Nanny Knows Best

Nanny Knows Best
Dedicated to exposing, and resisting, the all pervasive nanny state that is corroding the way of life and the freedom of the people of Britain.

Saturday, April 30, 2005

Nanny Bans Daffodils

Nanny Bans DaffodilsIt seems that Nanny must have some form of hayfever, or had a particularly unpleasant experience with flowers in her childhood, as she has decided to ban daffodils.

According to Nanny's chums at the Strood Civic Centre, daffodils are "politically biased".

Uhh?

Staff at the centre told Valerie Jewess, who was taking in a bunch of daffs to display there, that she could not display her flowers as yellow is the colour associated with the Liberal Democrats.

Whilst I realise that we are in the middle of a General Election, I do think that is taking things a little too far.

After all, each party (both mighty and small) have a particular colour in their brand; you cannot ban all colours.

Or maybe you can?

Friday, April 29, 2005

Nanny Censors Grauniad

Nanny Censors GrauniadNanny has, for some time now, been whipping up the media and the public into a frenzy over alleged Islamic bomb and terrorist plots.

Nanny knows that a compliant, and fearful, public will nod through her legislation covering id cards and trial without jury; indeed it will probably even re-elect her.

However, once in a blue moon a journalist will write an article that warns us that all is not what Nanny would have us believe.

One such article was written by Duncan Campbell, an investigative writer and a scientific expert witness on computers and telecommunications, for our old friends in The Grauniad.

His article covered the recent "Ricin Trial".

Here is a link to the story:

Grauniad

A link Ken?

That's not like you?

Well, click the link and see what happens.

Yes, that's right, The Grauniad have pulled the story.

Grauniad Plokners

Why?

It seems, that Nanny has a served a Public Interest Immunity Certificate banning publication.

Wonder why?

Don't worry though, it is still around on the net; and to save you the time and trouble of finding it, here it is in full.

Enjoy the feeling of freedom; and being able to read what you want, not what Nanny tells you.

Fake Terror - Ricin Ring That Never Was

Yesterday's trial collapse has exposed the deception behind attempts to link al-Qaida to a 'poison attack' on London By Duncan Campbell The Guardian - UK 4-15-5

Colin Powell does not need more humiliation over the manifold errors in his February 2003 presentation to the UN. But yesterday a London jury brought down another section of the case he made for war - that Iraq and Osama bin Laden were supporting and directing terrorist poison cells throughout Europe, including a London ricin ring.

Yesterday's verdicts on five defendants and the dropping of charges against four others make clear there was no ricin ring. Nor did the "ricin ring" make or have ricin. Not that the government shared that news with us. Until today, the public record for the past three fear-inducing years has been that ricin was found in the Wood Green flat occupied by some of yesterday's acquitted defendants. It wasn't.

The third plank of the al-Qaida-Iraq poison theory was the link between what Powell labelled the "UK poison cell" and training camps in Afghanistan. The evidence the government wanted to use to connect the defendants to Afghanistan and al-Qaida was never put to the jury. That was because last autumn a trial within a trial was secretly taking place. This was a private contest between a group of scientists from the Porton Down military research centre and myself. The issue was: where had the information on poisons and chemicals come from?

The information - five pages in Arabic, containing amateur instructions for making ricin, cyanide and botulinum, and a list of chemicals used in explosives - was at the heart of the case. The notes had been made by Kamel Bourgass, the sole convicted defendant. His co-defendants believed that he had copied the information from the internet. The prosecution claimed it had come from Afghanistan.

I was asked to look for the original source on the internet. This meant exploring Islamist websites that publish Bin Laden and his sympathisers, and plumbing the most prolific source of information on how to do harm: the writings of the American survivalist right and the gun lobby.

The experience of being an expert witness on these issues has made me feel a great deal safer on the streets of London. These were the internal documents of the supposed al-Qaida cell planning the "big one" in Britain. But the recipes were untested and unoriginal, borrowed from US sources. Moreover, ricin is not a weapon of mass destruction. It is a poison which has only ever been used for one-on-one killings and attempted killings.

If this was the measure of the destructive wrath that Bin Laden's followers were about to wreak on London, it was impotent. Yet it was the discovery of a copy of Bourgass's notes in Thetford in 2002 that inspired the wave of horror stories and government announcements and preparations for poison gas attacks.

It is true that when the team from Porton Down entered the Wood Green flat in January 2003, their field equipment registered the presence of ricin. But these were high sensitivity field detectors, for use where a false negative result could be fatal. A few days later in the lab, Dr Martin Pearce, head of the Biological Weapons Identification Group, found that there was no ricin. But when this result was passed to London, the message reportedly said the opposite.

The planned government case on links to Afghanistan was based only on papers that a freelance journalist working for the Times had scooped up after the US invasion of Kabul. Some were in Arabic, some in Russian. They were far more detailed than Bourgass's notes. Nevertheless, claimed Porton Down chemistry chief Dr Chris Timperley, they showed a "common origin and progression" in the methods, thus linking the London group of north Africans to Afghanistan and Bin Laden.

The weakness of Timperley's case was that neither he nor the intelligence services had examined any other documents that could have been the source. We were told Porton Down and its intelligence advisers had never previously heard of the "Mujahideen Poisons Handbook, containing recipes for ricin and much more". The document, written by veterans of the 1980s Afghan war, has been on the net since 1998.

All the information roads led west, not to Kabul but to California and the US midwest. The recipes for ricin now seen on the internet were invented 20 years ago by survivalist Kurt Saxon. He advertises videos and books on the internet. Before the ricin ring trial started, I phoned him in Arizona. For $110, he sent me a fistful of CDs and videos on how to make bombs, missiles, booby traps - and ricin. We handed a copy of the ricin video to the police.

When, in October, I showed that the chemical lists found in London were an exact copy of pages on an internet site in Palo Alto, California, the prosecution gave up on the Kabul and al-Qaida link claims. But it seems this information was not shared with the then home secretary, David Blunkett, who was still whipping up fear two weeks later. "Al-Qaida and the international network is seen to be, and will be demonstrated through the courts over months to come, actually on our doorstep and threatening our lives," he said on November 14.

The most ironic twist was an attempt to introduce an "al-Qaida manual" into the case. The manual - called the Manual of the Afghan Jihad - had been found on a raid in Manchester in 2000. It was given to the FBI to produce in the 2001 New York trial for the first attack on the World Trade Centre. But it wasn't an al-Qaida manual. The name was invented by the US department of justice in 2001, and the contents were rushed on to the net to aid a presentation to the Senate by the then attorney general, John Ashcroft, supporting the US Patriot Act.

To show that the Jihad manual was written in the 1980s and the period of the US-supported war against the Soviet occupation was easy. The ricin recipe it contained was a direct translation from a 1988 US book called the Poisoner's Handbook, by Maxwell Hutchkinson.

We have all been victims of this mass deception. I do not doubt that Bourgass would have contemplated causing harm if he was competent to do so. But he was an Islamist yobbo on his own, not an Al Qaida-trained superterrorist. An Asbo might be appropriate.

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Offensive Pies

Offensive PiesDear oh dear, we have become a nation of old Nannies haven't we?

The Advertising Standards Authority have said that the most complained about advert, in the last few months, was one for Mr Kipling's mince pies.

Seemingly people did not like the connection made in the advert, between a nativity play and a hospital birth.

The weaker a religion becomes, in terms of support and theological underpinning, the more paranoid its actions and statements.

Ooohhh...more controversy!

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Nanny Bans Hymns

Nanny Bans HymnsOh dear, it seems that even the clergy have succumbed to Nanny's brain washing.

Is nothing sacred?

The Bishop of Hulme, the Rt Rev Stephen Lowe a Church of England bishop, has demanded that churches ban the singing of "I Vow to Thee, My Country"; because he says it is heretical, and has racist overtones.

What utter nonsense!

Lowe seems to be under the delusions that this very popular hymn, which has been sung for generations, is in fact a symptom of the increase in English nationalism.

Lowe then, for good measure, likens it to the rise of Nazism.

The hymn is a popular choice for Remembrance Day services and other national occasions.

Needless to say Lowe doesn't much care for the hymn's associations with the British empire; they are "questionable" in a multi-faith, multi-cultural society.

Like it or not Bishop, there was an Empire which gave good and bad things to the world; you cannot dis-invent the British Empire, nor should you sweep it under the carpet.

It is precisely because of the Empire that we have a multi cultural, and tolerant, society today.

OOHH a bit of controversy!

Bishop Lowe says that the words are "totally heretical", because they suggested that people should pledge their allegiance to their country before God.

Quote:

"My country, right or wrong is not an appropriate sentiment for Christians to uphold,".

Bollocks!

Everyone knows that God is an Englishman, therefore the vow is not contradictory.

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Nanny Bans The Bible

Nanny Bans The BibleThe world, or rather Britain, has gone mad; truly truly mad.

It seems that in a fit of insanity, Stirling University Students Association (SUSA) have succumbed to Nanny's indoctrination and voted to ban the Bible.

Why?

Simple, because they believe it could offend non-Christians.

SUSA will remove up to 6,000 copies of the Gideon Bible from more than 2,000 halls of residence rooms.

Their rationale being, that representing one faith was not in the spirit of equality.

Al Wilson, president of the SUSA, said:

"The one thing the students have come up with is that they do have a Gideon Bible in their rooms but they feel that's not really fair on those who practice other faiths."

Unless I have missed the point here, no one is being forced to read it; if you don't like the message, then don't open the book.

The worrying thing is that these students are meant to be the "intellectual elite" of this country!

Students always like to claim that they are open minded, and receptive, to new ideas; it is more often than not the case that they have the most closed minds, and ingrained prejudices.

The future looks very bleak indeed.

Monday, April 25, 2005

Kiss My Hob

Kiss My HobNanny comes in many forms including; councils, the health and safety executive and the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

These organisations love to spend their time looking for areas of our lives into which they can poke their interfering noses.

The ASA have taken a particular dislike to celebrity chef Ainsley Harriott, or shall we say an advert in which he is currently appearing.

In this advert, for Fairy Power Spray, Ainsley is seen to be kissing his hob as he speaks lines that could have been crafted by Shakespeare:

"Everyday you squirt, wait and wipe. Love it."

Well, aside form the obvious damage to the English language, there seems to be little wrong with this harmless advert.

Not so, according to ASA.

You see, Ladies and Gentlemen, in ASA's eyes this advert represents a clear and present danger to people and children who may be encouraged to kiss their own hobs and consequently burn themselves.

As such, despite the highly unlikely scenario where anyone would be stupid enough to kiss their hob, ASA have forced Procter and Gamble to restrict the times at which the advert is shown.

There are many dangers in a kitchen, but I would have though that hob kissing does not rank amongst the top 10 threats to health and safety.