Kept Out!

Back in December it was reported that the pastor of a Florida church with less than forty members and who had caused widespread contoversy by threatening to burn the Koran on the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks had been invited to speak at an English Defence League rally in February.

I commented then that we had enough home-grown extremists of our own and that we didn’t need to invite any more into the country to stir things up. As it happened, the original invitation was withdrawn though another group, England Is Ours, popped up to issue an invitation for the man to speak at a rally next month.

Commonsense has been applied by the Home Office and the pastor has now been banned from entering Britain on the grounds that ‘Coming to the UK is a privilege not a right and we are not willing to allow entry to those whose presence is not conducive to the public good.’ That is absolutely right.

It is reported that the pastor is now promoting an ‘International Judge the Koran Day’ on March 20, which he said would put the Koran ‘on trial’.

Let’s hope he keeps this nonsense and the untold trouble it is likely to cause well at home in his own backyard of Gainesville, Florida.
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Hands Up If You Qualify!

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Government departments are not known for their skill or judgement in introducing new computer systems, and recent years have been littered with examples of expensive systems that have crashed or which have been unfit for purpose.

So it is no great surprise that the behemoth which is the Home Office has a computer system - the very same that does not know how many illegal immigrants are in the country - that does not record how long its own staff have been on their payroll.

Thus, when the Home Office introduced 25 years’ long service awards last year, they had to admit that staff have to nominate themselves for the award if they think they qualify.

These are the folk running the country!
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Too Much Interference!

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It frightens me sometimes how so many do-gooders in government and other agencies interfere and tinker with people’s minds and lives.

The news today is that children as young as five are to have lessons in ‘gender equality’ as part of a so-called national strategy to tackle violence against women and girls. The poor little mites are also to be taught not to bully transsexuals.

It must be admitted that children see far too much violence on television and that the war games they play on their X-Boxes and other gizmos may encourage violence and incorrect behaviour.

But at the age of five? Can’t they be left to be just children for a few more years?

And can’t teachers be left to do what they have been doing for generations - to teach children right from wrong?
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Ridiculous!

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We always knew that public money is wasted on useless projects, and confirmation comes with the news that a cabinet minister wasted £6 million on research that he was warned could not evaluate anything at all.

As a Home Office minister in 2002, Bob Ainsworth, now the Defence Secretary, put his signature to a study to research a drugs prevention programme in schools. It now transpires that academic advisers tried to block the project before it began since it ‘was not sufficiently robust to allow an evaluation of impact and outcomes’.

Despite this, the project went ahead, and the result is that the report, published earlier this month, found it was unable to draw any conclusions.

Six million quid wasted. Wonderful!
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