or pointing in the right direction. How to go about getting a job, Where to go to get a driving licence, tell the n00bs they’ll need a TV licence. That sort of thing. Not ‘How many children are there in Britain?’

“What do you mean I don’t get the job? But I know how many Parliamentary constituencies there are!”

Oh, I got 42%. I hope I get sent somewhere warm.

Via

…despite the Tories.

I don’t know if Bercow is the best speaker or not, but it sure did piss off Nadine Dorries.

And that, is a Good Thing.

The BNP are making wild inaccurate claims again. Apparently travellers of various sorts are treated much better than British people…

At least half of all Gypsies and Travellers in Britain are Romany in origin and are officially placed above indigenous British people in a range of National Health Services, according to an official guideline.

The shocking anti-British document emerged in the wake of anti-Gypsy violence in Belfast following months of criminal activity by the Romanian Gypsy community which drove local people to the breaking point

So in the wake of anti Gipsy violence, because they’re all thieves, naturally *rolls eyes*, the BNP are helping to keep the sentiment going.

The BNP site quotes an NHS pamphlet, Primary Care Services Framework: Gypsies & Travellers, which they also shoot there own foot with by providing to a link to a copy they host, and they start off with…

states that many of these “Roma Communities” are recent arrivals, and “possibly comprise half of all Gypsies and Travellers” in England.

According to the NHS, there are up to 300,000 Gypsies and Travellers in Britain in total, which means that there are possibly 150,000 Romany Gypsies living here.

This is indeed nearly true. The pamphlet does say that half of the Gypsies and Travellers in Britain are possibly Roma Gipsies. The 300,000 figure is also mentioned but only as an upper figure for how many travellers and Gypsies are in Britain. That figure might also be as low as 120,000. Nobody really knows any better than that because the 2001 census didn’t count Travellers & Gypsies as a separate ethnic grouping. Which obviously means that the amount of Roma Gipsies could be as low as 60,000.

Under race relations legislation, Romany Gypsies are defined as minority ethnic groups and this forces the NHS to consider their “needs and circumstances” when meeting their general and specific duties under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000.

Just like any other ethnic minority. As it should be.

Along come some bullet points. Makes it nice and simple for the knuckle-draggers…

In practice, the NHS document says, this means the following:

* Gypsies must be “fast tracked” when being provided with NHS services. This means they must be seen before any other patients, even if the indigenous patients have been there earlier or have prior appointments;

There is a recommendation that there should be a policy of not turning away a Traveller or Gypsie that attends a GP without an appointment. There is not a compulsion to, and it certainly doesn’t mean they must be seen straight away before anybody else. In reality, the Traveller could be left to wait until the end of the day.

Doctors have been told to see any Gypsy who walks into a surgery, even if all consultation times for the day are full

What the guidelines incourage, is for the local surgery to register Gypsies and Travellers that are local, on various sites and not to de-register them so quickly, so that a better health record can be built up. The pamphlet also says that when the surgery has got the trust of the Traveller that they will travel a considerable distance to see their doctor. The whole point of this exercise with the NHS is because Gypsies and Travellers do not visit the doctor very often and to try and change that so that the standard of health of these people improves from being the lowest of the English speaking ethnic minorities. The chances of a Gypsie walking in to any surgery is, I would say, pretty slim.

Gypsies are also to be fast tracked for nurses and dental appointments

The pamphlet says nothing about dental and nurse appointments. The BNP have split these types of care from the word ‘surgery’ used in the pamphlet, to mean all types of treatment that is non-emergency type of health problem including visits to the dentist and nurse.

Gypsies must be given 20 minute consultations (in comparison to native British peoples’ five or ten minutes) and must be allowed to bring relatives into the consulting rooms

Again, there is that word ‘must’. Nowhere in this document does it say ‘must’ (except for one instance where the document talks about when a surgery must de-register a patient. Page 28). Practices should give longer consultations. That is generally because the Travellers will ask for another family member to be seen. This request should be accepted within reason.
This is a Good Thing as it enables the doctor to “improve the screening status of potentially vulnerable patients”.

NHS staff are given “mandatory cultural awareness” training so they can fully understand what it is like to be a Traveller or Gypsy

OK. The Nazis have really got in a mix with this one. From the pamphlet…

PCTs’ with Gypsy and Traveller communities should consider including cultural awareness training as part of their regular mandatory training for all new and existing staff.

Still no compulsion. In the mandatory training that everyone gets, cultural awareness training should be considered. It doesn’t even say it should be included. It should just be considered.

The BNP then go on a little rant…

The NHS document tries to justify this blatant anti-British policy by claiming that Gypsies suffer from greater health problems than indigenous British people.

… and quote from the pamphlet about the poor the health is of Gypsies and Travellers but offer no rebuttal of any type to back up their implied claim that the Travelling community don’t suffer greater health problems that ‘true Brits’.

And they finish off with…

The implication of the document is that Primary Care Trusts will be breaking the Human Rights Act and the Race Relations Act of 2000 if they do not discriminate against British people in the ways suggested.

I suppose if you’re paranoid in that way, it could. But the whole tone of the guidelines is just that, a guide. A guide to help make it easier to make an unhealthy section of society healthier.

Look at that face. Isn’t it sad?, maybe even a little bit scared. It makes him look almost humane. Even his eyes are nearly pointing the same way. I would feel sorry, for him, but he’s a racist, so I don’t.

Destroying the BNPs’ arguments is all well and good, but now and again you gotta have a laugh, ain’t ya. And if No Platform can produce things like this, then it must have some merits.

Picture curtesy of Daniel HG

An audience with a racist…

Sitting in his suit and tie, with neatly combed hair and trotting out psephological jargon, he comes across as a sort of racist version of Tony Blair: coolly spouting dodgy dossiers of misinformation to justify a “war” against weapons of mass immigration and miscegenation. Most people don’t believe him; we’re not sure whether he sincerely believes himself, but he’s going to keep pushing his line for as long as he can.

At the moment he is trying to soft-sell repatriation. “We’re not talking about turfing everybody out. We’re talking about encouraging some to go. It would benefit them if we did a proper, sensible deal with countries that have suffered hugely from brain-drain, with people coming here – it’s the final form of colonialism. Instead of stealing, erm, gold and old statues, we steal the people and best brains, and the countries suffer as a result.

“We would help to stabilise all sorts of countries if some of their nationals or people who originate from there returned to their homelands with some of the skills that they’ve learnt here and applied them to make those a better place instead of coming here because it’s convenient for Britain and easier than training our own people.” Xenophobia as humanitarianism is just one of his verbal gymnastics.

So. Nick Griffin isn’t a racist that wants to keep the white race on top and withdraw Britain just about every international organisation you can think of, because we don’t need them.

Nick Griffin is going to save the world and improve all those third world countries (is that still a valid term or is it ‘developing nation’) by returning all those immigrants that we have train. Nick Griffins’ flying monkeys are good flying monkeys.

How the interviewer managed to carry that through, I’ll never know.

*Yawn*

Andrew Brons MEP has opened his mouth and said that Kelly Holmes is a British citizen, but she is not British by identity. A current BNP line.

Yeah, yeah, fuck off. Identity is a personal intangible thing. It is for the person only to decide, not for others.

The BNP’s ultimate aim – as laid down in its constitution – is a return to a predominately white Britain that existed before the 1948 Nationality Act.

BBC News (February 2003)…

Almost 9% of us describe ourselves as non-white compared to under six percent 10 years ago. If you take away mixed-race identities that figure falls to just under 7.5%.

A far cry from the headlines in the run up to the 2001 Census which predicted that by 2010 white people would be the ethnic minority in places like Leicester and Birmingham.
The census is interesting in telling us where people have settled and continue to live

This fact was used by far right groups to whip up a spectre of Britain losing its indigenous racial identity.

If there were only 9% of people were non-white in 2001, I doubt it’s much different now, so aren’t the BNP pushing an open door? They’re rallying for something they already have.

So that’s it, then. They can shut up shop and fuck off.