Homosexual pedophile ignored despite boy's pleas

A boy sexually abused by his adoptive father and his gay partner was labelled an ‘unruly child’ by social workers who ignored his complaints for years, a damning report has revealed.

They sent Andy Cannon, now 23, back to the couple’s home despite his protests of abuse, praising the gay man who adopted him as a ‘very caring parent’.

The report accuses Wakefield social services, in Yorkshire, of ‘folly and gross misjudgment’. Mr Cannon, who was wrongly diagnosed with mental disorders and prescribed anti-psychotic drugs, believes he would have been listened to sooner if his adoptive father wasn’t gay.

The case ended last year, after half a decade of legal wrangling, when a court ordered a £25,000 compensation payment to Mr Cannon.

Mr Cannon, who now has two children with girlfriend Redeana Hammill, was adopted by David Cannon in 1997.

He and his mother, Elaine Moss, repeatedly complained to social workers about the abuse. In 2004, he was returned to Cannon’s care nine days after running away and making a complaint about him.

Cannon, 54, and his 31-year-old partner John Scarfe were each jailed for 30 months in May 2006 for inciting sexual activity with a child.

Mr Cannon said: ‘I believe if my adoptive dad was in a heterosexual relationship then my complaints would have been listened to earlier.

‘It seems the council didn’t want to be seen as victimising gay people – they would rather look politically correct and let them get away with it to avoid any repercussions.

‘The council should have been there to prevent this from happening but they would rather just sweep it under the carpet.’ The report, conducted for Dewsbury County Court by a child welfare specialist, detailed how Cannon was allowed to adopt the boy, despite his mother accusing him of abuse at the time.

A social worker failed to report the allegations to a family court and instead called Cannon ‘a very caring parent who considered his children’s needs’.

Mr Cannon, who has waived his right to anonymity, said: ‘When I told social workers they didn’t believe me. When I got home from school, if my dad was wound up by something I would pay for it with a beating. Then later on he would sexually abuse me.

‘I never really had nightmares because I completely switched off from it all – although I get nightmares now. I let it happen and thought that one of two things would happen. Either I’d manage to get away or they’d kill me.’

Wakefield council has apologised to Mr Cannon. A spokesman said: ‘We are working with Andy to make sure that in making this apology we deal with all the concerns he has raised.’

SOURCE





Author Criticizes British Muslims for ‘Deeply Anti-Semitic Views’

An author and former editor at the British publication the New Statesman took the bold step of admonishing the Muslim community in his home country for its “Judaeophobia.”

Writing in the New Statesman, Mehdi Hasan addressed a recent controversysurrounding Lord Ahmed, a British Labor party peer and one of the most powerful Muslims in England,  saying, “To claim that your jail sentence for dangerous driving is the result of a Jewish plot is bigoted and stupid”

Lord Ahmed was sentenced to jail after hitting and killing a man with his car only moments after having sent text messages while driving. In a later interview he blamed a Jewish conspiracy on his having to serve jail time for the crime.

Hasan pointed out that he has defended Lord Ahmed before and that “He is not a latter-day Goebbels. But herein lies the problem. There are thousands of Lord Ahmeds out there: mild-mannered and well-integrated British Muslims who nevertheless harbour deeply anti-Semitic views.”

“It pains me to have to admit this but anti-Semitism isn’t just tolerated in some sections of the British Muslim community; it’s routine and commonplace,” Hasan wrote.

He continued: “The truth is that the virus of anti-Semitism has infected members of the British Muslim community, both young and old. No, the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict hasn’t helped matters. But this goes beyond the Middle East.”

Hassan said that complaints from the Muslim community that they were being vilified and discriminated against were “sheer hypocrisy”  when taking into account the community’s  “rampant anti-Semitism,” adding that “We cannot credibly fight Islamophobia while making excuses for Judaeophobia.”

Hassan wrote that not all Muslims were anti-Semites,  but that as a community there is a “Jewish problem,” concluding that “The time has come for us to own up to a rather shameful fact: Muslims are not only the victims of racial and religious prejudice but purveyors of it, too.”

SOURCE







Realistic advice riles feminists

Susan A. Patton, a proud Princeton University alumna and the living affirmation of the meddling Jewish mother stereotype, raised some eyebrows this week after urging young women attending her vaunted alma mater to be quick about snagging a Princeton man - a man like her own son.

Patton, who was among the 200 'pioneer' women enrolled in the Ivy League school in 1973, penned a letter to the editor of the Daily Princetonean Friday addressed to the 'daughters I never had.'

In the open letter dolling out free relationship advice, the proud Princeton alumna whose younger son, Daniel, is currently attending the New Jersey institution, bluntly stated that one of the main goals for female students attending her school should be finding a husband that will be up to their high standards.

'For most of you, the cornerstone of your future and happiness will be inextricably linked to the man you marry, and you will never again have this concentration of men who are worthy of you,' Patton writes.

'Here’s what nobody is telling you: Find a husband on campus before you graduate. Yes, I went there.'

The mother of two who runs a human resources consultation business on the Upper East Side in New York City, went on to say that her older son, who also went to Princeton, 'had the good judgement and great fortune to marry a classmate of his, but he could have married anyone.'

Of her younger son, who is currently a junior at Princeton, Patton wrote that the 'universe of women he can marry is limitless.'

According to Patton, unlike men, who often opt to cast their lot with dumb women so long as they are attractive, intelligent women cannot afford to settle for a husband who is not their intellectual equal.

'As Princeton women, we have almost priced ourselves out of the market. Simply put, there is a very limited population of men who are as smart or smarter than we are,' the Tiger Mother asserts.

And according to Mrs Patton, not only do Princeton girls have to pair off with Princeton men to have a successful, fulfilling marriage, but they also must waste no time and snag them before their 19th birthday.

'As freshman women, you have four classes of men to choose from. Every year, you lose the men in the senior class, and you become older than the class of incoming freshman men.

'So, by the time you are a senior, you basically have only the men in your own class to choose from, and frankly, they now have four classes of women to choose from. Maybe you should have been a little nicer to these guys when you were freshmen?'

The unprompted advice to the 'daughters' Patton never had sparked a firestorm online, with feminist bloggers attacking her seemingly backwards, archaic stance on marriage as a focal point in a woman's life.

Some critics also took issue with the fact that in Patton's world view, there is apparently no room for same-sex relationships as she keeps hammering home the point that women must be paired off with men, specifically, Princeton men.

In a reaction piece that appeared on the influential feminist blog Jezebel, writer Katie J.M. Baker put it in more blatant terms.

'Patton could've saved herself a lot of time and energy by simply writing 'F*** my youngest son while you have the chance!"'

The letter sparked a flurry of articles brimming with sarcasm and indignation.

'It's worth noting that this embarrassing window into how Ivy Leaguers talk to each other should be as cringe-inducing to modern audiences as Patton's take on gender relations is,' wrote Maureen O'Conner for New York magazine’s The Cut.

'Some of the dumbest and most intellectually incurious people I've known were in my class at Princeton. And some of the smartest I've known went to state schools, or community colleges, or didn't go to college.'

As it turns out, the president of Princeton's 1977 class had failed to follow her own advice – and paid the price for it.

In an interview with New York magazine, Patton said that she had recently finalized her divorce after 27 years of marriage to a man who did not attend her beloved alma mater.

'He went to a school of almost no name recognition,' she said, 'a school that nobody has respect for, including him, really.'

Looking back, Patton said she regrets not practicing what she now preaches.

'Yes! Yes. Yes, I wish I married someone who went to Princeton,' she said. 'That way I could have embraced Princeton for the thirty years that I stayed away from it because my ex-husband had no respect for the hoopla, the traditions, the allegiance, the orange and black...'

Patton also marveled at the extreme backlash set off by her letter.  'Honestly, I just thought this was some good advice from a Jewish mother,' she said.

The proud alumna also rushed to set the record straight, saying that although the tone of her missive may suggest otherwise, she is not anti-feminist, and she understand that not all women want to get married or are interested in men.

'I'm just saying, if as a young [Princeton] woman, you are thinking that you would like to have not just professional success but personal success as part of your life happiness, keep an open mind to the men that you're surrounded with now,' Patton said.

SOURCE





Reforming the Australian  welfare state

Andrew Baker

Australia’s federal, state and local governments spent $316 billion on the welfare state in 2010-11 which includes spending on health, education, income support payments and public housing.

Of this spending, about half or $158 billion, can be classified as ‘tax-welfare churn’ – which is the process of levying taxes on people and then returning those taxes to the same people in the form of income support payments and welfare services, simultaneously or over the course of a lifetime.

Compared to other countries, Australia has low levels of churn, however, churn is still a problem as it imposes a number of social and economic costs, including higher taxes, administration and inefficiency costs from a bloated government, rent seeking from lobby groups, government paternalism and increased welfare dependency.

We can do something about the problem of tax-welfare churn in Australia.

In my new report, TARGET30: Tax-welfare churn and the Australian welfare state, I outline the churn problem and provide a number of policy reforms that are not only worthy in their own right, but have the additional benefit of reducing churn.

These reforms target, amongst other things, government support for the aged, family payments and the disability support pension.

Australia’s system of retirement savings needs to be reformed so that more people spend more of their own money for longer on their own retirement, rather than receiving the pension.

Further measures to reduce government expenditure on pensions include: raising and aligning the age pension and preservation ages; including the family home as part of the age pension assets test; and introducing a requirement to use superannuation savings to purchase an annuity.

Family payments like the $4.5 billion a year Family Tax Benefit Part B and the $1.2 billion a year Schoolkids Bonus should be abolished. FTB Part B is a badly targeted payment that goes to families that are clearly not poor and do not need the extra money while the Schoolkids Bonus is of dubious education benefit. Further savings can be found by means testing payments like the Carer Allowance and the Child Care Rebate.

The disability pension needs to be reformed by including activity test and participation requirements for those with a partial capacity to work, in order to maximise the economic benefits of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. The current cohort of Disability Support Pension recipients should also be reassessed under tougher eligibility criteria introduced last year.

These are just some of the many ways we can reform the welfare state, cut spending, cut taxes, and empower more people to look after their own welfare, rather than relying on the welfare state.

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,  DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL  and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine).   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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