Bits and Pieces 3

WE ARE supposed to feel sorry for those Greenpeace activists arrested by the Russians after trying to board the Gazprom oil platform. The Russian authorities are now set to lay charges of piracy against the activists.

           

            The international executive director of the group, Kumi Naidoo complained that charges of piracy were "extreme and disproportionate". He continued with the usual sufferer for a cause, and sacrificial victim comment, "A charge of piracy is being laid against men and women whose only crime is to be possessed of a conscience. This is an outrage and represents nothing less than an assault on the very principle of peaceful protest,". Mr Naidoo and his multinational warriors of Greenpeace knew full well what they would fall foul of if they overstepped the mark with Russia and the Putin government.

           

            Talk of being "extreme and disproportionate" in such circumstances is raw and adolescent. I cannot believe Greenpeace's naivety in attempting such an act. My first impulse was to say "serve them right": my second was to say, "serve them right". How infantile are these people. They, through sincerely held (be them romantic) views, showed little awareness of the Putin government and what it was capable of.

            Greenpeace will have to take whatever happens to their activists on the chin. It is no good appealing to support from the West. They must have known what they were getting into. Talk of being "possessed of a conscience" matters little, if whatever law is deemed to be broken from whatever nation outside of the countries they emerge from in order to become be part of Greenpeace. When in Rome, as the saying goes, you obey whatever law you find yourself up against.

            The trouble is that Greenpeace, along with many other protest groups that emerge from the West, are either naive or believe that the West will rescue them through the usual diplomatic pavane, that, admittedly, all of the world's foreign ministries enjoy partaking in.

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WHAT HAS FORCING female teachers into wearing veils and forcing girls to sit at the back of the class to do with health and safety? But, apparently, it has, according to the school's head Stuart Wilson at the al-Madinah school in Derby, which has been forced to close, 'temporarily'. There have been claims that female teachers have been forced to sign contracts that incorporated the wearing of the niqab veil at all times.

            The school has been rightly closed by Ofsted, and I hope that when, or if, it reopens Stuart Wilson is no longer its headmaster. The al-Madinah was a government free school and its improprieties were quickly discovered and it has been closed. Compare this arrangement with the comprehensive system, where a single bad teacher is as hard to sack, as a recalcitrant Lord who has served a prison sentence from expiration of the second chamber.

           

             Al-Madinah, says it has a ‘strong Muslim ethos’. According to the school's web; ‘At the centre of our school is a community of pupils, able to enjoy learning in a caring Islamic environment which promotes a culture of high expectations and outstanding performance,’. What rot is this?

            This is Multiculturalism at work and at its worst. Head teachers like Stuart Wilson should be relieved of their responsibility for the education of our youth. How Wilson managed to be elevated to a position of responsibility as the headmaster of a school, should result in an investigation. He has bought into the Multicultural experiment and has been enthused by it to such an extent that he seeks to replicate as much of the Muslim culture into his school as he can - what an idiot. How did he ever rise to such an august status within our educational system?

           

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THE DAILY MAIL CAN HANDLE ITSELF without my support; but I offer it anyway. It seems that the paper has the whole of the liberal establishment out to settle a few scores with the paper's editor Lord Dacre. Unconvincing and  self-serving attacks have been made on the noble Lord and his organ…and why, one must ask?

            Is it because they were really disgusted at the way Red Ed 's father was treated? Is it because the Mail on Sunday sent a journalist to a memorial service for Ed's uncle? Were they really outraged that a man (whose son insists he loved his country) and whose sole desire was to create a Marxist state and all that that has signified historically, was attacked by the  Mail?

            I think not. Those who have jumped to Ed's defence, like Michal Heseltine, have a history of being assailed by the Rothermere titles, especially when Heseltine's arch enemy Margaret Thatcher was so well supported by the Daily Mail, and usually at his and other Tory Left-wingers (Wets) expense.

            The Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, also professes outrage at the way the communist academic was treated; but like Heseltine and Miliband, none of them condemned the way the Left treated Margaret Thatcher when she died. Ed Miliband even allowed himself to be photographed with an idiot wearing a black tee-shirt with the following inscription, written over what is portrayed as Margaret Thatcher's grave. 'Thatcher, a generation of trade unionists will dance on her grave'…and there stands Ed beaming at the recalcitrant's side.

  So let us have none of this phoney disgust by the liberal establishment.  It is revenge pure and simple. The revenge of super egos, criticised, and perhaps feeling humiliated by the way the editor of the Daily Mail has treated them in the past.