British municipality threatens to fine clergyman for advertising Holy Week on a flag outside church



But Muslims are allowed to broadcast their call to payer five times a day in some localities, of course

BRITISH council officials have banned a vicar from flying a flag of Jesus Christ outside his church because it advertises christianity.

Stunned Rev Mark Binney was also warned he faced a £1,000 fine and a criminal record if he continued to fly the flag without council permission.

The 52-year-old hoisted the flag up a 30ft flag pole outside St Andrews Church in Hampton, Evesham, Worcestershire, to celebrate Easter's Holy Week.

But because the flag was not placed on roof of the 700-year-old church, it breached planning law because he had not applied in writing for 'Advertising Consent' from the council.

SOURCE



Grandmother forced to wear a criminal tag for selling a goldfish has sentence quashed

Yes. it can be a criminal act to sell a goldfish in batty Britain

A grandmother branded a criminal for selling a goldfish to an underage boy yesterday had her sentence overturned. Joan Higgins, 66, had been caught in an undercover sting by trading standards officers, hauled before a court, and forced to wear an electronic tag.

Her plight caused widespread astonishment, with supporters calling the case against her 'ludicrous'.

Yesterday she won her legal battle to have the electronic tag removed and an overnight curfew scrapped. A judge described the punishment as 'inappropriate' for 'a respectable lady with no previous convictions'.

Mrs Higgins declared the decision 'a victory for common sense' - and said she would celebrate by going to play bingo with her sister and attend a Rod Stewart concert she had feared she would miss because of the curfew.

She added: 'The Daily Mail has been wonderful and I cannot thank them enough for all their support. 'We have always said that it was ridiculous to tag a 66-year- old, law-abiding pensioner and I am just grateful that common sense has prevailed at last.'

Her ordeal began when Trafford council officials sent a teenager to Majors Pet Shop in Sale, Greater Manchester, to make a purchase. They wanted to test whether new laws making it illegal to sell pets to children under the age of 16 were being adhered to.

It emerged yesterday that the boy they sent was 15 years old - not 14 as first thought - and at 5ft 7in could easily have been mistaken for an older teenager. Mrs Higgins's son Mark, 44, sold him a goldfish for £1.50 without questioning his age or providing any information about the care of the fish.

Mrs Higgins, as the licence holder, and her son were charged with breaching the Animal Welfare Act 2006....

Judge Smith quashed the curfew on Mrs Higgins, as well as the community service order on her son because of his poor health. Instead he imposed a 12-month conditional discharge on both.

The tag was removed last night at Mrs Higgins's home. She and her son have already paid prosecution costs of £1,750 and these were not challenged.

More HERE



An Open Letter to American Jews

by Ben Shapiro

I write to you as a charter member of the tribe. I'm not only Jewish, I'm religious. I'm married to an Israeli girl (she'll receive her citizenship next year and she is a proud soon-to-be American). I go to synagogue regularly, keep kosher, keep the Sabbath.

American Jews, I have one request of you: please pull your heads out of your posteriors.

I mean that in all sincerity. Your continued support for Democrats and an administration that is openly anti-Semitic is a disgrace. Your embrace of a party that seeks to hamstring Israel in the name of a wholly fictitious Middle East peace process is contemptible. Your loyalty to a president who consistently sides with Palestinian and Iranian mass murder-supporters is disgusting.

Your backing of a man who has spent his life surrounding himself with the worst anti-Semites America has to offer -- Jeremiah Wright, Rashid Khalidi (former Palestinian terrorist spokesman), Louis Farrakhan ("I don't like the way [Jews] leech on us"), Samantha Power, Robert Malley, to name a few -- is nothing short of reprehensible. Rahm Emanuel's presence in the Obama cabinet doesn't ameliorate Obama's anti-Semitism -- it just provides it convenient cover. Al Sharpton wrongly called Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell "house negroes"; Emanuel is a kapo.

Even as you continue to buttress a president who seeks the destruction of your co-religionists, you demonstrate your myopia by rejecting the tea party movement and evangelical Christian Israel-supporters.

The tea party movement is your ally for three important reasons. First, it supports capitalism against the forces of socialism -- and capitalism keeps America strong enough to provide Israel with a hand against its evil adversaries. Second, American Jews are, by far, the highest-earning religious group in the United States -- the tea party fights for your right to keep your money. Third, the tea party stands against government overreach -- and in an era when government overreach promotes anti-religious secularism, Jews must stand with the tea party.

Your rejection of evangelical Christians is even more idiotic. Evangelical Christians are the only major voting bloc preventing President Obama from breaking ties with Israel. When Janet Porter, an evangelical Florida talk show host, heard about Obama's anti-Israel tyranny, she responded by asking her listeners to buy dozens of yellow roses to send to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office as a show of support. The price per dozen: $19.48, in honor of the year of Israel's founding (1948). Over 14,000 flowers were delivered. Meanwhile, Adm. James Jones, Obama's national security adviser and the man who brought Jew-hater Zbigniew Brzezinski into Obama's inner circle, was busy telling anti-Semitic jokes before the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

"But they want to convert us!" many American Jews shout. Not all Christians do. But for the rest -- so what? Would you sacrifice the support of millions of good-hearted Christians because they want to discuss Jesus with you? If your own belief system is so fragile, the weakness is yours, not theirs. While you expend energy whining about Jehovah's Witnesses who show up at your door with a Bible, Obama supports radical Muslims who would show up at your door with a gun -- or, as in the case of Daniel Pearl, a butcher's knife.

Now, I understand, American Jews, that most of you don't care about Israel.

I understand that you're more concerned about a woman's unconditional right to abort her unborn child (which Judaism rejects) than you are about Israel. Fine. Understand that you have removed yourself from the vast river of Jewish history in favor of a chimerical morality that values libertinism over liberty.

I understand that many of you -- all of you above age 70 -- still think FDR is alive. He isn't, but Jimmy Carter is.

I understand that some of you still think that conservatives and Republicans are the same folks they were during the 1950s, when they banned you from country clubs. They aren't.

The simple fact is this: There is only one mainstream political ideology in this country that asks you to check your principles and cultural history at the door in the name of the greater good -- leftism, the same ideology that virtually exterminated Judaism in Russia and Europe. While the left exploits your adherence to bagel-and-lox Judaism by appealing to your watered-down and perverted "tikkun olam" sensibilities, you are enabling your own destruction. The same people who urge you to reach out to terrorists will be the first to sacrifice you to those terrorists' tender mercies. The same people who urge you to worry about same-sex marriage rather than religious freedom will be the first to take your religious freedoms away.

I love you, my brothers and sisters. That's why I'm writing to you. Time is running out; the clock is winding down. Pick a side.

SOURCE



One African dead in Western Australian street brawl

Sounds like it was a Lebanese Muslim gang versus an African gang. More of that wonderful "diversity" to make Australia proud

Police have raided a Ballajura house and are interviewing five men as they investigate a Mirabooka brawl in which one man died and another was critically injured. Police and sources in the Sudanese community have confirmed the dead man is Asamh Manyan, 20, of Mirrabooka.

Paramedics and police were called to the Mirrabooka riot about 9.50pm. Insp. Neil Blair said police found a group fighting near the corner of Northwood Drive and Australis Avenue. Insp. Blair said two people were stabbed during the violent brawl and a 20-year-old had since died.

It is understood a police officer unsuccessfully performed CPR on the victim. The other man remains in a critical condition in Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital.

A man was handcuffed by police and questioned on the roadside.

Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan said this morning the men were either African or Middle Eastern but the violence was not gang related and there were no racial overtones. He said five people were being interviewed by police.

Sudanese community leader Simon Dang this morning said the man who died was an honest, hard-working student and it was a sad day for the Sudanese community and the community at large. Mr Dang said he was with a group of friends walking to the shop when the attack happened.

“When you lose someone in your family, (the family of the deceased) are very hurt," he said. “(He was) an honest young man who would not be involved in any type of crime. He has died for no reason.”

Supt Mark Gilbert, of the west metropolitan police district which stretches over one-sixth of the Perth metropolitan area and is believed to be the most culturally diverse in Australia, said police had engaged with community leaders to try and identify any underlying problems between various ethnic groups. “It is completely out of character for this area to have people stabbed in a street like this,” he said.

Police raided the Ballajura house earlier this morning. A big section of Australis Avenue was closed this morning as major crime squad and forensic officers searched nearby bush.

Several backpacks remain strewn on the road and about 20 bright yellow evidence markers dot the suburban street as police continue their search.

This morning one witness told thewest.com.au how she watched the riot through a window after she heard screaming and shouting about 9.30pm. The 16-year-old Morley Senior High School student, who did not want to be named, lives on Wintersweet Ramble off Australis Avenue. "I just heard like screaming and saw people running around," she said.

She said she watched a group of men brandishing "some sort of weapon". "It was long, but it was too dark to see what it was," she said. "It was too much screaming, I couldn't understand it. It was too hard to make out what they were shouting."

She said her family had lived on the street for about five years and had never experienced anything like it before. "This is like the first time," she said. It's pretty quiet down here. It's kind of worrying ... wouldn't you find it worrying? It doesn't make you feel safe."

Another Wintersweet Ramble resident said he was watching a movie when he heard "a few pops and bangs." "I don't know if they were bottles breaking," the man said. "I had a quick gander out the window but didn't see anything."

He said there wasn't usually any trouble in the area although groups of males were known to walk the streets.

Police inquiries are continuing and the streets have been cordoned off. Motorists are advised to seek alternative routes this morning.

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, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here or 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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