This piece was forwarded to BLOGDIAL by a lurker. Its contents are simply shocking:

I raised the alarm about family 15 years ago. I still want answers

Eileen Fairweather

Every time I have seen Lord Laming, the Government's favourite child protection “expert”, wheeled out since Baby Peter's death I have gritted my teeth.

Never once has he admitted he knew the truth about this poor child's family.

Fifteen years ago, I warned Lord Laming in writing that a young relative of Baby Peter was central to a vicious London paedophile ring.

This followed one of the most disturbing and revealing inquiries ever mounted by the Evening Standard.

But Lord Laming — then chief inspector of social services — did nothing effective to rescue this terrified boy.

Since then, Lord Laming has presided over the destruction of tried and tested child protection systems, so more children than ever are at risk. He has also helped create today's surveillance society, which allows government apparatchiks and paedophiles alike to spy on innocent families.

In the early Nineties, Baby Peter's mother and a relative were under Islington council's care. Shockingly, all of its 12 children's homes then contained pimps, paedophiles and pornographers, who openly abused children. Decent staff who protested were threatened or sacked. In desperation, some bravely contacted this newspaper.

Baby Peter's relative, we were repeatedly told, was under particular pressure to introduce children to outside pimps. But the authorities thought it more important to protect politicians.

The then-council leader Margaret Hodge labelled the newspaper's meticulously-sourced investigation as “sensationalist gutter journalism”.

Laming, who later worked for Hodge, responded by letting Islington investigate itself. Inevitably, its inquiries were a whitewash.

So I and a Standard colleague met Lord Laming and revealed that management had “lost” incriminating files requested by police investigating three separate child sex rings. Islington's assistant director resigned a few days later “for personal reasons”.

But still no real inquiry ensued.

Hence the Standard's decision to compile a 112-page dossier of further evidence. I submitted it with real if naïve hope and Laming, to his credit, ordered a secret inquiry into Baby Peter's relative. It confirmed in August 1994 that Islington knew for two years that he was at the heart of grave concerns about pimps preying on children's homes. The council and local police had done nothing save call meetings about meetings.

A broader independent inquiry in 1995 demanded that 26 former Islington staff, given glowing references following serious allegations of rape, kidnap and pimping, be barred from social work. Still no paedophiles were raided or charged, and no children interviewed or rescued.

Social services is the lead agency in child protection inquiries, so Laming had the power to call for police action.

None followed. Thus Hodge was able to boast that no one was convicted as a result of the scandal, and no evidence was found of a ring. The ring dispersed but continued hurting children.

Three protected Islington children's home heads moved to Thailand's notorious Pattaya child sex resort. Thai police charged Nick Rabet there in 2006 with abusing 30 local children, as young as six.

The Islington cover-up had, Thai police estimated, allowed him to hurt hundreds more children. Everyone who failed the children of London rose spectacularly higher.

Sue Akers, the detective inspector then in charge of Islington's Child Protection Team, is now a Deputy Assistant Commissioner.

Hodge, infamously, became Britain's first children's minister.

Herbert Laming was awarded ermine and undertook the inquiry into Victoria Climbie's murder, whose 2003 recommendations allowed Hodge to treat all parents as potential abusers.

Her subsequent Every Child Matters (ECM) “reform” of social services abolished the Child Protection Register, and replaced it with the controversial ContactPoint database on all Britain's 11 million children.

The few children at grave risk are now almost invisible, while social workers drown under a tidal wave of paperwork about ordinary families. ECM also effectively removed police from investigating child abuse — Laming suggested in his Climbie report that the police only investigate actual crime, not a child's feared risk of harm.

The police responded by closing most child protection teams.

Baby Peter's mother was once a victim too, and became an abuser in turn, through the well-documented “cycle of abuse”.

So why did no one in power ever do anything effective to stop the evil ring which ultimately destroyed her and Baby Peter?

I asked Lord Laming recently but he would not comment.

Eileen Fairweather is a former Standard reporter involved in an award-winning investigation into Islington care homes

[…]

Evening Standard

This confirms many of the things we have been saying about ContactPoint:

• The people who organized it are dangerously incompetent.
• It will hurt children, and not help them.
• If you want to keep a register of children, you only list those at risk, and not every child.
• ContactPoint is a dream come true for paedophiles.
• ContactPoint will make ordinary people into suspects.

It is clear, in the light of this information, that ContactPoint should never have been developed, and that Lord Lamming, Margaret Hodge and everyone involved in this scandal should have been permanently barred from having anything to do with the welfare of children.

I wonder if this evidence, had it been presented during the consultations on ContactPoint, would have made a difference. I expect not. What is more clear than ever is that ContactPoint is flawed, not only in the technical sense, which is irremediable, but in its inception. The people who were behind its creation were scandal ridden molestation enablers. That people of that background should be able to commission and create a system like ContactPoint (and Every Child Matters) is a prime example of what is wrong with Britain. Monsters, literally, are in charge and enabling the worst sort of criminals to carry out their crimes.

If you were not scared by ContactPoint, this should be enough to utterly terrify you. If you are not scared by it, you are INSANE. The children listed in ContactPoint are going to be viewable by over ONE MILLION PEOPLE. It cannot ever be secured. Anyone using the system can take a screenshot from the database, and then send it anywhere they like. Once the data is out, it is out forever, and since there are over a million people using the system at once, this means that all it will take for the entire database to be copied is for every user of contact point to make 11 screenshots each (11 million children being divided by one million users). The shortest time this could happen in is less than a day. It will happen. Even if ‘only’ half of the children’s records are copied, or one 100th of them are copied, the crime is still the same. It is totally immoral, socially corrosive and evil to create a system like this; there is no excuse for it, and that it comes from the minds of monsters like Lord Lamming and Margaret Hodge is no surprise whatsoever.

ContactPoint, the pure evil paedophile directory invented by the monsters of New Labour and developed by Capgemini, has ‘gone live in a local authority pilot’.

The reprehensible and vile BBC News has a nauseating article, that has an inappropriate picture, and which trots out all the lies HMG want you to swallow unchallenged. Of course, you and I know better.

Since we have been through ContactPoint sufficiently, we can now turn to something fascinating that is related to ContactPoint tangentially.

This is an article, a dreadful article, from ‘CIO‘: “Business Technology Leadership”. This is from their ‘about’ page:

CIO is the leading information brand for today’s busy chief information officer. Available online at www.cio.co.uk and in print via our monthly magazine, CIO addresses issues vital to the success of chief information officers worldwide. CIO provides technology and business leaders with analysis and insight on information technology trends and a keen understanding of IT’s role in achieving business goals.

Ok…… if this is piece of writing is an example of what they describe above, it is no wonder that there are people out there who say things like:

The database is only intended to be accessed by professionals working with children, such as social workers, doctors and the police, and the government has said users cannot download the contents from ContactPoint.

That line was repeated in print, unchallenged by ‘Siobhan Chapman’ in Computerworld UK, who commits an unpardonable sin. Either this idiot is a paid liar for HMG, or she is computer illiterate, or completely immoral or as stupid as they come; whatever way you slice it, that she has written this article is deeply shameful and disgusting. That two magazines / websites that pretend to have expertise in IT can accept and reproduce a piece of writing like this that is clearly full of nonsense / propaganda makes them look bad and is absolutely astonishing.

Every schoolboy knows that it is IMPOSSIBLE to create a database system accessed by browsers that can prevent the users of the system from copying the entries. The fact that ContactPoint holds ‘minimal’ (more on that later) details makes it easier to copy entries, since they can all fit in a small space in the browser and can be copied with a single click of the mouse. And remember, we are talking about COPYING entries; to use the word ‘download’ is disingenuous. The point about the dangers of this database is that the entries can be copied, will always be copyable and there is nothing that anyone can do to stop copying, short of not having a database at all. It is very important that right now, some journalist puts up a bounty for a photograph of a ContactPoint entry to demonstrate that anyone can make a copy of a ContactPoint entry, and that those copies can be transmitted to anyone anywhere, and the idea that the entries are ‘not downloadable’ is purely farcical.

Now, lets get onto the insanity of Siobhan Chapman:

ContactPoint children’s database rolls out

Not so. It has not been ‘rolled out’ it is being piloted. This is important; it is easier to stop ContactPoint and the escape of all the data on the children living in Britain at this early stage. To imply that it is a fait accompli is to be on their side; the side of the paedophiles, child farmers and monsters.

System has been dogged with security faults

This is a magazine about IT. What on earth is a ‘security fault’? The people who write for this magazine should know that ContactPoint cannot be secured. They should know how databases work, how browsers work, how operating systems work, and they should have a good understanding of what data is. Someone who fits that bill would not use the phrase ‘security faults’ – it is meaningless.

A controversial database featuring the details of every child in England has become available to childcare professionals today.

Up to 800 social workers, head teachers and health officials will be able to use the new system, called ContactPoint, as it begins its national roll-out in the north west. Eventually, the system will be rolled out across the country.

This is underplaying the horror of ContactPoint. We know that over 300,000 ‘professionals’ will have access to it. To say that 800 people have access makes it sound like only a carefully selected few will have access to it, when it fact, a million people will have access. The implications of this have been discussed on BLOGDIAL, at length.

The system, which cost an estimated £224m has been dogged with data security fears and has been delayed twice due to faults.

Once again, this is a magazine for IT professionals; what were the ‘faults’ that you are writing about? And as for ‘dogged with data security fears’ have the people who created ContactPoint changed the nature of the universe and solved the problem of the security of the data on this database? If you are competent, you should know that it is impossible for them to secure ContactPoint. These are not ‘fears’ they are FACTS.

ContactPoint has also come under heavy criticism from civil libertarians. A report written by information policy experts at Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust described the database as “almost certainly illegal”, and warned that storing information leads to vulnerable people, such as young black men, single parents and children, being victimised.

If it is illegal, a legal challenge should be mounted immediately. I have £100 to contribute right now to the fighting fund.

In 2007, Deloitte and Touche said in a report that the project could never be totally secure.

And what is the opinion of Siobhan Chapman? How is it that CIO has no opinion on this dastardly database? How can a magazine like this not lambast ContactPoint? Do these idiots not have families of their own? It beggars belief. They are busy talking about greening their CIO activities as a part of corporate citizenship, but do not attack ContactPoint, which is pure evil and a clear and present danger. Absolutely pathetic.

In March, the launch was delayed after a fault sometimes exposed the information of vulnerable children, including victims of domestic violence and those in witness protection schemes.

This is nonsense. All the children on ContactPoint are vulnerable by virtue of being on the database. Since every entry on it can be copied, the system exposes all children’s information by default, no matter who they are. There are few things more annoying than a person without brains writing about something like this.

Think about it; if all the people who access ContactPoint are trusted, then how can it be a bad thing that the details of ‘vulnerable children’ are exposed to them? Surely these people, being good, can do no harm by seeing the details of ‘vulnerable children’?

The truth of this statement is that the details of the children of the rich and famous was found to be not hidden from the users of the system, meaning that curious ContactPoint users would be able to look up the details of people who have had their details ‘shielded’. If it is necessary for the rich and famous to be shielded because of harm from the supposedly trusted users of ContactPoint, how is it that the children of everyone else are safe from these trusted users? The whole thing doesn’t make any sense!

But Ed Balls, the Children’s Secretary (pictured) said there has been “important and careful work” to build ContactPoint over the past four months.

Including lines from Ed Balls is…..balls.

No matter what this aparatchick says, ContactPoint is immoral and a danger to children. To repeat his words is give credence to the logic of a paedophile violator who would sell the children of Britain to a company for money.

“If we are to do our best to make sure children are protected and that no child slips through the net, then it’s crucial the right agencies are involved at the right time and get even better at sharing information,” said Balls.

This is utter garbage. To protect children, just like the children of the rich and famous, ContactPoint must be dismantled. The children of the rich and famous are vulnerable by virtue of being on the database, that means that ALL children are vulnerable by default.

Also, all of the recent cases involving abuse, like the ‘Baby P’ case were known about by social workers in detail, and yet, in each case, the worst possible outcome was the result. This database will not prevent people from being hurt, will not stop criminals from committing crime and will do nothing but violate people on an unprecedented scale, and put children at risk.

“ContactPoint is vital for this because it will enable frontline professionals to see quickly and easily who else is in contact with a child.”

Once again, total drivel, and of course, unchallenged by Siobhan Chapman, who lets this monster get away with lying in an article under her name. Absolutely horrible collaboration with evil. There is no need whatsoever to put EVERY child in the country in a database because an extremely small number of children are at risk. The common sense thing to do would be to put only those children on a list of vulnerable children not every child by default. Even then, since the state has insane ideas about who and who is not at risk (gypsies being regularly targeted for abuse from the Local Authorities) you would regularly get children put onto ‘ContactPoint 2.0’ because Local Authorities are staffed by racists. ContactPoint is a bad idea, plain and simple.

It has been welcomed by children’s charities and organisations, including Barnardo’s, KIDS and the Association of Directors of Children’s Services. Martin Narey, chief executive of children’s charity Barnardo’s, said it “would make it easier to deliver better-co-ordinated services”.

And so what? Barnardo’s is not a part of government, and will not even have access to ContactPoint; who cares what they think? Martin Narey is an imbecile, clearly. Since when does the opinions of imbeciles justify the violation of millions of children? Once again, Siobhan fails to challenge this by asking the obvious question; HOW is ContactPoint going to, “make it easier to deliver better-co-ordinated services?”. He is bullshitting of course, as is Ed Balls, and you let them get away with it Siobhan. SHAME ON YOU.

ContactPoint, built by Capgemini, is described as an “online tool” that holds “minimal” identifying information of around 11 million under 18 year olds in England, including names, addresses, dates of birth, gender and contact details for parents or carers. Each child is also given a unique identifying number, as well as contact details for the child’s school, GP practices and any other practitioner services involved.

This is incredible. To describe the information as ‘minimal’ is an abuse of the English language. There is enough information on ContactPoint to UNIQUELY identify the parents and children of all families in Britain. There is nothing ‘minimal’ about that at all, in fact, it is quite the opposite. It is more than the Nazis had when the rounded up undesirables with the help of IBM. A tatooed number on your arm is ‘minimal information’ is it not? After all, its ‘just a number’. Of course, we cannot rely on the likes of Siobhan or the anonymous propaganda repeaters at the BBC to tell us this!

The database is only intended to be accessed by professionals working with children, such as social workers, doctors and the police, and the government has said users cannot download the contents from ContactPoint.

CIO

This article appears in two different magazines, with the same unchallenged garbage. The editors of both publications failed to stop this propaganda from hijacking their platforms. This is what we call a ‘lapse of standards’.

We can only hope that a legal challenge is forthcoming, or a Tory victory and the scrapping of this, the NIR, and ID Cards; preferably all of them, all at once. One thing is for sure; with ‘people’ like Siobhan Chapman and the inexcusably inept rags she writes in propping up the propaganda, the task of getting the fact out in the public is made that much harder. We expect nothing but evil from the BBC, so that is par for the course. Thanks you jackasses.

Anyone who boosted ContactPoint, who let propaganda for it pass by them unchallenged, who coded for it, argued for it, made excuses for it, allowed data to leave their office to enter it; everyone who helped make this happen is going to BURN IN HELL for what they have done. It is inexcusable, unforgivable and totally horrible. Any council worker who touches it, trains people for it or even makes a single telephone call where the number came from it, is also going straight to the lake of fire, where they will join the concentration camp runners, PW Botha and all the other villains of history.

ContactPoint is a particularly nasty thing because it uses children it farms children for money; there is no other way to describe it. The company that developed it, Capgemini, has become the greatest abuser of children in the history of the world, along with the government that commissioned it. They are making money out of children; they will have priced for the work they did based on the size of the database, i.e. the number of children it records; they were paid per child. This is a sin in every culture in the world. How these people can sleep at night is beyond me, and the irony is clearly lost on them that they are using children to make money and justifying it by saying that the act of using ALL the children in the UK to make money is going to stop the abuse of children.

You can’t make stuff like this up…. and these days, you don’t have to. That is the problem; every dystopian nightmare is trying to come true right before our eyes.

Finally, do not suffer under the illusion that just because they have put all the pieces in place that ContactPoint cannot be completely dismantled. It CAN be dismantled, and all the data erased. The DNA database climb-down is the most recent demonstration of what it looks like when HMG is forced to stop doing evil. Not only should all the data be erased, but it should be illegal for anyone in government to create a database of children that is accessible to people outside of a council. Capgemini can keep their fee. That money will condemn them forever.

Think about it; under what circumstances would a council need to keep a database of all children in its ward? The schoolmasters know how many places there are and who is applying for places, the doctors know who is on their (preferably paper) records and do not need to be served by a database run by the council or central government; for decades everyone has done without this ‘service’, so why should the privacy and dignity of families be violated in this way? The general census provides enough data for planning, so why do they need to do this? For ‘efficiency’? If that is the criteria, then why not take all children from their parents at birth and house them in a central Kibbutz, where efficiency is absolutely maximized? I’m sure that this idea appeals to the New Labour monsters, but most normal people would reject it outright.

Efficiency is not everything and certainly people should not be violated to provide the state with greater efficiency. Inefficient systems that protect people and their dignity are infinitely preferable to efficient systems that violate people. That is why a doctor’s office that runs on paper, even though it may be less efficient than a doctor’s office that runs on databases, is far preferable than the latter. Paper is private. Paper is decent. Paper protects the sacred oath of confidentiality that all doctors pledge. That it takes more time to organize the information of a patient in a ‘paper practice’ is NOTHING compared to the loss of confidentiality, and as we have seen with ContactPoint, there are unintended consequences to ‘modernization’, like the automated uploading of confidential patient records to the NHS Spine, the elimination of prescription privacy and everything else that flows from the availability of digital information.

Unintended consequences lead to what we call ‘feature creep’. We see that ContactPoint is going to be used to see who is and who is not ‘fully recorded’. The ‘minimal information’ that is supposed to re-assure everyone that ContactPoint is benign is actually extremely intrusive. For example, by keeping a list of what doctor you have, should there be a blank in the ‘GP’ field, (because your child has never needed to see a doctor for example) a Local Authority worker will immediately say that you are an abuser because your child does not appear to have a GP. And make no mistake, ContactPoint will allow the Local Authority to print a list of all children who have missing fields; that means children not registered with a GP, children who are not registered at a school, etc etc.

At the very least, the Local Authority will generate automated letters to all the parents from these records. That means that millions of letters generated from ContactPoint will be in the post, presumably with the child’s unique identifying number. As we saw before with the stolen child benefit DVDRs, the letters that were sent out to apologize to parents ended up being sent to wrong addresses, exposing the private information of families to strangers.

This is the sort of nonsense, and worse, that we can expect should ContactPoint be allowed to go live.

ContactPoint must be scrapped and the data permanently deleted. Nothing like this must ever be attempted again. There is no justification for it by any stretch of the imagination, an you should do everything in your power not to be touched by it. It is pure evil, a recipe for multiple disasters and for sure, a child is going to die as a result of this database.

The Ludwig von Mises Institute has an article about something familiar to all americans who have looked behind their TV sets or their toasters:

Look at the back of your computer monitor, the bottom of your table lamp, or the label on your hair dryer. Chances are you will see the symbol “UL” with a circle around it. It stands for Underwriters Laboratories, a firm headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois, and an unsung hero of the market economy.

Most people don’t realize that dozens of products in their homes — toasters, fire extinguishers, space heaters, televisions, etc. — have been tested by the Underwriters Lab for safety. The Lab also tests items like bulletproof vests, electric blankets, commercial ice-cream machines, and chicken de-beakers, among thousands of other products.

But the Lab isn’t an arm of the government. It is privately owned, financed, and operated. No one is compelled by force of law to use its services. It thrives — and makes our lives safer — by the power of its excellent reputation. For that reason, its ideologically driven enemies on the Left despise it.

The firm was formed in 1894 to deal with the dangers posed by the dramatic increase in the use of electricity. Today, it employs 4,000 scientists, engineers, and safety specialists to render an independent verdict on hundreds of thousands of products.

The very existence of the Lab debunks the common civics-text view that, without government intervention, private businesses would seek profit without regard for safety; thus, bureaucrats have to police markets to impose a balance between private interests and the common good. The government, according to this view, is the only thing standing between us and unceasing fatal accidents.

The truth is the opposite. The market is well equipped to regulate itself, and does a fine job of it. It’s the government that operates without oversight. To discover the quality and value of products, no one would trust the advice of the scandal-ridden Commerce Department or the Federal Trade Commission.

Unlike quality and price, safety isn’t always at the forefront of the consumer’s mind. But that hasn’t kept manufacturers from seeking out the Lab’s testing services. For those who appreciate the virtues of private enterprise, the UL insignia is an inspiration.

The Lab was the first to set standards for certifying the safety of pilots and planes before the government intervened. It set the standards for building materials, fire-fighting equipment, air conditioners, and household chemicals. It employs safecrackers and pyrotechnicians to test safes, and a variety of unique machines and devices to test thousands of other products each year. It has been testing multicolored Christmas lights since 1905, and entered the building-code business right after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.

Despite its unparalleled experience and success, the market economy keeps the Lab innovating. As engineer John Drengenberg of the Lab said,

There’s always some little twist in a new product — an innovative feature or something to make it cheaper — to keep us busy developing the appropriate test procedure.

Its effectiveness in determining safety standards (even for brand-new products) and maintaining them over time has generated an interesting result. Many government regulations, especially at the state level, merely mimic the building codes and insurance requirements of the Lab.

The Lab also “regulates” in a cost-effective way. Companies come to the Lab to present their products and the tests they have already conducted. The company pays a testing fee ranging from a couple of hundred dollars to several thousand, depending on the costs of the tests to be conducted.

If the product passes, it receives one of three designations:

1. To be “listed” means that the product has passed muster for sale as a final product, like a hair dryer.
2. If it is listed as “recognized,” it is safe to use as a component within the final product, like a transformer.
3. To be “certified” means that the product has met someone else’s standards, such as the Chicago building code.

Each product is tested for each use, and the Lab is strict about how its mark is used by manufacturers. For example, Securitron Magnalock sent a new lock to the Lab for testing. New standards had to be established, and the lock was duly tested and “recognized” as a component for a delayed-exit system.

When the company faxed all of its field representatives that the product was “UL approved,” Lab officials suspended the listing. It then required Securitron to inform all employees that UL does not “approve” any product.

To insure continued safety, manufacturers agree to let the Lab inspect their production facilities and to retest on demand. These on-site inspections, often four a year, are unannounced. Lab inspectors can require manufacturers to present data and to rerun safety trials and experiments. Companies, in turn, pay a tiny fee for every UL designation symbol they put on their products.

Manufacturers can modify their products to adapt to market conditions, but the Lab oversees changes that affect product safety. The Lab is inflexible and scientific, but it’s also driven by common sense and realism.

Nothing is perfectly safe, of course. The competitive marketplace and the Lab aim for safety in a framework of rational attention to costs. UL official Drengenberg has noted, “It would be very easy for us to come up with an overly strict standard,” but then no one could afford to buy the product.

In fact, the Lab once built a fireproof office for some of its employees. The expensive room featured ceramic tile on the walls and ceiling, a thick concrete floor, metal furniture, and similar standards. Not only was the cost high, the esthetic results were not impressive. As Robert Yereance, author of Electrical Fire Analysis says, “most of us cannot afford a fireproof dwelling and would not like living in it if we could.”

The Lab notes that 80% of accidents and fires are caused by consumers, not products. It takes this into account in its requirements. In the case of space heaters, for example, the Lab felt that enhanced warning labels would reduce as many fires as an expensive redesign, thus keeping down cost and price.

[…]

http://mises.org/story/3440

The Ludwig Von Mises institute keeps pouring out example after example of why we do not need the state for the majority of things that ‘need organizing’. The above is yet another instance showing how the market can solve any problem more efficiently than state regulation. Not only does it work better, but it is sensible, unlike the insane health and safety madness that has overtaken Britain, where, for example, every pest control company operating in the UK will soon have to have two people on hand every time a ladder is deployed…by order of the state. That means that either the companies that are currently working will need to double the numbers of their exterminators and pass the greater expense of these extra wages to the infested customers or the companies will have to do half as many jobs since they are no longer able to send a single man out with a ladder to do his job. Both outcomes will result in greater pestilence in the UK. But the government likes that, because they are the ultimate pestilence.

But I digress.

The above story proves yet again that we are all better off without the state interfering in our affairs. Wether the part of our lives is schools, money, safety or anything you can imagine, when the state is removed from the equation and people are left to organize themselves the optimum and just result emerges.

This is the letter posted to Mr Graham Badman of the Elective Home Education Review, on May 6th 2009, calling for the review to be scrapped and including AHEd’s dossier of information and responses:

Dear Mr Badman,

AHEd members call for the Review of Home Education to be cancelled immediately on various grounds, not least because of the illegitimate Terms of Reference. We have completed the consultation document, not in recognition of the value or legitimacy of the review, but as a means of being statistically included and conveying important messages about the errors inherent in the consultation process and questions.

We attach a copy of the response of AHEd members to the six question consultation “Home Education – Your Views” on the DCSF consultation web site.

AHEd object to the claim that this is not in fact a consultation, thereby allowing for avoidance of the regulations governing public consultations set by the Better Regulations Executive. DCSF Public Communications Unit state:

“Mr Badman has decided that he wants his review to be informed by material from a wide range of stakeholders, so he decided to offer the opportunity for organisations and individuals to contribute to the review by filling in a questionnaire.”

Quite how this aim can be achieved by avoiding good consultation practice and thus limiting the scope of those reached is a mystery, especially as the major and only really valid stakeholder group, home educators, are likely to be those most frequently excluded by this methodology. Despite efforts from within the HE community to contact a wide range of home educators, it is not possible to reach anywhere near the majority of the estimated 20,000 to 50,000 home educators.

On the other hand, local authorities who also had access to the six question consultation (and who are known to be often hostile toward and uneducated about home education and who are largely responsible for the calls for unwarranted increases in their powers) have been asked to complete an exclusive 60 question missive. The questions in this document demonstrate a shocking lack of understanding of the law and constitute a blatant incitement to local authorities to illicitly harass and persecute home educating families. They also highlight the DCSF’s and Review Team’s disdain for the Elective Home Education Guidelines for England which were only recently published by the DCSF after an extensive public consultation.

AHEd members believe that the review has been composed in this skewed manner in order to attain predetermined answers for the purpose of supporting the government’s desire to impose compulsory registration, monitoring and tracking of electively home educated children and their families, including state control and prescription of educational method, content and outcome for all children. The government’s motto seems to be “If at first you don’t succeed (in getting the answers you want from your consultation) try, try, try again (using increasingly devious techniques to try to thwart those who oppose you).

Further evidence of the predetermined outcome of this review was provided by yourself in a meeting with home educators when you declared that the “status quo” cannot prevail and changes WILL be made. Saying this before the review is complete is a clear indication that you have a predetermined outcome.

AHEd members are aware of the document “Education Otherwise Prospectus for Improving Support to Home Educating Families” presented to the review and wish to distance ourselves from it and dismiss the proposals out of hand. The document was written by a handful of home educators with no reference at all to the wider home education community or even to Education Otherwise members. In our opinion it does not represent proposals we would be happy to engage with and is extremely unlikely to have support in the wider home educating community. On the contrary, it has caused outrage.

AHEd members insist in the strongest possible terms that the only necessary changes are for LAs to stop ultra vires activity and instead learn to use the legal powers they already have. If changes in legislation that reduce the freedoms of home educators are proposed, this would be an act of the utmost hostility toward home educators and would be rejected out of hand by the home education community.

The public, especially those actually involved and likely to be affected by the outcome, do not have a taste for accepting such invasion into their private business. Our members will not co-operate with their own oppression and will continue to act and speak for our historic freedom to raise and educate our children in accordance with our personal philosophies, religious beliefs and conscience. Please see our Parents’ Declaration, attached.

You may also be aware of our petition which gathered 3,126 signatures in a short time plus that of the petition creator: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Homeedreview/

Further material supporting our call for cessation of the review is included.

Yours sincerely,

[…]

This is a great thing.

It draws a line in the sand, and gives the enemy a chance to back down. Sadly, they will not back down.

We all know that petitions do not work, that the declaration is flawed because it relies on the law as a basis of rights, etc etc, but in the main, this is probably the best thing a Home Education group has ever produced.

What needs to happen next is that every parent in Britain should be made to understand what this review really means. It is actually about the rights of all parents to look after their own children in any context, wether they are in school or not:

There is no current system for safeguarding children who are educated at home. There is no need for such a system, there never has been a need and there never will be. Children who are educated at home are exactly the same as those who are educated at schools. If you think there is a need for a system to safeguard children who are educated at home, then you need to start one to safeguard children who are educated at school. All schoolchildren have home lives just like home educated ones do. There is no more risk in either type of education. This consultation is the result of the fantasies of ignorant aparatchicks who are desperate to destroy the family, and to put every child in a government brainwashing centre. It simply will not wash. All the assumptions of this are completely wrong, and everyone knows it.

[…]

Home educating families should not be monitored, any more than families who send their children to schools should be monitored. Both of these groups have family lives; the only difference being that home educating families have more of a family life than those that send their children to school. Once again, this question is borne out of complete ignorance of what Home Education is, why it is done, who is doing it, what the proper role of government is, and what the fundamental rights of parents are.

[…]

http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=1528

I will give you an example.

There is talk about provision for kindergarten being made available nation-wide for children of three. Imagine that you do not want your child to attend one of these state kindergartens, and that you want to keep them at home…just because you want to.

If your child is in ContactPoint (if they do not scrap it) the Local Authority will know that your baby has reached the age of three. They will also know that you have not registered your child at one of the local kindergartens. They will then assume that you are an incompetent child abusing parent because you will not avail yourself of their ‘free’ ‘service’.

This is essentially what they are saying to all parents; you are not capable of looking after your own children – only we have the necessary skills to look after children…THE STATE.

This is why I have been privately advocating for a professional PR company to engineer the reality of Home Education; to put it into its proper context and head off the inevitable smear campaign that is going to go into full gear once the review is nearing completion and the results published.

Now for the hard questions

Our members will not co-operate with their own oppression

What does this actually mean? You will have several options, and the Germans are years ahead of you when it comes to this.

You will be obliged, first of all, to ignore any and all legislation that attempts to take away your rights.

You will then have to make a choice.

You could go into hiding. In police state britain, that will be a great challenge. People are being encouraged to tattle on their neighbors over garbage – literally – and so it will be a simple thing to convince a propagandized public to report home schoolers, since, ‘everybody knows….’. You would have to restrict your movements, only going out when school is out, lest the truancy officers spot you. It would be a difficult existence to say the least.

You could opt for taking a stand and Home Educating no matter what. As in the case of the Germans you can expect huge fines, jail, and being threatened with the loss of custody of your children. Without a large fighting fund behind you to give the authorities pause, we could call such a strategy a ‘Martyrdom Path’. It might actually be a good thing, as it could wake the nation up to the insanity of the State raising all children from the age of three, wether the parent likes it or not.

Finally, you could opt to flee the country with your family. Iran is a nice place to live compared to the UK if you Home Educate and they change the law. Certainly going to another western country is not a good idea. France is out of the question (for example) since:

In France, homeschooling is legal and requires the child to be registered with two authorities, the ‘Inspection Académique’ and the local town hall (Mairie). An inspection is carried out twice yearly once a child reaches the age of six (it is obligatory from the age of eight).

[…]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling

Not very nice. Its exactly what you do not want; the state interfering in your private business through invasive and pointless registrations and inspections.

Take a look at this map:

(Green) Legal
(Yellow) Mostly Legal; may be disputed in most political subdivisions
(Orange) Generally considered illegal, but untested legally
(Red) Illegal

All the places in red are where Home Education is illegal. The Brutish government wants to join all the bad places on this map. Absolutely SHAMEFUL.

According to that map, and the Wikipedia page it came from Austria looks like the best country to move to if you have an EU passport. Home Education is just legal; no registration, no interference, no nonsense. You will not have any problems with immigration, you can travel anywhere in the EU…

Which gives me an idea.

Why not take an address in Austria, and say that you live there? Think about it; how long do you have to be in the UK before the State requires that your children attend school? If you are from Austria, and you decide to spend some time in different parts of the EU as a family exploring Europe, how can the State expect you to register your children in every country as you move around? Its completely ABSURD.

Which brings us to the final conclusion of all of this. Eventually, the government is going to have to implement exit visas for all UK subjects. You will have to apply for permission to leave Britain with your children, so that they can make sure that you are not leaving during term time, or so they can catch Home Educators. When you apply for a visa, you will of course, have to get a signature from your schools headmaster, confirming that you have his permission to leave the country with ‘your’ child. The E-Borders project will facilitate this nicely.

Think about it; it is the logical end to all of this madness. As long as you have the right to leave the country at will and relocate anywhere you like with your family, their law means nothing. As long as you are free to live anywhere in the EU and can return to Britain at will, and there is no rule about how long you have to be in Britain before you must send your children to school, all of their Home Education laws will have no meaning. In order for these laws to be enforceable, what I have just described needs to be rolled into the equation.

This is why everything that they are planning now needs to be stopped. Once all these pieces are in place, they will have a system of total control over everyone. The keys to it all are the databases. Never before in the history of man has such a comprehensive grid of control been possible. Never before have such an evil group of monsters been in a position to make it a reality.

The war on Home Education is only a part of this. All groups, need to stand their ground in their own corner, and absolutely refuse to cooperate with anything that destroys their rights. Together, as we act individually, we will be transformed by emergent behavior effects into an unstoppable force for good.

Thankfully, it appears that this is actually happening!

I have been pointed to the Renegade Parent blog, as something worthwhile. It is:

Can you live my life for me, please?

by Renegadeparent

It was G’s birthday yesterday, and we enjoyed some well-earned family time together. I am wondering if in the not-too-distant future we might have to submit a timesheet to the DCSF in order to demonstrate the daily “positive activities” we’ve undertaken, thus warding off the over-zealous local authority workers who will no doubt be adding us to the at risk list for branding their endless interventions as UNNECESSARY, DUPLICATIVE NONSENSE of which we want no part, thank you very much.

As part of the celebratory fun, I bought a donkey piñata; I suppose it’s only a matter of time before they are banned for encouraging violence towards animals. I am not joking: Asda’s policy on teaspoons has recently been brought to my attention. In order to buy these items one must now produce valid ID. Because, apparently, someone has been murdered with a teaspoon. So lock up your cutlery drawers folks!

In a similar vein, JuliaM has written about the paramedic who was refused service by Tesco because he happened to be in uniform. Despite being heavily pregnant, I regularly buy alcohol from our local supermarket – perhaps, soon, I too will be refused – in order to protect my unborn child from the possibility of me downing a bottle of Grey Goose in the car park. In which case, I might take a leaf out of the paramedic’s book and confront them wearing nothing but a thong and a pair of socks.  As I am now the size of a young adult hippopotamus, it might shock them into compliance, if nothing else.

H/T Ambush Predator and Nanny Knows Best

[…]

http://www.renegadeparent.net/

See what I mean?

My kind of blogger, and my kind of parent!

I watched closely all the tea parties all over the country Wednesday. What a showing of national pride and solidarity. What a showing of subservient compliance and casual indifference. What a joke.

In Lafayette Park, Washington D.C., of all places to protest, the plan was to dump one million tea bags in the park, but the brave dissidents never did it because they forgot to get the proper permits. Are you kidding me? What is civil disobedience without civil disobedience? They even went so far as to say that they were willing to put down plastic tarps and clean up after themselves.

That’s like saying we don’t agree with your oppressive, unconstitutional despotism of our nation and to show our ire in no uncertain terms we’re going to break public law and disrupt the peace so take that, nah- nah-ne-boo-boo. But don’t worry because we’ll put everything back when we’re done as if nothing happened cuz we don’t want any trouble!

Videos on the Internet of Lafayette Park show people standing around in their trendy turtlenecks and Tommy Hilfiger and North Face jackets, chatting, socializing, drinking coffee and talking on their cell phones. Some dressed in colonial garb (how cute) and waving flags. Others even break into a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner followed by a chant of “USA, USA, USA.” What a terrific show of meaningless symbolism.

Who are they chanting to? The buildings in front of them? The birds in the trees? Themselves? What was this supposed to do, because it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to surmise that it did NOTHING! All the politicians were inside, smugly and comfortably seated in their expensive leather chairs that we paid for. They were discussing their next round of special interest pandering and deficit spending at our expense while we mingled as if at a, well, tea party. But not the sort of 1773 but rather more like the sort at 4 p.m. in England that is served with crumpets.

The politicians could have cared less about the goings on outside and NO ONE took it to them. Shame on us. No one made sure they took notice. No one was put out one bit. No economic loss to the government whatsoever, as was the purpose of the original tea party, so why should they notice?

Is this like giving to a charity? You write a check to feed a starving child for 10 cents a day in some far off, nameless, faceless country and you feel better about yourself?

I attended a “tea party” in the Midwest on Wednesday and there were only about 200 people there. And it was literally a tea party: people came with their coffee mugs and sandwiches, holding signs and standing around and chatting and socializing and then everyone went home. No passion. No signs of real frustration or discontent. No real commitment to changing anything. You know why? Because nobody wants to fire the first shot! Everybody wants change, but only if they don’t have to pay for it. Only if their comfortable lives don’t have to be disrupted for their freedom. What a bunch of crap.

Then I see all these political pundits ( idiots ) on CNN talking about how the tea party movement is nothing more than a partisan, Republican, conservative movement against the Obama administration and how the majority of Americans agree with the taxing and borrowing and spending. Some numb-nuts CNN political (anal)yst named Jeff Toobin says that the Texas state legislative resolution to reaffirm their state’s sovereignty is a fantasy. Are you kidding me? State’s sovereignty is a fantasy? Well I guess that says it all. Come on everyone, down the rabbit hole.

[Background music] One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small…

Welcome to the other side of the looking glass everybody. My name’s Alice and I’ll be your host for the mad tea party today. Let me introduce some other guests: the Hatter, March Hare, Dormouse, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Ted Kennedy, John McCain, Rod Blagojevich, Al Sharpton, Hillary Clinton all the AIG executives and many, many more. Don’t worry you’ll have time to get to know them all since you can’t leave no matter what you do so might as well just get used to it. Resistance is futile.

No doubt the majority of Americans didn’t want to go to war against the British in 1776. But would anyone say now that it was the wrong thing to do? No doubt the majority of Americans didn’t want a civil war. Both those wars were, at their core, about state’s rights. About oppressive governments trying to overreach their authority and impose unlawful mandates on the states. It was about their freedom to do what they wish with their lives.

I think we have met the enemy and it is us. We’re a bunch of fast food nourished, MTV anesthetized, shopping mall, plug-in-drug (aka television) addicts who will do anything to preserve that way of life at least until we die. After that who cares?

We’re a clinically obese, socially disconnected, politically inept and intellectually bankrupt nation of douche bags who deserve everything they get.

The movement has no leader. When I listen to anyone other than Ron Paul, Peter Schiff or Lew Rockwell speak about the issues we discuss on LRC I might as well be listening to any other political party spokesperson. They sound just the same. They dress just the same. They say the same old tired things. Ron Paul has even mentioned at times that the Libertarian party has become just another political party interested more in their political posturing rather than liberty. They have all the same sorts of infighting and power struggles that are symptomatic of the fact that they have lost their way.

Rallying the troops to vote more like-minded individuals into office won’t work. That’s an old, failing strategy. When will someone step forward with the courage, character, wisdom and intelligence to lead our nation into the 21st century the way our forefathers led it into the 19th century?

Will it be Texas governor Rick Perry? Perry is using rhetoric about seceding from the union. That is EXACTLY the kind of thing we need. I believe, given the other states with similar resolutions in their legislatures, that it would begin a domino effect. It would give people a chance to actually have a clear reason to fight: their state’s rights of sovereignty and they would know that they have the state’s resources behind them. Unfortunately, even though it’s clear what a boost Texas seceding would be in uniting us, I have no doubt that Perry is not up to the task and is using the issue as nothing more than a rallying point for reelection.

Where have all the heroes gone? Where are all the pioneers? Where are the visionaries? Where are the true statesmen? Where are the defenders of freedom? What has happened to the American Spirit of life and liberty? I guess they’re all at the mall or Starbucks and are too fat to get up out of their chair and fight. Or they’re looking forward to retirement and the “good life” after spending their life being a good soldier and playing by the rules and saving for the “golden years” while their real golden years of youth were passing them by. Certainly they can’t be asked to risk all that for something as silly as their children’s futures. How selfish of me.

Or maybe we don’t want to risk our children’s well-being now, so we defer it until they’re adults and let them deal with the fact that they can’t afford college or health care or a home without going into enormous debt and we never teach them the importance of things like: character, honor, integrity, truth and freedom but rather teach them how to live in fear and how important it is to get a “good job” and play by the rules and to go along to get along and that will be safe.

We’re pathetic.

[…]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/cooper/cooper14.html

Don Cooper… one of the last remaining real human beings.

This quote is for you:

“Where you gonna go?
Where you gonna run?
Where you gonna hide?
Nowhere, cause there’s no one like you left.”

http://www.mininova.org/tor/570383

In today’s Grauniad, a very pleasant letter has been published:

Boycott these checks on students

The Guardian,
Tuesday 14 April 2009

As academics involved in research on the uses and abuses of state power, it is becoming increasingly apparent that members of staff in universities and colleges are being drawn into a role of policing immigration (Universities weigh up new fraud unit to thwart bogus applications, 11 April). For example, academic and administrative staff are being asked to monitor the attendance of students at lectures and classes (whether compulsory or not), and we are being asked to check the ID of students and colleagues, while external examiners and visiting lecturers are also now being asked to provide passport details.

We strongly oppose the imposition of such changes in the way that academic institutions are run. We believe these practices are discriminatory and distort academic freedoms. The implementation of UK immigration policies is not part of our contractual duties and we will play no part in practices which discriminate against students and staff in this way. We support our administrative colleagues in their refusal to engage in such practices. Thus we pledge to refuse to co-operate with university requests for us to provide details on our students or participate in investigations of those students.

As a first, and highly practical, step, we pledge not to supply any personal details – such as passport or driving licence details – in our role as external examiners, and urge all of our colleagues across higher and further education to join this boycott. We will also forward motions to our respective union branches in support of this position. A boycott would undermine immediately the system of external examining at all levels, which operates almost exclusively on the basis of goodwill, and thus strike a significant blow against both the pernicious drift of government policy, and university managements’ acquiescence to this.

Dr Elizabeth Capewell
Professor Ben Bowling
Professor Penny Green
Professor Gerry Johnstone
Professor Scott Poynting
Dr Anandi Ramamurthy
Professor Phil Scraton
Professor Joe Sim
Professor Steve Tombs
and 28 others

In The Devil’s Home on Leave by Derek Raymond (aka Robin Cook), published in 1986, the main character, a detective sergeant, refers at one point to a proposed police special powers bill. Noting it would allow police to detain a person for seven days without access to a lawyer, he says: “If it ever passed on to the statute book we [the police] would effectively be released from any serious accountability to the public.” He adds: “I could stop and arrest a man on the street simply because I didn’t like the look on his face, or the way his pockets bulged.” He notes that the bill had been rejected (did it exist?), but he predicts that it would be back, “perhaps in a different form, perhaps looking more innocuous – not tomorrow, possibly not even the day after, but doubtless the day after that” … and he was right.

Peter Hames
Bideford, Devon

[…]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/14/immigration-higher-education

At last, the people with some backbone and brains are saying, “No”.

Like we keep saying, all it takes is for everyone to stop obeying; in this case, the ‘Academics’ are going to stop obeying and get on with minding their own business, which is the business of being an Academic.

If what the government is doing is really evil, and it is, then ALL professionals should take the same stance, and make the following pledge:

There is a broad consensus that the potential for abuse of human rights is massive with ID cards.

Whilst governments may be able to issue them, it is businesses and the professionals that run them who will be the main interface administering their use and pushing their widespread adoption.

We all have a moral responsibility to protect the welfare of others by refraining from doing evil ourselves.

We therefore call upon all members of Facebook, LinkedIn and all other professional networks to sign this pledge that they will not integrate ID Card requirements into their interactions with their clients, colleagues or customers.

For generations man has succeeded brilliantly without ID Cards in every sphere of life. We actively reject the mistaken ideas, claims and outright falsehoods made by the governments that want to introduce ID Cards, and we commit ourselves to reinforcing normal, moral interactions with our clients, customers and colleagues.

We actively reject the ‘Zero Trust Society’ that governments are trying to create through ID Cards.

We pledge that:

We will not require ID to provide our services.

We will choose professionals and service providers that have taken this pledge over those that have not.

We will not cooperate with any mandate that requires us to identify our clients, colleagues or customers.

When you take payment for a service, you pledge that you will not ask for ID. Your client or customer should not have to produce a document in order to buy products or receive services from you.

Example Scenario
The guiding principle here is not that our clients, colleagues or customers need to prove that, “they are who they say they are”, but that, “I am who I say I am” is good enough as long as they pay you.

If you are offering a hotel room, and the person hiring the room pays with a credit card or cash, there is no need for any other information; you are in the business of renting hotel rooms, not collecting information about your clients on behalf of governments.

Policy Example
Any form that you print that you require your clients, colleagues or customers to fill out should not contain fields for ID card numbers, passport numbers or any other number from an ID document.

If we all refuse to interface with the ID Cards they will be of little use to anyone, and will eventually be abandoned. If however we integrate them into our systems and processes, they will become indispensable and the Zero Trust Society will come into being.

Think of this pledge as a Hippocratic Oath for the 21st Century.

Spread it far and wide!

And now we have a new policy example; Academics refusing to demand ID before they teach, enroll or interact with students. Each professional body can come up with its own scenario and policy example; the most important thing is that everyone has a policy, and that that policy is to reject the Zero Trust Society and all the apparatus that enables it. Everyone everywhere must avoid doing the administrative work of the police state, and they must shun anyone that does do that nasty work.

Do you know someone who needs to read this pledge?

We at BLOGDIAL have blogged about this subject a few times before:

By David Coates, The Detroit News, via AP

In Detroit, three downtown businesses have created a local currency, or scrip, to keep dollars earned locally in the community.

By Marisol Bello, USA TODAY

A small but growing number of cash-strapped communities are printing their own money.
Borrowing from a Depression-era idea, they are aiming to help consumers make ends meet and support struggling local businesses.

The systems generally work like this: Businesses and individuals form a network to print currency. Shoppers buy it at a discount — say, 95 cents for $1 value — and spend the full value at stores that accept the currency.

Workers with dwindling wages are paying for groceries, yoga classes and fuel with Detroit Cheers, Ithaca Hours in New York, Plenty in North Carolina or BerkShares in Massachusetts.

Ed Collom, a University of Southern Maine sociologist who has studied local currencies, says they encourage people to buy locally. Merchants, hurting because customers have cut back on spending, benefit as consumers spend the local cash.

“We wanted to make new options available,” says Jackie Smith of South Bend, Ind., who is working to launch a local currency. “It reinforces the message that having more control of the economy in local hands can help you cushion yourself from the blows of the marketplace.”

About a dozen communities have local currencies, says Susan Witt, founder of BerkShares in the Berkshires region of western Massachusetts. She expects more to do it.

Under the BerkShares system, a buyer goes to one of 12 banks and pays $95 for $100 worth of BerkShares, which can be spent in 370 local businesses. Since its start in 2006, the system, the largest of its kind in the country, has circulated $2.3 million worth of BerkShares. In Detroit, three business owners are printing $4,500 worth of Detroit Cheers, which they are handing out to customers to spend in one of 12 shops.

During the Depression, local governments, businesses and individuals issued currency, known as scrip, to keep commerce flowing when bank closings led to a cash shortage.

By law, local money may not resemble federal bills or be promoted as legal tender of the United States, says Claudia Dickens of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

“We print the real thing,” she says.

Yes, we know; THAT IS THE PROBLEM!

The IRS gets its share. When someone pays for goods or services with local money, the income to the business is taxable, says Tom Ochsenschlager of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. “It’s not a way to avoid income taxes, or we’d all be paying in Detroit dollars,” he says.

Pittsboro, N.C., is reviving the Plenty, a defunct local currency created in 2002. It is being printed in denominations of $1, $5, $20 and $50. A local bank will exchange $9 for $10 worth of Plenty.

“We’re a wiped-out small town in America,” says Lyle Estill, president of Piedmont Biofuels, which accepts the Plenty. “This will strengthen the local economy. … The nice thing about the Plenty is that it can’t leave here.”

[…]

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2009-04-05-scrip_N.htm

Now.

Imagine if all the dimwitted and destructive demonstrators got together to disseminate the ideas behind sound money and then print and promote their own money.

Wouldn’t that be effort better spent instead of smashing an RBS office? Or gathering impotently in the streets to be corralled like cows?

We have been over this again and again and again:

We had this debate on BLOGDIAL before the historic march organized by StopWar. Demonstrations are pointless because they do not achieve their ends, and the people who go on them are nothing more than stupid monkeys; the people who organize them are actually working for the enemy. Time and time again we have said this, (and other stuff) and had it proved, sadly.
Now the directors of this film, after everything we have said and witnessed are asking everyone to:

Join Amnesty
Visit and sign up online:
web.amnesty.org/pages/join-eng
Join Liberty
Visit and sign up online:
www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/join
Email Your MP
Demand to know what they are doing about the issues raised in the film:
www.writetothem.com
Join the Mass Lone Demos
Demonstrations take place 5pm to 7:30pm on the third Wednesday of every month, forms [MS WORD] [PDF] must be handed in or sent by recorded delivery 1 week beforehand.
[…]

Joining Amnesty will not cause one law to be repealed, nor will it stop new bad legislation from being enacted.

Similarly, Joining liberty will achieve absolutely nothing at all.

Emailing the very people who pass the laws that enslave you is just STUPID.

And joining demonstrations we know about, don’t we?

Telling the truth is not enough. Acting is not enough. Correct Action is the only thing that will change what you want changed.

But you know this!

If you want to fix a problem, DO SOMETHING TO FIX THE PROBLEM, DO NOT do something THAT WILL NOT FIX THE PROBLEM.

If your problem is a currency that is being inflated by a criminal government who is stealing your value to give it to their partners in crime, and you cannot change the government, CHANGE THE CURRENCY YOU USE AND ACCEPT, since THAT IS THE PROBLEM.

Demonstrating against bailouts is like dancing to stop the damage to your car caused by hailstorms.

GET YOUR CAR UNDER COVER IF IT STARTS TO HAIL.

Demonstrating against taxation is like applauding to stop your drive from being blocked by snow in a blizzard.

IF YOUR DRIVE IS BLOCKED BY SNOW, GET A SHOVEL AND DIG YOURSELF OUT.

Demonstrating against a leaking roof is like waving a banner to stop being hungry.

IF YOU ARE HUNGRY, MAKE YOURSELF A SANDWICH.

It’s simple really, but to my constant amazement, even intelligent people persist in believing that demonstrations are a good thing. They are not, not because they are inherently bad, but BECAUSE THEY DO NOT WORK!

FOR THE MILLIONTH TIME

Way back in 1992, we wrote the following piece, printed it on 12″ square pieces of card and shipped it with thousands of 12″ singles:

What is the essence of digital recording/reproduction?
Digital recording systems work on the principal of turning a signal into a series of binary numbers, which are then stored for reproduction. This system of encoding averages the input signal to minimize the amount of data generated. It was believed that 44,100 samples per second was a high enough resolution to sufficiently encode any music signal without the listener being able to detect the inevitable degradation.

Analogue encoding systems work by taking the musical information as it is and turning it directly into mechanical movements ~as in the case of vinyl or directly into magnetic modulations (as found on tape) which in the replay stage do not have to be decoded or mathematically reconstructed. There is no trickery involved; what you hear is what you had.

Reductionism
The scientific community has, over the past 10 years, slowly come to the startling revelation, that there are many systems in nature that cannot be broken down or reduced to a set of simple component parts. This realization has overturned the prevailing paradigm of nature which as ruled for the last 200 years. T he death of reductionism has direct implications for the field of audio, and confirms what everybody has been feeling and saying in private for some time about digital music systems; the resolution obtained at 44.1khz is not high enough to reproduce music properly.

The resolution of analogue systems however, depends on the quality of the materials and components used in the audio chain; in the case of vinyl, the resolution goes down to the molecular level. It is millions of times more sensitive than any digital system that has ever been manufactured.

Upgradability
Because digital systems irretrievably reduce the input musical signal to a series of numbers that is insufficient to encode all of the music, there is a limit to how much you can upgrade your reproduction system (hi fi) to obtain a better sound. No matter how much money you spend, the original musical signal can never be retrieved belong the fidelity at which the encoding took place. With analogue recording however, the amount which you can gain is enormous. I he molecular resolution of analogue tape and vinyl facilitate this upward mobility, and even if you don’t choose to upgrade your equipment, the quality of the signal is still preserved in your recordings, if you should ever desire to take advantage of it. Digital denies you this potential.

What’s happening in the studios: engineers reactions
Studio engineers are consistently confirming that digital systems do not measure up under close scrutiny. At a world famous audio mastering facility which specializes in the preparation of lacquers and PQ encoded tapes for CD production, the verdict has been that digital must be treated with extreme caution. At this facility, the production of masters is carried out from many different sources; DAT, Sony PCM 701, analogue tape @ 15ips and 30ips, 1630 U-Matic and Cassette. The Monitoring systems that this studio employs are among the finest in the world, custom built and calibrated by hand by an audio genius. Constant exposure to different kinds of music, heard through an exceptional reproduction system, from different source tapes, has given these engineers the experience to be able to judge audio. Here is the testimony of one of their senior engineers. . .

“There appears to be an unquestioning attitude to digital audio. It is generally and wrongly accepted that digital recorders provide a true to original sound, however there are many variables that can drastically alter the audio signal and there is a widespread ignorance to the various permutations. On the simplest level, one finds that comparable DAT players of different makes have markedly different sounds. The variety of digital interfaces also gives rise to further differences. The idea that a digital copy is an exact copy of the original music is simply not correct. One can look at all of the variables and reach a good compromise but manufacturers still have a long way to go. There is also a growing feeling that the digital sound is conditioning people to accepting the digital sound as the TRUE sound whereas in reality digital systems impart a texture to the sound which is invariably 'restricted' and 'stifled' as opposed to 'open' and 'breathing'. Sound engineers seem to be subconsciously working around the problem, working towards a compromise that 'sounds good on digital'.”

The analogue infrastructure
The knowledge gained in the manufacture and operation of analogue recording systems is invaluable and irreplaceable. Research and development into further improving the near perfect world of analogue audio reproduction has virtually stopped, due to the destructive influence of digital. It is not only the patents and designs that must be carried into the future, but also the personal expert knowledge of engineers, gained over many years, which must survive; knowledge which can never be replaced once lost – the knowledge of what quality to expect from the best possible analogue reproduction system.

Analogue computing
Digital computing is only an evolutionary step in the development of computers. There exists today, the working components of a new type of analogue computer which will revolutionize computing, and make digital computing obsolete. With the establishment of analogue computing, all tasks that are now being handled by digital computers will be switched to analogue computers, including the recording and reproduction of music. Much experience has been gained in the field of optical discs. High density optical discs will, without doubt, be a major resource for data storage and retrieval when analogue computers come on line. I he advantages of optical disc storage (when the disadvantages of digital encoding are stripped away) are many; durability, pitch stability, low distortion and track numbering to name a few. When these advantages are combined with the perfection of analogue encoding, we will have a system of playback and recording with a quality beyond all expectations. Such a system however will be of no use to anyone if the analogue infrastructure has been dismantled, and there is no one left who knows first hand what real, true to life audio sounds like.

The mass destruction of masters
For the moment, digital is here with us, and a terrible price is being paid. l he entire history of recorded sound and music is being systematically ‘saved’ into digital formats . . . at 44.1 khz. This disaster is taking place because of the life span of recording tape; the glues that have been used to bind the magnetic material to the flexible substrate of most recording tape have been found to be decomposing, putting at risk most of the master tapes that have been recorded in the last 50 years. In what seemed like a sensible move, all of these master tapes have been scheduled for saving to digital; (also, conveniently, this ties in with the re-releasing of the back catalogues of most record companies onto CD) I. What nobody bothered to tell these companies, is that digital sounds like shit; and so, thinking that they have permanently saved their masters, the record companies are THROWING AWAY their original analogue master tapes. . . to save space. When the penny drops it w ill be too late. All of~our favorite music will be lost forever in a quanitized quagmire of brittle, cold, shitty sound, and for no good reason, because analogue machines could just as easily be used to preserve decomposing masters.

The proper place for CD
CDs are very useful, just as cassettes are useful; they have a place in the audio chain, and should be used and sold; BUT NOT TO THE EXCLUSION OF ANY OTHER FORMAT, and certainly not to the exclusion of vinyl, which is the best mass produced reproduction carrier ever made.

Who’s in control?
You have to wonder how this sham has continued for so long, and of course, we all know who is behind this insane state of affairs. The audio equipment manufacturers have realized that if they design and manufacture the hardware i.e. CD players, mini-disc, l)CC, they must control the manufacture of the software I music) to ensure that their investment in time and R&D pays off. Sony learned this the hard way, with the failure of Betamax; it failed because there was no software available to watch; they tried to push the system, licensing movies from film companies at huge cost, but it was too late. NOW Sony owns Columbia Pictures, and every picture they have ever made, so if they want to launch any type of new hardware to play movies, the availability of software will be no problem, no matter how good or bad the system is; they can even release films on reels of spaghetti if they want to. Sony also own CBS records and the CBS back catalogue. Phillips own Phonogram and A&M. This is a terrible situation, not only because the production of music is in the hands of a small number of giant companies that are also the exclusive manufacturers of all audio equipment, but because these companies are deaf to sound quality, due to their need to launch more and more new playback formats. Mixed with the profits to be made from re releasing hijacked back catalogues, the resulting brew is poisonous; companies that profit from reissuing old music again and again into a never ending stream of different and inferior devices to a public addicted to electronic novelty. GOD SAVE US ALL.

It’s not too late
Most of the engineers and companies involved in the production of analogue recording systems still exist and are working. If we stop the digital disease now, music and sound in all of its intricacy will be saved for everyone. Keep buying turntables and vinyl records. Keep buying cassettes. Boycott any release that is on CD only for no good reason. Make sure that the labels you buy from are not controlled by the manufacturers of music systems. It is the only way we are going to save sound.

A MESSAGE FROM THE PUBLIC SERVICE INFORMATION DEPARTMENT OF IRDIAL-DISCS

Now, in 2009, we read in The Times, the following…lets go through it together shall we?

Young music fans deaf to iPod’s limitations

Many people complain that pop music was better in the good old days. Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen are poor substitutes for the Beatles and Bob Dylan, the argument goes.

Older fans also insist that songs heard through iPods just don’t rock as they used to, compared with the clarity of CDs and the crackling charm of vinyl.

Research has shown, however, that today’s iPod generation prefers the tinnier and flatter sound of digital music, just as previous generations preferred the grainier sounds of vinyl. Computers have made music so easy to obtain that the young no longer appreciate high fidelity, it seems.

This is nonsense. Young people no longer appreciating high fidelity has nothing to do with the ease of getting a hold of music. They do not appreciate high fidelity for the reasons I outlined in 1992.

The theory has been developed by Jonathan Berger, Professor of Music at Stanford University, California. For the past eight years his students have taken part in an experiment in which they listen to songs in a variety of different forms, including MP3s, a standard format for digital music. “I found not only that MP3s were not thought of as low quality, but over time there was a rise in preference for MP3s,” Professor Berger said.

He suggests that iPods may have changed our perception of music, and that as young people become increasingly familiar with the sound of digital tracks the more they grow to like it.

False. ‘Our’ perception has not changed; the human ear is the same as it has been for generations. What has been changed are what young people are used to; they have been inured to the sound of garbage masquerading as music. They think that music IS what comes out of ear-buds.

He compared the phenomenon to the continued preference of some people for music from vinyl records heard through a gramophone. “Some people prefer that needle noise — the noise of little dust particles that create noise in the grooves,” he said.

No one has EVER preferred the noise of dust particles. Clearly this man has no idea of why vinyl and analogue are superior to compressed digital. Noise is something you sometimes have to put up with in order to hear music, which is what you get from a properly operating turntable and amplification system. It is important not to conflate the faults of vinyl playback and nostalgia for the facts about those high fidelity systems. They were and are good because of how they work and the audio chain, not because of their faults, which is why

“I think there’s a sense of warmth and comfort in that.”

is total nonsense. The quality of analogue reproduction is not an illusion; it is real and the emotional response you get from music that is played back correctly is your response to the music, which is being relayed to you faithfully.

Music producers complain that the “compression” of some digital music means that the sound quality is poorer than with CDs and other types of recording. Professor Berger says that the digitising process leaves music with a “sizzle” or a metallic sound.

First of all, music producers and mastering studios started compressing tracks so that when they are replayed over the radio they sound louder and more exiting. Tracks that were not compressed in this way sounded weak and not exiting next to those that had been pumped up, and so there has been a loudness war going on in pop music for a very long time. The only thing that has changed are the tools being used to do the compressing; now everyone uses ProTools to get this job done.

That is one sort of compression.

The OTHER type of compression is the Procrustean Bed type, which all young people are now suffering. As was said in that article from Sterophile, not only are we being subjected to sound that is destroyed by being sampled at 44.1khz in multiple passes from the multitrack down, but then these mangled, sterile tracks are then data reduced by the MP3 algorithms that reduce the file sizes to one tenth their original size, in lossy formats that sound nothing like music.

Some people say that the loss of fidelity is worth the trade off; there is more access to music than ever, it now costs nothing to listen to everything, and you get it the instant you want it.

As far as I am concerned, its like being offered immortality, but with the price being you can never eat food or have sex ever again.

Not such a good bargain is it?

Producers complain that as modern listeners hear their songs through iPods and their computers, music has to become ever-louder to hold their attention.

Not so.

“Now there’s a constant race to be louder than other people’s records,” said Stephen Street, who has produced records for Blur, the Cranberries and Kaiser Chiefs. “What you are hearing is that everything is being squared off and is losing that level of depth and clarity. I’d hate to think that anything I’d slaved over in the studio is only going to be listened to on a bloody iPod.”

Sorry Stephen, but your productions will never be recorded or heard properly again.

Other musicians have said that compression robs a song of its emotional power by reducing the difference between the loudest and softest sounds. Bob Dylan told Rolling Stone magazine recently that modern albums “have sound all over them. There’s no definition of nothing, no vocal, no thing, just like — static.”

Completely correct Bob.

Ken Nelson, producer of Coldplay’s first two albums, said: “An example of overcompression is the last Green Day album. If you try listening to it from beginning to end it’s hard work. After three songs you need to put something on that’s been recorded in the 70s.”

You NEVER need to listen to a Green Day album. For ANY reason. No matter how it was recorded.

Rennie Pilgrem, a dance music producer, said that he mixed his tracks while listening to them through iPod headphones to cater to the less refined tastes of today’s youth. “To my ears iPods are not even as good quality as cassette tape,” he said. “But once someone gets used to that sound then they feel comfortable with it.”

Cassette is a great format, and if you used it carefully, you could produce some really fantastic sounding masters with it. One of our most popular tracks was mastered directly from cassette, without any attempt to reduce the nose. It rocks.

Advances in technology have often resulted in profound changes in the style of popular music. Music historians point to keyboards in the 18th century moving from the plucked string of the harpsichord to the hammered string of the piano. For the first time, composers could devise songs that got progressively louder from note to note, something that was impossible on a harpsichord.

And yet, the Goldberg Variations are mostly known and loved through piano performances today, not harpsichord, which is the correct instrument for that work. It is the music of the Goldberg Variations that is great; it can be played on any keyboard and evoke its emotions. This is a completely bogus analogy. What we are talking about is the reproduction of recorded music not the technology of instruments.

In the early 20th century, the cylinders on Thomas Edison’s phonograph could play recorded music for only four minutes at a time, something that listeners became used to. Today tracks are still generally about four minutes long.

The Times

Well, that was a typically uninformed piece. Still, it confirms what we predicted; that one day, there would be no one left who knows what music sounds like. That day has now come to pass.

If you have any interest in this subject at all, do read the Stereophile article. It really is a nightmarish proposition that you are living in right now, and a most prescient piece of writing.

And who knows what is next? No doubt someone somewhere is working on a brain cap device that will allow a computer to directly stimulate the auditory processing parts of the brain so that ‘sound’ never has to pass through your ears at all.

The fact of the matter is that recorded music is a phenomenon that is very recent, that has not existed for the majority of the history of man and it may even disappear altogether. One thing is for sure, it is not going to remain the same. What I maintain is that you should be aware of what things are, why they are good or bad, what their value is to you and so on. What I am against is someone dictating how things should be for their own interests and not in the interests of music or the people who love it, which is exactly what happened with CD. It was designed and pushed (on the back of lies) for the benefit of companies without any regard for music or the public.

[…]

I fear that the attempts to speed up and deepen integration and to move decisions about the lives of the citizens of the member countries up to the European level can have effects that will endanger all the positive things achieved in Europe in the last half a century. Let us not underestimate the fears of the citizens of many member countries, who are afraid, that their problems are again decided elsewhere and without them, and that their ability to influence these decisions is very limited. So far, the European Union has been successful, partly thanks to the fact that the vote of each member country had the same weight and thus could not be ignored. Let us not allow a situation where the citizens of member countries would live their lives with a resigned feeling that the EU project is not their own; that it is developing differently than they would wish, that they are only forced to accept it. We would very easily and very soon slip back to the times that we hoped belonged to history.

This is closely connected with the question of prosperity. We must say openly that the present economic system of the EU is a system of a suppressed market, a system of a permanently strengthening centrally controlled economy. Although history has more than clearly proven that this is a dead end, we find ourselves walking the same path once again. This results in a constant rise in both the extent of government masterminding and constraining of spontaneity of the market processes. In recent months, this trend has been further reinforced by incorrect interpretation of the causes of the present economic and financial crisis, as if it was caused by free market, while in reality it is just the contrary – caused by political manipulation of the market. It is again necessary to point out to the historical experience of our part of Europe and to the lessons we learned from it.

Many of you certainly know the name of the French economist Frédéric Bastiat and his famous Petition of the Candlemakers, which has become a well-known and canonical reading, illustrating the absurdity of political interventions in the economy. On 14 November 2008 the European Commission approved a real, not a fictitious Bastiat’s Petition of the Candlemakers, and imposed a 66% tariff on candles imported from China. I would have never believed that a 160-year-old essay could become a reality, but it has happened. An inevitable effect of the extensive implementation of such measures in Europe is economic slowdown, if not a complete halt of economic growth. The only solution is liberalisation and deregulation of the European economy.

[…]

http://klaus.cz/klaus2/asp/clanek.asp?id=88EY96UW9zlp

I KNEW this man would be good!

It seems like the pressure is increasing on a daily basis. Look at this clip from the floor of the NYSE:

The seething anger is leaking out. Soon, the default action will be to say, “No”, and the REALLY angry people will be taking up arms.

It’s about BLOODY TIME.

California is broke.
Kansas is about to go broke.
New York is trying to tax everything under the sun to avoid going broke (it won’t work Mr. Bloomberg).

And in the EU, we read that the Telegraph printed a story about how

European banks may need £16.3 trillion bail-out, EC document warns

Only to immediately delete the story on orders so that bank runs would not be triggered.

Now, as we have been saying, if a bank does not operate a fractional reserve, it doesn’t matter if all the depositors come to get their money out at the same time; the money is actually there, unlike in today’s banks, where the money is NOT there.

Bit I digress a little.

The EU is, with any luck, FINISHED. When the euro collapses it will be the death blow to the EU. Each country is going to go back, re-launch their national currencies, tear up the bogus treaties and enslaving agreements that have made up this bad deal that betrays the hearts of nations and steals from the pockets and spirits of men.

No nation is going to ever again accept this extremely dangerous monetary monoculture. Think about it; why should the Italians suffer the wiping out of all their savings because some Germans made mistakes with the centrally controlled monolithic currency? If you are going to have your hard earned money wiped out, at least let it be by the act of other Italians; then you can string them upside down and shoot them for satisfaction; at least then you have someone to blame.

With the EU president chiseling from the top and all the citizens rioting from the base, the whole structure will fracture and shatter into a quadrillions pieces that will never be put back together again, and any future attempt will not look like the debacle that has been forced upon everyone today.

As for America, they are actively preparing for civil unrest. Google it for yourself. Like I have been saying for many years; if there is one country on earth that can turn itself around from the precipice it is the United STates of America. Only the men of that country have the balls (and the guns) to make the magic happen. I really do hope that they act as an example to the whole world once again. Either way, there is no going back. There is not enough money in the world to pay off the US debt. Europe cannot find the $25 trillion (twice the size of the gross domestic product of European Union) they need to ‘save’ themselves.

BOOM!

Finally, it seems that everyone realizes that refusing to obey is the only way out. Congress just passed a 1000 page bill without a single member reading it. Even if they had read it, and initialed every section, if it is a bill that violates your rights, you are under no obligation to obey its provisions. We have been saying this for ages. So have other people:

Children’s Books in Dumpsters: Washington’s Madness Continues

by Gary North

The kiddie police have begun to march across America, threatening thrift stores, as I warned.

On February 10, workers in America’s thrift stores tossed out every children’s book that was printed prior to 1985. That is the law.

A parent is not allowed to go into a thrift store and buy a book printed before 1985. Those books are now gone.

On the dumpsters filled with children’s books, read this.

Congress has spoken. Well, not quite. The bureaucrats who use Congress as their hand puppet, agency by agency, have spoken. The bureaucrats spend their careers identifying threats to the people. They get paid to do this, and they are paid well. They invent a presumed threat and then terrorize Congress into passing a 500-page bill that no Congressman has read. Then the bureaucrats add more regulations in the name of this 500-page law.

This has gone on since 1913, and it will continue to go on until the system finally breaks down. This is the logic of the system.

Here is the new reality, one week old. If you can still find any pre-1985 books, it is because the thrift store’s managers don’t know they are breaking the law and could be fined or sent to prison if they persist.

Congress passed the enabling legislation law last year: The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008. It has 239 sections. I don’t expect you to read it – after all, no Congressman or Senator did – but click the link and skim it: “Most parents are irresponsible and must not be trusted.”

Every Federal law looks like this one. This was true when I was a Capitol Hill staffer for Ron Paul in 1976, and it will be true for as long as the Federal government is solvent by means of (1) our tax money, (2) Treasury debt investors’ money, and (3) Federal Reserve fiat money.

The bureaucrats are now enforcing the letter of the 2008 law. Congressmen will feign ignorance. “Gee, how were we to know?”

Too late. The books are in landfill.

But why? “Stop dangerous lead paint!” Right. The lead paint in pre-1985 kids’ books in minuscule traces. There is no known example of any child being injured by lead paint from a book. No matter. The law’s the law.

This seems insane, but it is the relentless logic of the State: “Nothing is permitted unless authorized by the State.”

The Federal government has authorized abortion on demand. But, once a parent allows a child to be born, that parent is not be allowed to buy the child a pre-1985 book. Such books are too dangerous for children.

This is the logic of Washington. This logic is relentless. It will be extended by law into every nook and cranny of our lives until it is stopped.

This will stop it: (1) the destruction of the dollar, (2) the bankruptcy of the Federal government, and (3) a decision by millions of Americans to say, “I will not obey this law.” Law by law, people say, one by one, “I will not obey. Arrest me. I will hire a lawyer. Maybe I will simply defend myself in a court of law. I will resist.” Gandhi did it. It worked. People will organize, law by law, to clog the courts, jam the legal system, and vote out of office every politician who does not repeal a specific law. Nothing else can stop this madness.

Americans have surrendered their liberties to Washington, one by one. The process is relentless. No insanity is too great for the bureaucrats. Yet the public is oblivious.

It stems from a simple assumption: “My neighbors are irresponsible. They must not be allowed to make voluntary exchanges, no matter how harmless.” This belief leads to a principle of law: Nothing is allowed unless authorized by the State.

Some of your friends may think you are extreme for not trusting Congress and the bureaucrats. Forward this report to them. They may not yet perceive the nature of Beltway madness.

It is going to get much worse. We can be certain of this. Bureaucrats respect only one thing: budget cuts. That’s a long way away. But the destruction of the dollar may not be.

[…]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north688.html

There aren’t enough cops or apparatchiks to control everyone all the time. Once the teeth of the monster’s mouth reaches the meat of the crisis, then all bets will be off.

It will be something like the fall of the Berlin Wall, where everyone suddenly wakes up and the illusion of power fades away, only this time, the wall that will break will be inside people’s minds

It’s already happening. The cracks are widening. All it will take is one strike of a chisel, or a heating and then dousing in cold water for the whole thing to shatter.

At long last…

Gabby Swank was a straight-A student and cheerleader.

But that was before she became very ill following the standard dose of three Gardasil vaccinations, Attkisson reports.

You know the commercial. It showed teenage girls saying “I want to be one less” who gets the HPV virus, which is linked to cervical cancer.

“It was like a big hype among my friends, because we’re like, ‘we’re gonna get it’ because we felt almost pressured by the commercials,” Gabby said.

Gabby got sicker after each shot, progressing to seizures, strokes and heart problems. It was her neurologist who suspected Gardasil was to blame.

“I think there are too many people having serious long-term side-effects,” said neurologist Dr. Dwight Lindholm.

Last fall, the government and vaccine maker Merck concluded there’s no link between Gardasil and serious adverse events like Gabby’s. But a new analysis calls that finding into question.

The National Vaccine Information Center, a private vaccine-safety group, compared Gardasil adverse events to another vaccine, one also given to young people, but for meningitis. Gardasil had three times the number of Emergency Room visits – more than 5,000. Reports of side effects were up to 30 times higher with Gardasil.

“If I’d have known, we never would have gotten the shot,” said Emily Tarsell, whose daughter, Chris, died three weeks after her third Gardasil shot. She was one of the 29 fatalities reported in two years. “And she’d be here to hug.”

Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder of the NVIC, said: “Now we know from this report that there are more reactions and deaths associated with Gardasil than with another vaccine given in the same age group. It’s irresponsible not to take action.”

Merck, the FDA and CDC question the value of the new analysis, say they continue to review the data, Gardasil remains safe and effective, and its benefits outweigh the risks.

Those who believe the vaccine hurt them aren’t convinced. Gabby isn’t cheering anymore and is too sick to even attend school.

“I struggle with guilt a lot, because I made the choice to get the shot for her,” said Gabby’s mom, Shannon Swank.

Meantime, Merck has asked the FDA to approve it for boys, who can pass on the cancer causing virus to girls, meaning the number of people getting Gardasil may double.

[…]

CBS News

We.
Told.
You.
So.

TONIGHT, CHRIST CHURCH – Lecture Room 1, 8PM

JAMES STANFIELD – ‘Towards the Total Privatisation of Education: Lessons from History and the Developing World’

Researcher at the University of Newcastle’s E. G. West Centre, James Stanfield will speak about the incredible findings of recent research into the role of private schools in the developing world. In the absence of universal state control of education, a vibrant marketplace of schools has arisen throughout much of the developed world, previously unknown to development theorists. Privately run and funded, their costs, syllabus and teaching methods are subject to market discipline and consumer sovereignty. Their scope is extraordinary: in Lagos State, Nigeria (one of the case studies), 75% of the school-age population attend privately run schools with no government funding whatsoever. Their average fees per term are $12.41, affordable even to those in desperate poverty, with private scholarships for orphans and the children of widows. Controlling for background variables, their results in maths are 14-19% better than government schools, and in English 22-29% better. Similar ‘underground’ school systems have been uncovered by in depth research by James Tooley, the Centre’s director, in the slums of East Delhi & Hyderabad, India; Ga District, Ghana; and Nairobi, Kenya. The history of education in Britain prior to the introduction of universal state schooling also supplies evidence that the voluntary and for-profit private sectors succeeded in educating the vast part of the populace, contrary to Dickensian fiction. Dr Stanfield argues that the benefits associated with markets, far from being shunned as an inequitable way to allocate education, are in fact the best mechanisms to ensure that the standard of education rises universally, instead of stagnating equally everywhere.

This really does look to be a fascinating talk, especially if you’re interested in education or development.We covered a lecture by James Stanfield at the Libertarian Alliance conference in October on our blog: see here.

Attendance is, as ever, free. Facebook event here.

As we already knew, the state is not efficient at providing education as a service, and the market does it better, cheaper, and gives parents real choice. The children that come out of an education system driven by the market are superior to those that the state produces, and everyone is…more happy.

Which brings us to Home Schooling.

Home Schooling shares all the characteristics of the above examples, only more so. It is even more efficient and successful, and furthermore, it greatly reinforces the family.

In the light of all this, why is it that HMG is so obsessed with shutting down Home Schooling? Surely they should learn from these examples and as a start and take a completely hands off approach to Home Schooling? Ill tell you why; because firstly, Home Schooling produces people who can think and secondly, it creates stronger families where HMG wants to destroy the family and to produce uneducated, illiterate, immoral subhumans who will service their police state without question, because they will not have the psychological or educational tools to question anything at all.

And this time there are no punches being pulled by the looks of it!!

You may be aware that today, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families announced that he has commissioned an independent review of Home Education. The review will be conducted over the next four months with a report published in May 2009. The review will investigate if and how far children who are educated at home are able to achieve the five Every Child Matters outcomes; assess the effectiveness of current arrangements for ensuring their safety, welfare and education; and, if necessary, make recommendations for improvements to the current systems. Further information about the review and the full terms of reference can be found at

www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/ete/homeeducation.

just a sample of the questions contained there in:

Do you think the current system for safeguarding children who are educated at home is adequate? Please let us know why you think that.

Do you think that home educated children are able to achieve the following five Every Child Matters outcomes? Please let us know why you think that.

Some people have expressed concern that Home Education could be used as a cover for child abuse, forced marriage, domestic servitude or other forms of child neglect.
What do you think Government should do to ensure this does not happen?

http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/consultations/index.cfm?action=consultationDetails&consultationId=1605&external=no&menu=1 by Friday 20th February.

Here we go again.

1. Do you think the current system for safeguarding children who are educated at home is adequate? Please let us know why you think that.

There is no current system for safeguarding children who are educated at home. There is no need for such a system, there never has been a need and there never will be. Children who are educated at home are exactly the same as those who are educated at schools. If you think there is a need for a system to safeguard children who are educated at home, then you need to start one to safeguard children who are educated at school. All schoolchildren have home lives just like home educated ones do. There is no more risk in either type of education. This consultation is the result of the fantasies of ignorant aparatchicks who are desperate to destroy the family, and to put every child in a government brainwashing centre. It simply will not wash. All the assumptions of this are completely wrong, and everyone knows it.

2. Do you think that home educated children are able to achieve the following five Every Child Matters outcomes? Please let us know why you think that.

Every Child Matters is a government ‘programme’ to help children who need help. It is not relevant to children in stable homes with good parents, as all home educating households are. It is not the place of government to set the goals that families should strive for. The entire idea behind this is driven by false reasoning and a complete misunderstanding of the proper role of government. It would be far better for these people to run the schools that they are in charge of correctly, where they currently are in the business of manufacturing ignorant, obese, foul mouthed brainwashed monsters. That, by the way, is part of the reason why Home Education is growing so rapidly. DfES and DCSF are so appallingly bad at the areas they already have complete domination over, they have caused a mass exodus into religious schools and Home Education.

3. Do you think that Government and local authorities have an obligation to ensure that all children in this country are able to achieve the five outcomes? If you answered yes, how do you think Government should ensure this?. If you answered no, why do you think that?

The five outcomes are a fiction, a nonsense and an insult. Before this garbage was introduced, generations of children in this country were coming out of the state schools highly educated. Now, the system is so poor, parents run from it like the plague. People who can think reject the very idea of the government setting these arbitrary and pointless outcomes. They are the rabid imaginings of control freaks and family destroyers; the cancer that is killing Britain.

4. Do you think there should be any changes made to the current system for supporting home educating families? If you answered yes, what should they be? If you answered no, why do you think that?

Yes. Home educating families should have returned to them that portion of money that is taken from them to support schools.

5. Do you think there should be any changes made to the current system for monitoring home educating families? If you answered yes, what should they be? If you answered no, why do you think that?

Home educating families should not be monitored, any more than families who send their children to schools should be monitored. Both of these groups have family lives; the only difference being that home educating families have more of a family life than those that send their children to school. Once again, this question is borne out of complete ignorance of what Home Education is, why it is done, who is doing it, what the proper role of government is, and what the fundamental rights of parents are. Many people are ignorant of what Home Education is; take for example Sarah Ebner of The Times, who wrote an incredibly ignorant, ill researched, unthinking piece of garbage, that was retracted by letting a home schooler set the record straight for the entire length of her column. Take another example, Johann Hari, who wrote this, frankly, ridiculous pice of drivel in the scandalously bad Independent. We wrote about this on BLOGDIAL. There are many other examples of ignorant people slathering their ill conceived thoughts in the newspapers; they are harmless enough (to those without hypertension) but when the people who make legislation are ignorant, then we have a problem.

These ignorant people, who cannot even use The Google to find out that Home Education is not only exploding world-wide, but that in the USA, it is causing students so educated to be actively courted by the best universities there.

They do not have the common sense to seek out the people who represent….but who are we kidding? They want Home Education abolished, just like it is in Germany. They are doing it in a piecemeal fashion, boiling the frog slowly, so that before you know it, it is a thing of the past in the UK.

6. Some people have expressed concern that Home Education could be used as a cover for child abuse, forced marriage, domestic servitude or other forms of child neglect. What do you think Government should do to ensure this does not happen?

“Some people say“?

These people are dishonest, pure and simple. Home Education has nothing to do with child abuse, forced marriage, gypsies, or any form of child neglect whatsoever. This is another sick fantasy, part of the paranoid ‘Zero Trust Society‘ that these subhuman monsters think is the real world. These imbeciles, these damaged creatures and their sick nightmares can take their toys and go straight to hell.

They can have all the consultations they like (and you can bet there are going to be more) – the fact of the matter is that they do not have the budget or the resources to monitor home schooling in any meaningful way. They can make all the noise they like; they are all running out of money, and as the depression begins to pinch harder, these vermin will find themselves first with their dirty little projects cancelled and then, they will find their jobs axed; it cannot come soon enough I say. Everyone is sick and tired of repeating over and over again the same facts.

The sun is hot.
Ice is cold.
Water is wet.
Home Education is here to stay, has no need for government help and is perfectly normal, natural and highly efficient.

By all means, read the other stuff we have written about Home Education. It will answer everything you need to know, and then some.

In 2006, the infamous ‘anonymous email‘ of Frances Stonor Saunders that was widely circulated and published in newspapers, predicted that:

[…]

Every place that sells alcohol or cigarettes, every post office, every pharmacy, and every Bank will have an NIR Card Terminal, (very much like the Chip and Pin Readers that are everywhere now) into which your card can be ‘swiped’ to check your identity. Each time this happens, a record is made at the NIR of the time and place that the Card was presented. This means for example, that there will be a government record of every time you withdraw more than £99 at your branch of NatWest, who now demand ID for these transactions. Every time you have to prove that you are over 18, your card will be swiped, and a record made at the NIR. Restaurants and off licenses will demand that your card is swiped so that each receipt shows that they sold alcohol to someone over 18, and that this was proved by the access to the NIR, indemnifying them from prosecution.

[…]

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1207

Now we see that once again, its assertions have proven to be completely correct.

This is from a column in today’s Daily Mail

[…]

at the Lichfield branch of Marks & Sparks, 30-year-old Oliver Butler was told that unless he could produce his passport, he couldn’t buy two bottles of mulled wine.

They wouldn’t accept his paper driving licence either.

Rightly, he points out that you don’t see many under-age bingedrinkers swigging M&S mulled wine by the neck down your local shopping precinct.

Alcopops and extra-strength cider are more their preferred beverage.

Oliver tells me that it was the first time in 12 years he’d been asked for ID. You’d better get used to it, old son. It probably won’t be the last.

The crackdown on alcohol sales now extends even to people who can prove they are over 18, if they happen to be accompanied by a minor.

Christine Middleton, from Edinburgh, was out shopping for Hogmanay with her daughter at her local Co-op; usual stuff – chicken, turkey, sprouts, two bottles of wine (one red, one pink champagne).

When the champagne went through the barcode scanner, an alarm went off.

The checkout girl asked Christine’s daughter how old she was. After discovering she was 17, she confiscated the two bottles.

Christine (’48, but I look good for my age’) pointed out that the wine was for her, not her daughter, and sent for the manager. Still no joy.

The manager said that her daughter could, in fact, be a local hoodie who had persuaded Christine to buy booze on her behalf.

Like Oliver Butler and his mulled wine, Christine remarked that ‘pink champagne and a cheeky wee Rioja’ weren’t exactly your average hoodie’s gargle of choice.

But the manager still wouldn’t serve her and, with an impatient queue getting restless behind her, she was forced to withdraw, empty-handed.

At first glance, this all seems laughable, to be filed under You Couldn’t Make It Up – especially after reports that grown men and women are being refused whisky-infused cheddar cheese and knitting needles without proof of identity.

The idea that supermarkets are accusing law-abiding adults of being glue-sniffers and purveyors of illicit hooch to under-age hooligans is not only risible but deeply offensive.

It would be easy to put all this down to the good old British jobsworth mentality and the ridiculous modern ‘if it saves one life’ excuse for lowest-common-denominator law enforcement.

But scratch the surface and there’s something far more sinister going on – on a couple of levels.

First, proof of identity is not just the new elf’n’safety. It has been seized upon gleefully by the ‘consumer protection’ nazis.

[…]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1110069/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-How-Mr-Sheens-enemy-State.html

And there you have it.

The contents of this article prove something else; that it is the store managers and businesses that will be enforcing this scheme, not the government. Every supermarket, every seller of alcohol and cigarettes will be a de-facto arm of government, a fine grained interface between the ID Card the NIR and the public.

It immediately follows therefore that if we want to stop the ID card from being a useful tool, we have to ask that all professionals who will come in contact with it refuse to be that interface and facilitator.

If we can secure a pledge from millions of people who are going to be dealing with this, it would strike a real blow to the proposed ID Card and NIR.

With all the shops, supermarkets, cellphone outlets, banks and every other service you can imagine all refusing to interface with this card, it will become useless and even more pointless to everyone.

Thanks to Travis at Ron Paul News for this, who wrote, “This should make you smile…” He knows that we have written before about Cargo Cult effects in relation to that other subject that we all know and love so well.

Cargo Cult Economics
In a recent email exchange about our larger social situation Robert Klassen used a term that simply jumped off the computer screen at me.

Cargo Cult.

It may not hit you the same way, but it sure raised the wattage of the lights in my world. I turned to Wikipedia for a few details and didn’t need to even page down to see all that I needed.

Members, leaders, and prophets of cargo cults maintain that the manufactured goods (“cargo”) of the non-native culture have been created by spiritual means, such as through their deities and ancestors, and are intended for the local indigenous people, but that, unfairly, the foreigners have gained control of these objects through attraction of these material goods to themselves by malice or mistake.

Now let me rewrite that passage from the standpoint of politicians, reporters, most academic economists, executive branch administrators, and quite a few heads of corporations:

Members, leaders, and prophets of the government-regulated economy cults maintain that the manufactured goods (productive economy) of the Free Market have been created by spiritual or ideological means (Gaia or egalitarian socialism/Keynesian-monetarist policy, respectively), and are intended for the cult’s members, but that, unfairly, the Free-Market capitalists have gained control of these objects through attraction of this wealth to themselves by malice and greed.

Like Cargo Cultists in New Guinea, truly these people don’t know any better. Even highly placed and widely quoted professional economists are as ignorant of the source of economic wealth as were stone age tribesmen whose first contact with technology was with people landing airplanes in the jungle.

The cultists’ spending on (or cheering for) the bailouts, stimulus payments, and infrastructure “investments” is based on the belief that it is money that causes economic prosperity, just like cargo cultists thought that if they built straw models of airplanes and recreated airstrips the “cargo” would return.

When I go to the store to buy something with money, the only reason I have money to spend is because someone paid me to produce what it is I do at work. My job lasts only so long as I produce in value for my employer more than I cost to employ, and my job’s security exists only so long as my employer’s production is profitable.

As I see it, it is production that makes the human world go around and supports our wonderful standard of living. Money is a useful accounting of that production, unless fraud is involved (e.g. fractional reserve banking and central bank operations as a whole).

Why do Cargo Cult Economists cling so tightly to the notion that spending alone can solve the problems of the day?

I think part of the answer is that they have no way to define productivity. Instead of seeing productivity as action that yields something that can be sold profitably on the free market, they appear to cling to the Labor Theory of Value where labor alone defines value produced.

They seem to think that all it takes to make a job is a worker and someone to pay him. If no employer stands ready to do so, the manager of a government program can hire him to dig a ditch and fill it in. A job is a job.

In the news recently was an employee sit-in at defunct Republic Windows in Chicago. The company lost its credit line from Bank of America and a major investor recently wrote off a twelve million dollar investment in the company as valueless.

The employees are demanding severance and accrued vacation pay as mandated by federal law. Apparently unbeknownst to them, their work was producing nothing of value, defined as things sold at a profit. The company produced losses, not profits, which revealed that anyone working there was engaged in unproductive work, no matter how many windows they made.

Politicians with the state of Illinois and city of Chicago threatened to end their business ties with Bank of America if the bank didn’t somehow help the employees get what they wanted. In this microcosm we see that membership in Cargo Cult Economics is nearly universal. Jobs aren’t endeavors that produce economically viable goods and services, they’re just something that takes up time, requires some kind of effort, and results in a paycheck. All that matters is work, not that what is produced is economically viable. The idiotic Labor Theory of Value is clearly part and parcel of Cargo Cult Economics.

Spending on make-work jobs and economically non-viable production generates nothing but waste. It wastes the money of those people taxed (extorted) to pay for it and it wastes the time of those doing the work when they should be out developing new skills in other jobs that, when so employed, produce profits. Such spending also steals money from the suppliers of goods and services taxpayers would have preferred to purchase; society as a whole gets poorer with every cycle.

Instead of progress we get regress.

Welcome to Obamanomics, a sect of the Keynesian denomination of Cargo Cult Economics.

[…]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/calderwood/calderwood24.html

We have already seen Cargo Cult behavior in the form of UFO cults and the absurd designs for man made flying discs that totally misunderstand the principles of real UFOs.

This Cargo Cult effect in economics is directly related to the ostrich posturing surrounding UFOs as detailed in the excellent paper ‘UFOs, Sovereignty and Politics‘(PDF). There is a developing taboo against saying that allowing the free marked to solve problems is the best way to ‘organize’ the economy. We can see some of this effect in this CNN clip. It doesn’t seem to matter to the presenters and the delusional german that the Austrians have been right for decades and that they have a complete theory of economics that can not only predict the future but offer real solutions; these ideas are to be irrationally marginalized for purely psychological reasons based around mostly around pity and a poorly thought out desire to help their fellow man.

I am daily astounded by the amazing ignorance of the pundits and ‘experts’ when it comes to economics. It is not just a matter of philosophy, but a profound lack of knowledge about the fundamentals. The worst offenders are the people at CNN and MSNBC who are not only clueless, but who are actually hostile to the facts.

In the end, everyone must come to the same conclusion, wether the subject be economics or UFOs; there is only one reality, and we are all faced with it wether we like it or not. Your choice as a rational human being should be to face the facts and then deal with them whatever they may be.