Her offence was to unwittingly sell a goldfish to a 14-year-old boy taking part in a trading standards ‘sting’.

At most, pet shop owner Joan Higgins, 66, expected a slap on the wrist for breaking new animal welfare laws which ban the sale of pets to under-16s.

Instead, the great-grandmother was taken to court, fined £1,000 ($1,350 USD), placed under curfew – and ordered to wear an electronic tag for two months.

The punishment is normally handed out to violent thugs and repeat offenders.

The prosecution of Mrs Higgins and her son Mark is estimated to have cost taxpayers £20,000 ($27,000 USD) and has left her with a criminal record.

Mark, 47, was also fined and ordered to carry out 120 hours of unpaid work in the community.

Last night, as an MP criticised the magistrates, Mrs Higgins – who has run the pet shop for 28 years – said the family’s eight-month ordeal had left them traumatised.

She added: ‘It’s ridiculous. I mean, what danger am I that I have to wear an electronic tag? These last few months have been a very stressful time.’

The seven-week curfew imposed by the court means she is unable to babysit her great-grandson at his home or go to bingo sessions with her sister, and will be unable to attend a Rod Stewart concert after tickets were bought for her by her nephew, actor Will Mellor.

Under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 it is illegal to sell pets – including goldfish – to children under the age of 16 unless they are accompanied by an adult. Pet shops must also provide advice on animal welfare to buyers.

David Davies, Tory MP for Monmouth, said: ‘You simply couldn’t make it up. It is absolutely ludicrous that old ladies should be hounded through the courts and electronically tagged for something like this.

‘At a time when courts are being told not to lock up career burglars we have them issuing severe punishments like this on little old ladies.’ Mr Davies, who has served as a special constable for three years, said: ‘Not only is it traumatic for her but it is a complete waste of time and taxpayers’ money. It is ridiculous.

The goldfish was later adopted by an animal welfare officer and is in good health.

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People will need to turn vegetarian if the world is to conquer climate change, according to a leading authority on global warming.

In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said: “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.”

Yo, Lord Stern, you really want to come over here and attempt to take away my steak? Gook luck with that.

vegetarian, climate change, global warming, Lord Stern, greenhouse gas

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Bristol City Council is urging people to leave their sheds open because padlocks could lead to thieves forcing their way through doors and windows of the council-owned sheds to steal garden equipment.

The council said that its new initiative could save taxpayers’ money because fewer sheds would have to be repaired or replaced.

“Don’t padlock your shed; it can save the shed being damaged if someone does try to get into it. If there is a break-in, always inform the police,” the Telegraph quoted its guide as reading.

Huh? Are we talking about the Brits with their stiff upper lips, or the quick-to-surrender French?

Ladies, panties are no longer allowed because they are an inconvenience to the rapist. Also, please leave your blinds open and doors unlocked so that they will not hurt themselves as they enter your dwelling. If the rapist is hurt, you will be charged for causing them harm.

My head just exploded.

Bristol City Council

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They must have known he was a troublemaker the moment they saw him.

With his white hair, wax jacket and glasses, 78-year-old Philip Clarkson Webb clearly ticked all the boxes any eagle-eyed policemen would mark as ‘danger’.

And as he shuffled along the pavement towards them there was one thing above all they deemed to pose a threat – his walking stick.

The officers surrounded the retired classics teacher and informed him the 3ft wooden cane was an ‘offensive weapon‘ and had to be confiscated.

The cops surrounded this retired old man and confiscated his walking stick because they, in their experienced and professional opinions, deemed the stick to be an offensive weapon … maybe even one of those evil Assault Walking Sticks.

Philip Clarkson Webb, walking stick, offensive weapon

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In a grim attempt at revenge against his estranged wife, a British businessman committed suicide by decapitation in his Aston Martin sports car, the U.K.’s Daily Mail reported Friday.

According to the Mail, Gerald Mellin, 54, had been consumed with dark thoughts surrounding his 34-year-old wife’s decision to leave him.

The day before his death, a court had granted Mirielle Mellin additional alimony, the Mail reported.

Following the decision, in the last contact with his wife, Mellin sent a text message reading, “Congratulations, XXX.”

The businessman then reportedly tied one end of a rope he kept in his Aston Martin convertible to a tree and wrapped the other end of it around his neck as he sat in the driver’s seat. He then drove the car at a high speed onto a busy road, forcing other drivers to witness his violent suicide, the Mail said.

Oh. My.

Aston Martin, Gerald Mellin, Mirielle Mellin, suicide

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After Linda Davies reported to police that her 15-year-old daughter had been raped, it took three months — plus two dozen phone calls and a threat of legal action — before police questioned the suspect, a 28-year-old neighbor.

“I gave police his name, address, mobile phone number, car registration — everything but his passport,” said Davies, 44, a strong-minded mother of two daughters. “I was basically begging them. He lived five minutes away from us.”

The suspect was finally arrested but acquitted at a trial in which the judge told the jury that he was “in a way a man of good character” because his previous criminal convictions, for possession of stolen goods and marijuana, did not involve violence.

Davies was furious at the judge, who also instructed the jurors to ignore the victim‘s young age, and at police, who lost cellphone records that contradicted the defendant’s account.

Davies said she was stunned to learn that her daughter’s case was the rule, not the exception. According to government statistics, only 5.7 percent of rapes officially recorded by police in England and Wales end in a conviction.

“What are they saying?” Davies asked. “That 95 percent of women that come forward are telling lies?”

In Britain, a nation whose justice system has been used as a model around the globe, government officials and women’s rights activists agree that rape goes largely unpunished.

Even some cases that do end in a guilty verdict stir outrage. Last year, a judge sentenced a 24-year-old man to two years in prison for having sex with a 10-year-old after concluding that the girl had “dressed provocatively.”

It is illegal in Britain to interview jurors — even after a verdict. But public opinion polls show that a sizable proportion — a quarter to a third — of Britons say a rape victim is responsible for the attack if she is drunk or wearing “sexy” clothes.

Around the world, rapists are rarely punished. In the United States, 13 percent of rape reports end in a conviction. In many developing and Muslim countries, women’s activists say many victims don’t even report gang or stranger rapes because it is so difficult to win convictions. Reporting has even led to victims being charged with adultery or sentenced to public lashings for “mingling” with men.

OK, let’s get a few things out of the way. Some women do dress very sexy. They dress this way because they want to feel and appear sexy to the world. But the fact that a woman is wearing a tight skirt has nothing to do with whether I have enough self-control to prevent myself from assaulting her. Somehow I doubt when a woman puts on something sexy she’s saying to herself, “Gee, I hope I get raped today.”

Also there is the existence of false accusations by women. Some women do get angry at a man for whatever reason and dream up a false charge of rape. When this is discovered the woman should do as much hard time in prison as the man would have done if he were actually guilty.

Rape is terrorism. It is aggravated assault. It is a crime with lingering effects to the victim. It deserves to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. And in this article we see how the court systems around the world are failing women.

At the end of the day each and every woman must come to the realization that she, and she alone, is responsible for their personal safety. What good are the cops going to do if you cannot contact them until after the rape is over? Women need to legally own a handgun and become trained with it. They also require the survival mindset to use the gun if necessary and have the ability to put several bullets between the aggressor’s eyes.

The majority of us men are fine upstanding people. But there are a few men that are predators, and if you don’t deal with them today they will survive to prey on another woman tomorrow. Civilized people around the globe need to draw a line in the sand and exclaim, “No more.” And it makes me happy that my daughter and my wife both have their handgun licenses and both carry a handgun.

rape, criminal, victim, handgun

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For nearly a quarter of a century, Lourdes Maxwell has celebrated the arrival of summer by putting a paddling pool in the garden.

This year, however, her two grandchildren and the children of her neighbours may have to find another way to cool off in the heat.

Miss Maxwell’s local council has decided that the pool – which is only 2ft deep – needs a lifeguard.

The 47-year-old divorced mother of three has also been told she must have insurance before she can inflate the toy outside her house in Portsmouth.

The health and safety edict came after she wrote to the city council asking for permission to put a bigger pool in the communal garden outside her home.

Not only was she told it was too dangerous, but the council told her to empty the existing pool.

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And would you not agree, as a very significant political figure in the United States, Colin, that America, at the present time, is in danger of relying too much upon the hard power and not enough upon building the trust from which the soft values, which of course all of our family life that actually at the bottom, when the bottom line is reached, is what makes human life valuable?

Colin Powell delivered a lengthy response to the former Archbishop’s question:

The United States believes strongly in what you call soft power, the value of democracy, the value of the free economic system, the value of making sure that each citizen is free and free to pursue their own God-given ambitions and to use the talents that they were given by God. And that is what we say to the rest of the world. That is why we participated in establishing a community of democracy within the Western Hemisphere. It’s why we participate in all of these great international organizations.

There is nothing in American experience or in American political life or in our culture that suggests we want to use hard power. But what we have found over the decades is that unless you do have hard power — and here I think you’re referring to military power — then sometimes you are faced with situations that you can’t deal with.

I mean, it was not soft power that freed Europe. It was hard power. And what followed immediately after hard power? Did the United States ask for dominion over a single nation in Europe? No. Soft power came in the Marshall Plan. Soft power came with American GIs who put their weapons down once the war was over and helped all those nations rebuild. We did the same thing in Japan.

So our record of living our values and letting our values be an inspiration to others I think is clear. And I don’t think I have anything to be ashamed of or apologize for with respect to what America has done for the world.

We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we’ve done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in, and otherwise we have returned home to seek our own, you know, to seek our own lives in peace, to live our own lives in peace. But there comes a time when soft power or talking with evil will not work where, unfortunately, hard power is the only thing that works.

World Economic Forum, Colin Powell, Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey

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The Archbishop of Canterbury says the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law in the UK “seems unavoidable”.

Dr Rowan Williams told Radio 4′s World at One that the UK has to “face up to the fact” that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.

Dr Williams argues that adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law would help maintain social cohesion.

For example, Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia court.

Oh, goody! Now maybe the BBC can also televise live the stonings of women that have a false charge of adultery given them by a bunch of crusty old imams.

First let’s look at the context here. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, as well as the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The present archbishop is this idiot Rowan Williams. Williams is the 104th in the list of Archbishops of Canterbury, in a line that goes back more than 1400 years to the first, Saint Augustine of Canterbury, who founded the see, the oldest in England, in the year 597. Along with the Church of England as a whole, the Archbishops of Canterbury were in communion with the See of Rome until the English Reformation, around 1534, when the independence of the English Church was established. In the order of precedence, the Archbishop of Canterbury is ranked above all individuals in the realm, with the exception of the Sovereign and members of the Royal Family.

So whenever this clown speaks, people listen.

Says The Moxargon Group:

Dr. Rowan Williams is basically saying that the Judeo-Christian foundation of British liberty isn’t worth fighting for because it offends the sort of people who don’t want or deserve liberty.

What he should be saying is that Britain is a nation built on Judeo-Christian Liberty, and that all those who don’t like it, can leave it.

Of course you’d have to actually believe in something to say something like that, and I get the feeling that Dr. Rowan Williams is much too “intellectual” to actually believe in anything, let alone fight for it.

Social cohesion comes from people adapting to a new and ever evolving society, not from accepting the backward demands of thugs and bullies for fear of offending them. Better to get your head hacked off than live a sniveling little snot under the boot of a tyrant.

You do not build a cohesive society, by socially cutting people off from each other through custom-made legal systems based on ethnicity and religion. Instead you create a bunch of little societies, that are all at each others throats until cohesion is achieved through one side killing all of the other.

Ouch.

And “a bunch of little societies, that are all at each others throats until cohesion is achieved through one side killing all of the other” sounds strangely like Merry Ole Europe during the Middle Ages, doesn’t it?

Even forgetting the concept of “equal protection under the law”, why is mighty Britain bending over backwards to accommodate these immigrants, deferring to them instead of the people that actually built their once-great nation?

Archbishop of Canterbury, Sharia, Islam, Muslim, Church of England, Anglican, Rowan Williams

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“It is a moral imperative that we [the federal government] provide health insurance for the 47 million uninsured Americans,” Hillary Clinton recently said on the Fox on Sunday program.

Barack Obama said that every American would have access to private or government-sponsored health benefits by the end of his first term if he were elected President.

When asked by a reporter if an individual decided they didn’t want the healthcare John Edwards is pushing on American he quickly responded, “You don’t get that choice.”

Many point to the “overwhelming success” of Canada and the UK – where wait times have increased tenfold and costs are skyrocketing. The well-read and the intelligent understand that the universal healthcare promoted by the Democrats is nothing more than economic quicksand. But it’s the Parasites & Leeches™ – those that believe they are entitled to services for which they do not pay and benefits of which they have not earned – that are the targets for the Democrats’ pleas. It is these Parasites & Leeches™ that will suddenly clog the hospitals with numerous maladies and sufferings while the rest of us work longer hours and open our wallets to fund their medical care.

To see how the UK’s Parasites & Leeches™ have “matured” the healthcare situation you don’t have to look very far. From The UK Telegraph:

Doctors are calling for NHS treatment to be withheld from patients who are too old or who lead unhealthy lives.

Smokers, heavy drinkers, the obese and the elderly should be barred from receiving some operations, according to doctors, with most saying the health service cannot afford to provide free care to everyone.

About one in 10 hospitals already deny some surgery to obese patients and smokers, with restrictions most common in hospitals battling debt.

Managers defend the policies because of the higher risk of complications on the operating table for unfit patients. But critics believe that patients are being denied care simply to save money.

OF COURSE it’s to save money, stupid. You’ve mandated that the nation’s government-funded healthcare system provide services to everyone. Now you’ve created an entire sub-culture of Parasites & Leeches™ that use more than they pay, and you can’t understand why the system is going broke? Are you that ignorant or just blind? You are in the beginnings of a downward spiral to implosion of your entire healthcare system.

• Rates of potentially fatal hospital superbugs are continuing to rise because of chronic failures by the NHS to deal with the problem, says a study by the National Audit Office (NAO). Everything from unclean instruments to shoddy care have been listed as blame.
• London is bearing the brunt of shortages in the NHS according to a new report from the King’s Fund. It concludes that patients are getting a ‘raw deal’ as staff shortages in the capital run at twice the national average. “We are relying too heavily on temporary staff to plug permanent vacancies. This is simply unacceptable, as it has an impact on NHS staff morale and a potential knock-on effect for London’s patients,” said Niall Dickson. Huh? Temporary staff are the ones providing the medical care since the permanent staff are all quitting? Oh, that’s comforting.
• Patients at the Northampton General Hospital can now reduce the time required for surgery by paying up to £6,000, as the hospital trust is unable to perform the operations due to scarcity of funds. Wait a minute – a patient paying for their own surgery? That sounds like the old-fashioned way to do things, doesn’t it?
• Women across the Cotswolds could be denied livesaving breast cancer drugs because the local NHS trust cannot afford them. Cotswold and Vale Primary Care Trust’s mounting debt has forced bosses to make drastic decisions in a bid to cut costs.
• A case in the UK involving a woman who has decided to take her son to India for surgery rather than endure a long wait with the National Health Service is drawing media attention. Elliot Knot, who suffered a serious back injury in January while ice skating, was told by NHS doctors that he would have to wait another nine months for his operation. After learning that surgery at a private hospital would be prohibitively expensive, his mother decided to fly him to India.
• Charles Collins, of Blackburn, was told in February that he needed urgent treatment on a blood clot on one of his eyes but arrived for his appointment three months later to be told he faced further delay because a machine had broken down. Has anyone in the US had to delay needed treatment in this way?

And this is what the Democrats want for the US?

universal health care, Socialist, Democrat, Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Canada, UK, Doctor, NHS, patient, hospital

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