Free Republic

The Queen's College is delighted to announce that, thanks to two generous gifts, it has been able to establish a graduate scholarship in Philosophy in memory of Neda Agha-Soltan, the 27-year-old Iranian philosophy student who was killed in Tehran on 20 June during the protests over the outcome of the 2009 Iranian presidential election. Commenting on the scholarship, the Provost, Professor Paul Madden, said, 'Oxford is increasingly losing out to its competitors in the race to recruit top graduate students. Donations such as those that have enabled us to create the Neda Agha-Soltan Scholarship are absolutely vital for us to...

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...

Daniel Hannan, the Conservative MEP, has resigned as European legal spokesman only two months after taking up the post in protest at his party's stance on the Lisbon Treaty. Mr Hannan, a leading Eurosceptic, became the Tory spokesman on legal affairs in the European Parliament in September. But last night on his Telegraph blog, Mr Hannan, the Conservative MEP for South East England, said he would be returning to the back benches in order to campaign for direct democracy that will see power in the hands of individual citizens.

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".

Featured Term (selected at random):CELTIC CHURCH The name originally given to the Church in the British Isles before the mission of St. Augustine of Canterbury (d. 604) from Rome (596-97). It was founded by the second century, mainly among the poor, by missions from Rome and Gaul. By the fourth century, it was sufficiently established to send delegates to the Synod of Arles in 314 and the council of Ariminum in 359. All the evidence indicates that the Celtic Church was little affected by the major heresies of the age. It was in frequent contact with the Church of the...

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.

Paddling in the sea while smoking a pipe, dressed in a waistcoat, stiffly starched shirt and perky straw boater; out on a fishing trip with the family and gathering for an outdoor amateur production of Twelfth Night in an age before large screen TVs and games consoles. These beautiful pictures provide an intimate spyglass into the life and leisure time of an Edwardian family - and a valuable glimpse of a bygone era.

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...

Researchers at the University of Reading (UK) and the University of Southampton (UK) recently made available the roster of men who served during the Hundred Years' War.

(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 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...

Motorists should be forced to pay to drive on the busiest roads to slash greenhouse gas emissions, the Government's climate change watchdog says today. The Climate Change Committee, led by former CBI chief Lord Turner, wants ministers to introduce compulsory road pricing to prevent global warming. Under the controversial scheme, cars would be fitted with electronic tags and tracked either by satellite or roadside beacon. Charges would rise at times of peak congestion to around £1.50 a mile. In a report to MPs, the advisers called for a carbon revolution - with thousands of wind turbines, nuclear power stations...

Egypt wants to borrow the Rosetta Stone from the British Museum after winning a battle with France over ownership of painted rock fragments “stolen” from the Valley of the Kings. The French culture ministry has decided to return the 3,200-year-old frescoes, which disappeared in the 1980s, Egypt said, and were acquired by the Louvre in Paris in 2000 and 2003. Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt’s supreme council of antiquities, had threatened to sever relations with the Louvre unless it handed back the relics. That would have forced the French museum to suspend excavation work in the Pharaonic necropolis of...

Cheddar Gorge I heard about this place recently in a news article about a bicyclist that survived falling 80 feet off the Cheddar cliffs. I guess I had heard about it several years ago when they found "Cheddar Man" and genetically connected him to a local resident. I didn't realize it was an English scenic landmark. There are also some small caves, which is where "Cheddar Man" was found. For a satellite view, can't beat Google Maps. British teacher finds long-lost relative: 9,000-year-old man" click for larger click for larger click for larger Aerial More about Cheddar (the village, and...

A plumber whose arm was left twisted grotesquely out of shape in an accident ten months ago has had an operation to correct it 'cancelled four times'. Torron Eeles, 50, has been left unable to work since falling down the stairs and now fears he may lose his home after being denied incapacity benefit. The father-of-three today hit out at the NHS for the 'unacceptable delays', but East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust said Mr Eeles had his operation cancelled on 'only' two occasions on clinical safety grounds. His left arm has hung limply by his side since he fractured...

  Ex-cop’s shocker for yobs   Keep out ... electric wire running along inside of Ralph's fenceSOUTH WEST NEWS By JOHN COLES Published: Today     A RETIRED cop is defending his home against yobs - with an ELECTRIC fence. Now a beat bobby has warned Ralph Harvey, 63, he may be sued if louts are injured by the live wire. The former RAF police sergeant says his bungalow is "under siege" from thugs throwing bricks, paving slabs, breeze blocks - and even acid.   Victim ... Ralph was burgled SOUTH WEST NEWS  The final straw came after all...

Fruit grower Ken Morrish was left stunned when he found a golden delicious apple on his tree split exactly half green, half red down the middle.Ken Morrish, 72, of Colaton Raleigh, Devon, did a double take when he grew a Golden Delicious apple split down the middle - one half was green and the other red Photo: ARCHANT The fruit's striking colouring is thought to be caused by a random genetic mutation at odds of more than a million to one. The apple has caused such a stir in the village of Colaton Raleigh, Devon, that Mr Morrish is inundated...

The Wilton Diptych (The following from a pamphlet titled "Walsingham: The Shrine of Our Lady - Spiritual Guide," which I obtained on a trip to the shrine of Our Lady in Walsingham, England in September 2004). "On the Sunday after Corpus Christi 1381 in Westminster Abbey, King Richard II knelt amidst a great throng of his subjects to re-dedicate England to Mary, as her dowry. Westminster was the shrine of St. Edward the Confessor, traditionally held to have been the first to make this dedication and in whose reign Walsingham had been founded. Richard made at least two pilgrimages at...

Barack Obama Rebuffs Gordon Brown As 'Special Relationship' Sinks To New LowGordon Brown has been snubbed repeatedly by Barack Obama during his trip to the United States, as the fall-out from the release of the Lockerbie bomber appeared to have left "the special relationship" at its lowest ebb for nearly 20 years. By Andrew Porter, Political Editor in New York Published: 11:49PM BST 23 Sep 2009 British officials made five attempts to secure official talks with the US President and even agreed to a policy change in an attempt to land a joint appearance between the two leaders, said diplomatic...

A public school music teacher was yesterday jailed for having a lesbian relationship with a 15-year-old pupil - but told she could continue seeing her when she leaves prison. A court heard that trumpet mistress Helen Goddard, 26, helped weave a web of lies so the ' vulnerable' girl could stay in her flat overnight, and took her for a weekend in Paris, where they joined a gay pride march. Judge Anthony Pitts jailed Goddard for 15 months, saying: 'This case is so serious an immediate sentence of imprisonment is inevitable.' But despite hearing from the girl's parents the devastating...

A Christian couple who run a hotel have been charged with a criminal offence for allegedly insulting a female Muslim guest about her beliefs.Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang are charged with breaching Section 5 of the Public Order Act – causing harassment, alarm or distress. If convicted, they face fines of £2,500 each and a criminal record. The Muslim woman was staying at the Bounty House Hotel in Liverpool, which is run by the Vogelenzangs, when a conversation arose between the hoteliers and their guest about her faith. It is understood that among the topics debated was whether Jesus was a...

A BOY aged 12 turned up at school as a GIRL - after changing sex during the summer holidays. Teachers called an emergency assembly to order fellow pupils to treat him as female. The lad, whose parents have changed his name to a girl's by deed poll, arrived in a dress with long hair in ribboned pigtails. He is preparing for sex-swap surgery. Angry parents told yesterday how their kids were left tearful and confused after school staff announced the boy pupil was now a girl. They said the head teacher should have informed them in advance of the "sex...

Here at Americans for Tax Reform we have worked tirelessly to educate the public about the dangers of excessive taxation: job losses, businesses closing, economic stagnation - effectivly misery all round. Now we have one more thing to blame high taxes on: breaking up the Beatles. That's right, one of the greatest cultural tragedies of the 20th century was caused by big government...

New fathers are being given the right to take six months' paternity leave, despite concerns over its impact on firms in the recession. Gordon Brown will tell union bosses that the plan will be implemented after Business Secretary Lord Mandelson put it on ice because of the economic crisis. Around 400,000 men a year will qualify for the right to dramatically extended leave from April 2011.  At the moment, they can only take two weeks off, an offer taken up by 60 per cent of eligible men. By contrast, new mothers can take a year off. As well as...

I am looking for an older Article about Londoners encouraged to not lock their sheds---so criminals would not be injured.

My life is proof that something good can come from something so terrible. And I don't regret my last minute change of heart one bit.

Having my rapist's baby is the best thing I ever did: After being date raped, Miriam was horrified to fall pregnant, but her little girl is proof good can come of evil 09th September 2009 The party was a rare night out. Raised in a devout, Christian family in Reading, Berks, I was more used to going to choir practice than clubs with friends. But I had just landed a job with a telemarketing company and, when the new director announced he was taking us all out for a drink, I didn't want to seem unfriendly, so I agreed to...

Mohammed, in all its various spellings, is now the second most common boys' name in the UK, next only to Jack. ==snip== Mohammed was placed 16th with 3,423, Muhammad 37th with 2,068 and Mohammad 65th with 1,100. Figures for five other spellings - Muhammad (496), Mohamed (428), Mohamad (40), and Mohammod (10), were later released. That made a total of 7,576 and put Mohammed and its alternatives ahead of the official second placed name, Oliver, of whom there were 7,413.

Billions for Britain’s Conversion Effort Meets with UK’s Approval ByPaul L. Williams, Ph.D. thelastcrusade.org Libyan President Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi has mounted a multi-billion campaign to transform England and Wales into Islamic nations. Eleven Islamic missionaries will launch the campaign this week in Manchester, Sheffield, Nottingham, Birmingham, Leicester, Glasgow, Cardiff and Swansea.The effort is being sponsored by the World Islamic Call Society (WICS), an organization that was established by the Libyan leader.The Islamic crusade comes just a month after the release of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbasset Ali Al Megrahi caused a storm between Britain and the US when he returned...

... After 30 years of being South Yorkshire's undisputed King of the Veg , the pensioner, from Barnsley , was told he is no longer welcome at local shows. Now Mr Micklethwaite has vowed to take his fight to the courts after being blacklisted by the South Yorkshire District of the National Vegetable Society. ... 'But I know the reason it's because I'm too successful. I win too much so it's all sour grapes, they're just looking for a way to keep me out. 'They don't want me there because I might be a bit too good. 'If they had...

THERE were angry clashes in a city centre today as right-wing protesters fought with anti-fascist campaigners in a busy shopping street. A planned demonstration by The English Defence League in central Birmingham descended into violence as the group charged along New Street, close to the city's main train station. One onlooker said: "There were about 250 people in total, fighting and throwing bottles at each other." The disorder spilled onto the adjoining Bennetts Hill, a street lined with a number of pubs, popular with shoppers. Dozens of riot police worked to contain the disturbance and a police helicopter hovered overhead....

There were angry clashes in a city centre today as right-wing protesters fought with anti-fascist campaigners in a busy shopping street. A planned demonstration by The English Defence League in central Birmingham descended into violence as the group charged along New Street, close to the city's main train station. More than twenty men have been arrested. 'There were about 250 people in total, fighting and Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211414/Anti-fascists-clash-right-wing-protesters-Birmingham.html#ixzz0QFxinqVM

The recently elected mayor of Doncaster, in South Yorkshire, has infuriated Britain's politically powerful homosexualist lobby by attempting to withhold local funding for this year's Gay Pride celebrations. The funding for this year's event in June went through, but Mayor Peter Davies, a member of the English Democrat party and the father of Tory MP Philip Davies, has scrapped all future funding for the annual Gay Pride event.... Davies is only the second mayor of Doncaster to have been elected directly by a popular vote rather than by council members. He campaigned on a popular platform, that has reportedly alarmed...

Mock the NationNICK COHEN September 2009 The free availability of hard-core pornography on the internet is changing relationships between men and women in ways we have barely begun to talk about, but it is also changing television. What should executives do with the knowledge that sections of their ever-fragmenting audience are watching images they could not have found in the greasiest Soho basements 20 years ago? Once they would have ignored them, but now that television's power is waning, it must run after every viewer it can find. It cannot give them porn — not yet, anyway — but with Mock...

HOW LONG do you think it will be before our Health and Safety nutters start killing more people every year than they actually save? We've already had a child drown in a pond because the Hobby Bobbies called to his rescue hadn't been trained in the correct use of Wellington boots and so declined to intervene. And a woman bled to death after being stabbed by her boyfriend because armed police didn't fancy entering her home just in case the knifeman was still on the prowl. Now we have 61-year-old Roy Adams, who dialled 999 when having a heart attack...

It is easy now to deride the efforts of Neville Chamberlain. But at the time there seemed to be a realistic chance of peace ) It is 70 years since war broke out in 1939, but historic questions remain. “Appeasement” is still a dirty word, but so is “war-monger”. President Bush repeatedly used the memory of Winston Churchill in 1940 to justify his wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Revisionist historians question whether Neville Chamberlain, the architect of the 1930s appeasement policy, had any choice. One witness was Sir Nevile Henderson, who published his account in Failure of a Mission. Henderson...

A former Guantánamo guard who had flown to the UK to address a support group for inmates of the camp is to be deported back to the US this morning after being denied entry on arrival at Heathrow airport yesterday. Terry Holdbrooks, who has been an outspoken critic of the US government over the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo, said that immigration officials told him he was being refused entry because he was unemployed and living in rented accommodation in the US, raising suspicions he would not leave the UK. The former soldier, who converted to Islam after discussions with...

Byzantium - the English Connection By Steven Lowe In 330 AD, when Britain was still a Roman possession and the ancestors of the English race had not yet appeared on the scene, Emperor Constantine the Great built a new capital for the Roman Empire. The great new city was built on the site of the old Greek port of Byzantion. With typical lack of modesty, the Emperor re-named it Constantinople, after himself. For over 11 centuries it was the capital of the Empire we now call Byzantium – the richest, most powerful in Christendom. It was the largest and most...

Great Britain has long been held as the shining example of what can be accomplished via gun control. Handgun ownership is all but unheard of and rifles and shotguns are tightly controlled and citizens require a "good reason" to be issued a permit to own one. Historically, self-defense has not been considered a good enough reason. Now, the Daily Mail reports that while law abiding citizens have been nearly universally disarmed, the criminals have not and flaunt their power. According to the Mail, "the level of violent crime in Britain has risen by 70 per cent. Gun crime is up...

Five-year-old girl battling cancer viciously attacked by yobs who tried to set her on fire By DAILY MAIL REPORTER 22nd August 2009 A girl of five who is battling cancer is recovering today after two boys sprayed an aerosol in her face and tried to set her alight. Scarlett Hellewell had to be rescued by neighbours when the boys pinned her down and sprayed the deodorant in her face in Halifax, West Yorks. She escaped with just bruises after the deodorant failed to ignite. Attack: Cancer sufferer Scarlett Hellewell, pictured with her mother Paula, was set upon by thugs who...

Already badly shaken by American outrage and opprobrium over the release of the convicted Lockerbie airliner bomber, the British government faced fresh embarrassment on Saturday when the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, met with the newly liberated prisoner in Tripoli and thanked Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain, “my friend,” for interceding with the Scottish government to let the man go. In an appearance characteristic for its capricious mischief-making, Colonel Qaddafi heaped praise not only on Mr. Brown but on Queen Elizabeth and her second son, Andrew, duke of York, for helping in the release of the bomber, Abdel Basset...

The world's first Muslim cartoon superheroes have taken the Arab world by storm, and now they are headed for British television screensNamed the 99, as each possesses one of Allah's 99 attributes, the characters include a burka-clad woman named Batina the Hidden and a Saudi Arabian Hulk-type man named Jabbar the Powerful. They have proved a hit from Morocco to Indonesia and were recently named as one of the top 20 trends sweeping the world by Forbes magazine. Now they are being brought to British television by Endemol, the production company behind Big Brother, with a mission to instill Islamic...

A paedophile with a 30-year history of abusing children is being prescribed Viagra on the NHS - and there is nothing the authorities can do to stop him. Roger Martin, 71, merely has to visit his GP to obtain the libido-enhancing drug, even though experts warn it will enable him to continue preying on children despite his age. The probation officers who oversee Martin are powerless to interfere with the administration of prescription drugs. He does not have to tell his GP about his criminal past and even if he does, doctors cannot take convictions into account. Martin suffers from...

In a crucial discovery of interest to historians, a tightly folded scrap of paper containing a key encrypted message during India's first war of independence in 1857 has been discovered at the Harewood House in Leeds. Considered one of the smallest but most remarkable records of the era, the scrap of blue paper measures six by five centimeters and contains Greek and English characters. It contains an encrypted message that was smuggled out of Lucknow. Written on the September 1 1857, Brigadier John Inglis described conditions in the town that had been under siege since 30 June that year. The...

Christian pupils are now outnumbered by Muslims at Roman Catholic schools in some parts of England A survey has found 24 Catholic primary schools in the North West and the Midlands teach a minority of churchgoing children. Fewer than one in 10 children are Catholic at one school in Birmingham, while the Church is ending its involvement with a similar establishment in Blackburn. Overall, Catholics make up 73.34 per cent of pupils at the 2,300 schools linked to the denomination across England and Wales. But The Tablet, a weekly Catholic magazine, found that in Oldham, Blackburn, Wolverhampton and Birmingham there...

The 200th British soldier has died in Afghanistan, all of their service is deeply appreciated in the fighting for the western belief of freedom, and to defeat the enemy which has attacked both America & Britain brutally, however both of these superpowers have resented the tug of surrendering. Like the liberal morons in America, every time we receive a new toll of those that have given their life for their Nation, for Freedom, and to defeat a world recognized foe, the British socialists once again drum up their supporters to demand surrender to the greatest evil since Imperial Japan and...

It's one thing for the British to criticize their National Health Service, quite another for Yanks to malign it. A backlash against U.S. criticism has erupted in cyberspace. Castigating their public healthcare system may be a national pastime for the British, but it's not one they care to share with Americans, thank you very much. In fact, Britain's oft-maligned National Health Service on Friday was on the receiving end of an outpouring of love and affection it hasn't felt in years, owing to a growing backlash against what many here see as lies and calumnies being spread about the NHS...