Tag Archives for united kingdom

SAS War Hero Jailed for Keeping Trophy Pistol Given to Him by Iraqi Army

This is the thanks you get for serving the Empire (you know which one).  (HT: WK)

An SAS soldier has been jailed for possessing a “war trophy” pistol presented to him by the Iraqi Army for outstanding service.

Sgt Danny Nightingale, a special forces sniper who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was sentenced to 18 months in military detention by a court martial last week.

His sentence was described last night as the “betrayal of a war hero”, made worse because it was handed down in the run-up to Remembrance Sunday.

Sgt Nightingale had planned to fight the charge of illegally possessing the 9mm Glock.

But his lawyer said he pleaded guilty after being warned that he could otherwise face a five-year sentence.

The soldier had hoped for leniency given the circumstances. At the court martial, even the prosecution described him as a serviceman of exemplary character, who had served his country for 17 years, 11 in the special forces.

The court was told that he returned to Britain in a hurry after two friends were killed in Iraq, leaving his equipment — including the pistol — to be packed up by colleagues.

It accepted evidence from expert witnesses that he suffered severe memory loss due to a brain injury.

Judge Advocate Alistair McGrigor, presiding over the court martial, could have spared the soldier prison by passing a suspended sentence. Instead he handed down the custodial term.

Sgt Nightingale and his family chose to waive the anonymity usually given to members of the special forces.

His wife, Sally, said her husband’s sentence was a “disgrace”. She called him a “hero who had been betrayed”. She said she and the couple’s two daughters, aged two and five, faced losing their home after his Army pay was stopped.

The soldier’s former commanding officer and politicians have called for the sentence to be overturned.

Lt Col Richard Williams, who won a Military Cross in Afghanistan in 2001 and was Sgt Nightingale’s commanding officer in Iraq, said the sentence “clearly needed to be overturned immediately”.

He said: “His military career has been ruined and his wife and children face being evicted from their home — this is a total betrayal of a man who dedicated his life to the service of his country.”

Patrick Mercer, the Conservative MP for Newark and a former infantry officer, said he planned to take up the case with the Defence Secretary. Simon McKay, Sgt Nightingale’s lawyer, said: “On Remembrance Sunday, when the nation remembers its war heroes, my client — one of their number — is in a prison cell.

“I consider the sentence to be excessive and the basis of the guilty plea unsafe. It is a gross miscarriage of justice and grounds of appeal are already being prepared.”

In 2007, Sgt Nightingale was serving in Iraq as a member of Task Force Black, a covert counter-terrorist unit that conducted operations under orders to capture and kill members of al-Qaeda.

He also helped train members of a secret counter-terrorist force called the Apostles. At the end of the training he was presented with the Glock, which he planned to donate to his regiment as a war trophy.

This is why people shouldn’t volunteer for the military today, not only in Britain, but everywhere in the West; no State deserves such loyalty today.

Islamic Sharia Law on the Rise in Great Britain as UK Seeks to Shut Down Muslim Courts

This is what happens when you admit incompatibles into your country…

Islamic Sharia law is on the rise in Great Britain as members of the UK parliament are seeking to ban self-established Muslim courts in the nation.

There are approximately 85 Sharia tribunals throughout Great Britain, all of which are run by Islamic judges who rule according to the Koran. There are no appeals following judgment and sentencing.

Sharia courts have been in existence in the country for some time, but in 1996, the passage of the Arbitration Act was seen by Muslims as being a doorway to enforcing Sharia law within British law. Now, some of the cities that have the greatest Muslim concentration, such as London, Birmingham, Manchester and Bradford, also possess an Islamic court. The Tower Hamlets area is especially stated to be the seat of Sharia rule.

“If people are afraid of having their hands cut, don’t steal,” UK Islamic leader Anjem Choduary told reporters. “If you don’t want to be stoned to death, don’t commit adultery.”

Others state that homosexuals have been publicly beaten in the streets for violating Sharia law, and women have been threatened for not covering themselves with a Burqa.

Some tribunals are not courts at all. It is stated that rulings are sometimes issued at area mosques, especially as they relate to domestic issues, such as family disputes.

As a result of the prevalence of these courts, the Arbitration and Mediation Services Bill is now pending in the UK parliament, which seeks to put an end to Sharia tribunals, especially in England and Wales. Continuing to operate as a legitimate court could result in criminal penalties.

According to Baroness Cox, a Third World campaigner in the country who introduced the measure, a number of women have lodged complaints about the enforcement of Sharia law in the land. She recently debated the matter on the parliament floor.

“I feel betrayed by Britain. I came to this country to get away from all this, but the situation is worse here than in my country of origin,” she relayed one woman as stating.

British School Won’t Allow Boy to Grow Movember Moustache

Typical…

A school in Britain has banned a 13-year-old boy from taking part in Movember because it’s not an “inclusive” activity.

Gus Hooker has been shaving since he was nine and wanted to raise some money for Prostate Cancer UK by joining men (and boys) around the world growing facial hair for Movember, the BBC reports.

But a moustache would stand out among the boys and girls at the Priory Academy. It wouldn’t be something all students, regardless of age or gender, would be able to participate in, the school said in a statement to the news organization.

“In a coeducational school with young children, growing facial hair would not be an activity that many children would be able to join in with,” the statement said.

“Whilst the school dress code does not explicitly mention facial hair, it does mention unusual hair styles and colouring that are contrary to a smart uniform appearance.”

According to the report, Hooker wanted to take part in Movember because his grandfather recently beat cancer.

Welsh Children Punished For Not Speaking Welsh

Fancy that.

One mother was told not to read English books to her child at bedtime while another pupil, aged six, was too frightened to speak the language at home in case he got into trouble, it is claimed.

The Children’s Commissioner for Wales, Keith Towler, said he would look into the claims after he was contacted by a group of concerned parents in an email outlining the incidents at schools in Ceredigion – a bastion of Welsh language.

Source: Telegraph. Read full article. (link)

U.K. Would Lose Nuclear Submarine Base With Scottish Independence

Interesting; would the Scots compensate them financially for it?  Not bloody likely…

Britain would lose its nuclear deterrent for two decades if Scotland votes for independence because it would no longer have the capability to house Trident submarines.

Scottish independence will force the remainder of the UK to abandon nuclear weapons for at least two decades, according to report by MPs published today.

The Commons Scottish Affairs select committee said it would be possible to move Trident submarines and their missiles from their base on the Clyde within two weeks of separation.

However, the construction of replacement facilities south of the Border could take up to 20 years, they said, effectively forcing the UK Government into “unilateral nuclear disarmament”.

Source: London Daily Telegraph. Read full article. (link)

Rowan Williams in One Final Push for Women Bishops in Church of England

Wants a liberal victory before he bows out.

Rowan Williams, the head of the Anglican Communion, is making one  final push for the ordination of women bishops before he officially retires from  his position as the Archbishop of Canterbury in December.

“No-one is likely to underrate the significance of November’s debate on women  bishops in General Synod,” Williams wrote in an article for the Church Times  published on Friday. “It will shape the character of the Church of England for  generations – and I’m not talking only about the decision we shall take, but  about the way in which we discuss it and deal with the outcome of it.”

Although women can serve as deacons and priests in Anglican churches, they  are still fighting for ordination into the highest echelons of the clergy. Many  from the more liberal side of the Communion have insisted that the law should  change to allow women to be ordained as bishops, but conservatives maintain that  Christ’s disciples were all men, which is an example they should follow.

Atheist Boy Banned From Britain’s Scout Program for Refusing Allegiance to God

“On my honor, I promise that I will do my best, to do my duty to God and to the  Queen, to help other people, and to keep the Scout Law.” is the Scout Promise; an atheist can’t honestly say that, not believing in God.

An atheistic 11-year-old from the United Kingdom was recently  banned from the country’s Scout program after he refused to pledge allegiance to  God and the Queen.

“Variations of the Scout Promise are available for different faiths (such as  the use of ‘Allah’ to replace ‘God’ for Muslim Scouts), however all the  variations of the promise recognize the ‘Duty to God’ element,” A Scouts  spokesman said of George Pratt, who was dismissed from his Radstock, Somerset  Scouts chapter after he refused to pledge allegiance to God.

“Young people are required to show both an understanding, relevant to their  age, and an acceptance of the promise before they become a member,” the  spokesperson added, according to The  Daily Mail.

To hell with this little snot and his loser dad.  If you can’t pledge to do your duty to God, you shouldn’t be able to join them.

007′s Masculine Mystique

Why men (and women) love James Bond.

Illustration by Michael Hogue

The films largely share this trait, portraying Bond as “Her Majesty’s loyal terrier, defender of the so-called faith.” But why is royalty at the head of all things? British institutions, after all, don’t matter so much to real-life Britons. Consider the Queen’s Jubilee earlier this year. All pomp, but what of the circumstance? What the Queen timelessly stands for—empire, class, obligation, responsibility and even Britannia herself—are things today’s British, unlike Bond, reject.

This—and not the sex, sadism, and snobbery—is the allure for the Bond fantasist. 007’s Britain is antiquated. It’s not the Britain of Cameron and Clegg. It’s the one with a penchant for staying tyrants—of either the mustachioed or the vertically-challenged variety—and the one that gave us pocket calculators, steel warships, jet airplanes, and loads of other cool stuff. Bond’s Britain is relevant, wealthy, and influential, still a beacon of Western ingenuity.

[...]

Ian Fleming always denied that he shared character traits with his creation—he said that Bond was merely a composite of his war colleagues. But it’s hard to say that he shared no traits whatsoever: Bond’s penchant for scrambled eggs, short-sleeve Sea Island cotton shirts, and liquor, women, and gambling are reflections of Ian. And Bond’s operational prowess is definitely drawn from the commandos Fleming knew during World War II.

But Bond’s intangible virtues are Valentine’s—and, no, these virtues may not have been singular then, but they are quite un-plural now. Where Valentine’s contemporaries took to the trenches, the young men of today’s Britain riot in the streets.  That’s what a half-century of self-entitlement does to a society: it takes the backbone out of people while simultaneously giving them notions of grandeur. This makes them malleable. Make enough people malleable and you can make them, en masse, believe in any fancy or whim. Want to know why gay marriage is inevitable? Because today’s man, coerced into believing in his own emasculation, would introduce himself to a lesbian named Pussy Galore by saying: “I respect your lifestyle choice.” When James Bond met a lesbian named Pussy Galore, he slept with her.

[...]

Raymond Chandler famously suggested that Bond was “what every man would like to be and what every woman would like to have between her sheets.” This is generally perceived to mean that men want to be Bond because he daringly saves the world from megalomaniacal madmen while bedding women who lust after him because he’s dangerous. But what if all of this were just cover? What if men wanted to be Bond because secretly—or maybe not so secretly—they wanted to be less neutered, more decisive, more graceful under pressure, more accountable, and less postmodern?

[...]

Fleming’s original version of “Quantum,” which bore no relation to the movie. It was a short story, in the Somerset Maugham mold, in which Bond reflects that the dramas of ordinary people may be greater and more meaningful than his own. He’s right, of course. Men like James Bond are expendable for a reason. Take away that reason and you take away the nobility—and the purpose—in their expendability. If audiences thought of that, I wonder if they’d see past Bond’s sex and gadgets and superficiality, wonderful and fun though they may be, and realize what really makes James Bond appealing.

The reality for ordinary men and women is that we need to reassert some dignity in our ordinary lives. But that reality can’t overcome the pieties of modern discourse: we claim to like our men less assertive and less masculine and less accountable, and we claim to like our governments mired and enabling.

Scot Shoots First Fictional Feature in Antarctica

Interesting.

A still from South of Sanity

A fictional feature film has been shot in Antarctica for the first time.

Scottish climbing instructor and documentary-maker Kirk Watson filmed South of Sanity while working for British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

Shot entirely in the Antarctic, the horror movie’s cast and crew were made up of fellow BAS contractors and staff.

Matt Edwards, a doctor who lives near London, wrote the script for the feature which is now being marketed by a US film-maker.

Rated 18 by the British Board of Film Classification, the movie follows 14 staff at an Antarctic station as they are stalked by a killer.

Aviemore-based Mr Watson, who is originally from Torphins in Aberdeenshire, has six years’ experience working in Antarctica. His tasks include leading scientists across glaciers and training them in climbing techniques.

In winter, when the continent is locked in darkness and freezing conditions, staff learn skills such as woodwork and black and white photography to help while away their free time.

Mr Watson decided to hone his film-making by shooting a low budget fictional feature with help from other British staff, which included marine biologists, geologists and mechanics.

I definitely want to see that.  I’ve certainly seen non-fiction, documentary movies on Antarctica, like this one.  But a horror B-movie with likely cheesy acting (sorry British Antarctic scientists), crappy props, BUT gorgeous scenery?  Awesome! :)

Protesters Rally as Ireland’s First Abortion Clinic Opens

A sad day.

Protesters opposed to abortion hold placards outside the Marie Stopes clinic in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Thursday, 18, 2012. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

The first abortion clinic on the entire island of Ireland opened Thursday in  Belfast, sparking protests by conservatives from both the Catholic and  Protestant sides of Northern Ireland.

The Marie Stopes centre plans to offer the abortion pill to women who are  less than nine weeks pregnant — but only if doctors determine they’re at risk  of death or long-term health damage from their pregnancy.

That’s the law in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, where  abortion is otherwise illegal.

But more than 200 protesters opposed to abortion under any circumstances  gathered outside the central Belfast clinic hours ahead of its opening Thursday,  waving placards reading “Keep Ireland abortion free.”

And Northern Ireland Attorney General John Larkin wrote to lawmakers, who  broadly oppose abortion, offering his help if they investigate the clinic’s  operations. Larkin said he could order the clinic’s to be closed only if  evidence emerged of “serious criminal conduct” there.

Protesters demanded that the clinic be shut down regardless, lest it become  a beachhead for expanding abortion rights in Northern Ireland, the only corner  of the United Kingdom that has not legalized abortion on demand.

“We’re in 2012. Women’s health is not in danger. Women are not dying because  they cannot get abortions,” said Bernadette Smyth, Protestant leader of a  Belfast anti-abortion group called Precious Life.

“For Marie Stopes, this is only a first step,” said Liam Gibson from the  Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, a predominantly Catholic-backed  pressure group.

Hey, what do you know; an issue to bring together Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland! ;)

Gibson and Smyth are both right; this is just the beginning; eventually NI will offer abortions just like throughout the rest of Britain…

Britain’s High-Tech Thought Police

Something has gone terribly wrong in the land of the Magna Carta and Milton…

What country has just sentenced a man to eight months in prison for wearing an anti-police t-shirt, and another man to three months in prison for telling an “abhorrent” joke on Facebook? Iran, perhaps? China? No, it’s Britain.

Something has gone horribly wrong in Britain in recent years. The birthplace of John Milton (“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience”), and John Stuart Mill (“Every man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is so far doing a public service”), has become a cesspit of censoriousness.

The frequency with which the police and legal system now throw into jail anyone judged to have committed a “speech crime” is alarming.

[...]

Now, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the body responsible for prosecuting crimes in England and Wales, is holding a series of meetings to clarify the law on tweetcrimes and FB misdemeanors, and to decide when it is legit, and when it isn’t, to bring criminal charges for trolling or inflammatory speech online.

I can save it a bucketload of time by telling it right now when charges should be brought against web-users for speech-based affrays: Never. Ever.

Speech is either free or it isn’t. And if it is, then that means everyone must have it—not just nice people, but also nasty people; not just the right-on, but also the racist; not just well-educated judges who use their free speech to spout BS about how abhorrent certain jokes are, but also immature tweeters, Facebook saddos, and unpopular bloggers who use their free speech to insult minorities or make bad gags about missing girls.

[...]

Allowing the state to determine the rightness and acceptability of words and ideas doesn’t only lead to gobsmacking levels of censorious authoritarianism—it also robs us, the public, of our right and our responsibility to work out what is true and to challenge what feels like dross in the arena of public debate. As John Milton put it 350 years ago, “Let Truth and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?”

[...]

Besides, society has no right to punish people just because the overwhelming majority of people don’t like what they say, as John Stuart Mill argued decades ago: “If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.” Absolutely. Free all Britain’s tweeters, t-shirt wearers, and bloggers now!

Toddler Served Whisky at U.K. Restaurant

Oops!

Sonny Rees drinking the whisky at the restaurant

A restaurant has apologised after a toddler was served whisky instead of fruit juice at his birthday party.

Sonny Rees drank the 40% proof whisky at his second birthday in a Frankie and Benny’s restaurant in Swansea.

His mother Nina Rees only realised the mistake after he had nearly finished the drink.

Sonny, from Pontarddulais in Swansea, was taken to accident and emergency where he was kept under observation by doctors.

The toddler is now recovering at home. The restaurant is investigating how the incident happened.

Um, a server made a mistake, and delivered the wrong drink to the wrong table, getting them mixed up; that’s all…

Sonny was asleep by the time he arrived at Morriston Hospital, Swansea, where staff monitored his vital signs.

He was later given the all-clear and allowed to go home.

The family took photographs of Sonny with his drink before they realised it was whisky.

A Frankie and Benny’s spokesman said: “The company is incredibly sorry for what happened. It was a human error and we are putting measures in place to ensure it never happens again.”

It’s just booze, people; not poison.  So he fell asleep.  Big deal.  It wasn’t even full-strength whisky, it was diluted, according to other related stories linked at the BBC piece…

Human errors will always happen, spokeman dude.  People make mistakes; you can’t ensure it’ll never happen again…

Why is this even a story?

Except for a laugh, and a head-shake at the shrieking overreaction, which is why I’m sharing it.

Lighten up, parents, and restaurant industry officials.  Shit happens; he just fell asleep; no stomach-pumping needed.  No biggie.

*P.S. The mother is a liar; as if she counted how many sips; as if ten sips from a straw in that glass would make the drink ‘almost finished’; as if it was a ‘double’ as she claimed, esp. since if diluted with water, it still would not have been anywhere near full-strength, and ten toddler-sized sips from a straw of diluted whisky is NOT going to kill a toddler.

Lying overreacting dumb bitch.  Mothers overreact so much…  But the media shouldn’t give them a platform to do it…

New York’s High Line: Why Cities Want Parks in the Sky

A great idea!  Love it.

Once an elevated freight railway track, New York’s High Line is now an oasis for pedestrians. It has been so popular that other cities are following suit, with plans to replicate the formula in London. What is the secret of its success?

In 1980 the last freight train ran along the elevated railway line in the Lower West Side of Manhattan. Reportedly, it pulled three boxcars of frozen turkeys.

Almost 20 years later, in August 1999, local architectural enthusiasts Joshua David and Robert Hammond went along to a public meeting to discuss the future of the High Line.

Within months the two New Yorkers – variously described as total amateurs and neighbourhood nobodies – founded the Friends of the High Line, a charity that has gone on to transform the abandoned railway line into a wildly successful new kind of public space – part-beach, part-park, and part-promenade.

Since opening in 2009, the High Line has become New York City’s second most visited cultural venue, attracting some four million visitors a year. Through Mr David and Mr Hammond’s work, a relic of the 1930s has become the catwalk of 21st Century New York.

Already cities around the world are interested in learning from New York.

In Shoreditch, east London, the idea of building a new park on top of the old railway arches at the Bishopsgate Goods Yard, abandoned since the mid 1960s, is being considered.

Chicago is proposing to redevelop 2.7 miles (4.3 km) of disused elevated railway line into the Bloomingdale Trail. Its fellow US city Philadelphia is looking at transforming the Reading Viaduct into an elevated linear park. And in Rotterdam, Netherlands, another old elevated track is being considered as a site for a park and shops. The High Line itself echoes Paris’ Promenade Plantee, inaugurated in 1993.

And it’s hoped that the formula can be repeated on more besides disused railways.

James Corner, the British landscape architect who designed the High Line, is working on the transformation of London’s Olympic South Plaza into part of the future Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Corner is also working on a proposal to redevelop Liverpool’s 1980s Everton Park.

Church of Scotland Ministers Forced Out Over Gay Clergy

Not a bad thing; good for them to join a more solid church that opposes liberalism.

After the continued push by the Church of Scotland to ordain both  lesbian and gay ministers, those in the ministry are being alienated to the  point of removing themselves entirely from the church.

The Church of Scotland’s General Assembly lifted the moratorium over the  ordination of gay and lesbian clergy in May of last year, and since then, they  have been called enablers of the “dismantling of the true gospel” over the issue  of homosexual ministers.

One of those individuals that was forced to leave the ministry was Reverend  Paul Gibson, who claimed he left because of the Church of Scotland’s insistence  on adopting an “erroneous liberal agenda” while at the same time putting many of  the Church’s members “in an impossible position.”

Gibson is now a member of the Free Church of Scotland, and said leaving the  Church that he had grown up in was hard, but stated that a liberal agenda and  political shenanigans have put the Church in this state.

“Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.”

Liquid Nitrogen Cocktail Leads to Removal of Teenager’s Stomach

Bad idea; both the bar and the girl are stupid…

British surgeons removed a teenager’s stomach to save her life after she  drank a cocktail made with liquid nitrogen during a night out with friends,  police said.

The 18-year-old woman, named by newspapers as Gaby Scanlon, complained of  breathlessness and gastric pain before being rushed to a hospital in the  northern English city of Lancaster on Thursday where she was diagnosed with a  perforated stomach.

Scanlon is currently in serious but stable condition, local police said in a  statement over the weekend.

“Medical opinion is that this would have proved fatal had the operation not  been carried out urgently,” police said.

When exposed to air, liquid nitrogen creates a dense fog and is used by  bartenders and chefs to add an element of visual drama to dishes or to freeze  things quickly, such as ice cream.

It is also used for removing warts and has industrial uses. Contact with  flesh can cause cryogenic burn or “frostbite”.

Professor of food physics at Leeds University Malcolm Povey said liquid  nitrogen should not be consumed while still liquid, as it turns into a gas  inside the body and causes the stomach to swell and burst.

“The liquid nitrogen would rapidly change into gas and blow the stomach up  like a balloon…the idea that people put this stuff in drinks is just  unbelievable,” Povey told Reuters.

The bar which served the drink has stopped selling all liquid nitrogen  drinks, said police, who are investigating the incident.