Thursday, December 03, 2015



Multicultural fraud in High Court battle over £500,000 legal costs declares himself bankrupt


Crooked to the end

A former London mayor has declared himself bankrupt sparking a High Court battle over half a million pounds of legal costs.

Lutfur Rahman was elected as mayor of Tower Hamlets, but he was removed from office after being found guilty of corrupt and illegal practices after accusations of claiming racism and Islamophobia to silence his critics.

Four voters, led writer and filmmaker Andy Erlam, had taken legal action against him under the provisions of the Representation of the People Act. He was found guilty of wrongdoing  by Election Commissioner Richard Mawrey after an Election Court trial in London in April this year.

Rahman is the first person since the 19th century to be found guilty of the Victorian-era misdeed of unlawfully using religious influence.  He was ordered to pay the voters' legal costs, estimated to be around £500,000 and was also forced to pay £250,000 at the time.

However, the voters say they have not been given a penny and have taken legal action against him again. In hope of generating cash, they are trying to force Rahman to sell a property which they say he owns, but Rahman's wife claims she is a part owner.

A judge is analysing the claims at a trial in the High Court in London. The hearing started today and is due to finish later this week.

Lawyers for the four voters said Rahman, who was not in court today, had been 'adjudged bankrupt on his own petition' about two weeks ago.  They said the bankruptcy was 'plainly motivated' as an 'attack' on the voters' position.

Barrister Simon Johnson, who is representing the voters at today's High Court hearing, indicated that his clients wanted to be able to sell a property in east London in order to raise cash to cover legal expenses.

He said records showed that Rahman was the '100% owner' of the property. But he said Rahman's wife, Ayesha Farid, was now indicating that she was a part-owner.

Mr Johnson added that the judge would have to make a decision on the true position.

Labour's John Briggs was elected to the east London mayor role in June.

SOURCE






Greece to defy EU order on labeling settlement goods

A day after Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras visited Jerusalem, his foreign minister Nikos Kotzias sent a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, informing him of the opposition by Athens to the EU guidelines, The Times of Israel has learned.

According to guidelines published earlier this month by the European Commission, goods manufactured over the pre-1967 lines may not state that they were “Made in Israel.” Rather, they should be labeled with a formulation such as “Product from the West Bank (Israeli settlements),” the Commission suggested.

“The European Commission expects all member states to comply with EU legislation,” an official in the union’s delegation to Israel told The Times of Israel last week.

Another European country, however, has already declared its intention to defy Brussels’s instructions on labeling.

“We do not support that decision,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó declared earlier this month at an event of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations. “It is an inefficient instrument. It is irrational and does not contribute to a solution [to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict], but causes damage.”

Earlier this month, the Bundestag faction of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU party rejected the EU labeling initiative as “wrong,” also arguing that it would likely be misused by Israel’s enemies and did not promote Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation. However, Berlin has so far not announced whether it will implement or disregard the union’s directives.

On Sunday, Netanyahu announced Jerusalem was suspending ties with the EU vis-à-vis efforts to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians in response to the new labeling guidelines.

The Foreign Ministry said the suspension of ties on peace talks would remain in place “until the reassessment is completed.” While relations with individual European countries will continue, dialogue with EU organizations on the peace process is off-limits.

Despite Israel’s announcement, however, an EU diplomatic spokesperson insisted the EU “would continue to work on the Middle East Peace Process, in the Quartet, with its Arab partners, and with both parties, as peace in the Middle East was an issue of interest to the entire international community and also to all Europeans.”

The spokesperson said that “EU-Israel relations are good, broad and deep, and this will continue.”

SOURCE






Oh yes he is! Sleeping Beauty is now a prince called Percy after female theatre director switched the main character's gender

The traditional fairytale Sleeping Beauty has been shook up with swapped gender roles in a radical retelling.

Theatre director Sally Cookson rewrote the tale for a new version at the Bristol Old Vic which sees the unconscious princess played instead by a man called Prince Percy.

The director felt the usual version was outdated with a passive female heroine at the centre of the story, made famous by the Brothers Grimm in 1812.

Ms Cookson told the Guardian: 'What we wanted was a proactive, feisty heroine. 'Many of these earlier versions were recorded by men, so had heroines who were really so passive it is just not healthy.'

The Disney cartoon of the tale, released in 1959, furthered this idea of a helpless princess waiting for her prince to come and rescue her.

Ms Cookson wanted to actively move away from this, although she recognised that many adults or even children would be confused by the idea.

She told the Guardian: 'I am sorry if there might be some children or, more likely, parents who think that is not how it is meant to be.

'But every time a fairytale is retold we cannot help but adapt it in line with our ideology, regardless of whether that is a conscious plan.'

The play, which runs until January 17, follows Prince Percy, played by David Emmings, who was cursed to prick his finger and sleep for 100 years.

The Prince is rescued by a woman, Deilen, who was loved by her grandmother but got lost on her quest to mend her broken heart.

Gender-blind casting has seen a wider acceptance of swapping the traditional gender roles.

Maxine Peake played the title role in Hamlet at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, to widespread critical acclaim this year while Cate Blanchett was one of many actors to play Bob Dylan in 2007's I'm Not There.

SOURCE






A triumph of feminism

For years, the number of men drinking alcohol in the US has far outstripped the number of female drinkers.  But, now, new figures reveal that gap is narrowing, with experts warning of an 'alarming rise' in the number of women turning to alcohol.

Dr Aaron White, of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, said between 2002 and 2012, researchers found differences between men and women are diminishing in a number of areas.

They include current drinking, number of drinking days each month, alcohol use disorder and driving under the influence.

Dr White said: 'Males still consume more alcohol, but the differences between men and women are diminishing.'

NIAAA director, Dr George Koob, added: 'This study confirms what other recent reports have suggested about changing patterns of alcohol use by men and women in the US.'

Dr Koob said the evidence of increasing alcohol use by females is particularly concerning given that women are at greater risk than men of a variety of alcohol-related health effects, including liver inflammation, cardiovascular disease, neurotoxicity and cancer.

Examining data from yearly national surveys, conducted over the 10-year period, Dr White and his colleagues discovered the percentage of people who drank alcohol in the previous 30 days increased for females from 44.9 per cent to 48.3 percent.

Meanwhile, that figure decreased for men, from 57.4 per cent to 56.1 per cent.

Over the same time period, the average number of drinking days in the past month also increased for females, from 6.8 to 7.3 days.

Again, that figure decreased slightly for males - from 9.9 to 9.5 days.

The researchers said the reasons for the converging patterns of alcohol use are unclear, and do not appear to be easily explained by recent trends in employment, pregnancy, or marital status - all variables that the team controlled their analysis to take account of.

Dr White said additional studies are needed to identify the psychosocial and environmental contributors to these changes, and to assess their implications for prevention and treatment efforts.

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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