The Labour frontbencher Diane Abbott was forced into an embarrassing apology yesterday after being accused of racism for claiming that “white people love playing divide and rule”.
The storm followed a Twitter exchange between Ms Abbott and a journalist, which was prompted by the convictions of two men for the murder of Stephen Lawrence.
Moments after insisting her remarks had been taken out of context, she was ordered by her party to backtrack. Asked on live television to explain what she meant, she broke off mid-sentence to take a call from the Labour leader, above.
The shadow Public Health Minister then said: “I understand people have interpreted my comments as making generalisations about white people. I apologise for any offence caused.”
She was also warned by Ed Miliband that she would be sacked if she repeated such sentiments.
Ever though that heavy metal appreciation should be on the syllabus at your local school? Wattsville primary school in Birmingham clearly does. In a video that has become an overnight youtube sensation, a choir of youngsters performs a rendition of the 1983 Iron Maiden classic Flight of Icarus, replete with cardboard instruments and air guitar soloing. According to Metro.co.uk, the clip has been put together as part of Kerrang’s Cash for Kids charity which is aiming to ‘raise funds for sick and underprivileged children across Birmingham and the West Midlands to help local kids in crisis.’more
Paedophile nursery worker Vanessa George discussed killing a baby with her ‘Svengali’ accomplice while abusing children in her care, a court heard yesterday.
The mother of two, 40, was talking online to Colin Blanchard,
who was yesterday jailed for persuading a string of middle-aged women
he met on Facebook to abuse children for his sexual pleasure.
As the full extent of Blanchard’s depravity was laid bare, a
court was told that the pair were part of one of the ‘most sickening
paedophile rings this country has ever seen’. ‘Warped and wicked’ Blanchard, a twice-married father of two,
had a ‘Svengali-like’ influence over four women including George, who
filmed and photographed themselves carrying out their appalling
actions. George, who had already been jailed, has refused to identify her victims to police.
The Honourable Mr Justice Royce told Blanchard yesterday: ‘It
is beyond the ken of decent people how any of you could stoop so
disgustingly low as you did.’ He described Blanchard’s emails and text messages to George as ‘deeply disturbing’, The judge cited one example in which ‘you [Blanchard] discuss with Vanessa George raping a baby until it dies’.
Blanchard, 40, was said by the judge to be the ‘hub of this
paedophile wheel’ which had caused ‘widespread revulsion and
disbelief’. In 2002 he was placed on the Sex Offenders Register for five years. His most recent crimes were discovered when his occasional
business partner used his computer. Blanchard had forgotten to log out
of his personal email account.
On opening some of the emails, Noman Ahmed found graphic and disturbing images of children, and immediately alerted police.
George, who abused children at Little Ted’s nursery in Plymouth.
Dawber was the only one to have met Blanchard face to face. George, Allen and Lyons all pleaded guilty to a string of
charges of sexual assault and making and possessing child pornography.
Dawber, from Southport, Merseyside, was found guilty of sexual assault charges in October after a re-trial.
Blanchard, of Rochdale, pleaded guilty to taking indecent
photographs of children, distribution of an indecent image and sexual
assault of a child under the age of 13.
He had previously admitted 19 other sex abuse charges.
Greville Davis, mitigating for Blanchard, said his client had been
sexually abused and raped as a child and bore ‘psychiatric scars’.
Stephen Smyth, representing Lyons, described his client as ‘a dim woman’.
Dawber was jailed for four years for sexually abusing a five-month-old child while Blanchard took pictures.
Lyons, of Portsmouth, who gave birth to her youngest child
while in custody, was given a seven-year sentence, four of which she
will spend in prison and three on licence.
Each was disqualified from working with children for life.more
A school where a boy was attacked with a hammer failed to recognise a
series of racist incidents prior to the assault, a serious case review
has found
.
Henry Webster, then 15, suffered three skull fractures in the attack by a group of Asian youths in 2007.
His mother Liz Webster said the review showed the school was at fault.
Mr Webster, now 18, was punched, kicked and hit with a claw hammer at Ridgeway School, in Wroughton, near Swindon. Mrs Webster said: “This review has confirmed our belief that the
Ridgeway School was responsible for the horrific, devastating assault
on our son which has left him with permanent injuries.
“The criticism of the local authority is tantamount to a whitewash as it is so minimal and limited.”
Before the attack, Mr Webster had agreed to fight a boy “one on one”
due to peer pressure and to stop harassment he thought he and his
friends were experiencing. He has returned to part-time education, but
still suffers from short-term memory loss. The report summary, published by the Swindon Local Safeguarding
Children Board, said: “The school, although it knew in advance, did not
prepare for the arrival of a significant number of British Asian
students in 2005.”more
Scientists have depicted early humans as wimps who couldn’t hack it
in chilly northern climates, but a newly discovered cache of stone
tools is forcing archaeologists to revise their opinions. Scientists reported at a news conference here today that creatures
much like us managed to carve out a living at a spot on the coast of
England roughly 900,000 years ago, when the area would have resembled
today’s southern Scandinavia in climate and landscape. Never before
have early humans been shown to live so far north.
The finding, which will be published in Thursday’s edition of
Nature, is the latest to show that scientists have perpetually
underestimated the humans who lived thousands and millions of years
ago. Accumulating evidence shows, for example, that Neanderthals were
not the stupid brutes of public image but beings capable of symbolic
thought.
The people whose tools were found in coastal England probably moved
there during a warm period, but they proved their toughness when the
weather cooled off, says Chris Stringer, an author of the new study.
“The remarkable thing is they don’t just give up when it starts
getting cold,” says Stringer, of London’s Natural History Museum.
“They’re hanging on here, at least for a while.”
Also remarkable is that these people apparently lived on the edge of
a vast spruce-pine forest, which is a hard place to survive even for
today’s hunter-gatherers. “What is really interesting here is that
these guys were living in a coniferous forested environment, which
would have had few resources in winter,” says Robin Dennell of the
University of Sheffield. Other scientists harbor doubts about the new findings or its
significance. Richard Potts of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of
Natural History said in an e-mail from Kenya, where he’s doing research,
that though the paper is “intriguing,” he’s concerned about the methods
used to claim that the site dates back nearly a million years.
Other new discoveries showing that ancient humans weren’t as simple
as once believed:
* Early humans who lived 500,000 years ago could hunt big game, says
Stringer, “leading more complex lives than I would’ve thought.” more
Looks Like The EDL Voices Were Stronger!!! What did you offer those Two Boys at the bottom a Soda Pop to hold the UAF signs?
Shops and pubs in the city closed as up
to 3,000 EDL and Unite Against Fascism members took to the streets,
chanting and waving banners.
The two camps came face-to-face near the
city train station before their planned marches, with UAF protesters
chanting ‘Off our streets, Nazi scum’ in response to the EDL’s chorus
of ‘You’re not English anymore’. They were kept apart by hundreds of
officers from five forces.
Chief Supt Graham Smith said: ‘It has
been a great success. It has passed without incident. Newcastle is a
city for peace and the aim of today was to allow peaceful protests which
we have demonstrated is possible through careful planning.’
A strong police presence will remain in
the centre throughout the bank holiday weekend to prevent trouble.
One of the EDL leaders, Ronnie
Burgess, a 31-year-old bodyguard from Liverpool, insisted it was not a
racist group. Wearing a steward number one fluorescent jacket, he
said: ‘The message has been lost and we have got a bad press lately. We
don’t deny we have racist members, but we police ourselves and we will
find them out. We don’t want them.’
Weyman Bennett, joint national
secretary of UAF, said he was pleased with the turn-out to oppose the
EDL. He said: ‘They have come to try to divide black and white, Muslim
and Christian. Read
more:
