Showing posts with label Great Britain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Great Britain. Show all posts
Monday, February 14, 2011
Thursday, August 12, 2010
MAIL ONLINE: The British people and David Cameron have been labelled ‘thick’ by a senior member of Iran’s government.
In a blistering diatribe against Britain, Mohammad-Reza Rahimi said: ‘They have plundered the world in the last 500 years and the young lad in charge now is even more stupid than his predecessor. It’s as if God has made this nation servants of America and Zionists.’
Iran’s First Vice President added: ‘England has nothing. Its inhabitants are not human, its officials are not responsible, and it doesn’t even have any natural resources. (They are) a bunch of thick people ruled by a mafia.’ British are bunch of thick people ruled by a mafia, says Iran's vice president... and sparks row with our ambassador >>> Mail Foreign Service | Thursday, August 12, 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
SAN DIEGO GAY & LESBIAN NEWS: A comprehensive three-country survey on attitudes towards homosexuality reveals that Canadians and Britons are more inclined to support the legal recognition of same-sex couples than Americans.
The online survey of representative national samples of 1,003 Canadian adults, 1,002 American adults and 1,980 British adults shows that younger generations are clearly more accepting of same-sex relations. However, the poll also confirms that younger Americans — born between 1980 and 1995 — are more conservative than their Canadian and British counterparts in all matters related to homosexuality. >>> SDGLN Staff | Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: Petrol prices have hit a new record high, despite a fall in the wholesale cost paid by super-markets and forecourts, triggering fresh accusations of profiteering.
According to the AA, motorists are now paying 121.61 pence for a litre of unleaded, compared to 109.88 on January 1. This has added just under £6 to the cost of filling an average car such as a Vauxhall Astra.
Diesel has risen from 111.52p at the start of January to 123.03p now, a rise of more than 11 pence.
While British motorists have seen no end in sight to the inexorable rise in pump prices, their counterparts on the continent have seen the cost of filling a car fall by as much as two per cent over the last week. Read more about the rip-off >>> David Millward, Transport Editor | Friday, May 14, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: Britain has been warned it will be punished by Europe if the pound is hit by a financial crisis, after refusing to support a massive euro bail-out.
Officials from both euro and non-euro countries said Britain should not ask for help if it runs into trouble because it had not signed up to a £378 billion support fund.
French, Swedish and many Brussels officials have predicted that it is only a matter of time before Sterling is hit by the same market turbulence that came close to destroying the euro at the weekend.
Jean-Pierre Jouyet, a former French Europe minister and the current chairman of France's financial services authority, yesterday predicted only "God would help" a rudderless Britain after it snubbed its euro zone neighbours.
"There is not a two speed Europe but a three speed Europe. You have Europe of the euro, Europe of the countries that understand the euro ... and you have the English," he said.
"The English are very certainly going to be targeted given the political difficulties they have. Help yourself and heaven will help you. If you don't want to show solidarity to the euro zone, then let's see what happens to the United Kingdom." >>> Bruno Waterfield in Brussels | Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Friday, May 07, 2010
SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: Britain, it seems, has finally become European, at least in its political system. The UK's much-dreaded hung parliament would be business as usual on the Continent, where parties are used to forming coalition governments. Britain's unfair first-past-the-post system needs to finally be fixed.
British beer is famous for tasting flat to continental Europeans. Equally flat was the mood that set in over the course of the long election night after Britons voted in Thursday's general election. The result is disappointingly undecided: The British wanted change, but not enough to actually get it.
They have obviously had enough of Labour's Gordon Brown and his government, but they do not necessarily want Conservative challenger David Cameron as prime minister. With around 36 percent of the total vote, the Tories narrowly missed their goal of winning a majority of seats in parliament. Now the British have produced a very un-British election result: a hung parliament in which no single party has a majority of seats.
In the eyes of the Brits, coalition governments have been regarded, at least up until now, as an excessively complex invention by those continental Europeans. Such governments were seen as incapable of action, and coalitions were thought to promote haggling between parties and political corruption.
The British are accustomed to having a single government party and a large opposition party in their parliament. The government -- which, thanks to the undemocratic first-past-the-post system, usually had a comfortable majority -- dictated their policies; the opposition railed against them. Once the ruling party had run out of steam, the roles were reversed. New Political Territory >>> A Commentary by Michael Sontheimer | Friday, May 07, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: In the second extract from his new book, Philip Johnston says we must restore traditional British common sense.
When I was growing up, there were two common phrases that you hardly ever hear today. One was: "It's a free country." The other was: "There should be a law against it." They tended to be uttered by people older than my parents who had been born not long after the First World War and may well have fought in the Second.
These phrases captured the essence of Britishness and why those wars were fought. We were, or imagined ourselves to be, "a free country" in a way that most European countries were not and had never been. That notion of being free defined us. We were not people subject to arbitrary state power and we both knew it and could say it. Perhaps this first phrase was used ironically at times; but when I heard it as a young boy it had a sense of certainty and permanence about it. What are we? A free country.
The second phrase also says much about the sort of country we were, and are no longer. There were, obviously, lots of laws but they were less restrictive of individual activity. They set parameters within which the "free" bit could be exercised and were governed by common law precedents handed down over the centuries. We had liberty; we did not have licence.
Yet there were clearly things of which many people, especially older ones, disapproved and that they sometimes wished could be legislated away, such as the looser morals that were on show in the 1960s. You could imagine an old codger leering at a girl in her thigh-high mini-skirt in 1963 (when sexual intercourse began, according to the poet Philip Larkin) and saying: "There should be a law against it." And if the girl had overheard, she would have replied: "It's a free country, grandad. Mind your own business."
However, neither of these phrases applies today. We are no longer a free country, not in the way previous generations would have understood the phrase; and as for the demand for laws, there almost certainly already is a law against it. >>> Philip Johnston | Sunday, March 21, 2010
'Bad Laws' by Philip Johnston (Constable) is out on Thursday and is available for £8.99 plus 99p postage and packing from Telegraph Books. Please call 0844 871 1514 or go to books.telegraph.co.uk
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
THE COPENHAGEN POST ONLINE: Justice minister calls it unacceptable that proposed lawsuit against Danish newspapers could be heard in British court system
Because EU member states generally recognise the authority of each other's legal systems, Denmark may be forced to pay damages through the British courts if plaintiffs win their lawsuit over the printing of the Mohammed cartoons.
Saudi lawyer Faisal Yamani has taken the case to court in London – claiming to have done so on behalf of some 95,000 descendants of the prophet Mohammed – saying the drawings amount to defamation against them and the Islamic faith.
In August last year, Yamani requested that 11 Danish newspapers remove all the relevant images from their websites and issue apologies along with promises that the images would never be printed again.
Politiken was the only newspaper to agree to the demand, having acquiesced last month.
But justice minister Lars Barfoed has now asked the European Commission to step in to stop the case from being heard in the UK. Barfoed said that while he respected the legal cooperation among EU member states, the proposed lawsuit amounts to a restriction on the freedom of expression.
‘It’s fundamentally reasonable that judgments in the EU can often be exercised across borders,’ Barfoed told Berlingske Tidende newspaper. ‘But it would be taking it to the extreme if a UK court could rule against the Danish media and then require compensation and court costs to be paid.’ >>> RC News | Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Related:
THE TELEGRAPH: Defamation Case Over Prophet Mohammed Cartoons 'To Be Held' in Britain >>> Bruno Waterfield in Brussels | Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: A Saudi Arabian lawyer has threatened to use British courts to overturn a Danish free speech ruling by bringing a defamation case over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that depicted Islam's founder as a terrorist.
Faisal Yamani, a Jeddah based lawyer, is planning to take a case to London's libel courts on behalf of over 90,000 descendants of Mohammed who have claimed that the drawings have defamed them and the Islamic faith.
Cartoon caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed were published in Danish newspapers in 2006 triggering violent protests across the Muslim world and riots which claimed the lives of over 50 people.
According to Danish press reports, the case can be heard in the [sic] Britain because the images, including a caricature of Mohammed with a bomb shaped turban, have been freely accessible via the internet.
Danish politicians and publishers are furious that European Union rules reward "libel tourism" by enforcing British defamation rulings across Europe.
Ebbe Dal, managing director of Danske Dagblades Forening, the Danish national newspaper association, is concerned that Britain's tough libel laws could be used to restrict free speech in liberal countries such as Denmark.
"The Danish courts have decided that the case is not actionable and that we are allowed to print the drawings in Danish newspapers and websites," he said.
"It would be very odd if a civilised country like Britain could go against that. If this succeeded we would have to pay a lot of money to Saudi Arabians misusing the British courts to make it difficult for freedom of speech." >>> Bruno Waterfield in Brussels | Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
MAIL ONLINE: Labour encouraged mass immigration even though it knew that voters opposed it, Whitehall documents confirmed yesterday.
The Government said the public disagreed with immigration because of 'racism' and ministers were told to try to alter public attitudes.
The thinking on immigration among Labour leaders was set down in 2000 in a document prepared for the Cabinet Office and the Home Office, but the key passages were suppressed before it was published.
The paper was finally disclosed under freedom of information rules yesterday. It showed that ministers were advised that only the ill-educated and those who had never met a migrant were opposed to immigration.
They were also told that large-scale immigration would bring increases in crime, but they concealed these concerns from the public.
Sections of the paper, which underpinned Labour policies that admitted between two and three million immigrants to Britain in less than a decade, have already been made public.
These have showed that Labour aimed to use immigration not only for economic reasons but also to change the social make-up of the country. >>> Steve Doughty | Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: Muslim police officers have rebelled openly against the Government’s anti-terrorism strategy, warning that it is an “affront to British values” which threatens to trigger ethnic unrest.
The National Association of Muslim Police (NAMP) claimed that ministers were wrong to blame Islam for being the “driver” behind recent terrorist attacks.
Far-Right extremists were a more dangerous threat to national security, it said.
The officers told MPs that Muslims were being “stigmatised” by the Government’s attempts to tackle terrorism, which was adding to “hatred” against entire communities.
In the official intervention, the association said the Government’s anti-terrorism policies could not “continue unchecked”.
The comments, made in a seven-page memorandum to a parliamentary committee investigating extremism, are embarrassing for Gordon Brown.
They indicated that Muslim officers may be reluctant to take part in “hearts and minds” anti-terrorism campaigns.
The organisation, which represents more than 2,000 officers, was previously publicly backed by Mr Brown. The Prime Minister said the association was crucial to bridge the historic divide between Muslims and the police.
There have been growing concerns about the radicalisation of Muslims in Britain. The failed Detroit bombing on Christmas Day was carried out by an al-Qaeda-inspired extremist who had studied in London.
The Daily Telegraph disclosed last week that American intelligence agencies believed that Britain had the greatest number of Islamic extremists of any Western country.
It is thought to be the first time that the Muslim association, which was founded in 2007, has criticised government policy. >>> Robert Winnett, Deputy Political Editor | Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Saturday, January 16, 2010
THE SUNDAY TIMES: The radical Muslim who threatened to hold a march through Wootton Bassett is ready to defy the ban on his group and says a coup could make Britain an Islamic state
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
TIMES ONLINE: Britain warned Iceland that it would be frozen out of the European Union after its President abruptly vetoed the repayment of a £3.6 billion loan.
The Treasury expected Reykjavik to rubberstamp the terms of repayment for the loan extended by Britain and the Netherlands at the height of the financial crisis. The loan meant that 400,000 savers with deposits in Icesave did not lose their money.
President Ólafur Grimsson stunned the world’s financial community by refusing to sign the repayment schedule into law. Instead, he said that the matter would be decided in a referendum among Iceland’s 243,000 voters.
The decision threatened to bring down the Icelandic Government, took its financial system to the brink of collapse and sparked the worst row with Britain since the Cod Wars of the 1970s. Fitch, the international rating agency, downgraded Iceland’s credit rating to junk status.
Lord Myners, the financial services minister, said that if the decision was allowed to stand Iceland would be frozen out of the international financial system and would not be able to join the European Union. >>> Suzy Jagger and Jill Sherman | Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Friday, July 03, 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: Why does an educated, prosperous society choose not to reproduce itself, asks Charles Moore.
Our village is unusual in having a mainline railway station. Each day, a small number of people walk up from the station and past our house on their way to work. It is quite a long walk – perhaps a mile and a half – but I imagine they walk because they do not earn enough to own cars. They are virtually all foreign. They are on their way to serve as carers and nurses in an old people's home, whose inmates are virtually all British.
This procession is a daily visual illustration of what happens to a country when it lives and, increasingly, dies, under an illusion.
If you raise the subject of population with British people, most will tell you that the problem is overpopulation. There are too many people in the world, they say, and our own island is overcrowded.
Certainly, population growth causes problems, of which the greatest is the contest for resources, which can lead to war. But, as we are rediscovering with the recession, something frightening happens when what promised to go up, goes down.
Even quite marginal change has big effects. If you are getting 2 or 3 per cent richer each year, you can see a path of widening opportunity ahead. If you are getting 2 or 3 per cent poorer (let alone, as is currently the case, nearly 5 per cent), the future prospect narrows.
So it is with population; and the change is not marginal, but drastic. In 1960, OECD countries had a fertility rate of 3.2 children. Today, they have one of 1.6, well below the "replacement rate" of 2.1. So the rate has halved in my lifetime, moving from fast increase to steady decline. We in the West are collectively deciding not to bestow on others the gift which we most value for ourselves – life. >>> Charles Moore | Friday, July 03, 2009
Thursday, July 02, 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: Benedict Brogan believes both the main parties are missing the point of maintaining a nuclear deterrent
A free people, George Washington said, must be constantly awake against the insidious wiles of foreign influence. At any moment, from any quarter, trouble may pounce to put the sovereignty of the nation under threat. Defending the realm demands eternal vigilance.
Yet in this particular kingdom we are nodding off, distracted by the agonies of a financial crisis and the positioning of leaders vying for power. A time of great uncertainty abroad is met by political indifference at home.
From climate change and resource shortages, to cyber-warfare and disorderly states, to Islamist terrorism and international criminal networks, the dangers are multiplying. And then there are the unknown unknowns, the things we don't know that we don't know that kept Donald Rumsfeld up at night. Thirty years from now, who is to say that Russia will not have reverted to its expansionist ways, or that a nuclear-armed Caliphate of Waziristan will not be parked where Pakistan used to be?
Which is what makes British foreign policy, and our capacity to implement it, such a vital part of what a government does. It remains essential to us that our diplomatic effort be played out in the international premier league.
Listen to the whispers coming out of the chancelleries of Europe or the US state department, however, and the talk is of relegation. Britain is slipping down the rankings as Gordon Brown focuses on a domestic fight for survival. Ominously, there is no sign that the prospect of having David Cameron in charge will do anything to reverse the trend.
As so often with a national share price, it is a concatenation of decisions and behaviours that drives it downwards. Financial mismanagement, the prospect of a debt downgrade, an inability to produce the necessary resources in Iraq or Afghanistan, loose talk of defence cuts and an end to Trident, speculation about giving up our permanent seat on the UN Security Council, the threat of legal action against serving intelligence officers, and confusion over the Iraq inquiry have helped contribute to a steady loss of credibility.
The strength of our commitment to future defence is this week's wobble. Having frittered away billions since 1997, Mr Brown, with the tacit support of the Conservatives, is eyeing up those cash-draining Cold War programmes. It is tempting to detect the hand of his friends in the unions behind the well-timed leaks about cost over-runs on the two planned aircraft carriers, while the top brass fall over each other to volunteer the weapons programmes of rival services for the chop. >>> Benedict Brogan | Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: Britain has taken America's place as Tehran's most loathed nation. The antipathy goes back centuries, says Con Coughlin.
Not so long ago, Britain was held in such low esteem in Iran that it was simply dismissed as the "little Satan". So far as the ayatollahs were concerned, the real enemy was America, the "great Satan", whose love of liberty and free market capitalism was thought to pose the gravest threat to the Islamic revolution's survival.
It was for this reason that the American embassy, rather than the British, was occupied by the Revolutionary Guards in Tehran soon after Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in 1979, and its 66 staff held hostage. The expansive grounds of Britain's diplomatic mission, which hosted Winston Churchill during the Tehran conference in 1943, were briefly occupied by the Guards during Iran's revolutionary turmoil, but then evacuated because the mullahs did not regard Britain as being of sufficient importance to hold it to ransom.
But 30 years later it seems all that has changed as it is now Britain, rather than America, that finds itself on the receiving end of the ayatollahs' ire. After initiating last week's tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions, which saw two middle-ranking British diplomats expelled from Tehran for allegedly fomenting anti-government demonstrations, the Iranian authorities have arrested a further nine British embassy employees. Although some of the workers have since been released, there has been no let-up in the regime's anti-British rhetoric.
After Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, launched the initial anti-British tirade by denouncing Britain as the "most treacherous" of the regime's enemies, there has been no shortage of prominent Iranians lining up to denounce the "devious" British. At the heart of the dispute is Tehran's insistence that British spies have been responsible for stirring up the worst street protests Iran has experienced since 1979.
Manouchehr Mottaki, Iran's Foreign Minister, even went so far as to accuse Britain of sending planes filled with agents to Iran "with special intelligence and security ambitions".
In the past, Iran's purges and executions have been directed against those accused of spying for America or Israel. But the emergence of Britain as the mullahs' latest bête noire [sic] suggests Anglo-Iranian relations are about to undergo another period of intense strain. >>> Con Coughlin | Monday, June 29, 2009
Con Coughlan is the author of 'Khomeini's Ghost: Iran Since 1979', published by Macmillan
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Hat tip: The Anti-Jihadist >>>
TIMES ONLINE:
Why not read this ridiculous article by Daisy Goodwin while you’re at it? >>>
THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY: It's back - as controversial and, we believe, as necessary as ever. Here is this year's roster of the 101 most influential gay and lesbian people in Britian today
Before we started work on the 10th annual Independent on Sunday Pink List, we asked ourselves again whether we should be doing it at all. After all, in 2009, equal rights are enshrined in law and there are ‘out’ gay men and women at the top of every profession - or rather, they might argue, just men and women at the top of their professions. So, is the list anachronistic? Is it patronising to gay people? We feared it might be - and went in search of a leading gay or lesbian figure to say so. None of those we contacted wanted to. Their verdict? The Pink List remains indispensable, a celebration of a community that is integral to the British way of life.
On the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots - and in the week when the National Portrait Gallery launches a major new exhibition of Gay Icons, this list is a celebration of those people who have struggled to get us from there to here. As such, you won’t see anyone “outed” in these pages. If you don't see someone you think should be on the list, it may be that they have asked not to appear. It is also possible that - believe it or not - we have erred and they have been overlooked. >>> | Sunday, June 28, 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: If recent trends are any guide, many Church of England parishes will have been cheered by higher attendances at Easter services. The last published statistics for 2006/7 show rises of 7 and 5 per cent in church going at Christmas and Easter.
But these figures are just about the only signs of hope for the church and certainly not the first green shoots of a revival. Other statistics make for gloomy reading.
Annual decline in Sunday attendance is running at around 1 per cent. At this rate it is hard to see the church surviving for more than 30 years though few of its leaders are prepared to face that possibility.
In the short term we are likely to see more closures of buildings as the church battles to meet a big pension bill, pay clergy, and maintain a large bureaucracy.
To its credit, the church has been successful at getting members to give, but larger donations cannot offset the fall in numbers. At present the church is struggling to maintain 16,200 buildings, many of them old and listed with 4,200 listed Grade I.
If decline continues, Christian Research has estimated that in five years' time church closures will accelerate from their present rate of 30 a year to 200 a year as dwindling congregations find the cost of keeping them open too great.
Perhaps the most worrying set of statistics for the Church of England is the decline in baptisms. Out of every 1,000 live births in England in 2006/7 only 128 were baptised as Anglicans. >>> Rt Rev Paul Richardson | Saturday, June 27, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: Iain Martin says the Prime Minister hasn't 'saved the world' and now faces disgrace in the history books
They don't know what they're doing, do they? With every step taken by the Government as it tries frantically to prop up the British banking system, this central truth becomes ever more obvious.
Yesterday marked a new low for all involved, even by the standards of this crisis. Britons woke to news of the enormity of the fresh horrors in store. Despite all the sophistry and outdated boom-era terminology from experts, I think a far greater number of people than is imagined grasp at root what is happening here.
The country stands on the precipice. We are at risk of utter humiliation, of London becoming a Reykjavik on Thames and Britain going under. Thanks to the arrogance, hubristic strutting and serial incompetence of the Government and a group of bankers, the possibility of national bankruptcy is not unrealistic. >>> By Iain Martin | Wednesday, January 21, 2009
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback & Hardback) – Free delivery >>>
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)