i saw that interview live and the interviewer was terrible. the bbc did have to apologise yesterday though. if you check the medialens message board theres quite a bit on it. one video of it on youtube has had nearly 2 million views
darcus was on democracy now yesterday with richard seymor from lenin's tomb
faceless wrote:
I just hope she's the only one who was caught out and that she's ok.
13.25 Cameron wheels on the English Defence League following claims their supporters were among gangs of vigilantes who attacked police in Eltham last night, saying: "I described parts of our society as sick and there is none sicker than the EDL".
Lidl water thief jailed for six months A college student with no criminal record was jailed for six months on Thursday for stealing a £3.50 case of bottled water during a night of rioting.
John-Paul Ford Rojas
11 Aug 2011
telegraph.co.uk
Nicolas Robinson, 23, of Borough, south east London, carried out the “opportunistic” theft at a Lidl supermarket in Brixton as he walked home from his girlfriend’s house. Robinson threw away the water and ran when he was confronted by police but was arrested and quickly admitted what he had done.
His solicitor told Camberwell Magistrates’ Court had “got caught up in the moment” and was “incredibly ashamed”. But District Judge Alan Baldwin said the background of “serious public disorder” was an aggravating feature. Members of Robinson's family in the public gallery gasped with disbelief as the judge told him he would be going to prison.
The judge said: “The burglary of commercial premises in circumstances such as this where substantial and wholesale public disorder has taken place is in effect what is commonly called looting.” He said Robinson’s previous good character and early plea of guilty to a non-dwelling burglary, as well as the low value of goods stolen, the fact he was in education, and his remorse, were in his favour.
These meant he would not be sending the looter to the Crown Court where he would face a possible higher sentence. But the judge said: “The aggravating features are the background of serious public disorder and your part in that.”
Zahid Hussain, prosecuting, said: “Those who reside in London, and far afield, have noticed and witnessed during the past week the sight of riots, public disorder and looting. The prosecution submit that this defendant has contributed through his actions and criminal conduct to the atmosphere of both chaos and sheer lawlessness.”
The court heard that Robinson had spent Sunday evening with his girlfriend and on his way home at around 2.40am went into the Lidl’s store as it was looted, where he was spotted by officers with the water. “When he saw police his first reaction was to discard that case of bottled water. He accepts that he ran from the police. He was then arrested," said Mr Hussain.
Hind Ibrahim, defending, said Robinson had just completed the first year of a two-year college course in electrical engineering for which he has been receiving a small maintenance grant. She said: “Mr Robinson is incredibly ashamed. It was opportunistic. He was walking past. He saw the store was unsecure and got caught got up in the moment.”
-------------------
Six months for stealing some water - fuck that judge in the ear. such a sentence should be considered a crime of revenge.
They said on Sky that it was almost a million. I've not actually checked myself, but not even Sky would exaggerate that much...
the sites working at the moment, and sky either has a researcher who doesn't know the difference between 1000000 and 100000 or they were blagging it big time;
Convicted London rioters should loose all benefits. 114,988 09/02/2012
The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom
David Cameron, Ed Miliband and the entire British political class came together yesterday to denounce the rioters. They were of course right to say that the actions of these looters, arsonists and muggers were abhorrent and criminal, and that the police should be given more support.
But there was also something very phony and hypocritical about all the shock and outrage expressed in parliament. MPs spoke about the week’s dreadful events as if they were nothing to do with them.
I cannot accept that this is the case. Indeed, I believe that the criminality in our streets cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society. The last two decades have seen a terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite. It has become acceptable for our politicians to lie and to cheat. An almost universal culture of selfishness and greed has grown up.
It is not just the feral youth of Tottenham who have forgotten they have duties as well as rights. So have the feral rich of Chelsea and Kensington. A few years ago, my wife and I went to a dinner party in a large house in west London. A security guard prowled along the street outside, and there was much talk of the “north-south divide”, which I took literally for a while until I realised that my hosts were facetiously referring to the difference between those who lived north and south of Kensington High Street.
Most of the people in this very expensive street were every bit as deracinated and cut off from the rest of Britain as the young, unemployed men and women who have caused such terrible damage over the last few days. For them, the repellent Financial Times magazine How to Spend It is a bible. I’d guess that few of them bother to pay British tax if they can avoid it, and that fewer still feel the sense of obligation to society that only a few decades ago came naturally to the wealthy and better off.
Yet we celebrate people who live empty lives like this. A few weeks ago, I noticed an item in a newspaper saying that the business tycoon Sir Richard Branson was thinking of moving his headquarters to Switzerland. This move was represented as a potential blow to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, because it meant less tax revenue.
I couldn’t help thinking that in a sane and decent world such a move would be a blow to Sir Richard, not the Chancellor. People would note that a prominent and wealthy businessman was avoiding British tax and think less of him. Instead, he has a knighthood and is widely feted. The same is true of the brilliant retailer Sir Philip Green. Sir Philip’s businesses could never survive but for Britain’s famous social and political stability, our transport system to shift his goods and our schools to educate his workers.
Yet Sir Philip, who a few years ago sent an extraordinary £1 billion dividend offshore, seems to have little intention of paying for much of this. Why does nobody get angry or hold him culpable? I know that he employs expensive tax lawyers and that everything he does is legal, but he surely faces ethical and moral questions just as much as does a young thug who breaks into one of Sir Philip’s shops and steals from it?
Our politicians – standing sanctimoniously on their hind legs in the Commons yesterday – are just as bad. They have shown themselves prepared to ignore common decency and, in some cases, to break the law. David Cameron is happy to have some of the worst offenders in his Cabinet. Take the example of Francis Maude, who is charged with tackling public sector waste – which trade unions say is a euphemism for waging war on low‑paid workers. Yet Mr Maude made tens of thousands of pounds by breaching the spirit, though not the law, surrounding MPs’ allowances.
A great deal has been made over the past few days of the greed of the rioters for consumer goods, not least by Rotherham MP Denis MacShane who accurately remarked, “What the looters wanted was for a few minutes to enter the world of Sloane Street consumption.” This from a man who notoriously claimed £5,900 for eight laptops. Of course, as an MP he obtained these laptops legally through his expenses.
Yesterday, the veteran Labour MP Gerald Kaufman asked the Prime Minister to consider how these rioters can be “reclaimed” by society. Yes, this is indeed the same Gerald Kaufman who submitted a claim for three months’ expenses totalling £14,301.60, which included £8,865 for a Bang & Olufsen television.
Or take the Salford MP Hazel Blears, who has been loudly calling for draconian action against the looters. I find it very hard to make any kind of ethical distinction between Blears’s expense cheating and tax avoidance, and the straight robbery carried out by the looters.
The Prime Minister showed no sign that he understood that something stank about yesterday’s Commons debate. He spoke of morality, but only as something which applies to the very poor: “We will restore a stronger sense of morality and responsibility – in every town, in every street and in every estate.” He appeared not to grasp that this should apply to the rich and powerful as well.
The tragic truth is that Mr Cameron is himself guilty of failing this test. It is scarcely six weeks since he jauntily turned up at the News International summer party, even though the media group was at the time subject to not one but two police investigations. Even more notoriously, he awarded a senior Downing Street job to the former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, even though he knew at the time that Coulson had resigned after criminal acts were committed under his editorship. The Prime Minister excused his wretched judgment by proclaiming that “everybody deserves a second chance”. It was very telling yesterday that he did not talk of second chances as he pledged exemplary punishment for the rioters and looters.
These double standards from Downing Street are symptomatic of widespread double standards at the very top of our society. It should be stressed that most people (including, I know, Telegraph readers) continue to believe in honesty, decency, hard work, and putting back into society at least as much as they take out.
But there are those who do not. Certainly, the so-called feral youth seem oblivious to decency and morality. But so are the venal rich and powerful – too many of our bankers, footballers, wealthy businessmen and politicians.
Of course, most of them are smart and wealthy enough to make sure that they obey the law. That cannot be said of the sad young men and women, without hope or aspiration, who have caused such mayhem and chaos over the past few days. But the rioters have this defence: they are just following the example set by senior and respected figures in society. Let’s bear in mind that many of the youths in our inner cities have never been trained in decent values. All they have ever known is barbarism. Our politicians and bankers, in sharp contrast, tend to have been to good schools and universities and to have been given every opportunity in life.
Something has gone horribly wrong in Britain. If we are ever to confront the problems which have been exposed in the past week, it is essential to bear in mind that they do not only exist in inner-city housing estates.
The culture of greed and impunity we are witnessing on our TV screens stretches right up into corporate boardrooms and the Cabinet. It embraces the police and large parts of our media. It is not just its damaged youth, but Britain itself that needs a moral reformation.
That's a really good piece. I was trying to work out who'd written it as I went, then saw the Telegraph link at the bottom - the world's turned upside down!
he can be quite good peter oborne, he's done some good documentaries as well, there was one on politics and the media, one on the demonisation of muslims, one on the israel lobby in this country ( i think its on the forum somewhere ) and one on the afghan or iraq war
its like peter hitchens, he can come out with some good stuff as well, and that ex republican galloway has on his show sometimes
not all right wingers are wrong all the time
IPCC 'misled' media on Mark Duggan shooting
In response to an inquiry by our correspondent Paul Lewis, the IPCC has sent this statement to the Guardian:
Analysis of media coverage and queries raised on Twitter have alerted to us to the possibility that we may have inadvertently given misleading information to journalists when responding to very early media queries following the shooting of Mark Duggan by MPS officers on the evening of 4th August.
The IPCC's first statement, issued at 22:49 on 4th August, makes no reference to shots fired at police and our subsequent statements have set out the sequence of events based on the emerging evidence. However, having reviewed the information the IPCC received and gave out during the very early hours of the unfolding incident, before any documentation had been received, it seems possible that we may have verbally led journalists to believe that shots were exchanged as this was consistent with early information we received that an officer had been shot and taken to hospital.
Any reference to an exchange of shots was not correct and did not feature in any of our formal statements, although an officer was taken to hospital after the incident.
This is significant, as much of the early media coverage referred to an "exchange of shots", with some media outlets clearly implying that police had been shot at first. This issue is one of the key grievances of the Duggan family.
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