Tag Archives: UK

UK’s Cinderella Law: Jail for “Emotionally Abusive” Parents

Posted on by

The United Kingdom, already one of the most heavily surveilled states on earth, has decided that spying on its citizens with street cameras, shop cameras, cell-phone software, GPS tracking, email snooping, financial audits, welfare agency monitoring, and neighborhood snitches is simply not enough.

It wants to poke its nose into family life.

As usual, the pretext is a humanitarian one – the protection of children from abuse at home.

But child protection laws already punish physical/sexual violence and neglect of any kind severely.

So what’s left?

Now, parents face jail-time for convictions for emotional abuse, which can be anything from fighting in front of their children, blaming their children, being cold to them, or not paying enough attention to them.

Emotional abuse is real. And it is damaging.

But it’s also dynamic, complex and definitely not something a government official should meddle in.

Imagine the thousands of decent, loving families that are going to be ripped apart and destroyed by this malign law, as The Independent rightly points out:

“These days, parents who smoke or drink alcohol in front of children risk being characterised as child-abusers. Opponents of the tradition of male circumcision condemn Jewish and Muslim parents as abusers of children. Health activists denounce parents of overweight children for the same offence. Mothers and fathers who educate their children to embrace the family’s religion have been characterised as child abusers by anti-faith campaigners.”

Educating people about family interaction is one thing.

But there’s  already plenty of that going on.

What this law does is empower yet another empire-building department to pile up parental scalps in its quest for budgets, clout, and public profile.

Meanwhile, kids who tattle on their parents are losers too. They face the trauma of losing their parents to jail; losing their family life to endless days in court; and losing their own selves to a web of foster homes and government offices.

This isn’t a Cinderella law.

It’s a Cruel Step-mother (government) Law.

Telegraph.co:

“Changes to the child neglect laws will make “emotional cruelty” a crime for the first time, alongside physical or sexual abuse.

The Government will introduce the change in the Queen’s Speech in early June to enforce the protection of children’s emotional, social and behavioural well-being.

Parents found guilty under the law change could face up to 10 years in prison, the maximum term in child neglect cases.

The change will update existing laws in England and Wales which only allow an adult responsible for a child to be prosecuted if they have deliberately assaulted, abandoned or exposed a child to suffering or injury to their health.”

Once again, this is not about protecting children.

It is about giving the government the tools to intervene on behalf of  the “politically correct” agenda, which is the mask under which censorship of potentially disruptive political speech takes place.

It’s not about protecting a child who has sexual identity (or other) problems from harassment and cruelty.

Laws against physical abuse already do that.

It’s about using the accusation of “bigot,” “homophobe,” or “sexist” to jail human beings who are otherwise law-abiding citizens.

It takes no great imagination to see how universal surveillance plays into this.

Surveillance allows the government to surreptitiously target the people it wants to harass through analysis of their online activity, cell phone conversations, purchases, and social networks.

The guidelines for what constitutes a public threat have already been drawn up.

Provocateurs, agents, and civilian snitches, embedded in schools and welfare agencies, will then monitor the child of the  targeted person for investigation, coercive interviews, and direct threats.  Few children can stand up to such tactics.

Whatever they admit under pressure  then becomes the platform for a full-scale intervention into the targeted family.  Then follows jail-time, shrink sessions, and re-education camp  for the unlucky parent/s, whose entire private life now becomes public criminal record.

Criminalizing ordinary behavior and intimidating law-abiding citizens with an amorphous and expansive law is as good a way as any of politically gelding a large chunk of the population, hitherto beyond the reach of the criminal justice system.

Fake “Rape Crisis”: UK rape rate ten times Indian

Posted on by

One feminist notices something odd in the hype about the Indian rape crisis:

QUOTE:

“Let’s look at the numbers for India, population 1.2 billion (about 48% of whom are women):

In 2011 there were 24,206 reported rapes. Of these 26 per cent resulted in convictions.

The UK has a population of about 56.2 million.”

Lila: This  article was written in January 2013.  I don’t know where the author got her numbers.

The UK population in 2011 was 63.3 million. The population in 2012 was 63.7 million.

The Indian population in 2011 was approx. 1.21 billion.    In 2012 it was 1.22 billion.

That means that the UK has a population that is roughly 20 times smaller than India’s.

The article continues:

QUOTE:

“Fifty-one per cent are female.

In 2011 there were 14,624 rapes reported. Of which 24 per cent resulted in a “conviction or caution”.

Lila: If these rape statistics are in any way accurate, then the rape numbers in the UK are nearly half those in India, even though the Indian population is 20 times greater.

That means that the per capita rape rate in India is TEN TIMES smaller than that in the UK, a settled and developed country, with high levels of prosperity and education, one of the major powers.

Moreover, the UK rape rate is this high, even though Britain is a heavily policed country, with perhaps the most extensive surveillance networks in the world that routinely and illegally snoop on British citizens.

Britain also has a large and complex criminal justice system with multiple agencies to protect women and an academic culture that often shills for the feminist agenda.

But nonetheless the British rape rate is ten times that of India.  Where is the outrage?

Remember that the Indian rape rate is ten times smaller, despite extensive and severe poverty in India, few social networks outside kinship networks, and a very low per capita rate of policing.

Remember that India also has a very large population of illiterate young males, many without jobs and routinely experiences huge influxes of migrant workers into  severely overcrowded cities, already suffering from near-collapse in infrastructure and utilities.

Remember that India suffers from critical energy and water shortages, from soaring food and gas prices, from inflation and endemic corruption.

It has some of the world’s most congested and dangerous roads and some of the world’s most dangerous terrorists and separatists.

It is the target of unrelenting espionage and interference from the major powers.

India suffers in addition all the extraordinary stresses of very rapid economic development coupled with the crushing impact of  an alienating foreign culture on its traditional social fabric.

Finally, remember that behind the Indian rape rate are financial incentives created by feminist laws that reward women with windfall sums for bringing rape charges.

The Indian law privileges women as rape-victims while denying even the possibility that women might molest and rape, thus erasing the male as victim of sexual violence.

India has a jurisprudence weighted in favor of the woman coupled with a  feminist leadership that nonetheless demands even greater privileges and exemptions.

It has a media culture that is sensitive to every outrage to women and silent on outrages against men.

And yet, incredibly, the rape rate in India is ten times smaller than that in Britain.

So, where, I repeat, is the outrage?

Where is the United Nations study on the parlous condition of women in the United Kingdom, which rapes at ten times the rate of India?

Where is the UN study on the US, which rapes at higher rates than India?

Where is the UN study on South Africa, which rapes at higher rates than India?

UK Mind-Reading Surveillance System Monitors Anti-Social Behavior

Posted on by

Along the lines of Google Suggest, which replaces your own thoughts with intrusive suggestions, the cheery little police state in Britain is exploring some anticipatory thought control of its own:

“The technology, called Sigard, monitors movements and speech to detect signs of threatening behaviour.

Its designers claim the system can anticipate anti-social behaviour and violence by analysing the information picked up its sensors. Continue reading →

Arms and Mark Thatcher..

Posted on by

Mark Thatcher, son of the former UK PM, seems to have been dogged with accusations of financial impropriety. I bring him up, because of a comment on this blog about his direct involvement in an international conspiracy to cover up the manipulation of precious metals that was apparently outed in 2002 in the UK, but was covered up. In researching the comment, I began with some background on Mark Thatcher.

Here’s a brief summary of some financial “improprieties” as they show up in a Guardian article from 2004.

“But hit controversy in 1984 when the Observer alleged that he benefited from his mother’s position when a large construction deal in Oman was awarded to a building firm, Cementation, with which he was involved, after Mrs Thatcher visited the tiny Gulf state. The accusations were never proven.

Further controversy dogged him through his friendship with the Middle East businessman Wafic Said – a quiet-spoken Syrian with close links with Saudi royalty.

Among other business ventures in the 1980s, he was involved in several large-scale arms deals, most notably a £20bn contract between British Aerospace and Saudi Arabia.

Although rumours of impropriety have dogged his business career, he largely disappeared off Fleet Street’s radar after moving to the US.

But it is recorded that his wealth grew to the point where he spent periods as a tax exile in Switzerland.

In the 1990s he helped secure the multimillion pound contract for his mother’s Downing Street memoirs, but after the failure of a security alarm business in the US and a prosecution for tax evasion, Mark, his wife and their two children moved again – this time to South Africa.

Three years after the move to Cape Town, in 1998, he was investigated by South African police over a money-lending business to police officers. He counter-claimed that officers working for him as agents had defrauded him and the investigation was eventually dropped.

He returned to the UK last July for the funeral of his father, Sir Denis, a former oil businessman, who died aged 88. He inherited his father’s hereditary baronetcy to become Sir Mark.

Sir Mark, who was known as “Thickie Mork” among other nicknames at Harrow and who has been criticised for his lack of charm, was once described by the Financial Times as “a sort of Harrovian Arthur Daley with a famous Mum”.

A devoted Lady Thatcher, however, has always had faith in him. “Mark could sell snow to the Eskimos, and sand to the Arabs,” she is reported to have said.

His notoriety was not welcomed by Sir Bernard Ingham, Lady Thatcher’s former press secretary.

Asked by Sir Mark how he could best help his mother win the 1987 general election, Ingham reportedly replied: “Leave the country.”