In a move backed by children’s charities today, Baroness Delyth Morgan has announced routine mandatory checks on the genitals of all female children in England and Wales for signs of circumcision. The yearly examinations are to take place in the homes of every British family with a female child.

An amazing, impossible headline and story you would say yes? The fact of the matter is however, that this is exactly what is being asked for by Baroness Delyth Morgan, with her absurd and insulting assertion that Home Education is a cover for arranged marriage, and that all Home Educators need to be registered and then examined regularly to make sure that arranged marriage is not taking place.

A blogger we admire, Renegade Parent, has actually been called a racist for questioning the logic of this. She is right to say that this is insane, and her logic in this matter is flawless.

Arranged marriage does not occur in the families of the ‘ethnic British‘, who are the majority in this country. To force EVERYONE to be regularly examined for ‘signs of arranged marriage’ by compelling them to register with their Local Authority and then to submit to arbitrary inspection in their own homes is therefore, totally insane.

Only those people who come from cultures that do arranged marriages (which by the way, is their absolute right) should be targeted, if anyone is going to be targeted at all. Of course, if you target one type of person based on their ‘race’, the politically correct lunatics will accuse the government of being racist and of using racial profiling, both of which would be true in this instance.

There is no reason whatsoever to check ethnically British families (or the families of Trinidadians, Jamaicans, Americans, Canadians, Russians etc etc) to see if arranged marriage is taking place. The fact of the matter is people with a different culture, one in which arranged marriages are normal, are now entrenched here. You have to accept them for what they are, since they have no intention of changing their ancient and completely legitimate ways. It’s either that, or destroy your own culture and ways in a vain attempt to try and force them to adapt, i.e. erasing the rights of parents, destroying civil liberties, dismantling the family, making the state a third parent just as New Labour are doing right now.

None of this has anything to do with racism. It is common sense.

This attack on Home Education is completely baseless, evil and fraudulent. The people behind it are weak minded, paranoid, delusional, ignorant, tunnel visioned family wreckers, who if they had one brain-cell and shred of decency between them would have researched Home Education and seen that it is taking off in the USA and world-wide reaching over 1.5 MILLION children in the USA alone and that it is something to be encouraged, not banned, like their spiritual leader had it banned. US State legislatures are now routinely removing the artificial and immoral barriers to Home Education whilst Backward Britain™ created by Neu Liebour is moving in precisely the opposite direction, turning Britain from one of the best places to Home Educate into one of the worst places.

How. Stupid.

Back to the subject at hand. Let’s look at it another way for the lulz (courtesy of Mimi Majick); imagine this statement from Baroness Delyth Morgan:

All girls in the UK are to be screened for testicular cancer. We are doing this so that we do not appear to be sexist in our quest to eliminate this terrible disease.

These examinations would obviously coincide with the proposed mandatory checks for female circumcision.

You think that is insane of course, and that nothing remotely like it could ever happen… and you are WRONG.

The deadly anti cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil has been proposed for BOYS as well as girls. If I remember correctly, only the female of the species has a cervix. Home Educated people of course, are up on their anatomy, unlike their state schooled counterparts.

These people are completely mad, and when the little boy (in this case Renegade Parent) stands up and says, “the empress has no clothes” the morons come out of the woodwork and start calling names. Well, I have some news for you morons; 2+2 always equals 4. It will always equal 4, until the end of time. You are WRONG.

Baroness Delyth Morgan, Graham Badman, Ed Balls and all the other creatures of the night are wrong in what they think, what they do, what they propose and the conclusions they come to. They are the wreckers of civilization, the enemies of common sense and liberty and their time has come to an end, even if they do not yet know it.

Finally, to Renegade Parent directly, you are a voice of pure common sense, a true voice for liberty and the rights of man. People like you are what made this country great. We support you, we know that you are correct, and join with you in denouncing these pig ignorant brainwashed monsters that are trying to kill everything that is good.

Even if you were to say something that we do not agree with, we defend your right to publish it. I have said it before; this is what distinguishes us from the rabble, the sheeple, the sleeple and the eloi; our philosophy does not require anyone to obey us, whereas their philosophy requires everyone to obey them.

We are the best.

And that means YOU.

Alan Johnson puts himself in line behind the Home Secretaries that are total, unrefined scumbags with a piece made of unedited weasel words published in the Guardian. It is a very telling piece, and secures Alan Johnson’s place as lower even than Jacqui Smith in the league table of imbeciles liars and monsters that have drunk from the poison chalice that is the position of Home Secretary.

We need identity cards, and soon
Identity fraud costs the UK £1.2bn, and untold misery, each year. ID cards are a cheap and effective way of fighting back

Alan Johnson MP
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 2 July 2009 16.00 BST

There are only two possible reasons why Alan Johnson has written what he has written.

1) he is a totally mentally retarded, incompetent imbecile that has no idea of what has happened with ID cards since Blunkett, and doesn’t have the intellectual capacity to understand what it all means, and doest have the common sense to find out before making an insane pronouncement like this.

OR

2) he is a totally evil, totalitarian by nature, piece of human garbage.

Either way, he is not fit to be the Home Secretary, and cannot be trusted with the wings of a dead fly, much less his new appointment.

Our identity,

It is not OUR identity, it is YOUR identity in this context, you collectivist SCUMBAG.

the information that makes us unique, is something that we get called upon to prove each day, when we are opening a bank account, renting a flat, proving our right to work.

This is absolute GARBAGE. For generations people have been living without ID Cards and transacting everything they do without any problem whatsoever. Till this very day, you can go to your bank, walk up to a teller, inform her you want to make a withdrawal and that you have forgotten your cheque book. If it is your branch, they will give you your money on the spot, since they know you as one of their customers.

THAT IS HOW THE WORLD WORKS you trust destroying jackass. No one needs ID cards except YOU, so that you can exert total control over everyone to the extent of stopping people from buying teaspoons without your explicit approval.

The whole country is on to what this really means; you cannot lie and spin this one anymore. You have LOST; get a fucking grip and kill it with fire, then at least you will be known as the man who killed the ID Card and the NIR instead of being just another in the line of subhuman monsters that tried and FAILED to enslave the great British people.

It is this unique information that fraudsters and criminals want and this is why we guard it so carefully.

Actually, you incredible, ignorant, lying worm, it is YOU who cannot guard unique information carefully; in fact YOU are completely incompetent and careless with other people’s unique information, and you have hurt people with your incompetence.

Shredding machines, once only found in offices, are now found in many homes as people protect their personal information by destroying personal bank and billing information.

And of course, this is an example of people looking after their own security, and taking steps to protect themselves. What you are proposing will make all the shredding in the world worthless. You want to expose everyone’s personal details to all the people who should not have it IN ONE GO, just like you pathetic swines did with the leaked DVDR of 25 million Child Benefit records. You are stupid. VERY STUPID. You are more stupid than all the Home Secretaries since and including the CHUD Blunkett; you trott out all of their discredited nonsense knowing full well that the tide has turned and that no one believes this garbage any more. You are more stupid than them because you apparently cannot learn. And like I say above, if you know that what you are saying is wrong, then you are a LIAR.

The introduction of identity cards is a simple means of helping you, and I, protect our unique identity from fraudsters.

You idiot. We all know now that it is far from simple. We all know that it does not help you protect your identity from fraudsters; in fact, we all know that the OPPOSITE is true; putting yourself on the NIR EXPOSES your unique identity TO fraudsters, the main one being YOU since you are committing an act of blatant fraud by lying in this way about something that you know to be FALSE, trying to sell it knowing that it does not have the capabilities you claim it has.

Identity fraud costs the UK economy £1.2bn on average each year and causes misery for tens of thousands who fall victim.

Even if that number is true, SO WHAT. It is not the place of government to provide identity services, there is no single ‘UK Economy’ that these frauds against individuals can be charged against (and in any case, the money that is defrauded goes right back into that same economy, you simpering prat.) and as for the misery, the misery that MILLIONS of people would have suffered as a direct result of this ID Card would far outweigh the value of the individual pain from fraud.

You cannot do simple math. What a joke!

At a cost of just £30, the identity card is a cheap way of helping fight back.

Not only is it not cheap, because no one needs one, it is not a way of ‘fighting back’ in fact, it is quite the opposite. That fee is actually being paid to put you into a system that makes you less safe and which increases the probability that your identity will be compromised and fraud perpetrated in your name. This is more night is day, hot is cold, wet is dry, war is peace babble. You are full of FAIL.

So, despite the headlines that would have readers think otherwise, I’m not scrapping identity cards – I’m committed to delivering them more quickly to the people who will benefit most.

Then you are committed to FAILURE. You are committed to lying, totalitarian doctrines and the control freakery of your predecessors. You are a NOTHING, you are not your own man, you are just a pawn, a loser, a cog in the machine, a waste of flesh. You are going down with Neu Liebour; no one will even remember your name. You will leave government without having brought anything to the table except the spork that you used to eat your share of the spoils.

I know that some of you have real concerns about the government’s motives for introducing the card. When I announced this week that I would make identity cards wholly voluntary it was because I believe that there are real benefits that will make the card an attractive proposition for many people.

This is classic doubletalk. If the concerns are real, then something is wrong. Also, the incredibly insulting move of ‘making the cards voluntary’ is not fooling anyone you shit for brains loser; we all know that the NIR is the key to this insane scheme, and that your fingerprints will be the ID Card.

I think the case for identity cards has been made,

I think it is abundantly clear that you cannot think at all.

but understand that getting a card will be a big decision for some people. Easy or hard, I think it should be a voluntary decision, one that people choose to take, because they agree and welcome the benefits an identity card will provide.

Utter drivel.

In particular, I’m pleased that the government will be looking at bringing forward proposals for pensioners aged 75 and over to receive an identity card free of charge.

Actually, it is those people more than anyone who can remember what Britain used to be like, and who mourn for the country that everyone loved so much and to which you have done so much damage.

I also want to see young people with identity cards.

Young people want to see you given the red card and sent off. Other people want a worse fate for all of you.

They will not only act as a proof of age for the individual

You want a Britain where there IS NO INDIVIDUAL. THat is clear. And as for proof of age, once again, this is not needed in this or any other country. The laws restricting alcohol to certain age groups are absurd, and they are being used as a pretext to bring in the NIR / ID Card whose scope and powers are way beyond a simple check to see how old you are. Everyone knows this now, you FAIL every time you say this because you are repeating old lies that no one believes… its like you are living out of temporal sync whit the rest of the world. We have ALL BEEN PAST THIS POINT. These LIES will not work anymore.

but also empower communities tackling underage drinking and crime

This is complete crap. ID Cards cannot tackle underage drinking, and they will do nothing to combat crime. Once again, old chestnut nonsense. And no, if you repeat it one million times it will not suddenly become true. Idiot.

by enabling local retailers, including pubs and supermarkets, to help ensure they aren’t selling restricted goods, such as knives and alcohol, to those who are underage.

retailers are doing so badly that if they did not sell anything to anyone who wants it they would go out of business. And what the HELL does ‘restricted goods’ mean? We know it means teaspoons, but what it REALLY means is ‘anything we decide in the future that you should not have without having to show ID’ which means almost anything, since they are now asking for ID to buy teaspoons. We do not want a world where you have to show id to do everything, and we are not going to have it. ID Cards are finished. The whole country knows what they mean and how evil they and you are.

And this is why I have taken the decision to speed up the rollout of identity cards by announcing that alongside people in Manchester, residents in the wider north-west will also be able to apply for a card in the new year.

Meaningless. We will not do it, and those small numbers that do will end up having a piece of plastic that is the ultimate souvenir of Neu Liebour, apart from the mass murder, emptying of gold reserves on the cheap and every other disaster they presided over.

People believe in protecting what they have and what they have worked hard to achieve

And you and your evil colleagues believe in stealing what people have, destroying what people have worked to achieve; that is why Britain is in such a mess, and why monstrous animals like you are pushing ID cards; you are DESTROYERS by nature.

– a good name and a good credit rating.

SHOCKING. For someone who thinks that a good name is something worth protecting, it is simply ASTONISHING that Alan Johnson is putting his name, his reputation and his sacred honor behind this ABSOLUTE EVIL. Well, I have news for you Mr. Johnson, your name is now MUD!

Being able to protect your identity from fraudsters who would use and abuse it is something we all want and I think identity cards can achieve this.

[…]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree

You, are, of course, completely and disastrously wrong. And we know it.

And now, a smattering of the comments from The Grauniad:

imogenblack
02 Jul 09, 4:13pm (about 21 hours ago)

Is this a joke?

I only ask cos CiF totally got me on April fools…

If it actually isn’t it should be, I’m wetting myself.

Who the hell does the nulab PR??? Are they mad? Or secretly tory?

Not only is this article a poor re-hash of tired and debunked arguements, it is very poorly constructed as arguments go – I’ve seen far better from madmen BTL!

Its not going to happen – how are we going to be protected from fraud by a government who cannot keep the records they do have safe?

And how are we supposed to trust a government that has curbed our civil liberties so far?

dreadmorayeel
02 Jul 09, 4:10pm (about 21 hours ago)

Total bullshit from the charlatans of Stasi NuLabour.

Your pathetic excuse for a Govt hasn’t exactly got a great reack record on retaining sensitive data has it?

£1.2 billion a year you say? A drop in the fiscal ocean compared to the damage done by fasle illegal wars and unregulated troughers in the banking sector under ZaNuLabout stewardship.

Looking at the comments here should tell you all you need to know about what this country’s citizens think of this.

A shambolic corrupt decadent “Govt”.

Stick it.

thebley
02 Jul 09, 4:16pm (about 21 hours ago)

You were recently presented as a possible labour leader, from this article its clear you would be as mendacious as the present incumbent. You are supporting identity cards when the initial rationale of fighting terrorism has been conveniently airbrushed from history. Instead we now need them to maintain our good name and credit rating. Unbelievable rubbish, why not tell the truth about databases and your support for corporations who will manage this disaster and be paid handsomely for it. You should have commented on the retreat from privatisation of royal mail. Anyway, these cards are not voluntary and your lies bode ill for your own good name. The nonentity Smith has gone and you as her replacement are exhibiting a loyalty to surveillance dogma that has no place in a democratic society.

whatithink
02 Jul 09, 4:19pm (about 21 hours ago)

I’m with noisebastard. How did anybody ever think this pathetic man was fit to be prime minister? This article drips with contempt for the reader. Does he really think anyone is stupid enough to believe this stuff?

masterislove
02 Jul 09, 4:03pm (about 21 hours ago)

Countries that already have identity cards are not immune from criminals or fraud. The fact is that you or any other politician cannot grasp how technology works in the real world. Perhaps if you lived like the rest of us you would understand that freedom should not be given up for false promioses of protection and security. You are not qualified to protect me.

hermionegingold
02 Jul 09, 4:05pm (about 21 hours ago)

Being able to protect your identity from fraudsters who would use and abuse it is something we all want and I think identity cards can achieve this.

your government has an appalling record on personal identity security, why on earth should we believe anything you say?

next.

qwerty99666
02 Jul 09, 4:08pm (about 21 hours ago)

The sooner you incompetant authoritarian wannabe Stalinists are out on your collective ears the better.

I will never carry an ID card, I shall never pay for an ID card and will be happy to go to jail in order to ensure I never own one.

BarkingMad
02 Jul 09, 4:09pm (about 21 hours ago)

Our identity, the information that makes us unique, is something that we get called upon to prove each day, when we are opening a bank account, renting a flat, proving our right to work. It is this unique information that fraudsters and criminals want and this is why we guard it so carefully.

No, what makes us all unique is billions of years of evolution. Not a piece of card from a politician in a suit banging on about fraud and how much money it costs. And no, whilst you’re at it you can’t have my DNA either. So do us all a favour and go away!

And there you have it. It is hard to imagine that this man is actually worse than all his predecessors, but he actually is. And that they let him publish this badly written drivel shows that Neu Liebour is really in total disarray.

Good!

EDM 1794 HOME EDUCATION 01.07.2009

James, Utterson

That this House recognises that an estimated 45,000 to 150,000 children are educated at home; believes that the mammalian mating structure is centered around the family, and that what a family is should not be defined by or interfered with by this House, and that parents should have the right to home educate without any interference from this House; notes with concern and disdain the proposals put forward in the recent Badman Review; expresses particular disgust at the lack of consultation involved in conducting the review; considers it unacceptable that local authorities are to be given unprecedented powers to enter the homes of citizens; rejects the need for a system of support to ensure that home educated children receive a good quality of education and rejects the creation of an excessive and damaging extension of bureaucracy; and calls on the Government to enshrine the rights of parents to give their children the widest possible educational opportunities and thereby ensure that all children receive a well-rounded education.

The people who run the Pirate Bay have decided to exit and hand the site over for money. Good luck to them, and thanks for the lulz.

Now we hear of a company that wants to make money off of TPB, by ‘paying people to share files’:

Cash for Pirate Bay file-sharers

The new owners of file-sharing website The Pirate Bay say users will be paid for sharing files.

Global Gaming Factory (GGF) paid 60m kronor (£4.7m) to take over the site.

In an exclusive interview with the BBC, GGF’s Hans Pandeya said that the only way to beat illegal file-sharing was to make something more attractive.

“We are going to set up a system where the file-sharer actually makes money,” he said.

According to Mr Pandeya, GGF’s chief executive, the business model for The Pirate Bay would be that it continued to be a file-sharing site. The only difference – at least in terms of content – would be that the files would be hosted legally, rather than stolen from copyright holders.
“We’re a listed company so everything we do has to be legal; content providers need to be paid and have their wishes and demands met,” he said.

Freebie beater
Mr Pandeya said that one of the biggest hurdles in overcoming illegal file-sharing was that there was zero cost to the users, while legitimate sites required users to pay for content. The only way to make something more attractive than free was to pay users to share files.

“More than half of all internet traffic is file sharing and P2P [peer-to-peer] traffic and buying Pirate Bay gives us one of the biggest sources of traffic.

“We can then use this massive network of file-sharers to help [internet service providers] reduce overload.

“Let’s say a popular song comes out. Rather than a million downloads from a site – which would cause a considerable strain on that ISP – we can take that song and put it out on P2P.

“The copyright holder still gets paid, the users still get their file, the ISP doesn’t have a million people all grabbing a file and – for the users who share that song – a payment for putting that file on the P2P network.”

Mr Pandeya said that while they would be paying content providers and file sharers, there was money to be made from helping ISPs cope with overload.

“We’ve been working with ISPs for over a year and we can cut their costs – when the system becomes overloaded – by 90%.
“All ISPs have this problem and it is one we can fix,” he said.

Computer grid
The company is also looking at harnessing the storage capacity and processing power of the file-sharing community, creating a powerful grid of P2P-linked computers.

“We’re talking about next-gen file sharing so you can create revenue from storage and internet traffic optimisation,” he said.
However, GGF said that the technology to drive this was still in its infancy.

“This technology is new. For now, we’re outlining our intentions and asking users to have faith,” said Mr Pandeya

[…]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8128551.stm

Hmmmmm that sounds very familiar….

Those of you who are old (in internet time) will remember MojoNation. The leet amongst you will have run it.

Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow

Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow was a startup company founded by Jim McCoy et al. to create MojoNation. After several years, the company ran out of money and laid off most of its employees; Bram Cohen went on to create BitTorrent and Zooko created Mnet out of MojoNation’s source code. The company’s name comes from the game Illuminati by Steve Jackson Games.

[…]

Mojo Economy

Mojo was a digital cash currency that aimed to provide attack resistance and load balancing in a fully distributed and incentive-compatible way (see Agoric computing). Every pair of MojoNation nodes maintained a relative credit balance, with every EGTP request transferring some Mojo credit from the sender to the receiver. Once the absolute value of the debt between two nodes exceeded the size of a Mojo token, the side with the negative balance would transfer a token to the other, clearing out the debt. Because transferring a token was a relatively heavyweight event, tokens were worth 20,000 (?) Mojo. A MojoNation component called the token server acted as the mint, allowing MojoNation nodes to securely transfer Mojo.

In early versions of MojoNation, users were required to set prices for any services their node provided. Most users had no idea how to choose prices, so the Mojo layer was rewritten to use a second-price rolling auction. Each node maintained a queue of incoming requests that had not yet been processed, sorted by a bid field contained in each request. Requests were serviced in order, from highest to lowest bids. This shifted the burden of pricing decisions from servers to clients: each user could set a price he was willing to pay for services, and his node would offer that bid in outgoing requests. This scheme was intended to create a simple feedback loop: if the system is responding slowly, increase your bid and if the system is responding quickly, decrease it.

[…]

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

And there you have it. This has already been tried once.

At MojoNation where the creator of Bittorrent worked, a system was built that remunerated users of a P2P network for sharing their bandwidth and storage. The company ran out of money. Could it have worked if they had more users and deeper pockets? Who knows? What we DO know, is that if anyone is writing a system like this from scratch, they are insane, because much of the hard work on the server side has already been done, and the source code open sourced.

Whatever.

This is an interesting idea, interesting enough to be tried twice.

I am not ‘from India’. I have never been there. They have some of the best food on the planet, the best music and beautiful women. Hell, they even have Nuclear Weapons.

India is full of WIN.

But, they have some problems to solve. They have the brains to solve them. How do we know this? They have a huge number of software developers.

Now read this:

March 4 (Bloomberg) — Until May 2007

Meera Devi rose before dawn each day and walked a half mile to a vegetable patch outside the village of Kachpura to find a secluded place.

Dodging leering men and stick-wielding farmers and avoiding spots that her neighbors had soiled, the mother of three pulled up her sari and defecated with the Taj Mahal in plain view.

With that act, she added to the estimated 100,000 tons of human excrement that Indians leave each day in fields of potatoes, carrots and spinach, on banks that line rivers used for drinking and bathing and along roads jammed with scooters, trucks and pedestrians.Devi looks back on her routine with pain and embarrassment.

“As a woman, I would have to check where the males were going to the toilet and then go in a different direction,” says Devi, 37, standing outside her one-room mud-brick home.“We used to avoid the daytimes, but if we were really pressured, we would have to go any time of the day, even if it was raining.During the harvest season, people would have sticks in the fields.If somebody had to go, people would beat them up or chase them.”

In the shadow of its new suburbs, torrid growth and 300- ­million-plus-strong middle class, India is struggling with a sanitation emergency.From the stream in Devi’s village to the nation’s holiest river, the Ganges, 75 percent of the country’s surface water is contaminated by human and agricultural waste and industrial effluent.Everyone in Indian cities is at risk of consuming human feces, if they’re not already, the Ministry of Urban Development concluded in September.

Economic Drain
Illness, lost productivity and other consequences of fouled water and inadequate sewage treatment trimmed 1.4-7.2 percent from the gross domestic product of Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam in 2005, according to a study last year by the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program.

Sanitation and hygiene-related issues may have a similar if not greater impact on India’s $1.2 trillion economy, says Guy Hutton, a senior water and sanitation economist with the program in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.Snarled transportation and unreliable power further damp the nation’s growth.Companies that locate in India pay hardship wages and ensconce employees in self- sufficient compounds.

The toll on human health is grim.Every day, 1,000 children younger than 5 years old die in India from diarrhea, hepatitis- causing pathogens and other sanitation-related diseases, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund.

‘Sanitation Crisis’
For girls, the crisis is especially acute: Many drop out of school once they reach puberty because of inadequate lavatories, depriving the country of a generation of possible leaders.

“India cannot reach its full economic potential unless they do something about this sanitation crisis,” says Clarissa Brocklehurst, Unicef’s New York-based chief of water, sanitation and hygiene, who worked in New Delhi from 1999 to 2001.
When P.V.Narasimha Rao opened India to outside investment in 1991, the country went on a tear.For most of this decade, India has placed just behind China as the world’s fastest- growing major economy.Revenue from information technology and outsourcing jumped more than 300-fold to $52 billion a year as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., Infosys Technologies Ltd. and other homegrown giants took on computer-related work for Western corporations.

Annual per-capita income more than doubled to 24,295 rupees ($468) in the seven years ended on March 31, 2008, before the full force of the financial meltdown kicked in.Even during the current global recession, India’s economy will expand 5.1 percent in 2009, the International Monetary Fund projects.

Hygiene Breakdown
Yet India’s gated office parks with swimming pools and food courts and enclaves such as the Aralias in Gurgaon, outside New Delhi, which features 6,000-square-foot (557-square-meter) condominiums, mask a breakdown of the most basic and symbolic human need — hygiene.

Devi, who installed her neighborhood’s first toilet, a squat-style latrine in a whitewashed outhouse, created a point of pride in a village where some people empty chamber pots into open drains in front of their homes.Like most of Kachpura’s residents, more than half of India’s 203 million households lack what Western societies consider a necessity: a toilet.

India has the greatest proportion of people in Asia behind Nepal without access to improved sanitation, according to Unicef.Some 665 million Indians practice open defecation, more than half the global total.In China, the world’s most populous country, 37 million people defecate in the open, according to Unicef.

‘It’s an Embarrassment’
“It’s an embarrassment,” says Venkatraman Anantha- Nageswaran, 45, an Indian working in Singapore as chief investment officer for Asia Pacific at Bank Julius Baer & Co., which managed $234 billion at the end of 2008.“It’s a country that aspires to being an international power and which, according to various projections, will be the third-largest economy in 20-30 years.”

India has the highest childhood malnutrition rates in the world: 44 percent of children younger than 5 are underweight, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.

“Malnourished children are more susceptible to diarrheal disease, and with more diarrheal disease they become more malnourished,” says Jamie Bartram, head of the World Health Organization’s water, sanitation, hygiene and health group.“If we collectively could fix the world’s basic water and sanitation problems, we could reduce childhood mortality by nearly a third.”

Half of India’s schools don’t have separate toilets for males and females, forcing young women to use unisex facilities or nothing at all.Twenty-two percent of girls complete 10 or more years of schooling compared with 35 percent of boys, a national family health survey finished in 2006 found.

Indignity, Infections
Devi says she was concerned that her 14-year-old daughter would suffer the indignity and infections she herself endured due to poor menstrual hygiene.That was a major reason she bought a toilet, taking out a 7,000 rupee, interest-free loan from the U.S.Agency for International Development, which enabled her to pay for her new latrine over 18 months.

The agency also gave her a 3,000 rupee grant and a 2,500 rupee-a-month job with its Cross-Cutting Agra Project, which promotes hygiene and sanitation in her village.Until then, she, like her husband, was unemployed.Her daughter’s situation has also improved, Devi says.

“When she has her period, it’s especially difficult for her to go out into the fields,” she says.“It’s better to have a toilet at home — as it is for every female.”

Girls’ Education
Barriers that keep girls from equal education compromise the nation’s future, says Renu Khosla, director of CURE India, a New Delhi group that works to improve water and sanitation for the poor, including in Kachpura.

“We will have a less skilled population of youth,” she says.“Every year of schooling reduces household poverty by bringing down the family size and increasing skill levels.”

So far, companies looking to locate in India haven’t been turned off by the sanitation shortcomings, says Anshuman Magazine, chairman of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc.’s South Asian unit, which manages about 62 million square feet of property in the country.“India is a completely different planet,” he says.

As such, employees know not to drink tap water, and employers provide clean washrooms.

“As far as offices are concerned, I have never come across anyone raising these concerns.Businesses run on making money and opportunities.Since 2004, we have seen huge interest from foreign investors and businesses.”

[…]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?sid=aErNiP_V4RLc&pid=20601109

After reading that, do you REALLY believe that India needs….

ID CARDS FOR OVER ONE BILLION PEOPLE?

Astonishingly, in a country with some of the best software developers in the world, Israeli companies are bidding for the contract!

The whole world has gone NUTS.

This article has an idea:

Why The SIM Card Should Be India’s National ID Card
By Guest Author Sanjay Swamy, CEO, mChek

Imagine India as a country where 100% of the population is uniquely identified, has connectivity for telecom services and also has access to structured financial services. Imagine secure, personalized, anytime-anywhere healthcare services, government disbursements, loan disbursements and repayments! Imagine – the SIM card can become the government issued voter ID card – and one could even “vote” from the convenience of one’s mobile phone.

Which is echoed in this company’s idea. I strongly recommend that you read that last link. Mobile phones are like the biblical thief in the night.

In any case, India DOES NOT NEED ID CARDS, in my humble opinion. Of course, if ‘they’ want them its their business, and not any of mine or anyone else’s. One would have thought that after being a colony for 250 years, you would not want to be the slave of another master. Go figure. Your mileage may vary. Subject to change without notice. Your statutory rights will be affected. Not valid as a part of any other offer.

I was told when discussing this subject two days ago, that in India, births registration of births is not compulsory. My Google-Fu failed to confirm wether this is true or not. India is now one of the most powerful nations on earth, set to become even more powerful. Quite why they want to derail their success is anyone’s guess. And giving out ID Cards to everyone is a backwards step… at least, that is what it looks like from here, which is nowhere as far as they are concerned.

FURTHERMORE

Meau graciously fills in the blanks with his Google-Fu in the comments… registration WAS voluntary and was made compulsory in 1969… there have been problems in getting everyone to respond to compulsion it seems….read below!

Long time readers of BLOGDIAL know that we use substitution to find out what something really means. Lets find out what happens when we use it on the amendments tabled by Lord Lucas:

LORD LUCAS

311 Insert the following new Clause—
“Support for Miscegenation
Support for Miscegenation

1. The Secretary of State shall establish a body to be known as the Miscegenation Consultative Committee (the “MECC”).
2. The Secretary of State shall appoint to the MECC such persons as he considers appropriate.
3. The Secretary of State shall consult the MECC whenever he intends to make proposals that will have an effect on Miscegenated families.
4. The MECC may undertake investigations into areas of policy or practice in relationships between the government and the Miscegenated community.
5. The MECC may produce and promote guidelines and examples of good practice in relationships between the government and the Miscegenated community.
6. The MECC may make proposals to the Secretary of State for changes in practice or policy of Miscegenation.”

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200809/ldbills/042/amend/ml042-iih.htm

See what just happened?

In case you didn’t know…

Miscegenation (Latin miscere “to mix” + genus “kind”) is the mixing of different racial groups, that is, marrying, cohabiting, having sexual relations and having children with a partner from outside one’s racially or ethnically defined group.

[…]

Usage

The term “miscegenation” has been used since the nineteenth century to refer to interracial marriage and interracial sex, and more generally to the process of racial admixture, which has taken place since ancient history but has become more global through European colonialism since the Age of Discovery. Historically the term has been used in the context of laws banning interracial marriage and sex, so-called anti-miscegenation laws. It is therefore a loaded word and is considered offensive by many.

Today, the word miscegenation is avoided by many scholars, because the term suggests a distinct biological phenomenon, rather than a categorization imposed on certain relationships. The word is considered offensive by many and other terms such as “interracial,” “interethnic” or “cross-cultural” are more common in contemporary usage.[1] However, the term is still used by scholars when referring to past practices concerning multiraciality, such as anti-miscegenation laws that banned interracial marriages[2].

[…]

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

For the record, many entries in Wikipedia are… ‘confused’ about the issue of ‘race’. This article is certainly one of them.

What this substitution does is demonstrate the absurdity of having the Secretary of State establish a body to regulate Home Education. Home Education is not the business of the state, and neither is it the business of the state who you want to marry or live with. Both are as natural as sunshine, or clouds in the sky, and all of these things regulate themselves perfectly well without interference.

I could have just as easily inserted ‘Muslim’ in place of ‘Miscegenation’. Can you imagine ANYONE proposing that there be a ‘Muslim Consultative Committee’ that would, “…make proposals to the Secretary of State for changes in practice or policy controlling Muslims”? The idea would never cross the minds of anyone in the legislature; they are frightened to death of any vocal grouping that has established itself as ‘normal’. Sadly, Home Educators have failed to understand the need for professional and ongoing PR to make just that establishment a reality for themselves, and now, unless something is done immediately, they are going to watch their families be destroyed, forced to leave the country, harassed and hounded like criminals, very much in the same way that ‘mixed race’ couples were harassed in the USA.

The question is, do you, Home Educator, want to wait until the time where there is an equivalent of the current US president to dispel myths about Miscegenation – a time, which is certainly coming, where Home Education is completely accepted as the absolute norm, or are you going to go through twenty years of hell waiting for the rest of the country to wake up? Are you going to take the bull by the horns and use the tools available to you to make the reality change to accept you, or are you going to sit there and cry like a baby?

I must point out also, that Lord Lucas has tabled this amendment after having been told explicitly and overwhelmingly on his blog that this is NOT what is required.

All of you who have faith in politics had better get a grip on reality; these people exist to create new legislation, not to protect you and your family. Seeking your rights from them is what a slave does. Free people TAKE their rights, and do not beg like serfs.

But you know this!

ID cards will not be compulsory, says Alan Johnson

Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, has announced the death of compulsory ID cards in a significant Government climbdown over the controversial scheme.

By Tom Whitehead, Home Affairs Editor

Alan Johnson said ID cards should not have been portrayed as ‘a panacea for terrorism”.

He said the cards will now only be issued to Britons on a voluntary basis meaning no one will ever be forced to have one, effectively paving the way for the scheme to be scrapped altogether.

A pilot scheme for airside workers, which marked the first attempt at making the £4.9 billion programme compulsory for British nationals has been abandoned.

Mr Johnson even admitted the suggestion the cards would help combat terrorism was exaggerated as he accepted the Government should never have allowed “the perception to go around that they were a panacea for terrorism”.

Instead, the Home Office is now concentrating on the cards being useful for youngsters to prove their age when going in to pubs.

It will remain compulsory for foreign nationals staying the UK long term to have an ID cards but Britons will only have one now if they request it.

Chris Grayling, the shadow Home Secretary, said: “This decision is symbolic of a Government in chaos. They have spent millions on the scheme so far – the Home Secretary thinks it has been a waste and wants to scrap it, but the Prime Minister won’t let him. So we end up with an absurd fudge instead. This is no way to run the country.”

[…]

Telegraph

This is in no way good enough.

First of all, if you do not give ID Cards to everyone, then people who are stopped and asked to identify themselves will be forced to identify themselves in another way. The pressure will very great to adopt the card ‘voluntarily’; there will be more hassle in daily life without it, especially when you cannot even buy a teaspoon without an ID Card.

Second, if the NIR still exists, it will be trivial for the next totalitarian government to reintroduce compulsory ID Cards, and in any case, the NIR, since it takes your fingerprints, will make your fingers your id card. The position still remains the same that if you do not want to go into the NIR, you will have to forgo having a passport. This is totalitarian madness and yet another demonstration that Neu Liebour, even now, simply cannot change its evil nature.

The NIR must be SCRAPPED. Anything less than scrapping it is UTTER NONSENSE, and everyone knows it, because they know that the database is the problem, and not the card. Everyone also knows that the NIR does not make sense if the whole population is not in it. It is an affront to all decent people and must be abandoned completely.

Third, the suggestion that ID Cards would stop terrorism was not believed by anyone with a single brain cell, and everyone who said it was called a liar by us, and people better than us.

Fourth, the need to prove your age is a completely absurd excuse to maintain the NIR and ‘voluntary’ ID Cards. There are private organizations that print these cards for those people who really want them, and in any case, underage drinking is a health problem, not an identity problem.

Fifth. Compulsory ID Cards for foreign nationals staying in the UK is discrimination pure and simple. These people ALREADY have ID – THEIR PASSPORTS with VISAs in them; in other words, they have been vetted before they even got here. To require them to have (and pay for) another, superfluous piece of ID, running on the NIR, costing BILLIONS of pounds is completely insane. And of course, all foreign looking people, which means anyone who is not caucasian, will be constantly asked to identify themselves, as I say above. The fact that foreigners will be forced to have ID cards will increase the pressure on people in the UK to carry ID cards constantly dramatically. To stop accusations of racism, the beleaguered police will once again, be asked to stop people at random, this time for their ID just to make up the numbers. The government will also pass laws unrelated to the ID Card itself, requiring identification for a whole raft of goods and services, and the people who provide these will ask for either a UK drivers license, passport or UK ID Card. No one likes to carry around a sensitive and valuable document like their passport, and not everyone drives. That leaves signing up for a ‘voluntary’ ID Card. They will be able to force the adoption of this evil without trying very hard; this is why the NIR MUST be scrapped, because it is upon that that everything they are planning is built.

Clearly they have not got the guts to completely back down and destroy the work of David Blunkett

Charles Clarke

and Jacqui Smith,

who all spent so much time lying and misleading in an attempt to sell ID Cards to the British public.

What these cowards are doing is trying to steal the thunder of the Tories. The Tories have promised to scrap the ID Card. So now, Labour, to save their skins, are scrapping it.

This is actually a good thing.

Now the Tories will have to double down or fold. They will have to up the stakes and say that they are going to dismantle the NIR, since it is the key to the whole totalitarian system, and they are the party of liberty and freedom. If they do not do this, they LOSE the argument.

With both of the two parties playing this game, in the end, there will be NOTHING LEFT of the totalitarian apparatus.

Either way, it looks like ID Cards and now the NIR are finally on their way to total annihilation, and not a second too soon. Next, ContactPoint is going to go up for the chop. When that happens, it will be impossible for Local Authorities to generate lists of who is and who is not registered at a school.

I can hardly believe it, and I am tentative in saying it, but it looks like Britain is on the mend!

FURTHERMORE

Alan Johnson says in the Daily Mail:

Everyone who wants a card, or a biometric passport, will have their details stored on the national identity register.

So now there are going to be TWO types of British Passport?! a Biometric one and NON Biometric one?!!

As far as I know, there is only one type of passport available to British Subjects, the BIOMETRIC PASSPORT and in order to get one, you are FORCED to enter the NIR!

Mr Johnson said he still believed the cards would help improve security at airports.

This is a lie. HOW will it help security ANYWHERE that it is required?

Mr Johnson said he was an ‘instinctive’ supporter of ID cards and said he wanted to ‘accelerate’ the delivery of the cards.

That means that he is an instinctive totalitarian. What an admission!

Next year young people opening bank accounts are to be encouraged to obtain ID cards and over the following two years anyone getting a passport will get one – but can opt out.

Just like it was predicted; they are were going to tie the ID Card to your bank account, and use it to monitor your every withdrawal.

I’ve been reading “My Life and Work“, Henry Ford’s autobiography, I was pleasantly surprised by much of it (that is I mean you should read it too). Here are some quotes:

When we are at work we ought to be at work. When we are at play we ought to be at play. There is no use trying to mix the two. The sole object ought to be to get the work done and to get paid for it. When the work is done, then the play can come, but not before. And so the Ford factories and enterprises have no organization, no specific duties attaching to any position, no line of succession or of authority, very few titles, and no conferences. We have only the clerical help that is absolutely required; we have no elaborate records of any kind, and consequently no red tape.

[…]

Because there are no titles and no limits of authority, there is no question of red tape or going over a man’s head. Any workman can go to anybody, and so established has become this custom, that a foreman does not get sore if a workman goes over him and directly to the head of the factory. The workman rarely ever does so, because a foreman knows as well as he knows his own name that if he has been unjust it will be very quickly found out, and he shall no longer be a foreman. One of the things that we will not tolerate is injustice of any kind. The moment a man starts to swell with authority he is discovered, and he goes out, or goes back to a machine. A large amount of labour unrest comes from the unjust exercise of authority by those in subordinate positions, and I am afraid that in far too many manufacturing institutions it is really not possible for a workman to get a square deal.

I would say this is the polar opposite of ‘statist’ enterprises (e.g. BBC) and the bureaucratic mentality in general.

When a business becomes congested with bad methods; when a business becomes ill through lack of attention to one or more of its functions; when executives sit comfortably back in their chairs as if the plans they inaugurated are going to keep them going forever; when business becomes a mere plantation on which to live, and not a big work which one has to do–then you may expect trouble. You will wake up some fine morning and find yourself doing more business than you have ever done before–and getting less out of it. You find yourself short of money. You can borrow money. And you can do it, oh, so easily. People will crowd money on you. It is the most subtle temptation the young business man has. But if you do borrow money you are simply giving a stimulant to whatever may be wrong. You feed the disease. Is a man more wise with borrowed money than he is with his own? Not as a usual thing. To borrow under such conditions is to mortgage a declining property.

Substitute “a business” for “a country’s economy”

An impartial investigation of the last war, of what preceded it and what has come out of it, would show beyond a doubt that there is in the world a group of men with vast powers of control, that prefers to remain unknown, that does not seek office or any of the tokens of power, that belongs to no nation whatever but is international–a force that uses every government, every widespread business organization, every agency of publicity, every resource of national psychology, to throw the world into a panic for the sake of getting still more power over the world. An old gambling trick used to be for the gambler to cry “Police!” when a lot of money was on the table, and, in the panic that followed, to seize the money and run off with it. There is a power within the world which cries “War!” and in the confusion of the nations, the unrestrained sacrifice which people make for safety and peace runs off with the spoils of the panic.

!!!

Coming soon to a hyperinflated fiat currency near you!

Money: Cheaper than paper!

Gavin Webb is a Libertarian Liberal Democrat councillor for Stoke and Trent Vale ward on Stoke-on-Trent City Council.

He has just written something that was sent to us, so lets look at it shall we?

Those who can, teach – like parents!

As a matter of principle, Liberal Democrats should support home educators in their opposition to Graham Badman’s recommendations in the Review of Elective Home Education in England. However, I fear the Party leadership will not do so.

That is because they have no principles, obviously.

Instead, it looks at though it will be seeking to find a ‘balance’ between the rights of parents to decide for themselves how best to educate their children, and the collective welfare of children as a whole.

Why am I so concerned that the Party may side with collectivism as opposed to defending individual rights? Upon seeking clarification on the Party’s policy on home education from Cowley Street’s policy boffs, and in particular on the Badman recommendations, I was reliably informed of the need to find that balance. In short, I was told the Party is generally supportive of the Badman recommendations.

Which is just what we expect from a party filled with irrational people.

I have several problems with siding with this subjective piece of rubbish. As a libertarian, I say the Party should not be endorsing coerced collectivism at all. Sure, if a group of parents want to voluntarily come together and register their children with the State and the evil database that is ContactPoint, then let them do so. I would say they are foolish in their choice but they should be free to do so nonetheless.

Parents should not be ‘free to register with ContactPoint’. That is completely absurd. If the government of TODAY says its voluntary, any future government could suddenly make it COMPULSORY. This is why we should never support totalitarian infrastructures being built in the first place; you may trust Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith, but in the future, someone who you do not trust may take the reigns and do something dastardly with all that collected data. Also, for some parents to be able to use ContactPoint, the parents who do not want it will have their money stolen from them to pay for it by the state. The state should never put something like this together. If parents want to create and run their own private ContactPoint, that is another thing, but one designed and run by the state is always unacceptable to Libertarians. This is pretty basic stuff, how can you get it so very wrong AND support No2ID?

If however, parents decide they want nothing to do with the State, they too should be free to exercise their rights.

They should be free to live without interfacing with the state.

Under the Badman proposals home educators will not be permitted their rights.

They will have their rights stripped from them. They will not be free to exercise their rights.

They will be forced to register their children with their local education authority, and their children will be entered onto the ContactPoint register, and if parents’ standard or type of education doesn’t conform with that which is prescribed by the State – which most of us know to be crap – then the freedom to home educate their children will be denied them. Opposition to this is a matter of principle for all Liberal Democrats.

No, it is a matter of principle for all libertarians. Liberal Democrats HAVE NO PRINCIPLES except BAD ONES.

Of course, if a child is being abused – which, as an aside, government do-gooders have attempted to use as a justification for more regulation and control of home education – then that is another matter. No-one should be aggressed against contrary to their will. If there are victims of abuse, then the full weight of relevant laws should fall upon the aggressors.

Home Education has nothing to do with children at risk. The two should never be used in the same context, except to refute that vicious lie.

And the current laws and systems in place are more than adequate. In fact, in every one of the cases that the state trots out as pretexts for more control, the social services and police were fully aware of the families involved, were concerned and took no action. The fact of the matter is that they consistently fail to protect children; this is the message that is never propagated and brought to light. More powers will not help them improve their common sense. Putting ALL children into a database harms ALL children; it creates a needle-in-a-haystack scenario where people are looking into the affairs of perfectly innocent and ordinary people for no good reason.

If however a child is not receiving an ‘adequate’ education, this in itself should be no business of the State’s to resolve. Despite it being written in man-made Human Rights laws (that by the way also protect the State so should perhaps be referred to as Human and States’ Rights laws) the truth is that under natural law no-one has a right to education.

Agreed.

Yes, it would be nice if every single human being on this planet had access to not just a ’suitable’ education, but excellent education too; but I say this again, no-one has a ‘right’ to education. For if they had, the question is then what standard of education? Mediocre to poor? For that is the general standard delivered by the State to our children.

True.

If people want better than the State can provide, they should be able to opt out of State provision without fear of threat and hindrance from government and its agents. They should have unrestricted freedom to choose what they believe is best for their own kids because – and this is a fundamental point – the kids belong to the parents, not to society or government!

True!

Once bureaucrats gets involved and starts dictating the terms, quoting laws and targets, the already high standards that are achieved in most cases through home education – and indeed independent sector education – will be dragged down to State level.

True.

I hope the Party leadership sees sense and doesn’t allow the collectivist malaise undermine home educators’ freedoms, for if it does, it may as well ditch the word ‘Liberal’ and replace it with ‘Social’.

It is YOU that clearly have no place in the Liberal Democrat Party.

Are you a Libertarian, or are you a Liberal Democrat? How can you possibly remain a member of a party that explicitly wants to eradicate the rights of people to run their families as they choose?

You cannot serve two masters; you can either be FOR liberty or AGAINST it, and liberty is indivisible. Its like someone who is a member of the BNP saying on the one hand that they are FOR immigration but at the same time they are members of a party that is explicitly AGAINST immigration.

Gavin Webb’s council is going to run ContactPoint. Unless they say otherwise, he will be involved in the mass violation of children by working in a place that runs that system. I would like to see a written declaration that he is going to refuse to do any work that comes from, is in any way touched by ContactPoint.

When populations are being rounded up for ethnic cleansing, many people working in the apparatus simply got on with their jobs, even though they might not have agreed with what was happening. Every person who works at a council and who touches ContactPoint instantly becomes an accessory to the sale of children. By using that database, they are helping the contractors make money out of the children they have been paid to put into that database.

I do not immediately see a policy position on ContactPoint at Stoke-on-Trent City Council’s website but we do find this:

Elective Home Education

Information for Parents/Carers

The education of your child is a great responsibility, one that Stoke-on-Trent City Council takes very seriously. We have 93 schools across the city, catering for a wide range of needs and abilities. We are proud of the way they meet the challenges of an ever changing environment, whilst continuing to provide a rich diversity of experience for pupils of all ages.

It is a legal duty of parents/guardians to secure appropriate full-time education for their children. Most parents/guardians do this by ensuring that their child attends their local school. However, for a variety of reasons, a small number of them decide to take on the duty to educate their child themselves. In Stoke-on-Trent there are about 45 families educating their children at home, out of a total school population of over 32,063.

Educating at home is sometimes known as ‘Education Otherwise’, named after one of the independent charities set up to support such parents. More information about this charity can be found on the ‘Useful Contact and Links’ page.

Children should not be taken out of school simply because of a disagreement with the local school. There are many ways of solving such problems and talking to the Headteacher, or consulting with Children and Young People’s Services, will often resolve any difficulties. In Stoke-on-Trent, we will always make every effort to find a place at the most appropriate school for your child.

Home education is a major undertaking for a family. It will require serious amounts of time, patience and energy, and can have financial consequences.

[…]

http://www.stoke.gov.uk/ccm/navigation/education/home-education/

It is not the place of Stoke-on-Trent City Council to ‘take seriously’ the education of children who they themselves admit, are ‘yours’. How many schools you have is irrelevant… and for that matter, lets take a peek inside one of the schools that you ARE responsible for:

Peer Support at Longton High School

Longton High School is a large comprehensive on top of a hill on a mostly council housing estate on the edge of Stoke-on- Trent. The building consists of a tall tower block and a maze of buildings on the ground floor.

The kinds of problems students face are racial and bullying problems such as harassment, name calling, violence and singling out occurring both in between lessons on the schools corridors, and during break and dinner. The school has had a few major racial disputes but mainly faced with minor disputes between students, which with the skills we have been taught through our training, we are confident to deal with.

[…]

Anti-Bullying Alliance

Uh huh, just as we thought, your schools are as bad as everyone else’s.

They then say that:

It is a legal duty of parents/guardians to secure appropriate full-time education for their children.

This is a LIE. The actual wording of the law is:

Duty of parents to secure education of children of compulsory school age
The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable—
(a)to his age, ability and aptitude, and
(b)to any special educational needs he may have,either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.

As you can see, the word ‘appropriate’ is not there. What is or is not appropriate is the affair of the parent, not Stoke-on-Trent City Council. Also, as someone clever said on a blog, if a parent sends their child to a school that they know is not providing an efficient full-time education, are they not ‘in violation’, since it is the duty of the parent to ensure that their child receives such education? Or are they relieved of all responsibility under that section of the law should they hand their children over to the state?

Hmmmmmmmmmmm!

Educating at home is sometimes known as ‘Education Otherwise’

Say WHAT?

Children should not be taken out of school simply because of a disagreement with the local school.

Says who? It is precisely because of disagreements with the local school that children are removed from school.

Home education is a major undertaking for a family. It will require serious amounts of time, patience and energy, and can have financial consequences.

Having a family is ‘a major undertaking’ educating your children is a part of it. Raising a family requires serious amounts of time (whatever that means), patience and energy, which parents (especially women) have in abundance, and having a family costs money.

We know this.

Major digression there, but I just could not let it lie. I will leave you to splutter your tea over your keyboards at their useful contacts page and their outrageous FAQ, where you will find gems like:

What evidence will the Local Authority expect to receive?

Basically, we are satisfying ourselves that the education received by the chid is ‘efficient, suitable and full-time’, so the sort of evidence will be:

• long and short-term planning;
• possibly a weeks outline programme;
• a diary of work covered; and
• evidence of the child’s own work.
• Often talking to the child will be important evidence

and

What does the law actually say about the parent’s duty?
A parents’ duty is actually defined under section 7 of the 1996 Education Act, which says:

“…to cause the child to receive efficient full-time education suitable to his/her age, ability and aptitude and to any special educational needs he/she may have either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.”

Unfortunately the words ‘efficient’ and ‘suitable’ are not defined. ‘Efficient’ is usually taken to mean that the activity achieves what it sets out to achieve, and it is ‘suitable’, if it prepares the child for life in our society and enables the child to fulfill their potential.

My emphasis on the last one.

We are now at the stage where everyone has to draw a line and say, “I am morally obligated to refuse to work with this.” Everyone has their limits and their pain threshold, however it is clear that unless people refuse to take a stand and refuse to assist this infernal machine, it will continue to gain momentum and end up turning us all into hamburger meat.

Its good to read words from people who are waking up; we must give credit where credit is due, every time. At the same time, illogic, inconsistency, errors of judgment etc have to be flagged, otherwise, people persist in believing nonsense. Im sure Gavin is a nice guy. Clearly he can think, and he is aware of what is going on to a great extent. What I cannot accept are inconsistencies that actually hurt people. By all means, everyone can believe what contradictory stuff they like. When it becomes a matter for concern is when those people have their hands on the levers of the machine.

FURTHERMORE

I updated and reinforced the section about parents who want ContactPoint being entitled to it.

Renegade Parent uses substitution to see into the future:

24 hour home surveillance -a glimpse into the future

Someone to watch over you:

"It sounds like a fantasy straight from The Truman Show George Orwell's 1984: a house that monitors your every move, from bedside to bathroom and from medicine cabinet to fridge. The aim, however, is to help the elderly to ensure that children lead safe and independent protected lives.

"Researchers are working on a “health safe house” so sophisticated that it will not only track everyday habits but also check weight and blood pressure and predict whether a person is at risk of a serious fall child abuse.

"Britain is one of the largest investors in “telemedicineprotection” — using medical surveillance and monitoring technology to help chronically ill deprived and older people indeed all children to be treated for longer continually inspected at home rather than in hospitals or care homes through visits by social workers or education welfare officers.

"The system, developed by GE Healthcare and Intel Becta and the NSPCC, uses sensors that track a person’s behaviour and send alerts when unexpected disruptions or data are picked up. Similar networks are already being used by for about 3,000 people children in care-home settings but researchers now hope to introduce a much more sophisticated model for private homes.

"Patient data, such as risks of hypertension, diabetes and respiratory emotional disturbance, sleep disorders, over-attachment, concentration or eating problems, would be combined with information on daily routines to create an algorithm capable of identifying subtle health abuse indicators or behavioural changes that might signal more serious problems.

"Examples might include how many times a person opens the fridge door or uses a tap logs onto NotSchool; repeat trips to the fridge could signal mental impairment a danger of obesity while failure to use the tap log onto NotSchool might suggest an increased risk of dehydration lack of a suitable education.

"The next generation of sensors also studies activity such as use of the lavatory, time spent sleeping and when medicine mood stabilisers or enhancers are taken, plus vital signs such as blood pressure, weight and blood-oxygen levels.

"Work is under way on more advanced alerts that could identify changes to a person’s gait — providing an early signal of instability learning or behavioural difficulties, feelings of isolation or depression, lack of meaningful relationships or even substance misuse and heightened chances of a serious fall abuse by a neglectful parent — and how long it takes to get out of bed in the morning."

[…]

http://www.renegadeparent.net/post/A-glimpse-at-the-future-home-surveillance.aspx#top

What this looks like, long time readers of BLOGDIAL and sci-fi fans know is THX-1138.

Will your children be able to do it without etracene?

That is the question!

People are waking up to what all of this really means, and how all the dots join up.

By Chris Buratta

A father has refused permission for his daughter's Oxford school to take her fingerprints – fearing it is step towards a 'Big Brother' state.

IT IS a step towards exactly that, and even if this library system is self contained, i.e. does not connect to any other database anywhere, the very fact that they have it serves to soften up the students into accepting this sort of technology as a part of ordinary life, when it is not. It is a total invasion and violation, and as we can see below, even the ignorant pigs administering it do not know how it works.

Ben Emlyn-Jones's daughter Louisa, 12, attends St Gregory the Great School in Cowley – which is planning to use fingerprint recognition software in its library.

On Tuesday, it was revealed that Windale Primary School, Glory Farm Primary School, Matthew Arnold Secondary School and The Cherwell School currently use fingerprint systems in libraries and Cheney School uses the technology to register pupils.

Absolutely ridiculous. Whats more, I would like to know how much this system cost the school. I wonder how many BOOKS you could buy with the same money….hmmmmmm!

Mr Emlyn-Jones said: "I am really quite disturbed about it, it reminds me of a Big Brother state.

"There may be advantages in having a fingerprint database, but the price you pay is too high."

There is NO advantage to it. Library books in a school, where all the pupils are known and where only pupils can enter has no need to install a system whose purpose is to uniquely identify an individual. The people who allowed this to be introduced into the school simply cannot THINK.

He refused to allow his daughter's fingerprints to be taken and was also concerned that the school had not contacted parents.

Well done Mr Emlyn-Jones, you are a hero, and a good parent.

He added: "It is as if they know it is wrong and have done it secretly, hoping no-one finds out."

That is EXACTLY what they are doing, otherwise, they would have contacted everyone in advance. The amount of time, effort to explain and money to roll this out is a complete waste of scarce resources.

Mr Emlyn-Jones said he was opposed to the principle of biometric data being used by schools.

"Once people are on a computer then the world's your oyster as far as the Government is concerned.

Exactly right.

"It also desensitises kids. When they're grown up and they apply for a passport and apply for jobs they won't bat an eyelid about having fingerprints taken or a laser being shined in their eyes."

This man's brain is switched to 'ON'. And what is great is that his daughter will also have her brain switched on also.

This week, Liberal Democrats called for Government guidelines to be introduced to control the use of the technology in schools.

But Mr Emlyn-Jones said that would not satisfy his concerns.

He said: "Once the infrastructure is in place those guidelines could be abolished. That's my concern."

Once people have their brains working, its impossible to placate them with doubletalk and weasel words, at which the Liberal Democrats are masters. They want to cancel ID cards because of the 'privacy concerns' but then want to replace the rates with a local income tax which would mean the council getting into far more of your private affairs than they do now, either by having data shared with them or by collecting it to calculate your new 'more fair' rates. You see? COMPLETELY STUPID. But I digress…

Now comes the ignorant pig part:

St Gregory the Great's learning resources manager Hilja Bassett said the library system, which would be operational next term, was very efficient and secure.

Just because it is efficient, that does not make it right. And in what way is it more efficient? By what measure? Does that library exist for the convenience of the students or the convenience of the staff? As for 'secure' how does she know it is secure? Did she design the system? Does she know wether or not it connects to any other computers over the internets? Does she know ANYTHING ABOUT IT AT ALL? Or is she just repeating verbatim from the sales pitch?

She added: "It can only be used in this one place, in this one way, for this purpose."

And that one way and one purpose are illegitimate.

She said fingerprints were not stored, just certain data taken from the print.

And there is the proof that Hilja Bassett is a completely ignorant pig, computer illiterate student violating jackass. NO biometric fingerprint system stores the ENTIRE PRINT. They ALL work by mapping the print, finding points to store and then storing those points; that is enough to (90% of the time) uniquely identify the person whose finger it is on the scanner. THAT IS THE WHOLE POINT YOU STUPID RETARD its not about actual images of the fingerprints, its about being identified by a part of your body that is unique to you. And of course once it is in the database it can then be transferred (along with all the prints and the names and addresses of the other students) to other databases and systems where if the admins are corrupt, your UNIQUE IDENTIFIER can be placed alongside a criminal profile turing YOU into the criminal, even though you have never done anything whatsoever. Don't believe me? IT IS ALREADY HAPPENING:

Old news department, or a taste of how NIR information will be implemented. I emphasise.

A FYLDE coast student was arrested after posting Christmas cards to his family

Stunned David Atkinson found himself at his local police station under suspicion of stealing the festive greetings he last saw when he put them in a postbox five years ago. Due to fingerprints found on the mail – which was stolen then recovered – police thought they had their man. However, it transpired the “suspect’s” fingerprints were those of the student who had innocently sent the cards to relatives when he was 15.

Mr Atkinson, now 21, of [address omitted – gosh, to think that his address was posted online after this, mm], was arrested because his DNA and fingerprints had been kept on record under controversial Government laws to combat terror.

It was only after Mr Atkinson asked officers to look more deeply into the crime his innocence was proved.

The law student said it has shattered his confidence in the system. He said: “The potential incompetence, laziness, or over enthusiasm of an individual officer means an innocent, law-abiding citizen can never truly have confidence in the giant police database.”

It was the second time Mr Atkinson had been arrested – twice for crimes he did not commit. He has now lent his support to a campaign to force a rethink by the Home Office.

The mix-up began last March when Mr Atkinson was arrested on suspicion of criminal damage – but, when the real culprit gave himself up to police, he was released without charge.

During his short time with the police, he had his fingerprints and DNA taken as part of the arrest procedure but, under recently passed laws, all details – no matter whether the person is innocent or guilty – are kept on a national computer.

Mr Atkinson thought nothing of it until he got a call from officers a month later asking him to go along to the station. He said: “I was arrested as soon as I went in. “The officer told me he had a computer report which had automatically matched my fingerprints with those recovered from a number of items of post which had been stolen from a letter box in December 2000.

“As a result of this report alone, and no further investigation, the officer advised me to ‘get the matter out of the way quickly and take a caution now’.

“After refusing to admit a crime I’d not committed, I was bailed while further investigations were made.”
“The recovered letters were in fact my family Christmas cards which had been taken after I had posted them five years ago.
“This innocent explanation had not even crossed the officer’s mind and, as far as he was concerned, if his computer report said I was guilty then I had to be.”

Mr Atkinson complained to Lancashire Constabulary and eventually received an apology. But, he claims, without the Government’s “menace to our freedom”, he would not have been put through the ordeal. A police spokesman said: “We can confirm that we did receive a complaint in August about a wrongful arrest concerning stolen post. “This was investigated thoroughly under our normal complaints procedure and dealt with locally to the satisfaction of both parties. “Under current legislation, all police forces can retain and record DNA taken for arrestable offences no matter what the eventual outcome of the investigation.”

ben.rossington@blackpoolgazette.co.uk

http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=304

And there you have it. These systems are EXTREMELY DANGEROUS, and should not be in schools for any reason WHATSOEVER.

Parents had been informed through a newsletter, she added, and pupils who did not wish to use the system could still make use of library services.

Oxford Mail

So out the window goes Mutterschwein Hilja Bassett’s claim that it is for efficiency; if people can opt out of the system, that means they will be running two concurrent systems, the old and venerable Library card system and the new one, causing inefficiency.

And apologies to all Mutterschwein out there; calling Hilja Bassett a pig is an insult to pigs.

If you are a Home Schooler, you never have to deal with any of this of course!

FURTHERMORE

This courtesy of Home Ed Forums:

The truth about biometric systems used in schools (using verifiable references)

“People have to be stark, raving mad to use conventional biometrics to improve the efficiency of a children’s lunch line.” Kim Cameron , Microsoft’s Identity Architect, 05 April 2007 (read more from Kim Cameron)

“If a child has never touched a fingerprint scanner, there is zero probability of being incorrectly investigated for a crime. Once a child has touched a scanner they will be at the mercy of the matching algorithm for the rest of their lives.” Brian Drury , IT security consultant, 12 March 2007 (read more from Brian Drury)

Schools that introduce fingerprinting usually try to reassure parents by saying “the system does not store a fingerprint, just a number. It is not possible to reconstruct an image of a fingerprint from what is stored”.

• The short answer is that fingerprint templates are what is stored on these systems. These are the equivalent of fingerprints – rather like the difference between a drawing and a photo – otherwise the systems simply wouldn’t work.
• Police, the security services, and governments use fingerprint templates to identify criminals.
• There are international standards to ensure that biometric templates from different manufacturers are compatible – so what’s stored on one system can be read by any other, including government systems.
• Where fingerprint templates are stored in an encrypted form, it is impossible for anyone to guarantee that this won’t be broken during a person’s entire lifetime. A PIN number can easily be changed. A fingerprint, and the template dervived from it, cannot ever be changed.
• Moreover, the Government has the power to demand encryption keys from the system supplier, under the terms of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 Part III.
• In the future, fingerprint templates will be used to authenticate passports, bank accounts, etc. Thus biometric templates are extremely valuable and need to be kept in a highly secure environment.
• In addition, fingerprint templates can be used to rapidly link different databases and to build up a disturbingly accurate profile of an individual without their knowledge or consent.
• The US government’s official National Science & Technology Council says you CAN reconstruct a fingerprint image from a fingerprint template.
• Government security experts have successfully hacked the fingerprint scanners used in schools.
• Schools cannot possibly provide the level of security necessary to protect children’s data.
• A school might not even be aware that children’s data had been compromised until it was far too late.

“If you want to find out who owns a fingerprint, just convert the fingerprint to a template and do a search for the template in one of these databases. Call the template a binary number if you want to. The point is that all you need to save in the database is the number. Later, when you come across a “fingerprint of interest”, you just convert it to a number and search for it. Law enforcement can use this information – and so can criminals.”

Kim Cameron , architect of identity and access in Microsoft’s connected systems division, 09 May 2007

http://www.leavethemkidsalone.com/facts.htm

First, take a look at this:

Then read this.

In the past, the facts and subsequent analysis about an event like this would have taken months to propagate. Accurate analysis would never come to the attention of the wider public at all. Now both are happening in a matter of hours, thanks to teh internetz. The very systems that are being used to destabilize countries are self healing and nullifying the ill effects of dastardly plots like ‘Operation AJAX 2.0’:

We know that the US funds terrorist organizations inside Iran that are responsible for bombings and other violent acts. It is likely that these terrorist organizations are responsible for the burning buses and other acts of violence that have occurred during the demonstrations in Tehran.

A writer on pakalert.wordpress.com says that he was intrigued by the sudden appearance of tens of thousands of Twitter allegations that Ahmadinejad stole the Iranian election.

He investigated, he says, and he reports that each of the new highly active accounts were created on Saturday, June 13th. “IranElection” is their most popular keyword. He narrowed the spammers to the most persistent: @StopAhmadi @IranRiggedElect @Change_For_Iran. He researched further and found that on June 14 the Jerusalem Post already had an article on the new Twitter. He concludes that the new Twitter sites are propaganda operations.

[…]

http://vdare.com/roberts/090621_iran.htm

which has been underway in Iran as the ‘Green Revolution’, the occurrence of which was known about before it actually started to happen:

Neoconservative Kenneth Timmerman let the cat out of the bag that there was an orchestrated “color revolution” in the works.

Before the election, Timmerman wrote: “there’s talk of a ‘green revolution’ in Tehran.” Why would protests be organized prior to a vote and announcement of the outcome? Organized protests waiting in the wings are not spontaneous responses to a stolen election.

Timmerman’s organization, Foundation for Democracy, is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) for the explicit purpose of promoting democracy in Iran. According to Timmerman, NED money was funneled to “pro-Mousavi groups who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.”

The US media has studiously ignored all of these highly suggestive facts. The media is not reporting or providing objective analysis. It is engaged in a propagandistic onslaught against the Iranian government.

[…]

http://vdare.com/roberts/090621_iran.htm

Read that entire article by Paul Craig Roberts.

Now we have even the pro intervention, pro regime change Guardian printing an article that hits the nail on the head:

Democracy, made in Iran

By reviving memories of an ousted leader, Iran’s protesters are signalling they want to win reform without US intervention

Stephen Kinzer

Protesters displaying pictures of former prime minister Muhammad Mossadeq alongside presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi during demonstrations in Iran last week. Photograph: Anonymous (courtesy of Stephen Kinzer)

Despite efforts by Iran’s leaders to keep photographers off the streets during post-election protests this month, many vivid images have emerged. The one posted here, above, is the one I found most chilling, poignant and evocative.

By now, many outsiders can identify the man whose picture is on the right-hand side of this protest sign. He is Mir Hossein Mousavi, the reported loser in this month’s presidential election. The elderly gentleman in the other picture is unfamiliar to most non-Iranians. He and his fate, however, lie at the historical root of the protests now shaking Iran.

The picture shows a pensive, sad-looking man with what one of his contemporaries called “droopy basset-hound eyes and high patrician forehead”. He does not look like a man whose fate would continue to influence the world decades after his death. But this was Muhammad Mossadeq, the most fervent advocate of democracy ever to emerge in his ancient land.

Above the twinned pictures of Mossadeq and Mousavi on this protest poster are the words “We won’t let history repeat itself.” Centuries of intervention, humiliation and subjugation at the hand of foreign powers have decisively shaped Iran’s collective psyche. The most famous victim of this intervention – and also the most vivid symbol of Iran’s long struggle for democracy – is Mossadeq. Whenever Iranians assert their desire to shape their own fate, his image appears.

Iranians began their painful and bloody march toward democracy with the constitutional revolution of 1906. Only after the second world war did they finally manage to consolidate a freely elected government. Mossadeq was prime minister, and became hugely popular for taking up the great cause of the day, nationalisation of Iran’s oil industry. That outraged the British, who had “bought” the exclusive right to exploit Iranian oil from a corrupt Shah, and the Americans, who feared that allowing nationalization in Iran would encourage leftists around the world.

In the summer of 1953 the CIA sent the intrepid agent Kermit Roosevelt – grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, who believed Americans should “walk softly and carry a big stick” – to Tehran with orders to overthrow Mossadeq. He accomplished it in just three weeks. It was a vivid example of how easy it is for a rich and powerful country to throw a poor and weak one into chaos.

With this covert operation, the world’s proudest democracy put an end to democratic rule in Iran. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi returned to the Peacock Throne and ruled with increasing repression for a quarter-century. His repression produced the explosion of 1979 that brought reactionary mullahs to power. Theirs is the regime that rules Iran today.

Carrying a picture of Mossadeq today means two things: “We want democracy” and “No foreign intervention”. These demands fit together in the minds of most Iranians. Desperate as they are for the political freedom their parents and grandparents enjoyed in the early 1950s, they have no illusion that foreigners can bring it to them. In fact, foreign intervention has brought them nothing but misery.

The US sowed the seeds of repression in Iran by deposing Mossadeq in 1953, and then helped bathe Iran in blood by giving Saddam Hussein generous military aid during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Militants in Washington who now want the US to intervene on behalf of Iranian protesters either are unaware of this history or delude themselves into thinking that Iranians have forgotten it. Some of them, in fact, are the same people who were demanding just last year that the US bomb Iran – an act which would have killed many of the brave young protesters they now hold up as heroes.

America’s moral authority in Iran is all but non-existent. To the idea that the US should jump into the Tehran fray and help bring democracy to Iran, many Iranians would roll their eyes and say: “We had a democracy here until you came in and crushed it!”

President Barack Obama seems to grasp this reality. During his recent speech in Cairo, without mentioning Mossadeq by name, he conceded that “in the middle of the cold war, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.” Then, after the current electoral protests broke out, he avoided the hypocrisy of righteous indignation and confined himself to saying that “ultimately the election is for the Iranians to decide.”

Anyone doubting the wisdom of those words should pay attention to the sprouting of Mossadeq pictures during protests in Iran. They mean: “Americans, your interventions have brought us tyranny and death. Stay home, keep your hands off and leave our country to us for a change.”

[…]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/jun/19/iran-protests-mousavi-mossadeq

The fact of the matter is that it is no longer possible to mount 20^th century Psy Ops in countries like Iran; cellular networks are like mass vaccination – they immunize the populations that have them from being infected by the vile propaganda of the colonialists. Centralized radio and television cannot counter AJAX style operations. Why? Because the TV is not a ‘trusted introducer’ to any idea, whereas a text message from your social network IS a trusted introducer.

Those Rock & Roll loving Iranians had better watch out; they are doing the work of the lord when they hold up signs IN ENGLISH, riot, cause mayhem and destabilize THEIR OWN COUNTRY. They have only to look to their former enemies to see what US ‘liberation’ looks like. What they are actually asking for is the complete DEATH of Iran and their culture.

Thankfully, the small deluded minority causing all this trouble will not get it.

Now let me be clear. The problem with all of this has nothing to do with the ‘right and wrong’ of how Iran runs its own affairs, and wether or not you personally agree with it. What this is about it the pursuit of global domination by monsters, who are hell bent, literally, on wiping out any culture or system that is different to theirs, or which is not under their direct and absolute control.

Tehran is the largest city in the Middle East and is the second most populated. If the Iranians should ever discover the true nature of money they could become an unstoppable economic force in the region. Right now, they are being run by Keynsian witch-doctors (John Maynard Keynes is to Economics as a Witch-Doctor is to Medicine), who are printing money like drunk sailors on the rampage at the ripperbahn.

Did you know that Tehran has an ‘Underground’?

These people are dangerous; dangerous because they are so successful, so organized and so peaceful. They are the most threatening nation to the ‘New World Order’. They are showing, through results and not rhetoric, that you can have huge prosperity without interfacing with the globalists.

That is why they must be destroyed.

Nicolas Sarkozy today took a hard line in France’s latest row over mens dress, saying stacked heels and shoe-lifts were a sign of men’s debasement and “not welcome” on French soil.

More than 50 MPs, mostly from the president’s centre-right UMP party, last week backed calls for a parliamentary inquiry to debate whether men who wear cuban heels posed a threat to the republic’s fashion values and gender equality. A government spokesman had suggested that a law could eventually be proposed to ban elevated shoes from being worn in public in France.

Sarkozy today used his first state of the nation speech to defend the French republican principle of Napoleonism and attack heightist attitudes.

He said: “The problem of the heel is not a religious problem, it’s a problem of liberty and men’s dignity. It’s not a religious symbol, but a sign of subservience and debasement. I want to say solemnly, the cuban heel is not welcome in France. In our country, we can’t accept men prisoners behind a platform, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity. That’s not our idea of freedom.”

There was raucous applause from MPs and senators. Sarkozy backed the setting up of a parliamentary commission on the issue of shoe-lifts, calling for all arguments to be heard. “But I tell you, we must not be ashamed of our values. We must not be afraid of defending them,” he said.

Earlier in his speech, he warned against stigmatising short men in secular France. “We must not fight the wrong battle. In the republic, short men must be respected as much as other men.”

Cuban heels and all height-enhancing implants were banned in schools in 2004, and the latest row over dress is likely to spark more soul-searching and controversy in France.

There are no figures for the number of short men who wear stacked heels, but it is believed to be a very small minority. In France, the terms ‘platform heel’ and ‘shoe-lift’ are often used interchangeably – the former refers to a full-shoe covering worn largely in the Palace of Versailles with a mesh screen over the toes, while the latter is a full-foot insert, often in black, with a gap for the toes.

Critics have already warned that the government risks stigmatising short men over a minor and marginal issue. After Sarkozy’s speech, the leftwing senator Jean-Pierre Chevènement said the subject was difficult because people were free to dress how they liked in public under French law, but full veils could contravene French ideas on gender equality. He cautioned against whipping up “pointless provocations”.

[…] Guardian

President Sarkozy’s comments have not come out of the blue.

They are in response to a call last week by a group of 65 cross-party MPs, led by the Communist Andre Gerin, who wants a parliamentary commission set up to investigate the spread of the cuban heel in France.

They want to see whether such a spread is indicative of a radicalisation of Fashion, whether men are being forced to embiggen themselves or are doing so voluntarily, and whether wearing the heel undermines French secularism.

Mr Gerin believes the cuban heel “amounts to a breach of individual freedom on our national territory”.

[…] BBQ

The Renegade Parent has a great post about Ed Balls.

I have been looking into this creature over the last few days, and found two articles that sum him up perfectly:

Our children have had the MMR jab, says Brown’s Cabinet friend

By GLEN OWEN

A key Cabinet ally of Gordon Brown has let it be known his children have had the controversial MMR vaccine, in a clear break with former Premier Tony Blair’s policy of refusing to discuss the issue.

Going public: Yvette Cooper and Ed Balls with baby Elle in 1999

Schools Secretary Ed Balls, who has three children with his wife, Communities Minister Yvette Cooper, sanctioned the release of the information in the week that officials revealed Britain is in the middle of the worst measles outbreak for 20 years.

In allowing the disclosure, Mr Balls – who was Mr Brown’s right-hand man at the Treasury for nearly a decade – has broken ranks with Mr Blair’s long-standing ban on Ministers saying whether their children have had the controversial vaccine.

Campaigners are now calling on the Prime Minister to declare publicly that his children, too, have had the MMR inoculation.

Take-up of the vaccine, which also protects against mumps and rubella, plummeted after Dr Andrew Wakefield published research in 1998 that claimed it was linked to autism and bowel problems.

Mr Blair – who has repeatedly refused to say whether his son, Leo, had the jab – was furious at the embarrassment caused to him in January 2001 when Ms Cooper told a newspaper that her daughter, Ellie, had received the inoculation.

He later slapped the ban on Ministers speaking about their personal decisions.

Since then, Mr Balls and Ms Cooper – who is also in the Cabinet – have had two more children reach vaccination age (there are two injections, one at 13 months and a booster between the ages of three and five).

Mr Balls’ decision to lead by example follows a warning from the Health Protection Agency that the number of children suffering from measles has trebled in the past 11 weeks.

The HPA, concerned that even more children will be infected as the autumn term begins, has urged parents to add MMR to their back-to-school list.

After Dr Wakefield published his research in The Lancet, take-up of the vaccine fell to 80 per cent.

It has since recovered to 88 per cent, which is still short of the 95 per cent rate the HPA recommends.

The study is being scrutinised by medical watchdog the General Medical Council in a professional misconduct hearing involving Dr Wakefield and two of his co-authors.

Meanwhile, in a series of briefings timed to coincide with the start of the new term, Mr Balls announced he will write to every headteacher in the country to urge them to help deliver ‘a world-class education for every child’.

The new term also sees the start of a ban on schools selling fizzy drinks, chocolates or sweets in vending machines.

From now on, pupils will have to choose from foods such as bagels, muffins and breadsticks.

[…]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/

This is a man (and his ‘wife’) who would use (and if he gave the MMR specifically for this purpose, SACRIFICE) his daughter’s health to show support and undying loyalty for the evil gargoyle Gordon Brown, and to curry political favor.

If he will do this with his own child, imagine what he would do with yours? Well, you do not have to; you have the Balls and Badman report in your hands.

And here, we have an example of the Balls anti family agenda, where the school and the state are the new parent in the totalitarian dystopia being born in the UK:

Teachers ‘must worry about pupils when they go home’, warns education secretary Balls

Teachers have a responsibility for what happens to children after they return home from school, Education Secretary Ed Balls warned today.

On the day that he and Gordon Brown are launching a national debate in Bristol on the future of children’s services, Mr Balls has urged schools to do more beyond their gates.

“Not every school sees their responsibility as worrying about what happens when the child goes home… and they should,” he told The Guardian.

Praising breakfast clubs for giving children a good start, Mr Balls added: “A little boy may not eat between leaving school and coming back the next day. There’s no way the school can solve that problem.

“It requires parents with the support of social services to do that, but the school can provide an early warning.”

Mr Balls dismissed Tory claims that society in Britain is “broken” following the spate of killings of teenagers in London and other cities.

“There are always going to be some kids that get into more serious trouble with the law, but we shouldn’t demonise young people.”

Prime Minister Gordon Brown today opened the first new school built under the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme.

He arrived at the Bristol Brunel Academy in the inner city Speedwell area flanked by Mr Balls.

The school is the first in England to be completed under the Government’s £45 billion BSF programme.

The initiative is intended to re-build or refurbish every one of England’s state secondary schools over the next 15 years.

About 1,000 pupils moved into the school this morning which replaces Speedwell Technology College whose crumbling buildings sit immediately in front of the gleaming new academy.

The Prime Minister will tour and then officially open the new school.

Later this morning he will take part in the first citizen jury held in the school’s sports hall.

The Prime Minister looked at a “wishing wall” at the school entrance which is covered in messages from pupils.

One message read “I wish I could eat toenails” while another read “I wish to become a successful accountant”.

He then chatted with pupils, each with their own personal laptop computer, in a Year 7 IT class being taught in one of the school’s many open-plan classrooms.

The Prime Minister then visited pupils undertaking a soldering lesson in a craft design and technology class.

The pupils were guided by overhead monitors in a state-of-the-art classroom as they worked on circuit boards.

[…]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Do I really have to spell this out for you?

Have a look at all these articles on Balls for yourself.

I wouldn’t leave this man in charge of an ice cube in the Antarctic.

You can get very tired of people voicing their ill-considered views about home-based education with no apparent knowledge of the research of the last 30 years in UK, USA, Canada, Australia and elsewhere on the subject. They are also forgetful of the dire effects of ‘compulsory mis-education’, as Goodman put it, in the day-prison system of learning called schools.

One response is to point out that their comments on home-based education might be construed as a kind of treason. After all, the Queen is a home-based education graduate, so accusations of ‘missing out on socialisation’, ‘no exposure to approved forms of knowledge’, etc., must apply to the monarch. The response to this line of argument is usually an uncomfortable silence.

Those who prefer Presidents democratically elected to unelected monarchs can look at the USA situation where of the 42 or so past presidents, 17 were home-based education graduates. Moreover, the various studies trying to rank them in order of success, consistently put the first five as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt. Yes, you have guessed it – they are all home-based education graduates.

There is a second kind of treason, to the evidence of other well-known people who were home-educated. Thus, Yehudi Menuhin went to school for only one half day.

“When I came back from the morning, my mother asked me what I had learnt. I said, ‘I really didn’t learn anything. I sat at the back of the class, and there was a little window high upon the wall, through which I could see branches. I hoped that a bird would alight. No bird alighted, but I kept hoping’, and that’s about all I could report. So my mother promptly said, “Well, we’ll educate you at home.”

He got on well enough without school to become a world-class violinist.

Patrick Moore, the astronomer and broadcaster, was educated at home and did not go to university. He tells us that he chose his curriculum at the age of seven as learning to type, which he thought would be useful, by copy typing some tomes in astronomy. This, he thought, would inform him about the subject that interested him, and would also serve as a course in improving his English. He would also spend some time on his xylophone and later the piano developing his musical skills. This ‘unbalanced curriculum’ served him well, he explains, since the central activities of his life have been astronomy, journalism and music. All other knowledge and skills that he needed were gained incidentally on a ‘need to know’ basis.

Then there was the Headteacher of Wolverhampton Grammar School who was a party to educating his two daughters at home until they were eleven because the local primary school was not able to facilitate a personalized learning system to take into account their own keen learning interests in gymnastics and music.

Bertrand Russell, distinguished philosopher and mathematician, was another home- based education graduate. He observed that:

“I was glad I did not go to school. I would have had no time for original thought, which has been my chief stay and support in troubles.”

The roll-call of well-known people can take up a whole book – see An “A” in Life: Famous Home Schoolers by Mac and Nancy Plent (1999) Unschoolers Network. It includes George Bernard Shaw, Charlie Chaplin, Claude Monet, Thomas Edison, Andrew Carnegie, The Wright brothers (the aeroplane inventors), Agatha Christie, Noel Coward, Margaret Mead, Pearl Buck, C.S.Lewis, John Stuart Mill, two Wimbledon tennis champions, and several contemporary film actors.

There is also a third kind of treason, to the respect for research evidence, which shows that the bad news about home-based education is very hard to find and confined to a few odd cases – reported in the press, for I have never come across any myself and I have encountered thousands of home-based educating families in the years I have been researching the subject. The Home Education Research Journal has been publishing systematic studies on home-based education for over 30 years in USA. The research shows that, in the vast majority of cases, home-based education is a good news story. Mike Fortune Wood’s two books, The Face of Home –based Education 1: Who, Why and How, and The Face of Home-based Education 2: Numbers, Support, Special Needs, are two recent surveys of the scene in UK showing the same outcome.

Members of the establishment, despite showing the signs of being damaged by their mis-education at school themselves, can be won over in time. Thus, a school inspector, quoted in D. Smith, Parent Generated Home Study in Canada, 1993, said: “I so wish I’d given my daughter the opportunity you’re giving your sons.”

Roland Meighan: D.Soc.Sc, Ph.D., B.Sc.(Soc)., L.C.P.., Cert. Ed., he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Writer, publisher, and consultant/research er on learning systems, past present and future. His work on “The Next Learning System” has been translated into more than twelve languages. Roland is also Director of Educational Heretics Press, Director/Trustee of the Centre for Personalised Education Trust Ltd. He is also a former Special Professor of Education at the University of Nottingham and was Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Birmingham.

He is an acknowledged Educational Heretic for his view that mass compulsory schooling is an obsolete and counter-productive learning system which should be phased out as soon as possible and schools should be recycled into something more personalised, flexible and humane. He began researching home-based education in 1977, appearing as an expert witness in key legal hearings.

UPDATE

A wise Home Educator chimes in on Roland MeighanL

Roland Meighan has long been seen as a “champion” of home education. He spoke at a conference in Glasgow a few years ago. I cheered him and enjoyed watching some establishment types squirm. We dined with him and his wife afterwards and enjoyed the company. I do not *want* to think badly of him.

The language of “alternative education” for want of a better phrase, or “personalised education” to use a Meighanism , has been nicked, perverted, re-branded and is being used to sell some very nasty outcome-based “education” eg: http://www.home-education.biz/forum/media/352-radical-learning-reform-unveiled.html (lazy link to some of our discussion of CfE in Scotland – obviously just one example).

Roland does not seem to mind this. Recently, in the light of this “not minding” and prompted by discussion on one of the lists, I had a look back at what he had actually said in the past.

Sadly, I found this rather telling quote – afraid the link is no longer live (have emailed the person who owns the site to see where it has gone).
Roland Meighan, 2003 –

“There’s an important sense in which the people who are home schooling are trail-blazing their way to the next learning system.

They are not the next learning system but they are trail-blazing their way towards it.”

http://www.thebluecrane.com/BLUECRANEMEDIA/subhtm/education-germany/EducationOtherwiseVideoTranscript.html

This article is not quite so clear cut but is in a similar vein:

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=305041

I accept that it is easy to be wise with hindsight but surely, at best, this shows an incredible political naivety?

And then he says this in his response to the Badman crap?

“Education Otherwise and similar organisations could form a monitoring body if given the finance and resources to perform this task well. OFSTED and LEAs are not competent to do this task having been trained only in the authoritarian crowd instruction and crowd control approach to learning – ‘you will do it our way, or we will find something nasty to do to you’.”

Have a look at the connections between PEN /BECTA/ARCH/ EO and Heppell (man loves himself so much one link would be meaningless).

+++++++

I read his response to the Badman report, and those quotes jumped out. This matter is about the autonomy of parents as much as it is about Home Educating parents. EO have no business monitoring Home Educators (which will mean registering with them) or anyone else for that matter, unless people volunteer to be a member of their organization.

Having said all that, I found this piece to be worthy of posting. As usual, we do not have to agree with everything everyone says; at the same time, at a time when EO are maneuvering for the job of being the masters of all things Home Education, with funding and power handed to them by the state, it is a good idea to know precisely who is who. By posting this article and exposing the name of the author, it is possible (but unlikely) that this mans voice could be amplified by the BBC, and clearly, his ideas about EO are anathema to many Home Educators.

‘The Fog of War’….