School for scandal

America may be the worldwide leader in ridiculously stupid ideas in the field of education, but our cousins across The Pond are rapidly catching up:

A British school was blasted Friday after kids as young as 11 were told to shout obscenities during a lesson in swearing.

Expletives like the f-word and c-word were written on a blackboard before a teacher explained their meaning to 30 seventh graders.

S.t Laurence School in Bradford on Avon, Wilts, claims it was part of a sex and relationship education program to "dispel" the myths of swear words.

What does that even mean? What are these "myths"? And how does shouting "FUCK" at a chalkboard "dispel" anything?

Posted by: Sean M. at 05:37 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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I've Heard Of Unique Uses For A Flashlight, But This Takes The Cake

I mean, if this fellow wanted to cheer himself up, he should have just chosen some booze.

Mr Shannon continued: “He volunteered to police that he had a stick and a torch inserted in his anus for sexual gratification. He had inserted it because he was depressed.”

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Behold The Glories Of The Nanny State

When Fail Britannia isn't busy tagging pensioners for speeding on their Model T vehicles, they are invoking "health and safety" rules to keep neighbors from saving a family trapped in a burning house.

Another witness said some friends and neighbours ignored the police warnings and tried to reach the family with ladders and a hosepipe. But again the police intervened and stopped them.

Chris Richardson, 37, said: 'It was shocking. I couldn't believe the police were acting like that.

'One woman climbed over the garden fence and went to the house but there was a policeman at the back who stopped her.'

Firemen using breathing apparatus-found Mr Colley, a DIY store supervisor, in the master bedroom with his wife. Sophie was in another bedroom and Louis on the landing.

Witnesses said police arrived 'several minutes' before firemen but South Yorkshire police refused to give the exact time, citing 'data protection' rules.

Detective Superintendent Peter McGuinness said: 'I would like to commend our officers. The Fire Brigade were only minutes away but our officers were faced with a raging fire. They handled the incident as professionally as we would expect and then worked long into the night.'

Experts said the blaze was not suspicious.

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Horseshite

If this doesn't completely typify the FAIL Britannia! category, I don't know what does:

Rosemary Greenway has been playing passages of opera and orchestral symphonies on the radio to the animals at her stables for more than 20 years, convinced that it helps soothe them.

While not all of her staff are quite as fond of the output of Classic FM as she is, Mrs Greenway, 62, kept the radio tuned to the station religiously while mucking out because of the apparent benefits.

But she has dropped the practice after being told that she must pay a £99 annual licence fee as it constitutes a "performance".

Because her stables, the Malthouse Equestrian Centre in Bushton, Wilts, employs more than two people it is treated in the same way as shops, bars and cafés which have to apply for a licence to play the radio.

She received a telephone call from the Performing Right Society – now officially known as PRS for Music – which was targeting stables as part of a drive to get commercial premises to pay for licences.

The implication here is that there are people who are paid to think up new types of businesses that they can soak for these fees. Wonderful. They say that there will always be an England, and that may be true, but it's pretty much gonna suck from here on out.

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Behold The Glory Of The Nanny State

Namely, the records keeping of students might be in need of an upgrade.

“Megan would have loved going to the prom. She planned to go with a group of friends, she was really looking forward to it.”
The letter carried the signature of deputy head G White. Headteacher Ged Ward has now apologised for the ‘software error’. 
 
Mr Ward said: “Clearly that letter should not have gone out. I want to make my apology to Megan’s parents and can only apologise for the distress that it has caused.
“The letter was sent out to all year 11 parents regarding the school prom.
“We didn’t think to check it. With hindsight we would have checked all 150 of them. The problem is a software problem.”

But the family say they could never forgive the mistake.
Mr Gillan, 53, a civic attendant for Macclesfield Borough council, found Megan in her bedroom. He said: “To send a letter to her family when you are trying to come to terms with her death is just not right.”
Mr Ward said the school uses the software SIMS (School Information Management Systems) which is produced by Capita.

He said: “Unknown to the school, Megan’s details had remained in a different part of the computer system and were called up when the school did a mail merge letter to the parents of all Year 11 students. The letter called up details of each student’s attendance for the whole year to date and because Megan had been on roll in September, she was included.
“Capita has acknowledged to the school that there is a problem with this part of its software and is working to remedy it, because they realise that it could affect other schools.
“Capita has asked the school to convey their apologies to Mr and Mrs Gillan.”

Phil Neal, managing director of Capita Children’s Services, said: “What has happened is absolutely tragic and our thoughts are with Megan’s family. Capita Children’s Services supply a software system known as SIMS to Macclesfield High School.
"Among many other tasks, the software keeps track of pupils’ attendance at the school and the school is able to produce letters to parents based on this information.
“When a child is no longer attending a school, for whatever reason, the software will allow the school to continue to produce letters to their parents as occasionally it is necessary to do so.
"It appears that this is what has happened in this case which everyone involved deeply regrets.”

Thanks to Hermit Dave

Posted by: eddiebear at 12:14 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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I'll take a smug and tonic with a wedge of sanctimony

I didn't think it was possible that something could make me not want to drink vodka, but this comes pretty damn close...

TRU Organic Spirits is putting the friendly back in environmentally friendly. Not only are its lemon- and vanilla-infused vodkas and their aromatic gin completely certified USDA organic, but the Monrovia, California-based company plants at least one seedling in Central America (through its nonprofit partner Sustainable Harvest) for every bottle sold--that's 50,000 last year.

TRU commissioned an independent report, to be released next week, showing that each tree planted has the potential to absorb 790 square kilos of carbon dioxide, whereas the carbon footprint of each bottle in its relatively lightweight packaging is merely 1.04 square kilos--making the product an eye-popping 760 times carbon negative!

At that rate, a single glass would be enough to offset your carbon footprint for a day. At the upscale hotels (Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott) and restaurants where TRU is mainly sold, the company distributes certificates showing how many trees the patrons have planted so far that year--a virtuous selling point that may make a $12 vodka tonic easier to swallow.

Yeah, if some stupid piece of paper makes you feel better about paying twelve bucks for a vodka tonic, you're a fucking idiot.

Me, I just drink Val-U-Rite vodka (which costs less than $12 per bottle) from inefficiently-manufactured plastic jugs which I throw into a storm drain that empties directly into the Pacific Ocean.  Take that, Mother Earth!

Posted by: Sean M. at 08:44 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Okay, Jon, you go first

Am I the only one who always hears troubling rumbles of totalitarianism behind proposals like this?

JONATHON PORRITT, one of Gordon Brown’s leading green advisers, is to warn that Britain must drastically reduce its population if it is to build a sustainable society.

Porritt’s call will come at this week’s annual conference of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), of which he is patron.

The trust will release research suggesting UK population must be cut to 30m if the country wants to feed itself sustainably.

By the way, that's about half of the current UK population. The other half, it would seem, will have to go.

So, Jonathon, who has to go, and how do you propose getting rid of them? Are you going to somehow create a ranking system for which people (or "undesirables") are first in line for mandatory sterilization? And, by the way, how many children do you have? Big Brother would like to know.

Posted by: Sean M. at 09:55 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Behold The Glories Of Socialized Medicine

British Hospitals throw away this much food?

Preston and Chorley's hospitals throw away 150 meals EVERY DAY – worth nearly £42,000 in the last year.New figures published in Parliament show a vast food mountain ends up wasted year, either because patients' refuse to eat the food or the meals were never served.

Patients at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Trust, which runs both hospitals, requested 988,998 meals in 2007/08. However, 54,980 meals were recorded as either untouched or never served.

According to a hospitals spokesman this equates to £115 a day, or nearly £42,000 a year.

Meanwhile, separate figures released by the NHS Information Centre found that, during the same year, 22 patients were discharged from either Royal Preston or Chorley and South Ribble hospitals suffering from malnutrition.

An additional 2,298 were discharged with nutritional anaemia and 178 left with other nutritional deficiencies.

Ribble Valley Conservative MP Nigel Evans today demanded that the hospital trust's bosses address the issue.

He said: "Relatives will be concerned that food is put before their relatives and then not eaten, for whatever reason."

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The Glories Of The Nanny State-Fatass Edition

Nice to see that people in England who are deemed "too fat to work" can live off the dole. Even better? The lardasses claim it's not enough.

Mr Chawner said: "What we get barely covers the bills and puts food on the table. It's not our fault we can't work. We deserve more."

The family claim to spend £50 a week on food and consume 3,000 calories each a day. The recommended maximum intake is 2,000 for women and 2,500 for men.

"We have cereal for breakfast, bacon butties for lunch and microwave pies with mashed potato or chips for dinner," Mrs Chawner told Closer magazine.

"All that healthy food, like fruit and veg, is too expensive. We're fat because it's in our genes. Our whole family is overweight," she added.

Each week, Mr and Mrs Chawner, who have been married for 23 years, receive £177 in income support and incapacity benefit. Mrs Chawner is paid an extra £330-a-month disability allowance for epilepsy and asthma, both a result of being overweight.

Mr Chawner gets £71 a month after developing Type 2 diabetes because of his size. He was on a waiting list for a gastric band last year, but a heart condition made the operation unsuitable. Their daughter Samantha receives £84 in Jobseekers' Allowance each fortnight while Emma, who is training to be a hairdresser, gets £58 every two weeks under a hardship fund for low-income students.

Emma, said: "I'm a student and don't have time to exercise" she said "We all want to lose weight to stop the abuse we get in the street, but we don't know how."

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Worst. Fad. EVAR.

Leave it to the upper-class twits of the UK to come up with something this stupid:

Desperate to chime with the zeitgeist, artfully distressed millionaires and billionaires are competing against one another to show just how far their fortunes have been reduced. "I told people my tan was fake the other day," says one Notting Hill princess. "Well I couldn't say it was from Verbier, could I? I didn't tell anyone I'd even been skiing this year."

Oh, the poor dear.  My heart just bleeds for her.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to the soup kitchen for dinner.

Update: Obligatory video added...

Posted by: Sean M. at 08:39 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Thoughtcrime

Just because the people being punished here are douchebags doesn't make it right:

A group of anti-Israel activists who disrupted a concert by the Jerusalem String Quartet in Scotland last August have been charged by a Scottish court with racially aggravated harassment.

At a the performance, in Edinburgh's Queen Hall on August 29, four members of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) - a radical offshoot of the London-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign fringe group - interrupted the concert by shouting abuse at the musicians and audience.

It was claimed that the activists caused distress to both the orchestra and members of the audience.

The protesters had originally been charged with disturbing the peace, but at the Edinburgh Sheriff Court on Monday those charges were dropped in favor of the more serious charge of "racially motivated conduct."

I'd be perfectly happy seeing these people slapped with the original charge of disturbing the peace, but when you add a charge like this, well, there goes freedom of speech. Of course, this is the UK we're talking about, so that ship has pretty much sailed.

By the way, none of this is to say that the protesters aren't probably utter anti-Semitic assholes. Take a look at some of their other antics:

In December, the SPSC fabricated a story that a number of Scottish companies and institutions had terminated contracts with an Israeli mineral water supplier. The allegations proved unfounded. In January, the group staged a Holocaust Memorial Day event with a Hamas representative.

Charming, no?

Posted by: Sean M. at 08:30 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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The tyranny of NICE

Britain's socialist health care regime bans a cancer inhibition treatment for women facing a virulent form of breast cancer, as well as one for a rare form of stomach cancer because of the cost.  If you give the government power over your health, it will put a price on the value of your life, and it will decide on a much lower price than you're worth. 

You're not bringing this to our shores, Obama, no fucking way.  This is why we've got to fight to the last man when the Democrats move to try and nationalize health care.

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 10:14 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Rise, Sir Edward of the Lake!

They're going to give knighthood to this shitbag murderer?  The hell is wrong with these people?

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 12:36 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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British censors need someone to hold their hands

Some are concerned that viewing pornographic content alone will increase the chances of being sexually aroused by the material.

Um, isn't that the point?

(source)

Posted by: Alice H at 01:10 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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There's the rub

Mark Steyn makes a good (and, sadly obvious) point about the Geert Wilders kerfuffle:

Anyway, Geert Wilders’s short film is basically a compilation video of footage from various recent Muslim terrorist atrocities — whoops, sorry, “anti-Islamic activities” — accompanied by the relevant chapter and verse from the Koran. Jacqui Smith banned the filmmaker on “public order” grounds — in other words, the government’s fear that Lord Ahmed meant what he said about a 10,000-strong mob besieging the Palace of Westminster. You might conceivably get the impression from Wilders’s movie that many Muslims are irrational and violent types it’s best to steer well clear of. But, if you didn’t, Jacqui Smith pretty much confirmed it: We can’t have chaps walking around saying Muslims are violent because they’ll go bananas and smash the place up.

Of course, Steyn just committed a HATE CRIME!!!1!!one1!!!eleventy! by pointing that out, so you should probably take what he says with a grain of salt.

Posted by: Sean M. at 09:58 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Big Brother is picking through your trash

In Formerly Great Britain, the Garbage Man and the Tax Man will be working together from now on:

Waste collection crews are being issued with devices featuring GPS technology that allow councils to store a history of information about individual rubbish collections, including whether householders are failing to recycle properly.

The system feeds binmen with up-to-the minute information about houses they are visiting.

It also provides local authorities with enough information to issue recycling advice or automated fines to residents who fail to obey bin rules.

Opposition MPs and campaigners say the technology will make it easy for the government to resurrect plans for the introduction of a £50 pay-as-you-throw tax on millions of families.

I hope to God that nobody else here in California reads British newspapers, or else this scheme will be in place in about a week and a half.

Obligatory video follows:

Posted by: Sean M. at 06:52 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Nice to see The Tennis Channel has more balls than Britain

(pun intended)

Dubai barred a female Israeli tennis player from entering the country to compete in a tournament due to security concerns.  As in concerns that she would be in danger, not that she's a threat.  The Tennis Channel's response?  Buh bye to televising the tournament.

Sure, there's some moral equivalency there, but it's nice to hear someone, anyone, calling this an easy decision.  The WTA is also threatening to yank the tournament off the calendar next year.  I don't necessarily blame them for not canceling the tournament, apparently the UAE dithered on the visa and everyone else is there.  Yes, I agree that it would be better to cancel and/or for other players to walk out.  I am trying to look at the glass half full parts of this.

See, this is how to respond to threats.  Punish the threatmakers, not the innocent person.  It's sad that this is so out of the norm as to be newsworthy. 

Posted by: alexthechick at 01:05 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Perseverance

When most people would have just given up, England's Tracey Bridges somehow found the will to keep going:

A mother from Willenhall downed so much vodka “most people would have died” from the alcohol levels before being arrested by police, a court heard.

Tracey Bridges, of Webster Road, consumed four-and-a-half litres of vodka but the 40-year-old was still conscious and swearing and shouting at officers as they arrested her in Wright Street, Bilston.

Good for her. Keep fighting the, er, good fight.

Posted by: Sean M. at 09:25 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Quickie update on Geert Wilders

Gates of Vienna is following Geert Wilders' attempt to fly into Heathrow.

(h/t a commenter at Jihad Watch)

Update: Wilders was detained at Heathrow and is being sent back to the Netherlands.

Posted by: Alice H at 12:04 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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It's only extremism if it's offensive to Muslims

Once again, hate speech isn't objectionable, but exposing that hate speech is offensive - so offensive that a citizen of a European Union country can be denied his right to travel freely throughout the EU. Geert Wilders has been banned from entering the UK, despite a direct invitation from the House of Lords to show his controversial anti-Islamofascism film Fitna at Parliament. Quite a bit of hoopla has been made about Wilders being anti-Islam and anti-Koran. While I find some of his statements extreme (for instance, his calls to ban the Koran and burqas from the Netherlands), I think Wilders does an excellent job in Fitna of pointing out the more noxious elements of Islamofascism, and calls for Muslims to tear out the pages of the Koran that contain verses advocating violence and terror.

The British Embassy claims that they are acting to "stop those who want to spread extremism, hatred and violent messages in our communities from coming to our country." The ban is stemming from threats of violence against Parliament if Fitna is shown. Those threats weren't made by Geert Wilders.

Geert Wilders is also facing prosecution in the Netherlands for comparing Islam to Nazism. Making that comparison is "so insulting for Muslims that it is in the public interest to prosecute". Hmmm...

I guess it's a really good thing for Muslims that we live in a country more tolerant of hate speech than the Netherlands.  I'm certain that if these sorts of demonstrations were held in the Netherlands instead of Denver, there would have been repercussions.  </sarc>

Posted by: Alice H at 02:37 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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