Mitigation For Marine A – Sgt Blackman
I shall be signing the petition that I understand is being organised to ask for a reduction in the 10 year minimum sentence imposed on Royal Marines Sgt Alexander Blackman. Technically, he was guilty of murder and deserves punishment, not least to maintain the honour and discipline of the Marines. However, his sentence did not take into account the pressure of the war in Afghanistan. This includes the horrors that he and his troop had witnessed in seeing the remains of our troops who had been blown up left to hang on the branches of trees: the work of Taliban insurgents, one of whose number he killed.
On top of the 10 year imprisonment his name was divulged by the court which means every Muslim fundamentalist in British jails – and they are not few – will be ready to kill him.
Senior officers have spoken out supporting leniency. One such is Lord West of Spithead, a former first lord of the Admiralty, who said: This is a man who has put his life on the line many times. I am not sure due account has been taken of this.”
There are now new rulings by the courts that British troops face 11 separate inquiries about their conduct in the war in Iraq. These new legal efforts arise from Europe (who wisely did little of the fighting in Blair’s little escapade). Our High Court has ruled that any allegation about an Iraqi citizen dying in British custody has to be investigated as a breach of Article Two of the European Convention on Human Rights, which has become part of our domestic law as a result of the Human Rights Act. The total cost to the taxpayer will be in excess of £2 million
All this could be a trickle before the flood. Phil Shiner, a human rights solicitor, has brought or is preparing to bring a total of 160 cases accusing British troops of involvement in Iraquis’ deaths, and nearly 800 cases accusing them of mistreatment. I suppose we all have to make a living Mr Shiner, eh? ‘Go tell that to the Marines’, as the saying goes.
As Colonel Tim Collins, who led the lst Battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment during the Iraq invasion, put it: “Applying the law and doing your duty is no longer enough. They are trying to apply the rules that you would to running a fairground to Her Majesty’s Armed Forces, and that’s not doable.”
An Alternative to Grammar Schools
In my last Notebook I dealt at some length with the educational problems facing the White Working Class, and boys in particular. Since then we have seen the publication of an OECD-PISA international league table of school system performance for 15-year-olds.. It is a devastating indictment of the effectiveness of Britain’s educational system in that it shows us as being 21st in the world in science teaching, 23rd in reading and 26th in maths. Furthermore, it found that the gap in exam results between rich and poor pupils was wider in Britain than in most other developed nations. One obvious answer to this is that ‘poor’ pupils are more likely to live in high immigration areas and teachers are held back by dealing with growing numbers of children whose first language is not English. This has been well covered on this site previously.
Some, including myself in the past, have said that the only answer is to maintain the 11 plus system with the return of grammar schools with all costs being provided for parents on low incomes. We had defended this by saying it was the best way for identifying the greatest talent available for the highest positions in the nation’s life. No other considerations, such as so-called ‘class’, family connections or economic advantage should be considered as greater for qualification for public office than individual ability. Furthermore, great sections of the post-war baby boom in the working class reached higher education as a result of grammar schools. This is why in the sixties Britain had the highest proportion of university students from working class backgrounds of any European country (see Janet Daley, Sunday Telegraph 17.1.13).
A reason for the main changes in this situation since then is the difference in the outlook of teachers – most of .whom work just as hard as their predecessors.
Student teachers in the sixties were now being told by Maoist-influenced university and college lecturers that to impose correct grammar, or academic content, or bourgeois culture, on working-class children was a form of social imperialism. Maoist class war emphasised that you did not want able children to escape from the working class. Therefore, you must not indoctrinate the children with ‘posh’ speech or show any interest in elitist pastimes. The objective must be social engineering.
You have only got to listen to any speech, or comment from the floor, at a National Teachers Union meeting, or speak to your own children’s teachers, to find that this view has now been passed on to two further generations of teachers.
I would put this open to discussion in view of the above. Bringing back grammar schools would no longer be a solution to the problem. In fact, this is hinted at in the main point of the British Democrats education policy which does not refer to grammar schools:
“ We require an education system, where discipline is restored, that pushes education in science and technology. We favour selective rather than comprehensive education. Not every pupil is suitable for university education , therefore we would increase the number of technical schools , particularly those leading to apprenticeships.”
Paedophile Immigrants “A Gravy Train for Lawyers”
Reports on paedophile immigrants and gangs who have passed around young white girls who have become their victims are becoming commonplace. I am reporting on a specific case because it emphasises the difficulties that the law has in deporting these monsters, and in this case we, the taxpayers, end up having to pay them compensation..
It concerned a Sudanese, Jumaa Kater Saleh who arrived here as a 16-year-old via the back of a lorry nine years ago. In 2008 he was convicted of serious sex offences against school girls in Dartford where he was part of a five man (Sudanese) grooming gang. Last month, with the help of UK top human rights lawyers and relying on legal aid he successfully sued the Government for “unreasonable delay”, which had led to his being detained unnecessarily for eight months. His damages have yet to be decided.
On first arriving, he told the court that if his asylum request was rejected and he returned to the Sudan he would be killed. He said his father was an arable farmer, but men from his tribe usually farm cattle. He claimed to be from an interior part of Sudan, but his tribe is normally found on the border region. The sorry tale went on and on but was full of holes. His appeal for asylum was rightfully rejected.
Saleh and his fellow Sudanese involved in the affair did everything they could to delay all court proceedings to deport them. Each claimed the need for a separate interpreter and also a second barrister each. Saleh’s lawyers launched a series of appeals including one under the UN Refugee Convention and humanitarian protection legislation. This was dropped and then the lawyers successfully appealed and claimed relief under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The successful law firm is Duncan Lewis, which specialises in immigration matters. Apparently it earns more money from the Government in legal aid than any other law firm. In 2011-12 it earned almost £15 million in civil legal aid payments, which is almost double the £8 million earned by Blavo & Co, its closest competitor.
As Dominic Raab, the MP for Esher and Walton said of this case: “It’s a gravy train for lawyers but a nightmare for the taxpayers”.
Police Massage Crime Figures
Next to hiding the true amount of immigration, crime figures must be a close second for being distorted by both Labour and Coalition Governments, with the aid of the Police. They claimed that crime was down 8 per cent last year. A similar claim was given for the last year of Blair’s government. Yet, at a House of Commons public administration committee last month, it was divulged that police forces are routinely massaging crime figures to make hundreds of offences disappear in a puff of smoke.
It was reported that serving and retired police officers gave evidence about techniques used to manipulate the figures – which they said were sanctioned by senior officers. According to David Barrett, Home Affairs correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, Peter Barron, a former detective chief superintendent in the Metropolitan Police, said that some boroughs “can only afford to have X number of burglaries per day and X number of robberies per week”. At the daily meeting, they will discuss individual crimes with a view to see what opportunities there are to count them as something other than a priority crime.
At a conference held in Northampton on November 19-20 of the Association of Chief Police Officers, Mick Creedon, the head of the Derbyshire force, said: “Inadvertent pressure from senior officers meant statistics did not depict the true level of crime in Britain. He added that national performance targets may have led crime figures to be skewed for 15 years or more.
The people on the front line of crime, mainly those in the large towns and cities, should at least be pleased that at last the myth of reduced crime pushed by Blair and Cameron – and his glove puppet deputy – has been exposed. It is down to the BDP to explain how we can make a genuine reduction in crime.
I am afraid that for many of us our attitude towards the police has now become the views as expressed by Alfred Hitchcock: “ I am not against the police; I’m just afraid of them”.
3
My personal view is that Sgt Blackman did wrong and should only serve 5% of the sentence and the politicians who authorised the deployment of our troops in Afghanistan serve the remaining 95%.
But the Taliban HAD to be stopped! They had taken control of the local opium production from the usual Western-backed traffickers. They also refused a central bank and national debt/usury on moral grounds. They put the man back at the head of the household and believed in home schooling.
Tragically, our boys (and girls) and treasure were expended for the NWO’s plans. Shame, shame, SHAME on our military top brass for collaborating in all these wicked wars, definitely NOT for Queen and Country! I hope to see them, with their pockets stuffed with gold pensions, decorate our lampposts some day (after due process, of course).
Shan’t argue with that Ken.
My view is Sgt Blackman did no wrong. Putting a dying man out of his misery is humane. Had he put his K Bar in the wound and swished it around. Now that might seem cruel.
But that’s the game. We either train our watchmen to kill or we train them in social work. Now sleeping at night is implicitly a case of our watchmen ready for action. Personally I’d give him a medal.
Its a shame our monarch hasn’t the cajones to intervene. And our soldiers to down rifles fly a white flag and get killed. Afghans are not impressed with these niceties of combat. The single best reason we should take no prisoners.
For me it is morally wrong to put a gun in a man’s hand, train him to use it, and then try him for murder when he does use it – whatever the circumstances.
Our ancestors who fought at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt would fall around laughing and thoroughly despised our generals, officers and judges if they could hear of this. When they fought, the French flew the ‘Orriflame’ standard which meant no prisoners and no quarter.
You can’t fight a dirty war by gentlemens’ rules. Unfortunately, our brave men are being led and judged by donkeys with no (excuse me) cojones. Is that how you spell it?
We shouldn’t give quarter either. A dead terrorist is one less, after all.
I agree 100% with John Bean’s analysis of the failure to teach literacy and numeracy in our schools. Until we can rid the schools, and most particularly the secondary schools, of the Marxist teachers standards will continue to decline.
Another thing that to me is simply wrong is to keep children at school in general education until they are sixteen or over (sometimes well over) if they have no further interest in being educated in that way. We need technical schools where children over the age of 13 can specialise, learn a trade, practical courses where they will feel they are learning something useful, not simply marking time in utter boredom at the back of the class, or clowning around, disrupting all those of a more academic turn of mind.
When one thinks of how boys used to go to sea at 14. My own father left school at that age.
11+ died long ago and that’s not a bad thing. Just because you failed an exam at 11 doesn’t mean you couldn’t be very successful academically later in life.
This Marxists-under-the-bed paranoia that some people have is wildly unrealistic. How many teachers have even read the Communist Manifesto? I’m sure there are plenty of Marxists in Hackney but in most of the country Marxism is dead and has been for a long time.
We need to look into how we can get our standards up to the level of Finland and South Korea rather than fighting an imaginary Cold War and trying to turn the clock back to some golden age of British education that never was.
Adam is totally out of touch. Teaching is eaten up by post-Marxist ideas which have led to a loss of classroom discipline and appallingly low levels of numeracy and literacy.
The Chief Inspector of Schools was quite good on Newsnight Wednesday night. He seems to be trying to bring a little sanity to bear.
Of course there’s a loss of classroom discipline and appallingly low levels of numeracy and literacy, but this has nothing to do with Marxist teachers. Discipline, numeracy and literacy were all extremely high in the Soviet Union where they really did have Marxist teachers. Let’s stop blaming an enemy that doesn’t exist. It’s the system itself that needs reform.
Sorry but you are ill-informed Adam.
The Soviet Union had a worker motivation problem summed up in the joke “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work”.
Britain is different. A majority of British teachers are members of the Labour party. They believe in child-centred learning which means no discipline and that school is there as social engineering to fight capitalism and that this objective comes first. They are motivated alright – but not in a constructive direction.
As one teacher put it to me: “As long as they are having fun”. Teacher training has long been a scandalous hot bed of left-wing social engineering.
‘All must have prizes’, as the title of Melanie Phillips’ book had it. May I suggest you read it.
You are incredibly ill-informed. A quick google reveals there were 438,000 teachers in England in 2011 compared to 193,961 members of the Labour Party so how on earth could a majority of British teachers be members of the Labour Party? It’s disappointing to see these wild claims of Marxism and Labour Party membership thrown around without any evidence.
As for learner-centred teaching, there’s nothing inherently wrong with it. It’s used in successful education systems like Finland. The discipline issue is completely separate. May I suggest you get your information on the crucial issue of education from a more weighty authority than Melanie Phillips.
I think you’re correct to a certain extent in the sense that most teachers are not Marxist ideologues. The problem is that policy and curriculum has been filled with culturally Marxist ideas, which most of the teachers were brought up on when they trained and were at school, and so the cycle continues, with few questioning what they are taught to do.
You may be right on the proportion who are in Labour now because their membership has fallen so much since the heyday of Blair – ignoring affiliate membership via unions.
We will have to agree to differ if you believe the education system is not largely in the hands of the left with an agenda. And I don’t accept that Melanie Phillips knows nothing about it so we will have to differ on that too. Have you read her book?
We heard in comments here from a teacher a few days ago along the lines I suggested.
I agree that there are a lot of left-wing teachers with an agenda and, for example, children are being taught a warped version of history as a result, but that’s very different from some of the wild claims made by you and John Bean.
As for Melanie Phillips, no I haven’t read her book because I have no interest in plastic Tories who write for the Daily Mail like her and Peter Hitchens. What qualifications or experience do they have to write about education?
Well Melanie Phillips’ book on education was described by The Guardian as ‘deranged rantings from the far right’.
Mike Newland has admirably answered Adam Smith’s misunderstandings about the true state of education today.
I feel the debate will not get anywhere in that Adam’s belief in learner-centred teaching – i.e. the pupil and his/her views must become paramount. It is the cause of much of the anarchy that exists in today’s schools. The ploy of bringing in non-sequiturs on membership numbers of the Labour Party and the number of teachers is also indicative of modern liberal-left thinking on the subject. This is the attitude of most teachers today according to my grandchildren. It was not the case when I passed the 11 plus (another chance available at 14) for a grammar school (with free dinners as my mother was a widow). As I have said above, not that this means grammar schools today are the best answer.
(Party Member) Does anyone remember the nationalist leaflet of the mid 1970’s? ‘How to spot a communist teacher’. It was full of good advice which had it been followed, would have saved our education system. The qualifications for being a teacher had been lowered considerably and there was no doubt that eight out of ten teachers were lefty liberal or Marxists. We Nationalist’s were right at the time and we are right now. Let’s hope people are now starting to listen to our decent Nationalism of today.
In inner-city schools it is the head teacher who is Common Purpose/lefty/Marxist – most having been more militant NUT members before promotion plus anyone aspiring to advance their careers. Others just toe the line, keep their head down and pick up their wages.
Just look at the actions of Lynn Small covered by the article at: http://britishdemocraticparty.org/children-threatened-with-racial-discrimination-note-for-not-attending-islamic-workshop/
She typifies the mind-set of all that is wrong with our education system at management level.
Even school policies promote a multi-racial utopia and are laced with subliminal positive discrimination.
Not long I expect before we get executed for ‘dreaming different dreams’ like Uncle in North Korea.
I grew up in NW London and failed the 11+ . I got a chance at the 13+ and went to Willesden art school. In both infants junior and secondary school, where I spent two unhappy years, discipline was rigidly enforced. We were never less than 40 to a class, and we all faced the same way towards the teacher. The cane was kept in view and was most effective as a deterrent to bad behaviour.
You see, they only had to cane me (I answered back if I thought I was being unjustly treated) and after that the whole class fell into line. The classes were quiet. We were not allowed to talk and so we learned what the teacher was there to teach us.
Nowadays, the children are split, from infants up, into groups round tables with chairs which can be banged onto the floor to cause disruption. Many children do not know how to sit still on a chair and they do not know how to be quiet.
Not enough writing is done in infants and juniors to equip them to cope with the secondary school and the teacher has no deterrent to bad behaviour and can get no help from the head or even other teachers as they tend to want to be friends with the children rather than put the fear of God (or anything else) into them. Thus, not much learning is done. I speak from experience. Many teachers find it difficult to keep the children in their seats and in the classroom – never mind about teaching them anything.
The public schools don’t beat people any more but maintain order. One reason why people are willing to pay huge sums in fees.
That’s because there is an atmosphere of won’t stand for trouble on principle. In the state schools the kids quickly pick up on the fact that the system will stand for disruption and kids do what kids do. It all emanates from the political theory behind state schools which is that order is capitalist oppression.
I went to a public school fifty years ago when beating was legal but not much used and certainly not threatened by leaving canes around like a Billy Bunter story. It was not generally required for the reason above.
I am suprised there has not been a comment on my piece regarding the police massaging crime figures.
Several dailies last week reported on statements made by Prof Mike Hough of the Crime Statistics Advisory Board to MPs. He confirmed that police were overstating the rate of the decrease in crime. Prof Stephen Shute, chairman of the CSAB, said: “There is a question about the extent to which police are manipulating the crime recording process either to inform external performance targets or to improve the way they are perceived in the locality”.
Elsewhere it was reported that the former chief constable of Gwent Police, Carmel Napier, was accused of manipulating the force’s crime figures to give her area the largest fall in crime in England and Wales. Half the reported crimes investigated were incorrectly recorded.
Mrs Napier was ordered to “retire or be removed” after a dispute with the Crime Commissioner. She denied wrong doing.