Wednesday, January 15, 2014



Nothing like a bit of Muslim multiculturalism in Britain



Relaxing in sequinned slippers at a wedding, Kabeer Yousaf looks every inch the family man.  But the 30-year-old police community support officer has been accused of extorting money and sexual favours from prostitutes.

Yousaf, whose alleged offences include rape and blackmail, was arrested during a long-running investigation into the trafficking of women from Eastern Europe as sex workers.

The Scotland Yard civilian employee, pictured at what is believed to be a Punjabi family wedding, is suspected of demanding cash in return for keeping quiet about their activities.

Anti-corruption investigators believe he pocketed hundreds of pounds while working his beat in Upton Park, East London.

The married PCSO appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court charged with blackmail, rape and misconduct in a public office.

Watched by his mother and other family members, Yousaf was remanded in custody after the brief appearance.

The court was told he is accused of blackmailing women at a brothel on St Stephen’s Road near Upton Park Tube Station. According to the charge, he visited the illicit business in September and offered to keep police away in return for £500 a week.  It is claimed he also gave the women a mobile phone number – which ended in 999 – and told them to call him directly if they had any problems.

Yousaf allegedly later reduced the payment to £500 a fortnight.

The rape charge states that the PCSO demanded that one of  the women perform a sex act on him on December 22 in lieu  of payment.

The third charge, misconduct in a public office, involves the alleged offences of blackmail and forcing the woman to perform a sex act while on duty.

Yousaf was arrested 24 hours before his court appearance as part of what the Met described as an ‘ongoing investigation’ by its Human Trafficking Unit.

It is understood the force is examining suspected trafficking of women from Albania into London by a crime gang. This inquiry is unrelated to Yousaf’s case.

Yousaf worked in the Green Street East ward of Newham borough, alongside PCs, a sergeant and an inspector.

His role involved high-visibility patrols, meeting members of the community and dealing with low-level antisocial behaviour.

The PCSO has ambitions to be a fully-fledged police officer and had recently completed a course to help him qualify.

A Met police spokesman confirmed Yousaf was charged with rape, blackmail and misconduct in a public office last Friday. ‘The arrest follows an ongoing investigation by the Human Trafficking Unit,’ said. ‘The officer will be suspended from duty.’ Yousaf was ordered to appear  at Southwark Crown Court on January 24.

Rape and misconduct in a public office carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. Anyone convicted of blackmail could face a maximum sentence of 14 years

SOURCE





An attention seeker

Rachel Garlinghouse and her husband, Steve are both white, and they've adopted three kids — two girls and a boy — who are African-American. "We get double-takes everywhere we go," Garlinghouse tells NPR's Rachel Martin. "You have to look at discrimination in a whole new way" as a trans-racial family.

In addition to the stares, sometimes the family meets with more direct and offensive inquiries. "We have been asked, 'Were their parents on drugs?'" Garlinghouse says. "Those questions are very hurtful to our children, if not detrimental."

Garlinghouse and her husband are raising their children to understand race and heritage. "They need to know their history as African-Americans. They are not white and we should not pretend that they are white."

So the parents look for little ways to work history lessons in, taking advantages of opportunities in line with the kids' interests at the time. "My kids love transportation — the trash truck and the school bus and things like that," Garlinghouse says. "So we talked about Rosa Parks ... and what happened when she was discriminated against."

Garlinghouse says being humble and realistic are two essential elements to being a trans-racial adoptive parent. "I'm not black, I will never be black, and my children will never be raised with black parents. Therefore, there are certain things that we need to do to help supplement that." A retired African-American couple living nearby also has adopted children, and Garlinghouse sometimes turns to them for conversations about adoption and race.

They've also hired an African-American woman to mentor and serve as a role model for the children. "We wanted a successful black Christian female to have a close, tight-knit relationship with our girls," Garlinghouse says. She says both she and her children have formed close bonds with the woman. "Now I feel like I don't know what I would do without her."

Garlinghouse hopes her kids grow up "seeing themselves as a child of God who has a wonderful purpose for their life." But she knows they will face challenges, especially her son.

"He's going to be followed in a mall, where I've never had that experience. Or he's going to get pulled over, and we're going to have to teach him what to do in that situation," she says. "We're going to have to handle ourselves carefully, and we're going to have to educate our son in the best way that we can."

SOURCE






Shoot down these flying pickets

By Richard Littlejohn

The right to peaceful protest is fundamental to a free society. So is the right to strike. But there must be limits.

After the industrial anarchy of the Seventies and early Eighties, the Thatcher government introduced laws to ban mass picketing. It also outlawed secondary picketing, a favourite tactic of Arthur Scargill’s National Union of Mineworkers.

This was designed to prevent the intimidation of other workers into supporting strikes that were nothing to do with them. Scargill’s thugs travelled the country attempting to close down steel works and power stations in the name of ‘solidarity’.

Violence often broke out on the picket lines. Pitched battles were fought in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire, most notably at the Orgreave coke works.

The homes of so-called ‘scabs’ — who refused to join the strike — were attacked. Windows were broken and front doors daubed with slogans.

It wasn’t confined to the coal industry, either. In the Midlands, components factories were regularly shut by blockades organised in support of striking car workers at British Leyland’s main plant at Longbridge.  Thousands of employees who should never have been involved in these disputes were laid off and sent home without pay.

The new law was so popular that Labour declined to repeal it when Tony Blair came to power in 1997.

But while the kind of mob violence which was commonplace 30-odd years ago has disappeared from the industrial landscape — along with much of the industry which made up that landscape — nothing has ever been done to stop the militants intimidating people in their own homes.

Britain’s biggest union regularly exploits this loophole to bring ‘industrial action’ to the front doorsteps of company executives.  Unite, led by 'Red Len' McCluskey, has set up a special 'leverage squad' designed to hound managers and their families where they live

This disgusting practice first came to light in Scotland last year during the dispute at the Grangemouth oil refinery. It was organised by shop stewards in the Unite fiefdom of Falkirk, centre of a notorious Labour Party vote-rigging scandal.

In the latest case, a joinery company boss in North Yorkshire has found himself and his family on the receiving end of Unite’s bully-boy tactics. Pickets descended on the home of Matthew Ingle, in a small village near Skipton.  They carried banners, sounded horns and sirens and bad-mouthed Mr Ingle to his neighbours.

The union followed this up in thoroughly modern fashion by issuing threats on the internet. He was warned he would have ‘no peace’ unless he backed down over plans to transfer transport operations from Cheshire to East Yorkshire — a move which threatened the jobs of 53 drivers, all of whom were Unite members.

On Facebook, the protesters wrote: ‘We came to your town where you do your shopping. We came to your village and spoke to your neighbours. We came to your local pub where you have a drink. We came to your house but you hid behind your large gates.  ‘Come back to the table and talk to our Unite reps. We are not going away. We have nothing to lose.’

Mr Ingle, chief executive of Howden’s Joinery, which makes fitted kitchens, was forced to hire security guards and seek an injunction to end ‘the harassment to himself and his family and the nuisance and trespass to his property’.

But the intimidation obviously worked. The dispute has been settled and Unite has announced that it is ‘proud’ to have saved the jobs of its members.

It is worth remembering that Ed Miliband is bought and paid for by McCluskey’s union. Miliband is wary of falling out with his party’s biggest donor.

Labour could only put out a mealy-mouthed statement condemning intimidation by ‘either unions or management’.

Targeting individuals is a relatively new development on the Left and is deplorable even by Scargill’s standards.

Those who cross militant unions and voluble, single-issue pressure groups can expect to find their home addresses posted on social media, with a helpful Google map and directions on how to get there. The Government should now urgently revisit the law to make sure this appalling and unwarranted intimidation never happens again.

While strikers are entitled to picket their own workplace, provided it is proportionate and non-violent, they should never, ever, be allowed to take their grievances to the homes of their bosses, or to harass wives, children and neighbours.

As things stand, victims of this type of trades union terrorism have to seek refuge in the civil courts, after the damage has been done. The law should be changed to make it a criminal offence.

Ministers must bring forward legislation immediately — and dare McCluskey’s glove-puppet Ed Miliband to oppose it.

Unions should have the right to strike and demonstrate. But bosses have rights, too, especially the right to freedom from thuggery on their own doorsteps.

SOURCE




   

Popular benefits cap could be slashed, Duncan Smith reveals as Tory MP suggests it could be cut to as little as £18,000

The cap on benefits of £26,000 a year could be cut, Iain Duncan Smith suggested  yesterday, telling MPs that the figure was ‘under review’.

The Work and Pensions Secretary was responding to continuing anger from Tories, who indicated that they want the figure reduced to £20,000 or lower.

MP Andrew Bridgen told the Commons that the limit was ‘considerably more’ than the average take-home pay in his constituency.

Official figures show workers in North West Leicestershire earn on average £22,130 but keep only £17,866 after tax.

Mr Bridgen urged the Minister to  continue the squeeze so benefits were always lower than earnings.

Mr Duncan Smith’s comment follows demands from Conservative MPs last week to lower the limit to £20,000. He said yesterday: ‘The only people who don’t support the cap are the Labour Opposition.’

Tory MP Philip Davies also highlighted the Channel 4 documentary Benefits Street and Channel 5’s On Benefits and Proud.

He said it showed claimants who could afford ‘copious amounts of cigarettes, have lots of tattoos done [and] watch Sky TV on the obligatory wide-screen television’.

Last week it was revealed 33,000 families claimed £26,000-plus a year in handouts before the cap was imposed last July.

It included 150 who received more than the take-home pay of someone on a salary of £65,000-a-year.

In the Commons Mr Bridgen said his constituents were astonished by the figures.  He urged Mr Duncan Smith to ‘persevere with this policy of a benefits cap and also review the level at which the cap, which is currently considerably more than the average post tax income in my constituency’.

Reducing the cap to £20,000 would be the equivalent to take take home pay of someone in work on a salary of around £25,000.

Mr Duncan Smith said: ’73 per cent of the public support the cap as it stands, nine out of 10 Londoners in a recent poll supported the cap. The only people who don't support the cap are the Labour opposition.

‘We will keep the policy under review but the one thing we should celebrate is we are reforming welfare to ensure those who need the money get it, and those who don't make sure they go back to work.’

The cap affects income from the main out-of-work benefits including Jobseeker’s Allowance, Income Support, Employment and Support Allowance, Universal Credit and other benefits such as Housing Benefit, Child Benefit and Child Tax Credit and Carer’s Allowance.

However, households are exempt from the cap if someone living there receives one of a number of other benefits such as Disability Living Allowance, Personal Independence Payment, Industrial Injuries Benefit and the War Disablement Pension.

Mr Duncan Smith also revealed he thought the controversial Channel 4 show Benefits Street was helping to win the argument for reform.

The Tory minister said viewers were rightly 'shocked' by programmes such as Benefits Street and On Benefits and Proud, featuring people who spend their benefit money on luxuries such as cigarettes and wide-screen TVs, but that they had enabled the Government to force through measures, which he said would put an end to the abuse.

Conservative MP Philip Davies said the documentaries will leave working people 'irritated' by the spending of those living on state handouts.

The member for Shipley asked Mr Duncan Smith: 'Have you managed to watch programmes like Benefits Street and On Benefits and Proud?

'If so, have you, like me, been struck by the number of people on there who manage to combine complaining about welfare reforms whilst being able to afford being able to buy copious amounts of cigarettes, have lots of tattoos done, watch Sky TV on the obligatory wide-screen television?'

He added: 'Do you understand the concerns and irritations of many of the people who go out to work every day, pay their taxes, who cannot afford those kinds of luxuries themselves?'

Mr Duncan Smith replied: 'Many people are shocked by what they see, but the reality is that is why the public backs our welfare reform package, to get more people back to work, to end these abuses.'

He said the last Labour government, which presided over 'massive spending and trapping people in a benefit dependency' was to blame for the abuse.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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