Tag Archives: Britain

News

Women are becoming more violent towards their partners

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I noticed this story in Australia’s Daily Telegraph.

Excerpt:

Shocking figures have revealed that the number of women who have been charged with domestic violence-related assault has soared by 159 per cent over the past eight years.

The figures, from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics, show 2336 women faced court on charges of domestic violence in 2007, mainly for bashing their husbands, compared with just 818 in 1999.

….The figures show that although the number of women prosecuted for general assault remained stable between 1999 and 2007, there was an increase of 11 per cent a year in the number of women prosecuted for domestic violence.

During the same period, domestic violence charges against men rose by 2.3 per cent a year.

I am at a loss to understand why this is. Does anyone have a theory about why this is happening? Leave a comment if you do.

I wrote before about the problem of domestic violence against males, on the first day I started my blog. It turns out that these Australian numbers are echoing the numbers in Canada and the UK that I cited in that post:

UK numbers:

In the event, the CASI method found relatively high levels of male victimisation, to the extent that men appear to be at equal risk to women of domestic assault (4.2% of both sexes reported an assault in the last year).

Canada numbers:

An estimated 7% of women and 6% of men in a current or previous spousal relationship encountered spousal violence during the five years up to and including 2004, according to a comprehensive new report on family violence.

Here is a related research paper on the problem of domestic violence against men, writen by Dr. Linda Kelly, a professor of Law at Indiana University School of Law.

Commentary

How is well is Britain’s National Health Service working?

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The UK has a two-tier health care system, just like India does. One tier is private, the other is public. The British system is called the National Health Service (NHS). Everyone has to pay into the NHS, but only some people are treated. Since the government is paying for all NHS service, the decision about what will and will not be covered is not left to individuals. The state decides what gets treated or not.

British journalist Melanie Phillips writes about it in her latest column.

Excerpt:

…central government should not be making such decisions in the first place. It is wrong for a politician or some Whitehall bean-counter to say people can’t have IVF or the latest drug to combat Alzheimer’s.

Whether or not these things are efficacious or worth the money is a calculation central government should not be making. It should be no business of the state to tell us what treatments we can and can’t have.

But as long as the Government controls the purse-strings, it is entitled to make up the rules. What’s wrong is that it does control the purse-strings. It’s our money, and we should be entitled to decide how to spend it.

For we now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Government cannot be trusted to spend it properly. We know about the serial computer debacles.

We know about the huge profligacy and waste, with the idiotic non-jobs of ‘diversity outreach co-ordinator’ and such-like.

We know that in both health and education, gazillions have been poured straight into a black hole. We know that, while the extra money has undoubtedly brought about some improvements in the NHS, most of it has been wasted.

She also talks about the problem of choice in education in the same article.

Be careful who you trust your money to. Maybe you should be handling these decisions yourself, instead of putting your faith in strangers who get paid regardless of whether you get what you want, or not. Government-run services are not like the free market. You pay and then you pray with government-run social programs. When you buy from a private business, they have to meet your needs, or they go out of business.

UPDATE: Neil Simpson has a good article linked in his round-up about how single-payer health care will require that services be rationed.

News

Obama releases terrorists to Bermuda, forces FBI to mirandize captured terrorists

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Releasing captured terrorists

The President of the United States is releasing capture terrorists, known allies of Al-Quaeda and the Taliban, so that they can attack us again.

ABC News reports: (H/T Hot Air)

The Obama administration put out some seemingly mixed messages on the Uighur transfer, saying that their release to Bermuda would make the US safer, while insisting the government would guard against their travel to the US.

An Obama administration source told ABC News that “the Uighurs will not be able to travel to the United States unless the U.S. government consents in advance.”

See, the thing is, during Clinton’s 2 terms, the United States was attacked abroad four times, so terrorists don’t have to be in the country to hurt us. So restricting them from traveling to the US solves nothing, since they can travel somewhere else and attack us there.

The UK Times says that the British, who own Bermuda, are furious that weren’t consulted:

The British Government responded with ill-disguised fury tonight to the news that four Chinese Uighurs freed from Guantanamo Bay had been flown for resettlement on the Atlantic tourist paradise of Bermuda.

The four arrived on Bermuda in the early hours, celebrating the end of seven years of detention after learning that they were to be accepted as guest workers.

But it appears that the Government of Bermuda failed to consult with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the decision to take in the Uighurs – whose return is demanded by Beijing – and it could now be forced to send them back to Cuba or risk a grave diplomatic crisis.

Bermuda, Britain’s oldest remaining dependency, is one of 14 overseas territories that come under the sovereignty of the United Kingdom, which retains direct responsibility for such matters as foreign policy and security.

National security you can believe in! Leftists hates the good and love the evil, as Evan Sayet explained.

Forcing the FBI to give terrorists miranda rights

But Obama the hawk is not just releasing terrorists so they can attack our assets abroad. He’s also forcing the FBI to give miranda rights to terrorists captured on the battlefield – to make sure they don’t reveal their nice plans to any sneaky counter-terrorism experts.

The Weekly Standard had the scoop: (H/T Michelle Malkin)

When 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was captured on March 1, 2003, he was not cooperative. “I’ll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer,” he said, according to former CIA Director George Tenet.

Of course, KSM did not get a lawyer until months later, after his interrogation was completed, and Tenet says that the information the CIA obtained from him disrupted plots and saved lives. “I believe none of these successes would have happened if we had had to treat KSM like a white-collar criminal — read him his Miranda rights and get him a lawyer who surely would have insisted that his client simply shut up,” Tenet wrote in his memoirs.

If Tenet is right, it’s a good thing KSM was captured before Barack Obama became president. For, the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.

And my friend Andrew e-mailed me this story from Fox News, which has more details.