Telegraph: Blair’s anti-terror Bill was ‘an election ploy’
When the Prevention of Terrorism Act was going through Parliament, Mr Blair claimed that the orders were needed because “several hundred” active terrorists were plotting or threatening an attack in Britain, yet they fell outside the existing powers of the police and courts to prosecute them.
But in a progress report yesterday, Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, said he had made 11 orders since the Act was passed and each was in respect of individuals who had already been “certified” under 2001 legislation that was subsequently ruled discriminatory by the law lords.
Posted on June 21st, 2005 at 1:57 pm
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Spam above eeeeeeeeeek.
Brilliant British Initiatives in Basra.
Take “Emergency 115.” Recently, the city, with British assistance, instituted a “911″-style system for residents to dial in case of need. Humanely enough, the Brits designed 115 with a provision that allows Basrans to contact help even if they lack SIM cards in their mobile phones. (Land-lines are few and unreliable, so people live by their cells, which require the constant purchase of expensive “scratch” cards to replenish their minutes.) “We created 115 so the call is free,” a British officer who supervises the program told me.
Gang atfa gley, Robert Burns might say. For a certain segment of Basra’s population discovered the hilarity of making bogus emergency calls. To add to the fun, they remove their SIM cards and remain on the line for hours, tying up the system and preventing people with real crises from getting assistance. According to the British officer, “Only about 5 percent of people contacting 115 call actually need help.”
And probably even fewer call with medical emergencies. This is because public hospitals in Basra are medical emergencies, short on medicine, equipment, manpower  everything, it seems, except germs. Private centers are another matter, as evidenced by the Al-Moosawi Hospital, a sleek, clean, expensive establishment that looks American right down to the anodyne artwork on the walls. According to director Zaineldin Moosawi, the hospital contains 36 beds and serves up to 250 outpatients a day. “We even have a dental clinic,” he enthused.
What they don’t have is the one thing you’d expect in a well-equipped Iraqi hospital: an emergency room. “We had one,” Dr. Zaineldin recalled. “But it got to be a security problem, with all the gunmen coming in.” Seems that young tribal bucks would go a-feuding at night, get themselves shot up, then demand that the Mooswawi Hospital patch them up  and woe to the medic who proved unable to save a wounded brother or cousin’s life. “The British encouraged us to shut down the center,” said Dr. Zaineldin.
Then there’s garbage: Basra is choking in it, from shredded plastic bags ensnared on coils of barbed wire to archipelagos of rotting offal floating in the city’s canals. A few months back, the Brits  yes, them again  initiated a program that would pay trash collectors to cart waste material to a landfill in the desert. The plan seemed to work: Contractors brought truckloads of trash to the site, earning dinars in return. But the city seemed no cleaner. As the Brits soon discovered, contractors were loading up their vehicles with garbage from already-existing piles, located on the edge of town or smoldering in the city center. By the time the British rejiggered the program to compel contractors to direct their attention to city streets, the funding for the project disappeared, a victim of canceled plans, bureaucratic reorientation, or  more likely, locals say  theft.
Spam binned. Let’s hope Blooger get that sorted soon.
That’s a great article FF - I’ll lift it into the blog.