The British Labor Party government loves its criminals

Almost 2,200 foreign prisoners have been released from jail early with up to 168 pounds each of taxpayers' cash to compensate them for the loss of bed and board. The criminals were released back on to the streets despite a promise by Gordon Brown that they would all be deported. The total cost of funding the handouts for the foreign inmates could be as much as 370,000 pounds.

The revelations will overshadow today's announcement by the Home Office that it removed a record 5,000 foreign criminals last year. Ministers said they were fulfilling a commitment by the Prime Minister, made in July 2007, to take tougher action in the wake of the foreign prisoners scandal. Those removed last year included 50 killers and attempted killers, more than 200 sex offenders and more than 1,500 drug offenders. But the Tories pointed out that Mr Brown had said all overseas criminals would be removed when he declared: 'If you commit a crime you will be deported. You play by the rules or you face the consequences.'

Research by the Tories discovered that not only did 2,196 foreign criminals escape removal, but they were allowed to leave jail 18 days before their sentence reached even the halfway point to ease overcrowding. To compensate them for the loss of accommodation and food they would have received in prison during this 18-day period, they were given up to 7 pounds a day from public funds, up to a maximum of 168.24 each.

In a dossier released last night, the Tories revealed that an estimated 3,000 foreign criminals were released without being deported last year, including those who were set free 18 days early. And the total number of foreign inmates has actually increased by 1,000 since the foreign prisoner fiasco, which led to the sacking of Charles Clarke as Home Secretary in 2006. The scandal prompted a review of deportation procedures after 1,000 inmates were mistakenly released without being even considered for removal. But despite a series of measures being put in place to speed up removals - including the introduction of 3,000 pound bribes for those who go home voluntarily - there are currently 11,168 overseas inmates, an increase of 11 per cent since 2006. The Government is also holding 543 foreign prisoners under immigration powers, because they finished their sentences before measures could be taken to deport them. With each place costing around 40,000 a year, this 'bed blocking' is costing the taxpayer œ22million per year, according to the Tories.

Shadow Justice Secretary Nick Herbert said: 'The Government want to create the impression that they're successfully deporting foreign national criminals, but the truth is that for every three prisoners they remove, two more are released on to the streets. 'Far from paying the price as Gordon Brown promised, foreign national offenders are being rewarded by serving less than half of their jail sentence and with taxpayers' cash in their back pockets.'

Many of them cannot be deported because of a combination of EU law and the Human Rights Act. The End of Custody Licence scheme was introduced in June 2007 primarily for British inmates, to free space in the chronically overcrowded prison system. But foreign nationals - who now have three jails dedicated exclusively to their detention - have been unexpected beneficiaries.

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British police uninterested in car theft

But say anything critical about homosexuality and they will be there like a shot

When Keith Harding found his son's stolen car, he thought he had done all the hard work for the police. He phoned and told them it was parked outside a nearby block of flats, and waited for action. But to his astonishment officers said all they could do was send someone to pick up the car at a cost of 125 pounds. They said they did not have the resources to investigate the case.

Mr Harding, 51, a construction manager, said: `When they told me they couldn't do anything but charge me to tow the car away, I just couldn't believe it. `The officer apologised because he was embarrassed and I was furious. The culprits were probably inside that block of flats and they were going to get away with it.'

The case follows the Daily Mail's revelation earlier this week that officers are routinely failing to investigate crimes reported by the public. Nearly four in every ten offences are `screened out' by officers who claim they have little chance of catching the culprit.

The BMW was stolen on November 21 from the Harding family's home in Rayleigh, Essex, by thieves who broke into the house and took the keys and other items, including a purse belonging to Mr Harding's wife's. The purse was found by a member of the public only ten minutes' drive away, so Mr Harding decided to play detective. He drove around nearby roads until he spotted his son's car in a private car park for a block of flats. Mr Harding immediately called the police, who took an hour to arrive. The officer then called CID to see if a detective was available to investigate how the car ended up parked in the block of flats. But after another hour, CID rang back to say that `no resources' were available.

Mr Harding then drove the car home after a friend dropped off a spare key, rather than pay the 125 pound tow fee. Forensic tests were carried out on the car the next day. Mr Harding said: `We were still scared that the thieves would come back for the car because they had the keys and knew our address, so I had to park it at a friend's house. `I think the police are just worried about statistics and making sure they are seen rather than actually solving crimes.'

A spokesman for Essex Police said the officer's advice on retrieving Mr Harding's car was `usual' and forces across the country charge 125 for this service. He added: `Investigations continue, including the review of other intelligence available to police.'

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Europe's Choice for Christmas: Pink Trees or None at All

Be prepared for a homosexual parody of Christmas when you take a stroll through Amsterdam these days. The Dutch city, the self-declared "gay capital of the world," is holding its first "Pink Christmas Festival." From 18 until 28 December there is a ten-day "Christmas Festival" for homosexuals, including a "gay X-mas open-air market", gay nativity scenes - featuring Baby Jesus with either two Josephs or two Marys - several gay gatherings, a "pink ice skating rink" (for travestites), and streets lined with pink Christmas trees.

The organizers, who also organize the Amsterdam Gay Pride Parade each August, say they want to "increase the range of options for homosexual men and women during Christmas week when there is not much to do." They intend to turn the event into an annual Pink Christmas Festival and expect that in the long run Pink Christmas will become even more popular than the August Gay Pride Parade, a floating Parade on barges and boats through the famous Amsterdam canals.

The Dutch Calvinist merchants, who built the canals in the 17th century to provide easy access to their warehouses, could never have imagined that their spoilt, affluent offspring would turn the city, which they made into the commercial hub and the capitalist center of the world, into the world's showpiece of depravity. Today's Amsterdammers hold nothing sacred of what their ancestors cared for, except money.

Pink Christmas, the organizers say, is also an attempt to "reclaim Amsterdam for gays" and to counter the rising intolerance in the city. Over the past years, assaults on homosexuals have occurred with increasing frequency. Though the parades, parties and festivals continue, homosexual couples who venture into the streets risk being beaten up or thrown into one of the canals.

While the homosexuals make a parody of Christmas, mocking the Christians with an open show of blasphemy during the holy season, it is not the Christians whom the homosexuals fear. Those who pretend that "religious people" are intolerant will find few examples among the remaining followers of Christ in Holland. The attacks on homosexuals are perpetrated by Muslim youths. The growing presence of Islam in the Dutch capital, which is already almost 20 per cent Muslim, has made life in the city less gay than it used to be.

Europe's Christians, however, would be na‹ve to expect that the Muslims will have greater respect for Christmas nativity scenes. Radical Islamists want to ban them altogether. In an interview earlier this year Belgium's Cardinal Godfried Danneels said that Christians may thank Muslims for the growing respect for God in present-day Europe, but the liberal Cardinal does not seem to understand that the God of Islam is not the God of Christianity.

In Antwerp, in Danneels' own Belgium, the city authorities have decreed that public shools, even during the Christmas season, have to avoid all references to Jesus, Mary and Joseph. The authorities do not want to upset the schools' large population of Muslim kids. "Christmas should be a neutral event, not focused on one particular religion, but on enjoying food and drink together with friends and family," the city officials wrote in a letter to the schools.

Even Christmas trees have been banned in Antwerp's public schools. Last year a Muslim civil servant and trade union representative demanded that the city show "its commitment to complete neutrality by banning Christmas trees and Easter eggs" from public buildings and spaces. Christmas carols are not allowed as background music, let alone to be sung, during Antwerp's traditional open-air Christmas market. Like Amsterdam, Antwerp still tolerates the word "Christmas," though. In Oxford, England, the city council has decided to ban the C-word and replace it with the term "Winter Light Festival." This is done in order "to include all religious denominations."

Meanwhile, Oxford University Press has removed other words associated with Christianity and British history from Britain's leading dictionary for children, the Oxford Junior Dictionary. Words like "bishop," "chapel," "abbey," "saint," "monarch" and "empire" have been axed. The publisher claims the changes are made to "reflect the fact that Britain is a modern, multicultural, multifaith society."

What multifaith means was experienced by the non-Muslim children of a junior school in Nottingham which cancelled the traditional Christmas nativity play because it got in the way of the Muslim children celebrating the Islamic Eid festivities.

In Sarajevo, Bosnia, Christmas has been abolished in all the city's kindergarten institutions. In order not to offend Muslims, even Christmas trees have been banned from the kindergarten premises. 43 percent of Bosnians are Muslims.

In Cologne, Germany, the windows of the Galeria Kaufhof department store no longer display traditional Christmas scenes. Instead, passers-by can marvel at Islamic scenes of mosques with minarets, desert abodes and puppets dressed like Arabs, including veiled women. Over 30% of Cologne's inhabitants are Muslims.

In Europe, the war against Christmas is being waged on all fronts, with the institution under attack from two sides: from secularist fundamentalists, who turn it into a mockery with two Josephs (or two Marys) amidst pink Christmas trees, and from Muslim fundamentalists who tolerate no nativity scenes and no Christmas trees at all. It is time for all men of good will to raise their banners and fight: for the family and the right of child to live and to be raised - like Jesus - by a father and a mother, instead of two fathers or two mothers; for green Christmas trees; for words and concepts like Christmas, bishop, chapel, abbey, monarch and empire; in short, for God, sanity and tradition.

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Big erosion of individual liberties in Australia -- in the name of "human rights"!

St Vincent de Paul Society ordered to pay $27,500 to president sacked for not being Catholic. If religious people cannot choose to associate with people of the same religion, what other associations might be forced upon us?

The St Vincent de Paul Society of Queensland has been ordered to pay $27,500 to a voluntary president it sacked because she was not Catholic. The landmark decision in the Anti-Discrimination Tribunal has massive implications for the welfare organisation. State president John Campbell said the organisation was disappointed at the decision and had sought legal advice over whether it should appeal or try to have legislation amended, The Courier-Mail reports.

The $27,500 has been awarded to Kingston woman Linda Walsh for "offence, hurt, embarrassment and intimidation" following the society's decision to stand her down as president of the Migrant and Refugees Logan Centre. According to documents tendered to the tribunal, Ms Walsh's work for the centre was her reason "to get up in the morning". After volunteering for the society in 1997, she first became a president of a St Vincent "conference" - or group of people who respond to calls for assistance in the community, according to the charity's website - in March 2003. By the end of the year, she was working unpaid seven days a week.

But trouble started in January 2004 when objections to her not being Catholic were raised. Ms Walsh said she was asked when she first joined the society whether she was Catholic and there were no objections to her being Christian only. She also was accepted as a conference president in 2003 despite not being Catholic. But, in 2004, the society gave Ms Walsh three options - become a Catholic, resign her position and stay only as a member, or leave the society.

Eventually, Ms Walsh took her case to the Anti-Discrimination Tribunal. Ms Walsh told The Courier-Mail she felt betrayed by the society to which she had devoted her life. "They put me through the wringer and back," she said. "It hurt, it really hurt." [Does it hurt to take $27,500 out of the mouths of the needy too?]

In its tribunal documents, the society argued its primary function was to "inculcate the Catholic faith in its members" and the charity aspect was secondary for presidents, which meant they needed to be Catholic.

The tribunal found the society did not prove its case and awarded compensation to Ms Walsh as well as court costs. Mr Campbell said that although Ms Walsh did volunteer work, she also was a member and they believed they should have the rights to choose their members, just as a bowling club did. He said the rule that all presidents should be Catholic was "understood", even if it hadn't been written prior to Ms Walsh's membership. He declined to comment further.

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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, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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