Letter From the UK About Vanishing Acts

A policeman on patrol? 

You're more likely to see a wildebeest

Peter Hitchens
Daily Mail


Have you noticed how politicians, police chiefs and media have all stopped pretending that crime is falling? Even the supercilious academics who have sneered for years at real public concern about crime and disorder, tittering from their safe, secluded homes about ‘moral panic’, may eventually have to change their tune.

This is partly because of the exposure – which I helped to publicise – of the systematic fiddling of crime figures by the police. It is also partly because the police like to pretend that minor cuts in their enormous numbers have made crime more common – though how this can be when the police are almost entirely invisible I cannot tell. In the days of regular foot patrols, we had about half as many officers as we do now.

But there’s another reason. You can hide and fiddle the truth about many types of crime. But you can’t keep stabbing and murder secret in any remotely free society.

The authorities long ago gave up doing anything serious about shoplifting, public drunkenness and disorder, vandalism, bike theft, car theft, robbery and burglary. They just stick up notices telling you that these things are your own fault.



The authorities long ago gave up doing anything serious about shoplifting, public drunkenness and disorder, vandalism, bike theft, car theft, robbery and burglary

They now publicly admit they cannot be bothered to pursue anyone for possessing illegal drugs, even though this offence is at the root of so much other crime. Indeed, they boast about it, as if this laziness and defeatism, a mutinous refusal to do the job we pay them for, were somehow enlightened. They pretend that their inaction will free them to tackle other crimes. It never does.

Letter From the UK (About Rogue Policing)

Our Police Prefer Playing Politics to Solving Real Crimes


Peter Hitchens
Mail On Sunday 

How can the police be too powerful and too feeble at the same time? This is perhaps the greatest avoidable scandal of our age, and yet nobody ever does anything about it.

The decisions which led to this mess can easily be tracked down. I did it years ago, and have supplied the details to politicians (including Theresa May) and senior police officers.  It benefits nobody, least of all the police themselves. So why is it never put right?

The amazing fall of Damian Green might serve some purpose if it led to action. But will it? I couldn’t care less about Mr Green. I may have met him once, but am not sure. I despise his party and the Government of which he was a member.   But the behaviour of some of the police officers who searched his parliamentary offices, and have since gone public with pornography claims, seems to me to be disgraceful and wrong. It is an improper use of powers given to them for other purposes.

I shuddered when I first heard of the case, sensing in it a threat to freedom in general, as I often do these days.

Letter From the UK (About Mind Distorting Drugs and Violent Crime)

Nothing to Do With Terrorism

Peter Hitchens
MailOnline

Far too often, we make the world worse than it is by imposing a pattern on it that has little or nothing to do with reality. I say this though I am a keen pessimist. I know the glass is half-empty unless someone is actually refilling it at the time.

But what a foolish mess we get into over so much of the violence that has recently ripped through our society. For instance, we have been marking the terrible death of Jo Cox, a young wife and mother and a delightful, beloved person missed terribly by all who knew her.  It is quite right that she should be remembered. This was a dreadful event. Yet the authorities and the media have decided to insist that her murder was political.  I think this is wrong. Her killer was quite obviously a deranged, muttering loner, with no serious understanding of politics.




Psychiatrists know that such people often latch on to political or religious movements to make themselves seem important.  Why help him magnify his wretched life, his twisted mind and his cruel violence? I have my own suspicions that, by classifying his act as terror, the authorities closed their minds to other possibilities.

Letter From the UK (About Political Correctness in the Army)

‘Marine A’, Sergeant Blackman

‘Wife In A Million’ Saved Me

Jack Montgomery
BreitbartLondon


Sergeant Alexander Blackman, better known as Marine A, has spoken out for the first time since his release from prison, saying that his “wife in a million” saved him.  “I will be eternally grateful to Claire and I cannot put into words how wonderful she is,” he told the Daily Mail.

“She is a wife in a million. Other inmates often said how lucky I was to have her fighting so hard for me.  I don’t think there is anybody who has witnessed the effort she has gone to who will doubt how she feels about me, and that’s beyond words really.  You just can’t imagine anyone cares for you that much.”

It is rumoured that the couple, who will not be changing his identity or appearance, in spite of terror risks, will be played by Tom Hardy and Kate Winslett in a big screen adaptation of their story, with Hollywood legend Al Pacino taking up a role as their lawyer.

Sgt Blackman, a Royal Marines Commando who served his country with distinction for 15 years in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Northern Ireland, was sentenced to ten years in prison by a court-martial for shooting an already mortally wounded terrorist fighter.

Letter From the UK About France: The Fix Is In

Manchurian Candidate Macron Is France’s Obama Equivalent

James Delingpole
BreitbartLondon

[Ed's note: in this piece, the author argues that Macron will win the election, heading off Le Pen.  He laments the ongoing declination of France.  Tomorrow, we will publish a piece which argues the exact opposite: that is, Le Pen will win, Macron will lose, and France is finished.]

If you want to know the likely result of next month’s French presidential election run off, just look at how the markets responded. The euro and the French markets both jumped dramatically.  This has nothing to do with the underlying strength of the sclerotic, unionised, statist, overtaxed, unproductive French economy or, indeed, with the future of the doomed euro.

It was simply a case of the status quo breathing a sigh of relief that it was going to be business as usual, after all: Emmanuel Macron, the de facto Establishment candidate is now pretty much a shoo-in for the French presidency; his rival, Marine Le Pen doesn’t stand a prayer – of that the Establishment will make sure.

But Brexit. But Donald Trump…

Nope: I’m afraid those arguments just don’t wash in this case.

Letter From the UK (About the Extinction Of Marriage)

A Fight for Equality? 

No, it's a plot to wipe out marriage

Peter Hitchens
The Daily Mail


The campaign to get rid of marriage has not gone away. Civil partnerships for heterosexuals were not thrown out by the Appeal Court last week, only put off till later. They will come.

In fact, after 20 years of New Labour government (some of it nominally Tory) we can now look back and survey the smoking ruins of marriage. It’s not that the New Labour radicals and their Tory imitators wrecked marriage on their own. It’s just that they have more or less finished it off.  The very words ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ have been erased from official forms and even from normal conversation. We all have partners now, whether we want to or not.

Divorce figures have fallen only because so many couples don’t get married in the first place. The marriage statistics show that more and more people simply aren’t bothering to make any sort of legal commitment at all before setting up home and starting a family.

As Lady Justice Hale, now tipped to be boss of the Supreme Court, said in 1982: ‘Family law now makes no attempt to buttress the stability of marriage or any other union,’ adding ‘the piecemeal erosion of the distinction between marriage and non-marital cohabitation may be expected to continue.’ And how.

Letter From the UK (About Official Prejudice Against Persecuted Christians)

See No Evil, Hear No Evil

Official Prejudice Against Persecuted Christians

Editorial
The Barnabas Fund

Last week we revealed how three archbishops from Iraq and Syria were refused visas to attend the consecration of the UK’s first Syriac Orthodox cathedral. As we previously reported, they were not the only ones.

In the last few months, a number of Christian leaders from contexts of persecution who have been invited to undertake speaking engagements in the UK, have also been refused visas. The Prime Minister was also asked in parliament last week about a similar refusal to grant visas for a twinning arrangement between the Church of Scotland and a diocese in Pakistan.

The situation we revealed last week became the front page story in the Sunday Express and was carried by other national newspapers such as the Daily Mail and The Times, as well as being picked up by news media around the world, including in the Middle East and Russia. Yet there is a deeper question that remains unanswered: why is this happening?

The issue is not confined to the UK, it has also become clear that similar problems exist in the United States.

Letter From the UK (About More Rotherham Convictions)

Another Rotherham Gang Sentenced 

Rape, Holding Hostage Young Girls

Breitbart London
Liam Deacon

Five mostly Muslim men from Rotherham, including three brothers, have been found guilty of subjecting two young girls to two years of violent sexual abuse, including rape and false imprisonment.  Matloob Hussain, Mohammed Sadiq, and brothers Basharat, Nasser, and Tayab Dad, were convicted of 21 historic sex offences at Sheffield Crown Court and are due to be sentenced on the 2nd of February.  Their offences date back to the late 1990s and early 2000s when the girls were given alcohol and cannabis and intimidated into performing sex acts.

Temporary Detective Chief Inspector Martin Tate, who oversaw the inquiry, said in a statement: “The court heard harrowing evidence from two very brave women whose childhoods were robbed by these men.  “They were targeted, systematically groomed and subjected to horrific sexual abuse while they were young vulnerable girls, on the cusp of their teenage years.

“No child should ever have to experience what these women have had to endure and I hope that today’s result offers them both some resolution after so many years of anguish.

Letter From the UK (About Oppressing Christians)

Shut-Up, Or Else

Christians Too Scared to Talk about Faith in Public, Says Bishop

Nick Hallett

Breitbart News

Christians are increasingly fearful to speak out about their faith in public due to the rise of an “intolerant liberalism” in the UK, a bishop has said.  Nick Baines, the Anglican Bishop of Leeds, said Christians feel “picked on” by some secularists who have a problem with religion being discussed outside of church.

“Clearly there are some Christians who are concerned about whether they are free to talk about their faith in a respectful and appropriate way in the workplace,” the bishop told the Press Association.  “Equally, there are plenty of people who are not Christians who think that Christians shouldn’t, or think there is an issue around it. I call it religious illiteracy.”

He added that people have been disciplined or threatened with discipline for talking about their faith in the workplace, even if they have been asked about it by colleague.  “Someone makes a complaint and says they have been inappropriate. This is absurd,” he said.

His words come just a day after Prime Minister Theresa May defending the rights of Christians to express their faith in public.

Letter From the UK (About South Australia's Blackout)

Ill Wind: Australia’s Greenest State Blacked Out By Power Cuts

James Delingpole
Breitbart London

The entire state of South Australia was blacked out by power cuts night sending 1.67 million householders back to the dark ages. This comes just days after a report called Keeping The Lights On warned that black outs might be a consequence of the state’s radical green energy policies.
Local media has blamed it on “the most extreme weather systems to hit in 50 years.” But a more likely culprit would seem to be the state’s disastrous “clean” energy policy which has driven up electricity prices to insane levels and severely threatened the reliability and stability of the state’s grid.

As we reported at Breitbart earlier this year, South Australia now has the cleanest energy in Australia – 40 per cent of its energy capacity comes from wind – but also by far the most expensive. The wholesale price for electricity in most Australian states is $30/MWh and $32/MWh. Earlier this year, in South Australia it reached an eye-watering $1400/MWh – wreaking havoc on energy-intensive local industries such as BHP.

A renewable energy lobby group called the Clean Energy Council has been quick to deny that the massive blackout has anything to do with green energy policy:

“The blackout in South Australia appears to have been caused by extreme winds which have caused damage to large electricity pylons at multiple locations across the state, policy manager Tom Butler said.  “This is not an issue relating to power generation – whether renewable energy, gas or otherwise – and by all accounts there was little that could have been done to prevent it.

Mr Butler said wind power was generating lots of electricity at the time the system went down, with the rest of the state supplied by gas-fired power and the interconnector.  “It is important to remember that this is a once-in-50-year storm, and no power system can fully prepare for the savage winds, lightning and hail that pounded the state today. It is a freak event.”

But Australia is not a Third World country and is well used to freak weather events. Indeed, it’s an island of almost nothing but freak weather events The idea that a storm – even an alleged once-in-fifty-years storm chucking down hailstones the size of golfballs and comprising over 130,000 lightning strikes – should be capable of immobilising an entire state’s grid network is more a case of culpable incompetence than an Act of God.

This is what a report published earlier this week by Australia’s Grattan Institute warned would happen. And it wasn’t even a particularly anti-renewables report. It simply pointed out that the drive for renewables in South Australia – led by a character called Tom Koutsantonis, who came to power as South Australia’s Energy Minister with a bold promise to reduce net carbon emissions in his jurisdiction to zero by 2050 – has driven many, traditional brown-coal-fired power stations out of business. This means that there is a dangerous shortage of reliable, baseload power capacity in times of crisis.

South Australia’s experience offers a salutary warning to all those other countries foolish enough to imagine – as the Labour party does in Britain, for example – that renewables represent any kind of workable solution to the world’s energy problems

Letter From the UK (About Self-Righteous Patricians Sneering at the Plebs)

Betraying Brexit

The Revolt of the Elites Against the People

Brendan O'Neill
The Spectator

Why is everyone so chilled out about the threats to Brexit? Why isn’t there more public fury over the plotting of lords and academics and experts to stymie Brexit and thwart the will of 17.4m people? In all the years I’ve been writing about politics, I cannot remember a time when democracy has been treated with as much disgust, with as much naked, Victorian-era elitism, as it is being today. And yet we’re all bizarrely mellow. We’re going about our business as if everything is normal, as if the elites aren’t right now, this very minute, in revolt against the people. We need to wake up.

Every day brings fresh news of the revolt of the elite, of the march of the neo-reactionaries against the mandate of the masses.

Peter Hitchens's Letter from the UK (About Justice)

The Church In Retreat--From Ignominy

Peter Hitchens
The Mail Online

As the vast Goddard inquisition lurches off the rails, are we finally recovering our sanity about child abuse? Terrible as this crime is, it is not an excuse for losing our heads and trampling on justice.  This week I record a small victory in one such case of injustice, that of the late, saintly and much-loved Bishop George Bell. He was publicly smeared as a paedophile without a hearing by the Church of England – on the basis of a single, ancient uncorroborated accusation.

I am pleased to say that, under cover of a cloud of holy smoke, the C of E has retreated.  The Church doesn’t understand English law (hence the kangaroo court) and has a nasty habit of using the anonymous complainant, an elderly lady known as ‘Carol’, as a human shield. Any criticism of the Church’s injustice is falsely alleged to be an attack on her.

The current Bishop of Chelmsford, The Rt Revd Stephen Cottrell, recently said in the House of Lords that defenders of George Bell had ‘made hurtful comments’ about ‘Carol’. It was a nasty thing to say, and it was not true.  I have been pursuing Mr Cottrell, helpfully pointing out to him what the Bible says about bearing false witness, and about owning up to wrongdoing. He is, after all, a modern sort of Bishop and can’t necessarily be expected to be well-versed in such things.

Letter From the UK (About Something Smelly)

Jailed... For a Very Odd Non-crime 

Peter Hitchens
The Daily Mail

In the same way that we have to allow free speech to those we despise, we must be most careful to ensure justice for those who are different from us, and with whom we can’t easily sympathise.

So a nasty shiver ran up and down my spine when I saw that Lorna Moore, a convert to Islam who married a Muslim, has been locked up for a very odd offence.  In fact, I know of no other offence like it in English law. This young mother has been imprisoned for not informing on her husband.


I’ve yet to see any conclusive proof that she actually knew he was planning to join a terror group. Somehow or other, a return ticket to Majorca was taken as evidence that she was planning to run away to Syria with a husband she loathes.

And my English heart revolts at the idea of a wife being forced by law to inform on her husband. This is sinister, totalitarian stuff, alien to everything we stand for.

Those who drafted the 2000 Terrorism Act should be ashamed of enacting it. Can they have meant to lock up this person, so undangerous that she was allowed to be out on bail for three months between conviction and sentence?

Will it be children next, snatched into custody for not sneaking to the police about their parents’ conversations? This reminds me of the nauseating cult of Pavlik Morozov, whom Soviet children were taught to revere because he reported his father to the secret police.

There used to be a statue of this little monster (who was promptly and understandably murdered by his grandfather) in the middle of Moscow.   But while even Vladimir Putin doesn’t encourage such things nowadays, we in Britain are moving towards the all-powerful state, on the excuse of combating terror.

As it happens, Lorna Moore had every reason to do her husband harm if she had wanted to. She went into the witness box (a dangerous thing for a guilty person to do) to say convincingly that she hates her husband, who was given to shoving her head down the lavatory.  To make the matter even more odd, the husband involved hasn’t actually been convicted of doing the thing his wife didn’t tell the police about.

Indeed, he has sent an email to British media saying he isn’t actually in Syria, but in Turkey. Are the rest of us truly free when people can be locked up for such things? I don’t feel so.

Letter From the UK (About Massive Policy Failures)

Rejection of UK Government's Perverse Ineptitude

96% Label Government’s Anti-Radicalisation Strategy Ineffective At Tackling Extremism

Breitbart London

Sarkis Zeronian

A poll has revealed the public has no faith in the government’s anti-radicalisation scheme, with 96 per cent of respondents saying it is a failure.

The coalition government’s flagship Prevent strategy was unveiled in June 2011 as part of its attack on extremism in Britain, and further revamped last year. It followed a review of the previous Labour government’s failed anti-radicalisation attempt. The three main objectives were:

“to respond to the ideological challenge of terrorism and the threat from those who promote it; to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism and ensure that they are given appropriate advice and support; and to work with sectors and institutions where there are risks of radicalisation that we need to address.”

Today the Daily Express reports that only four per cent of respondents to a poll believe the anti-radicalisation strategy can be described as effective.

Allegations of Institutional Evil, Part I

Rotherham Police Had Sex With Abused Girls 

And Covered For Relative Sex Groomers

Lliam Deacon
Breitbart London

The police watchdog is examining almost 200 Rotherham officers after corrupt police, one related to the convicted groomers, allegedly conspired to protect the Muslim child sex gang.  One officer and local politician, who is a family relative of the brothers convicted yesterday, is alleged to have brokered a deal whereby one brother was given assurance that he “wouldn’t get done” if he returned one his young victims to a police station.

Another is accused of having sex with an under-age girls, passing drugs to the grooming gang and tipping them off when colleagues were searching for missing children, a court was told. .  .  .

Jahangir Akhtar, the former deputy leader of Rotherham council and deputy chairman of South Yorkshire police, is one of several alleged to have taken part in the handover. [Emphasis, ours.]  He is also a relative of Arshid, Basharat and Bannaras Hussain.  The three brothers were found guilty yesterday of multiple sexual offences against underage girls over a twenty years period in Rotherham, a town they were said to “own” thanks to their criminal and police connections.

Letter From the UK (About Not Baking A Cake)

'Gay cake' couple: 'We don't hate anyone.

It's done out of love for God'

The Guardian

Daniel and Amy McArthur say they have no regrets about refusing to bake cake with pro-gay marriage message on it.  An evangelical Christian couple at the centre of the “gay cake” court case have insisted they never meant to discriminate against anyone and do not hate gay people.  [They] also said the case against them last year had strengthened their marriage.

Ashers Baking Company was found guilty last year by a county court in Northern Ireland of breaking the province’s strict laws on political and sexual discrimination. The case centred on the McArthurs’ refusal to bake a cake with a pro-gay marriage message on it.  They were taken to court by the Equality Commission of Northern Ireland and the couple were fined £500.

Letter From the UK (About Africa)

Capitalism is Eradicating Disease and Poverty

As the remarkable retreat of malaria across Africa shows, free trade is a very efficient way of spreading medicine and wealth

Daily Telegraph
Fraser Nelson


A Maasai warrior talks on a mobile phone in Kajiado, Kenya Photo: Joseph Van Os / Getty

Did you know that someone dies of malaria every 60 seconds? You may do, if you’ve seen one of the latest Christian Aid posters picturing an African girl staring fearfully at the camera, or a young boy lying on what seems to be his deathbed. They send a powerful Christmas message: while we celebrate in comfort, children are dying for want of a £3 mosquito net. And we could change this, if only we chose to help.

What these adverts don’t tell you, though, is the remarkable extent to which we are helping – and, more importantly, the way in which Africans are helping themselves. Malaria, mankind’s biggest killer, is now retreating faster than at any time since records began.

Earlier this month, the United Nations announced that malaria’s global death toll has more than halved since the turn of the century, saving six million lives. It’s the greatest success story of modern times, yet no one seems interested in telling it.

Letter From the UK (About Statist Brainwashing)

British Secularist Values Regime Will Suppress Christianity

Consistent, faithful Muslims attempted to take over some state schools in Birmingham.  It was an infiltration plot, dubbed Trojan Horse, whereby school boards would be populated by faithful Muslims, who would then employ consistent Muslim teachers.  The curriculum and pedagogical methods (for example, classroom separation of boys and girls) would be adjusted to conform to true Islamic beliefs, teachings, and values.

The plot was exposed and the Trojan Horse was duly dragged outside the city walls whence it came.

The secularist, pagan British government decided that it had to police its schools more aggressively.  It had to clamp down, not on Islamic beliefs, but on "extremism".  How was "extremism" to be defined? you ask.  Anything taught in schools which did not conform to "British values".  And what, one asks, are British values?  Atheistic secularism, of course--similar to what is officially adhered to in Communist China.  

The upshot is that consistent, faithful Christian schools (and churches) are lumped in with consistent faithful Muslims--all alike are under the cosh because they teach values inconsistent with atheistic secularism.

Government Inspectors Could Monitor Sunday Schools And Choirs To Enforce ‘British Values’

Nick Hallett
Breitbart London

Government inspectors could monitor Sunday schools, church youth groups and even choirs to ensure they are teaching so-called “British values”, in a move Christians have dubbed “profoundly insulting”.

Letter From the UK (About Free Speech)

Christian Institute Launches Free Speech Campaign To Defend Christians From ‘Extremism Orders’

by Liam Deacon

Breitbart London

The Christian Institute is planning to lead a challenge to the government’s new “Extremism Disruption Orders” (EDOs) joining the National Secular Society in a campaign called Defend Free Speech.

The EDOs are similar to Tony Blair’s infamous Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs), but target perceived extremist, rather that anti-social, behaviour.  The orders, which featured in the Tory manifesto, would allow police to apply to the High Court for the power to restrict the movement and freedoms of people they deem to be extremists.

At the beginning of August, Tory MP Mark Spencer, admitted: “EDOs… would apply to a situation where a teacher was specifically teaching that gay marriage is wrong.”

Simon Calvert, from the Christian Institute and spokesperson for the Defend Free Speech campaign, told Premier Christian Radio:

Letter From the UK (About A Relic That May Revive)

Peter Hitchens Shouldn’t Give Up the Fight Just Yet

Peter Hitchens, Twitter

by Benjamin Harris-Quinney

Breitbart London

It is true that Peter Hitchens is one of the last public conservatives allowed to exist in Britain. The establishment is apparently willing to tolerate him as a relic, but eagerly waits to consign him to history and prevent any successors from reminding us of the inconvenient foundations of politics in philosophy and ideology, rather than the pointless pursuit of power and status quo.

I was surprised to see him appear in Owen Jones’s latest attempt to wheel out curiosities who have not yet conformed to the metropolitan liberal consensus.

In speaking to Jones and the Guardian, Hitchens is somewhat guilty of putting pearls before the swine, he seems to justify it in cheerfully acknowledging his relaxed acceptance that Britain is finished in anything other than name anyway, and he may be right. But that doesn’t mean conservatism is finished, in fact it is engaged in a global culture war that many more in Britain are capable of taking part in, if they had the basic tools to engage with the debate.

Hitchens is now reduced to reminding us in his sadly seldom screen appearances of the definition and basic concepts of liberalism, socialism and conservatism. Not because that is all he is able to do, but the political debate in Britain has become so debased it is necessary for serious commentators to have to walk Guardian columnists through the ABCs of political theory while their eyes bulge in shock to learn that David Cameron is not a conservative.