A special case

If, like me, you find it difficult to get your head around a figure of 6 million pounds, a little surfing on the internet can help. The mansion shown above cost Adele £6million, the sort of figure a banker might expect as just one year's bonus. 

As the average young person struggles to get onto the property ladder, the people who dropped us into this mess are regarded as a special case, not because they are all in it together, but because of threats they will abandon the country that made them rich if they are not allowed to continue in the style to which they have become accustomed. The term 'special case' used to be reserved for those in hardship or deserving of special treatment, rather like the disabled people employed by Remploy who are going to lose not only their jobs but a way of life that gave them some feeling of worth. As a sop, they are promised a bonus - an '£8m fund is being set up to help those affected find alternative employment. That must be a great comfort when the able-bodied cannot find work.

According to a report in today's Independent there is 'Judgement day at last for the bankers'. I very much doubt it but while they are at it, is anyone going to be held to account for the PPI scandal or is that just another special case?  

NHS reforms

The 'listening' exercise.

Postscript

Reactions to yesterday's re-launch from the Independent, Mirror and Guardian.

Beggars belief...

Hot on the heels of Cranmer's post, "Tis Pity She's a Whore - the Virgin Mary", I watched a video report in the Independent which gives details of  "a controversial book to be published on Good Friday [which] has caused outrage for its portrayal of Jesus as a bisexual drug addict." Christians are expected to tolerate such religious 'stone-throwing', turning the other cheek rather than going on the rampage killing innocent people in fits of righteous indignation with no regard for the rights of individuals in their own land.

On Monday (11 April) the BBC's 'Panorama' broadcast "Living with the Ayatollah" highlighted human rights abuses in Iran. Ironically Iran's Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Mohammad Hosseini has been urging European countries to avoid encouraging 'Islamophobia'. The Guardian has taken up a similar cry with "Islamophobia on the rise as austerity bites". 

What utter tosh. The maxim 'attack is the best method of defence' cannot hide the fact that claims of "Islamophobia" are used simply as devices to deflect well earned concern and criticism of double standards.

Postscript
The University of Exeter's European Muslim Research Centre was forced to issue an apology for serious errors of fact in their academic report Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: UK Case Studies referred to here which "may lead a reader to misconstrue the conduct, actions and the intentions of Councillors". Conservative MP Robert Halfon  has demanded an explanation from Exeter University over a donation from the Middle East broadcaster Al-Jazeera. I know universities are short of funds but what next?

Racial discrimination

To their great credit, I heard two prominent members of the Muslim community speak on the BBC 6 o'clock News about their disgust that Muslims could perpetrate the sexual predatory crimes currently in the news. This is in stark contrast to the report in The Telegraph that charities and agencies working with victims of sexual abuse have been accused of covering up the role of British Pakistani Muslims in sexually exploiting young white British girls.

Meanwhile The Independent reports today that according to the Coalition for the Removal of Pimping (Crop) "On-street grooming is a well-established, lucrative and successful method of coercion of young people that has been around for more than a decade. Part of the problem of discussing the practice was that some organisations were accused of racism when many of the alleged perpetrators of such child sexual exploitation turned out to be of Asian descent. 

Evil is evil. Holding-up the race card serves no-one, least of all children solicited for sex regardless of race, creed or colour.

Over 120,000 children killed during election campaign

Readers of The Independent may have spotted that April 25^th was World Malaria Day, the only British sourced reference I have managed to find.

While our politicians squabble over which party is better placed to deliver the fat of the land to British citizens, in other countries over a million people die every year from malaria. Every 30 seconds a child dies, killed by a mosquito bite. During the six weeks of the election campaign over 120,000 children will have died even though these deaths are preventable. http://www.rollbackmalaria.org/worldmalariaday/index.html

Thanks largely to the efforts of the charity WaterAid all three main political parties have pledged to increase efforts to tackle the water and sanitation crisis. Whichever party wins the election it is one pledge that must be kept. http://www.wateraid.org/uk/default.asp

Gay “Marriage” (2) – Wahee….!

The Independent reports that the amendment to the Equality Bill, which was tabled as a free vote by gay Muslim peer Waheed Alli, received overwhelming backing in the Lords, including from a number of prominent Anglican bishops. The report continued, “MPs are unlikely to oppose [the Bill] because the vote was so overwhelming in the Lords.”

In a previous Blog I predicted that civil partnership blessings would soon be turned into ‘weddings’. Within days pressure was building up to refer to these ceremonies as such and voices have grown ever stronger following the vote in the Lords. Some may regard that simply as semantics but more worrying from The Times, “Church of England clergy will be sued for discrimination if they refuse to “marry” homosexuals under a proposed law, a bishop has warned. Other religious leaders fear that churches that refuse to bless civil partnerships might be forced to close”.

Such a shame to close churches after all the hard work put in by our American friend with her WATCH campaign, supposedly revitalising the church despite its dwindling numbers. Who will put the next nail in the Church of England's coffin I wonder? But I thought this quote from our Muslim friend took the biscuit, “Religious freedom cannot begin and end with what one religion wants.” – Waheed. I shall have to remember that one.