Free Republic

Wheelie bins with microchips which measure how much rubbish they contain could be introduced to make householders cut down on their waste. Alternatively, under plans outlined by council leaders today, people could be charged according to the size of their bin or of their rubbish bags which they would buy from the local authority. The Local Government Association denied the plans would be a stealth tax to raise extra cash for councils.

Warming Scandal: The architect of climate fraud steps down, the creator of the infamous "hockey stick" is investigated, and Australia's parliament defeats cap-and-trade. We love the smell of truth in the morning. As the high priests of what Czech President Vaclav Klaus has called a "religion" prepare their pilgrimage to worship the earth goddess Gaia in Copenhagen, complete with humanity being sacrificed, the heresy of climate truth is finally being heard. The gospel of climate change, once expressed with the messianic fervor of an Elmer Gantry by Al Gore, is now expressed with the stammering incoherence of an Elmer Fudd...

British troops in Iraq had to let attackers go free British troops in Iraq had to let 40 armed men who had just ambushed them “walk away” under “constraining” and “frustrating” rules of engagement, papers leaked to The Daily Telegraph show.   Andrew Gilligan Published: 8:00AM GMT 24 Nov 2009 British soldiers take up positions as they guard outside the presidential palace during a handover ceremony in Basra in 2007 Photo: REUTERS Despite fighting “the most sustained conflict since the Korean War”, the rules left troops with one hand tied behind their backs, the secret documents said. Ministers refused to...

New pubs enough to drive you to drink? The Write Factor: Ed Hart asks whether it’s really good news that J D Wetherspoons are planning to open 250 new establishments across Britain. 02 December 2009 13:17 PM Comment (1) 141494 When it’s announced that 250 pubs are to open it might be considered a cause for celebration, particularly as Britain’s pubs have been closing at a rate of 50 a week. But who needs 250 more J D Wetherspoons? Aren’t they dreary barns full of lonely old men taking a break from the bookies, female office workers on a night...

The racing yacht, the Kingdom Of Bahrain, owned by Sail Bahrain and crewed by the five Britons, was stopped by Iranian naval vessels last Wednesday as it sailed from Bahrain to Dubai. The crew members are still in Iran and are understood to be safe and well. Their families have been informed. The Foreign Office said the yacht might have "inadvertently" strayed into Iranian waters. The sailors were heading to Dubai to join the Dubai-Muscat Offshore Sailing Race. One of the men onboard has been named as David Bloomer, believed to be a radio presenter in Bahrain. A source later...

As the Tories pledge to curb meddling officials, glorious images of days when childhood was allowed to be fun. A new book presents scenes from a bygone era when men from the council with clipboards did not swoop down on children swinging from lampposts, climbing walls or dangling from the string of a kite. Not to mention practising the noble art of boxing...

ClimateGate: Britain's Climate Research Unit now says it will release all its data. Does that include the data that have been shredded, deleted and denied publication? In a statement released Saturday by the University of East Anglia, where the CRU is located, it was announced that all unit data, including data that had been denied climate skeptics, would soon be released to prove this is much ado about nothing. Unimpressed by the news is David Holland of Northampton, a grandfather with a background in electrical engineering, who is seeking prosecution of the CRU scientists involved in suppressing and even destroying...

During the past few months, the United States has been embroiled in a debate about the government takeover of Health Care. Our friends "across the pond" in Great Britain have been discussing healthcare as well. The UK discussions are not about a government health care takeover, that has already happened, their discussions have been about how awful the medical care is in the British socialized medical system. We are constantly that a most important part of treating cancer is early detection. The newest revelation about the over-worked British medical system is up to 10,000 British lives a year are lost...

The Pentagon, after years and years of deliberation and heavy pressure from Britain, has finally decided it will not share the all-important computer source code for the Joint Strike Fighter. Sharing source code would, in the words of one close observer of the program, “turn the British JSF into a Trojan Horse.” The message this source would send the British: “Yes we love you… but who are those third party nationals from the EU working for you? And how do we know we can trust them?” British officials had threatened to pull out of the program if the US did...

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present the Obamacare version of the future of America: Poor nursing care, filthy wards and lack of leadership at Basildon and Thurrock University NHS Hospitals Foundation Trust led to the deaths of up to 400 patients a year. Figures compiled by a health watchdog showed death rates at the Essex trust were a third higher than they should have been... At first glance you might think that this is a scenario from an episode of the Twilight Zone, but for thousands of British Citizens, this is all too real and caused by understaffed, filthy hospitals....

The UK Independence Party is set to head in a fresh direction, fighting radical Islam, with the election today of a replacement for Nigel Farage as its national leader. The two favourites to take over from Mr Farage are committed to adding the battle against Islamic fundamentalism to the party’s main goal of withdrawing Britain from the European Union. Mr Farage resisted strong grassroots pressure during his three-year leadership to broaden UKIP’s focus to include actively campaigning against Islamism and immigration. But both Lord Pearson of Rannoch and the London MEP Gerard Batten — the two front-runners in a field...

CLAIRE BERLINSKI Government Motors 1975 America should learn from Britain’s disastrous takeover of its biggest auto company. PETER MARLOW/MAGNUM PHOTOS Striking became a way of life for British Leyland autoworkers during the seventies. After the Second World War, the United Kingdom’s newly elected Labour government resolved to build of Britain a New Jerusalem. It nationalized the commanding heights of the economy and inaugurated the cradle-to-grave welfare state. By the 1970s, the UK faced an economic crisis unrivaled since the Great Depression. Shabby and hopeless, Britain had become, in Henry Kissinger’s words, a “tragedy” of a nation, reduced to “begging, borrowing,...

To Louise Bowling, it was the fulfilment of a life-long dream. Having bought some land, surrounded by beautiful countryside, she now had space to rear her beloved horses. But. just a few months after purchasing the 1.1 acre plot, Mrs Bowling's dream is in tatters.

Gordon Brown was told last night that he must seek the immediate return of the Lockerbie bomber to Britain. A senior senator in the United States has written to the Prime Minister to protest that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi's early release on compassionate grounds on August 20 was granted on the assumption he had only three months to live. Charles Schumer said that period had now elapsed and there was speculation that the severity of the Libyan's condition had been exaggerated. There is growing pressure for all of Megrahi's medical papers to be published, as well as monthly updates...

There's big news for climate change students. A hacker has gotten into the computers at Hadley CRU, Britain's largest climate research institute and a proponent of global warming, and seems to have uncovered evidence of substantial fraud in reporting the "evidence" on global warming; the unlawful destruction of records to cover up this fraud ,conspiracy,and deceit in the entire operation. While hacking into the institute's records is inappropriate if not illegal, the activities disclosed appear illegal and damaging to science and the economies of the world. At first many of us were inclined to dismiss the posted emails from the...

More abortions are carried out in Britain than any other country in Europe, research has shown. It has overtaken France - which has a larger population - to become the abortion capital of the continent. The rising rate has been pushed up by abortions among teenage girls, which increased by nearly a third over the past decade. Half of all pregnancies among girls under 18 in Britain end in abortion. Anti-abortion campaigners said the figures were an indictment of the Government's teenage pregnancy strategy. The figures, collated by a European pressure group, showed that the 219,336 abortions carried out in...

As the new hunting season begins today, animal rights activists are threatening to disrupt meets as "observers", as well as joining hunts undercover. The saboteurs will film constantly using new telescopic lenses so hunts can be monitored from a distance. They will also use hidden cameras in clothing and time-delay devices dotted around the countryside. (edit) Hunting was banned in 2005 but since then the number of people taking part in the sport has continued to increase, with 50,000 mounted followers expected this year compared to 40,000 in 2004. This year there are expected to be a further 50,000...

LONDON (Reuters) -- Counterterrorism detectives said they had arrested five men in early morning raids today in northwest England. They were being held on suspicion of committing terrorism offenses including inciting an act of terrorism overseas. Police said the suspects, aged 21, 26, 27, 52, and 62, were detained after swoops at homes in Manchester and Bolton, and at a hotel near London's Heathrow Airport. The properties were now being searched.

From The Times November 17, 2009 Going Rogue: Sarah Palin's autobiography Giles Whittell in Washington Taken at face value — as it begs the reader to do — Sarah Palin’s non-fiction debut is a love story. She is in love with Alaska, America and her husband, Todd, she says. In the process, she cannot help revealing that she is also in love with the vortex of briefers, make-up artists and media attention that spun around her for three months as a vice-presidential candidate, even though some of the principal players set out to destroy her before the election had even...

MORE than 100 penguin-loving tourists including dozens from Britain are trapped by ice off Antarctica aboard a Russian ice-breaker cruise ship... The Kapitan Khlebnikov is in a bay near Snow Hill island, located off the northeastern end of the Antarctic Peninsula, and cannot leave as the bay is sealed off with ice... Everything is calm aboard the ice-breaker, nothing is threatening the passengers and crew... There were 105 passengers aboard the vessel ...The ship has been at its current location for four days. "To put it plainly, the ship got stuck between an island and an ice massif.''

As many as 150,000 poor British children were shipped off to the colonies over three and a half centuries, often taken from struggling families under programs intended to provide them with a new start - and the Empire with a supply of sturdy white workers. Forty years after the program stopped, Britain and Australia are saying sorry to the child migrants, who were promised a better life only to suffer abuse and neglect thousands of miles from home. The British government said Sunday that Prime Minister Gordon Brown would apologize for child migrant programs that sent boys and girls as...

SNIPPET: "An Irish jihadist living in Pakistan’s Swat valley says he is preparing to wage war against British and allied troops in Afghanistan. Khalid Kelly, a former altar boy from the Liberties area of Dublin who used to be known as Terry, told The Sunday Times he is undergoing weapons training in Pakistan’s mountainous tribal region in order to fight jihad against the enemies of Islam. His dream is to face a British soldier in combat, although he would “settle” for an American, he said. “I’m already on the path to jihad. I’ve already picked up a gun and done...

Everyone in Britain should have an annual carbon ration and be penalised if they use too much fuel, the head of the Environment Agency will say. Lord Smith of Finsbury believes that implementing individual carbon allowances for every person will be the most effective way of meeting the targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. It would involve people being issued with a unique number which they would hand over when purchasing products that contribute to their carbon footprint, such as fuel, airline tickets and electricity. If their "carbon account" hits zero, they would have to pay to get more credits....

Ex-soldier faces jail for handing in gun Thursday, November 12, 2009, 10:30 A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for "doing his duty".Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday – after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year. The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year's imprisonment for handing in the weapon. In a statement read out in court, Mr Clarke said:...

LONDON: With nearly half of teenaged pregnant girls in Britain going for termination, the country has surpassed France to become the abortion capital of Europe, a new survey said. According to the survey by a European pressure group, around 48,150 abortions were carried out among girls under 20 in 2007 in Britain, against 31,779 in France, which has a larger population. While a total of 2,19,336 abortions were conducted in England, Wales and Scotland in the said year, the figure for France was 2,09,699, The Daily Mail reported. Both countries remain far ahead of the other European nations where abortion...

Uncontrolled mass immigration had been a deliberate, covert policy to change the country’s demographics, according to the Sunday Times. Labour's “open door” immigration policy knowingly risked allowing dangerous people to settle in Britain unchecked. This is revealed by documents of the Home Office, seen by The Sunday Times, which also mention Bulgarian organized criminal groups. “The Whitehall correspondence, which was illegally withheld by the Home Office for four years, shows how ministers were told by the country’s most senior immigration official that his staff were to be “encouraged to take risks” when granting visas, work permits and extended residency to...

Britian's postal service has rejected "Benny Hill" for a stamp because his girl-chasing ways are no longer politically correct. Royal Mail, as the post office is called there, had been considering a stamp to honor the famously naughty British comic as part of group of stamps to mark the 40th anniversary of his network, ITV, according to a report yesterday in London's Daily Telegraph. But, according to the minutes of a committee making the decision, the PR arm of the Royal Mail raised an objection saying Hill's antics were "in direct opposition to [the] company's policies on harassment in the...

A heavily pregnant woman and her fiance have gone on the run after social workers threatened to take away their baby at birth. Kerry Robertson, 17, and Mark McDougall, 25, had been told that she was not bright enough to raise their child and that they would have to give him up. It was another blow for the couple, whose wedding this year was halted just 48 hours before the ceremony in a row over whether Miss Robertson was intelligent enough to marry.   Miss Robertson, who is 29 weeks pregnant, has since been told the couple will be...

A disturbing new report by the Centre for Social Cohesion, a British think tank, makes a strong case that Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) is not the "peaceful" Islamist group it purports to be. In a study published Monday, the center - quoting extensively from the statements and writings of HT leaders and party organs – shows that the group actually advocates hijacking planes and other forms of jihadist violence in order to annex all Muslim-majority nations and colonize non-Muslim-majority ones. Representatives of HT, which seeks to establish a global Islamic state (a Caliphate), have long claimed that they oppose violence.

A woman 'rescued' from an attack by a group of girls, by London mayor Boris Johnson, has spoken about the incident. Franny Armstrong called for help as she was surrounded and pushed by the girls, one of whom had an iron bar, in Camden, north London, on Monday night. The mayor, who was cycling past, stopped and chased the girls down the street, calling them: "Oiks".

Someone is attacked by a complete stranger every 30 seconds in Binge Britain, figures revealed last night. When Labour came to power, only a third of violent crimes were carried out by an attacker the victim did not know. That has now jumped to half as random violence - fuelled by alcohol and round the clock opening - has become commonplace. There were 1,057,000 violent attacks by strangers last year - the equivalent of 2,895 a day or 120 every hour. Opposition MPs said it was the latest proof the Government's relaxation of licensing laws had failed. Some 21 per...

British film icon Sir Michael Caine has abandoned his support of the Labour party and announced he will vote Conservative at the next general election. The actor, 76, a former Labour supporter, condemned the “terrible state” that has been allowed to develop in Britain and said he planned to change his allegiance at the next election. For his latest film, Harry Brown, about violence on Britain’s streets, Sir Michael spent time with a gang from a tough inner London estate, who were hired as extras.

A U.S. plane that featured in a European Parliament report into the 'extraordinary rendition' of terror suspects was met by two SAS helicopters in a secret operation at one of Britain's biggest airports. The Gulfstream jet landed at Birmingham International Airport on Friday, October 2, having flown in from an undisclosed location, and was seen by a member of staff being met minutes later by the Special Forces regiment aircraft. Records show that the jet is owned by a subsidiary of L-3 Communications, a multi-billion-dollar defence corporation based in New York, whose clients include several American government departments, among them...

The Queen forced to wear a burkha and Buckingham Palace turned into a mosque - that was the vision of Britain under Sharia law proposed by a Muslim firebrand today. Preacher of hate Anjem Choudary even showed mocked-up photographs of the palace sporting a golden dome and Nelson's Column as a minaret. He was speaking ahead of a demonstration calling for Sharia law planned for Central London tomorrow, which it is feared could descend into violence. Police are working to avoid a clash between moderate Muslim groups and far-right mobs who have organised rival demonstrations.

President Obama must show leadership over Afghanistan, and soon. His delay in announcing his plans looks less like deliberation and more like dithering A remarkable headline on an opinion piece about Afghanistan in The New York Times, following an interview with David Miliband: “Britain resolves, US wavers”. If the American press can look to policy on Afghanistan on this side of the Atlantic and see relative determination, vision and clarity of purpose, then things in Washington must be dire indeed. It is now two months since General Stanley McCrystal, the commander of US and allied forces in Afghanistan, told President...

Primary school pupils and toddlers in nurseries are being punished for making racist insults, according to a report, even if they don’t understand the terms they use. Teachers are being treated like counter staff in police stations as they have to fill in forms detailing name-calling and jokes. Meanwhile diversity “missionaries” are said to be increasing the divide between white and black children by forcing them to see everything through the prism of race. Adrian Hart, the author of the report published by the Manifesto Club...said: “The obligation on schools to report these incidents wastes teachers’ time, interferes in children’s...

Santa Rosa resident Nancy Roberts lived in England for five years in the 1970s and got her master's degree there. She wrote this note in the wake of a recent Chronicle article and SFGate blog posting about the underemployment rate -- a measurement that adds people forced to work part-time and discouraged job-seekers to the unemployed. California's unemployment rate is 12.2 percent. Its underemployment rate is 21.9 percent. -- Tom Abate Thank you for raising this question, which has been much on my mind. Here's the situation for some of my American friends. (Their names have been changed.) -- Todd:...

MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Somali pirates holding two Britons captive aboard a yacht off the coast of the Horn of Africa nation warned Britain not to try to rescue the couple. The pirates seized the vessel on Friday morning hundreds of miles out to sea near the Seychelles archipelago. They have taken it to the Somali coast with a view to demanding a ransom for their captives. "If warships surround us, we shall point our guns at the British tourists. They are old and we will take care of them -- that is if we are not attacked," said a pirate...

I know we've got some FREEPers from Britain, and probably some IN Britain. Would like to carry on a bit of a conversation, probably via FREEP mail regarding some specific questions about the country and law enforcement. anyone out there?

A man who stabbed a burglar to death after catching him in the act was charged with murder yesterday. Omari Roberts, 23, was remanded in custody. Roberts had found two teenage burglars in his mother's house when he arrived to visit her. After chasing one of the youths, aged 14, from the property, he returned to find 17-year-old Tyler Juett still there. There was a struggle and Juett was fatally stabbed in the chest, Nottingham Magistrates Court was told. The Crown Prosecution Service said the decision to charge Roberts months after the incident in March had been taken after 'careful...

Scotland Yard has abandoned plans for armed foot patrols and marksmen on motorbikes in gun crime hotspots in the face of mounting political criticism. Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, was forced to withdraw the proposal before a meeting of his police authority on Thursday, where he would have faced fierce criticism. The plan to deploy armed officers on the beat as a response to rising gun crime in the capital was announced last week when Sir Paul was out of the country. A team from CO19, the unit that shot dead Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005,...

So now the cat is well and truly out of the bag. For years, as the number of immigrants to Britain shot up apparently uncontrollably, the question was how exactly this had happened. Was it through a fit of absent-mindedness or gross incompetence? Or was it not inadvertent at all, but deliberate? The latter explanation seemed just too outrageous. After all, a deliberate policy of mass immigration would have amounted to nothing less than an attempt to change the very make-up of this country without telling the electorate. There could not have been a more grave abuse of the entire...

Navy surrenders one new aircraft carrier in budget battle Michael Smith The Royal Navy has agreed to sacrifice one of its two new aircraft carriers to save about £8.2 billion from the defence budget. The admirals, who have battled for a decade to secure the two new 65,000-ton carriers, have been forced to back down because of the soaring cost of the American-produced Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) aircraft due to fly off them. The move is a blow to the navy’s prestige and has come on the heels of Gordon Brown’s announcement last month that he was axing one of...

(edit)Accounts filed at the Charity Commission show that the Government paid a total of £113,411 last year to a foundation run by senior members and activists of Hizb ut-Tahrir — a notorious Islamic extremist group that ministers promised to ban. (edit) Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, last night described the disclosure as “astonishing and outrageous” and accused the Government of “sleeping on the job”. Hizb regards integration as “dangerous” and says that British Muslims should “fight assimilation” into British society. It wants to create a global Islamic superstate, or “caliphate”, initially in Muslim-majority countries and then across the rest...

Huge increases in immigration over the past decade were a deliberate attempt to engineer a more multicultural Britain, a former Government adviser said yesterday. Andrew Neather, a speechwriter who worked in Downing Street for Tony Blair and in the Home Office for Jack Straw and David Blunkett, said Labour's relaxation of controls was a plan to 'open up the UK to mass migration'. As well as bringing in hundreds of thousands to plug labour market gaps, there was also a 'driving political purpose' behind immigration policy, he claimed.

A British nuclear expert has fallen to his death from the 17th floor of the United Nations offices in Vienna. The 47-year-old man died after falling more than 120ft to the bottom of a stairwell. He has not been named. He worked for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, an international agency charged with uncovering illicit nuclear tests. A UN spokesman in the Austrian capital said there were no "suspicious circumstances" surrounding the man's death. Police said no other person was believed to have been involved. No suicide note has been found. Four months ago another UN worker also believed to...

...or maybe not. Faced with increased violence, Britain deploys permanently armed police in London

“This Is As Sick As It Gets!” Islamic Pedophilia Plagues England bythelastcrusade.org British parents are forcing the schoolgirls into prostitution and selling them to Saudi and other Arab millionaire pedophiles. Members of the UK’s Vice Squad collared three women and one man from Manchester after secretly filming them offering to pimp six girls aged between 14 and 23 at a five-star West London hotel. They also taped the gang bragging how they were prepared to peddle even younger, prepubescent girls. The gang - - described by the British police as “something out of TV's Shameless" - - also had...

The BBC came under siege as Nick Griffin, the leader of the BNP, used his appearance on Question Time to attack Muslims and homosexuals while defending the Ku Klux Klan. Mr Griffin said Islam was not compatible with life in Britain, while describing homosexuals as "creepy". However, he admitted sharing a platform with the Ku Klux Klan, which has carried out racist attacks across America’s Deep South, and defended leaders in the organisation as "non-violent". Related Articles Arrests as anti-BNP protesters clash with police The BNP on Question Time: live-blog Griffin booed as he walks into Question Time studio Mark...

A white pupil was battered with a hammer at a school where politically correct teachers were afraid to deal with racial tensions, the High Court heard yesterday...