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A family of Somali benefits claimants living in a £2million home courtesy of the taxpayer admitted they couldn’t believe their luck yesterday. To the anger of neighbours, the family of ten are allowed to live in a six-bedroom end-of-terrace Georgian townhouse in one of London’s most fashionable areas, populated by high-flying lawyers and stockbrokers. The family use housing benefits to pay a heavily discounted rent for the four-storey house in Islington – close to Tony Blair’s former home – which boasts a variety of period features, including chandeliers and wood flooring. The family are understood to pay the council just...

A FAR right politician was held in cells for almost six hours for objecting to a pro-gay rights flag flying above a police station. English Democrat Paul Rimmer, who recently failed in his bid to become mayor of Liverpool, was arrested on Saturday after an argument in Admiral Street Police station, Toxteth. Mr Rimmer demanded to know why the Rainbow Flag was flying above the station.

The Health Service has removed the word ‘dad’ from a pregnancy handbook for fear of offending gay and lesbian parents. Officials decided to use the term ‘partner’ throughout the 200-page guide, titled Ready Steady Baby, after receiving a complaint that ‘dad’ was discriminating against same-sex couples. But the omission of the word has angered some campaigners who claim that traditional family values are being undermined. Norman Wells, of the Family Education Trust, said: ‘This is all part of an agenda to present as natural a type of family that cannot be created by natural means. ‘The NHS should not be...

The British State treats us, the good, kind and law-abiding, with officious scorn. We have learned, when we are the victims of crime or disorder, that the police don’t need us, and they expect the same in return. If we dare to travel abroad, we are terrorist suspects on the way out, to be poked and humiliated, and serfs on the way back in, herded, hectored and corralled. If we try to pay our taxes honestly and on time, we are held on the phone for half an hour. Happy families are torn apart in secret courts, where guilt is...

Police and social workers were last night accused of failing to investigate an Asian paedophile gang for fear of being perceived as racist, allowing them to prey on up to 50 young white girls.Complaints to social workers and the police were ignored because they were "petrified of being called racist", former Labour MP for Keighley Ann Cryer said. Mrs Cryer, who has campaigned to bring the issue of Asian sex gangs to light, said the girls had been "betrayed" and condemned to "untold misery" by the police and social services."This is an absolute scandal. They were petrified of being called...

Police and social workers were last night accused of failing to investigate an Asian paedophile gang for fear of being perceived as racist, allowing them to prey on up to 50 young white girls. The nine men from Rochdale were yesterday convicted of abusing five vulnerable teenagers after plying them with alcohol, food and small sums of money in return for sex. However, the true number of victims, who were "passed around" by the gang, is likely to be nearer to 50, police have admitted. Greater Manchester Police and the Crown Prosecution Service have now apologised after they failed to...

A DOUBLE killer who had a sex swap and was moved to a women’s jail is divorcing the lesbian murderess he wed behind bars. Deranged strangler Douglas Wakefield, who had the sex change at taxpayers’ expense and changed his name to Tai Pilley, married fellow lifer Thelma Purchase. But now the relationship is over after the married couple had a violent bust-up over 47-year-old Purchase’s close relationship with another female inmate at New Hall prison near Wakefield, West Yorks. Prison bosses moved mum-of-three Purchase to a prison in the South of England and now Wakefield, who became best pals with...

Is London about to elect a mayor who has been accused of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism? Until last week, former mayor Ken Livingstone was trailing the incumbent Boris Johnson in opinion polls by as much as six points. But now, only days before the election on Thursday, May 3, the two are neck-and-neck, separated by just two percentage points, according to pollster YouGov

In a public letter, the influential members of the Anglican Church claimed that “God’s grace” was at work in allowing same – sex couples to marry. The group, including members of the General Synod, the CoE’s governing body, dismissed “mistaken” impressions that church leaders were “universally opposed to an extension of civil marriage”. Instead, they argued that same-sex couples who wanted to “embrace marriage should be a cause for rejoicing in the Christian Church”. They wrote: "Recent statements by church leaders past and present may have given the mistaken impression that the Church is universally opposed to the extension of...

The largest university in London plans to impose a ban on the sale of alcohol on campus to accommodate the "cultural sensitivity" of its Muslim students. London Metropolitan University's Vice Chancellor, Malcolm Gillies, says it would be unwise to "cling" to a "nostalgic" view where the vast majority wants alcohol to be available. Instead, he says that he believes the university should take account of diverging views, namely those of Muslims, who now comprise 20% of the university's 30,000 students. "Many of our students do come from backgrounds where they actually look on drinking as a negative. We therefore need...

The Government is on a fresh collision course with public sector workers over its controversial pension reforms after more industrial action was called by civil servants and NHS staff. The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union and Unite announced that their members will take action on May 10, the day after the Queen's Speech, which is expected to include a Parliamentary Bill on the pension changes. The PCS said the May walkout will kickstart a programme of action, with another strike at the end of June and industrial action across the civil service, health and education sectors. Co-ordinated, targeted industrial...

Surgery bans elderly patient over her carbon footprintAn elderly woman was ordered to find a new GP because the “carbon footprint” of her two-mile round trips to the surgery where she had been treated for 30 years was too large. By Daily Telegraph Reporter 11:48PM BST 03 Apr 2012 Avril Mulcahy, 83, was told to address the “green travelling issues” over her journeys from her home in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, to the West Road Surgery. The surgery wrote to Mrs Mulcahy, telling her to register with a new GP within 28 days. The letter said: “Our greatest concern is for your...

 I want to live in a surveillance state. Big Brother, come cast your watchful eye over me and mine. I love you, bro. Seriously, when I saw the outcry over Government plans to gain access to telephone, email and internet, my initial reaction was: “You mean they can’t do that already?” I assumed, somewhat stupidly, that everything we said, typed or viewed was routinely monitored, and then filtered by some giant, super-secret computer tucked away in a heavily guarded subterranean basement of GCHQ: “Hodges has just said he wants to shoot another Liverpool player, sir.” “Oh, he’s always saying that, Jones....

Making houses and cars smokefree is the only way to protect children from second-hand smoke, according to a new government campaign in England. The TV and radio adverts show how pervasive invisible second-hand smoke can be. Breathing it in can damage lungs and cause cancers, research has shown. Snip The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said it wanted to see smoking in cars made illegal, when children are present. "I have no doubt an outright ban on smoking in cars would have the same positive results [as banning drink-driving]” - Prof Terence Stephenson Royal College of Paediatrics &...

It's an eye opening experience for a Brit returning to her hometown to witness firsthand the growing muslim extremism in Britain.

Thousands of elderly people are dying unnecessarily early because ‘despicable’ age discrimination in the NHS is denying them treatment for cancer, a charity has warned. A lack of treatment or insufficient treatment is contributing to 14,000 deaths a year in people over the age of 75, Macmillan Cancer Support has found, in what it called an ‘unacceptable act of discrimination’. Deaths from cancer are reducing in most age groups but at a slower rate in those aged 74 to 84 and are increasing in people aged 85 and over, the report said. The report, The Age Old Excuse: the under...

Scrapping the Trident nuclear missile system would save £83.5bn and many of the jobs at risk could be transferred to alternative defence projects, according to an authoritative study published on Wednesday. An average annual saving of £1.86bn would be made until 2062, it says. The study, commissioned by senior figures from all three main parties, points out that the savings would not be available immediately because cancellation and decommissioning costs would have to be taken into account. The report, by Professor Keith Hartley, a leading defence economist, is published by a commission set up by the British American Security Information...

“Best friend bans” — apparently, they’re a thing. Educational psychologist Gaynor Sbuttoni said the policy has been used at schools in Kingston, South West London, and Surrey. She added: “I have noticed that teachers tell children they shouldn’t have a best friend and that everyone should play together. “They are doing it because they want to save the child the pain of splitting up from their best friend. But it is natural for some children to want a best friend. If they break up, they have to feel the pain because they’re learning to deal with it.” Russell Hobby, of...

Reforms to allow same-sex marriage will see the words husband and wife removed from official forms, it was revealed last night. Tax and benefits guidance and immigration documents must be rewritten so they no longer assume a married couple is a man and a woman. And private companies will be told to overhaul paperwork and computer databases containing the words. New versions of documents will‘replace references to husband and wife with the more neutral terms spouses and partners’. The cost of the red tape revolution demanded by the ‘Equal Civil Marriage’ plans will run into millions, according to an official...

Most people thought they knew what marriage meant, namely the union of a man and a woman. In 2004, when the Civil Partnership Act was passed to provide legal protections for homosexual partnerships, Parliament was led to believe by the government of the day that this did not affect the established institution of marriage. But barely eight years later, political fashion has changed. More recently, though, familiar words such as “husband and wife” and “mother and father” are disappearing from the statute books in the small minority of countries that have begun the experiment in social engineering.(edit) In Canada,...