The Daily Mail reports that one in eight entries on the police’s growing DNA database is incorrectly inputted, threatening to associate the DNA signature of a criminal with the record of an innocent member of the public. In the future innocent people could be arrested on the basis of an error made by a data… [Read More]
Today’s Times reports that 20,000 Muslim leaders have just issued a declaration condemning terrorism as un-Islamic. Their declaration was made at a conference held yesterday at the Dar Uloom madrassa in Deoband, northern India. It runs: “Islam is a religion of mercy for all humanity. Islam sternly condemns all kinds of oppression, violence and terrorism.”… [Read More]
A worrying case has emerged this morning. A shopkeeper managed to fend off an attempted robbery by stabbing the assailant with his own knife. From the details available, this response was proportionate since the shopkeeper suffered wounds in the struggle as well (it was clear that the robber was prepared to carry out his threat… [Read More]
Who is it that can keep London safe in the run-up to the Olympic Games? If you have been tempted to answer either the ‘Metropolitan Police’ or the ‘Special Branch’, then you would have been wrong. That is the view of the recently retired head of the Special Branch’s Muslim Contact Unit. continued on the… [Read More]
Richard Vize writes what can only be described as a vitriolic attack on the BMA in his editorial in the Health Service Journal this week, describing them as resorting to ‘sabotage to block the modernisation of our primary care services’ and ‘crass, childish behaviour’. His particular gripe is that the BMA’s GP Committee has, very… [Read More]
School children are to be mandated 5 hours of ‘culture’ a week by the latest government initiative. This hour-per-school-day prescription seems to be the government’s answer to every education issue, as it defines more and more of every state school schedule through Whitehall guidance. This follows on from the five hours of mandated sport a… [Read More]
Forgive me for returning to the claim made last week by the Archbishop of Canterbury that it is now unavoidable in the interests of social cohesion that certain elements of sharia become recognised by or incorporated within British law. Despite having been gone over so well by now, his remarks raise such an important issue… [Read More]
When the DH slashed the second wave of independent sector treatment centres (ISTCs) last year, it reasoned ‘they were unlikely to provide acceptable value for money’. This was based on capacity assessments by the new Director General of the Commercial Directorate, Chan Wheeler. But now it appears a separate, independent, review concluded exactly the opposite.… [Read More]
A terrorised pensioner died of a heart attack during an attack on his home in a dispute over a parking space at a supermarket. What makes this story especially worrying is that a policeman (and friend of the defendants) traced the 79-year-old by his car registration number, using the police national computer database. There is… [Read More]
Should MPs’ be exempt from police bugging when conversing with terrorist suspects being held in detention and awaiting extradition? Forget, for a moment, whether any laws or protocols were broken when police recorded the conversations between Labour MP for Tooting Sadiq Khan and his childhood friend and constituent the Islamist terror-suspect Babar Ahmed. What laws… [Read More]