From Britain, but the same basic story could just as well be told from America:

The head of the NHS rationing watchdog has said he is ‘genuinely sorry’ for a delay in approving a new treatment for blindness.

But campaigners said Andrew Dillon’s comments would be of little consolation to the thousands of Britons who have lost their sight in the two years it took NICE to make its final decision.

The watchdog has now approved Lucentis, which is used to treat wet age-related macular degeneration, a condition which affects 26,000 new sufferers every year.

NICE’s original recommendation was that patients had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they would be given treatment to save the sight in the other.

The proposal caused a huge public outcry from doctors and campaigners, prompting a U-turn in December last year before further consultation resulted in the final decision today.

NHS thought it was their responsibility to decide what level of risk warranted use of this drug. The public vehemently disagreed with the determination that the drug was only worth taking after eye-sight was lost in one eye.

Why is the individual’s own judgment not sufficient? Let people decide when they want to take a drug and risk the side-effects, not government. If they want to wait until they are blind in one eye, then they can. But no one knows better than the individual how to properly weigh the consequences of their choices.

Proponents of government interventionism always promote these watchdog groups as protecting consumers, but what they really do is needlessly delay the operation of the market. The real beneficiaries are the drug manufacturers, whose already approved products need not face the level of competition they otherwise would without government meddling.

Freedom is a wonderful thing. Let it happen.

Hat tip: OpenMarket.org

What happens when multiculturalism and the victim culture collide? The end of sanity, that’s what.

For a year, Sarah has been facing financial ruin, due to a compensation claim for £34,000 brought by Bushra, 19, who has maintained she is due that figure after being turned down for a job at the Wedge salon in London’s King’s Cross.

In the event, the tribunal ruled this week that while Bushra’s claim of direct discrimination failed, her claim for indirect discrimination had succeeded.

Sarah has therefore been ordered to pay £4,000 compensation by way of ‘injury to feelings’.

…Since the judgment, Bushra, who is of Syrian descent and has worn a headscarf since she was 13, has, so far at least, chosen not to comment.

But, speaking last year, she admitted she had attended 25 interviews for hairdressing jobs without success.

But Sarah, she told the tribunal, had upset her the most.

She said: ‘I felt so down and got so depressed. I thought: “If I am not going to defend myself, who is?” Hairdressing has been what I’ve wanted to do ever since I was at high school.

‘This has ruined my ambitions. Wearing a headscarf is essential to my beliefs.’Bushra had a job in a salon in London, where her tasks included cutting hair, highlighting, tinting and perming, before she left to get married in Syria in 2006.

But on her return to Britain, she was unable to find work.

She has given up her ambitions to become a hairdresser and is studying travel and tourism at Hammersmith and West London College while working part-time in a shop.

At the tribunal, Bushra was asked if Sarah had made derogatory remarks about her headscarf.

She replied: ‘She did not. She just asked me if I wore it all the time, or whether I’d take it off.’

…

‘Her CV didn’t stand out because I was looking for someone who lived locally - something I’d specified in the advert so that I could call them in as and when required - and she lived several miles away in Acton,’ says Sarah.

‘One day she rang up to see if I’d got her CV and begged me for an interview. I told her I had concerns about where she lived, but she sounded so desperate that I agreed she could come in for a chat.’

A few days later, Bushra duly arrived at the salon.

‘I have to say I didn’t take to her,’ says Sarah. ‘She waltzed into the salon and hung up her coat as though she already had the job.

‘Naturally, I noticed her headscarf. But I presumed that, as she’s a hairdresser, she’d take if off when she was working. In 16 years, I’ve never known any stylist cover their hair with a headscarf. And this particular headscarf came all the way down to her eyebrows and covered her entire hairline.’

Sarah broached the subject with Bushra, who said she would not be removing the garment.

After ten minutes, with the interview complete, Sarah said she would come back to Bushra about the vacancy.

‘As she left, Bushra turned to me and said that she’d been turned down for jobs before,’ says Sarah. ‘And I admit I thought: “Well, what do you expect?”

‘It was not a religious matter. If she’d come in wearing a baseball cap and saying she wouldn’t take it off for work, then she wouldn’t have got the job either.’

One morning in the second week of June 2007, an innocuous white envelope landed on Sarah’s doormat. It contained a letter saying that she was being sued for £15,000 for indirect and direct discrimination by Bushra Noah.

This, the letter stated, related to compensation for injury to her feelings and lost earnings. Later, that figure was increased to £34,000.

‘I read it and re-read it and stood there dumbfounded,’ says Sarah.
‘I remembered Bushra, and I guessed straight away that the claim related to the headscarf. In my mind I was saying “But I wasn’t discriminating, it’s just a part of the job”, over and over again.

‘I dialled the number at the top of the letter and was told I needed to get a solicitor, but that because I worked, I wasn’t entitled to Legal Aid. I thought: “This is it - my business is over.” I was devastated.’

There are no words.

Europe Pushes Ahead Plans for Anti-Death Penalty Day

Europe will mark an anti-death penalty day next week, but it won’t be an official European Union initiative. Efforts to involve the E.U. failed when member state Poland refused to go along on the grounds that the death penalty debate ignored broader right-to-life questions.

The conservative Polish government’s objections ruined the E.U. plan, but another European grouping, the 47-nation Council of Europe (CoE), has decided to push ahead with a “European Day against the Death Penalty” on Oct. 10.

The CoE groups most European countries, including those outside of the E.U. It is independent of the 27-member E.U. and has been campaigning for years against capital punishment.

Poland was able to veto the E.U. plan to formally recognize the day, but at the CoE decisions are based on a majority view rather than unanimity.

I foresee a future dilemma for the Euroweenies. What will they do when they realize they are insulting Islam by denying the right of Muslims, who they usually bend over backwards to accommodate, to practice stonings of women for real or imagined social infractions.

If they oppose the death penalty, they get to feel good about themselves for being “compassionate,” plus they get the nice bonus of being able to attack America. On the other hand, they are rendering judgment on a cultural practice of another group, which flies in the face of their cultural relativism. And not they’re not just poo-pooing the behavior of any group, but the newest protected victim group on the block: Muslims. What’s a do-gooder Euroweeny to do?

Just when you thought British dhimmitude couldn’t get any more ridiculous. Trevor Phillips, the head of some silly “human rights and equality commission” has decided that British history just isn’t inclusive enough.

He said Muslims were also part of the national story and “sometimes we have to go back into the tapestry and insert some threads that were lost”.

He quoted the example of the Spanish Armada, which was held up by the Turks at the request of Queen Elizabeth I.

“It was the Turks who saved us,” Mr Phillips told a Labour fringe meeting.

Dhimmi Watch asks if Mr. Phillips is planning to include the slave raids carried out by Turkish clients against British ships and towns in his new tapestry? Somehow I doubt it.

Mr Phillips thinks that bending over backwards, destroying his national identity and rewriting one more suitable for Muslims will reduce their aggressive posture and ambition. He couldn’t be more wrong. Cultural concessions are to the culturally aggressive Islamists what military concessions were to Hitler. All Mr. Phillips is doing is proving how weak British culture is, that nothing in the country is worth standing up for. Anything and everything can be compromised. He might as well have already converted to Islam for all the good that will do.

The Guardian reports on Britain’s gang problem:

In a city where more than 3,000 firearm incidents have been logged in the past 15 months, the sound of shots is just background noise for too many people. But last week’s ambush, which left a 25-year-old man struggling to survive serious wounds to his leg and abdomen, has taken gang warfare in Manchester, mainly black on black, to a new level.

. . .UK gun crime is still rare, but the numbers injured by firearms in England and Wales has more than doubled since 1998, with London, Greater Manchester and the West Midlands accounting for 54 per cent of recorded incidents. So concerned has the government become that last February Tony Blair held a gun crime summit at which plans were outlined for more funding for community groups and tougher punishments for offenders.

In 1997, Britain banned handguns. 57,000 hand guns were confiscated between July 1997 and February 1998.* Yet the article notes that “the numbers injured by firearms in England and Wales has more than doubled since 1998.” According to the anti-gun lobby, this shouldn’t be possible.

Britain never had a large population of hand gun owners, and such crimes had already been on the rise prior to the ban. SO I don’t want anyone to get the idea that the ban caused this crime explosion, but it’s quite clear that Britain’s gun confiscations did absolutely nothing to reverse it’s upward crime trends. Gun restrictions do not reduce crime.

* Colin Greenwood. The British Handgun Ban: Logic, Politics and Effect, International Firearms Safety Seminar. New Zealand, February 2006.

While the Islamist war against the West heats up on British soil, the cross-Atlantic relationship is cooling considerably. The new Prime Minster’s appointment of Sir Mark Malloch Brown to a key foreign ministry post does not bode well for the future of our cross-Atlantic relationship.

As a U.N. official, Malloch Brown was an outspoken critic of American leadership on the world stage and a constant thorn in the side of the United States. He launched an unprecedented attack on Washington’s approach to the U.N. in a speech in New York in June 2006, despite the fact that Washington gives over $5 billion a year to the U.N. system–more than France, Germany, China, Canada, and Russia combined. Malloch Brown warned of the “serious consequences of a decades-long tendency by U.S. Administrations of both parties to engage only fitfully with the U.N.” and condemned “the prevailing practice of seeking to use the U.N. almost by stealth as a diplomatic tool while failing to stand up for it against its domestic critics.” He singled out for particular criticism Washington’s decision to opt out of joining the disastrous new U.N. Human Rights Council, despite the fact that it was no better than the discredited former Human Rights Commission.

Malloch Brown could barely disguise his contempt for the American public and media, speaking of “unchecked U.N.-bashing and stereotyping” and a “U.S. heartland [that] has been largely abandoned to its [the U.N.’s] loudest detractors, such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.” What was needed in response, he argued, was for America’s leaders to support the U.N. “not just in a whisper but in a coast to coast shout, that pushes back the critics domestically, and wins over the skeptics internationally.”

British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s ten year administration will soon be coming to an end; such departures generally lead to a time of reflection.

Tony Blair’s tenure has been one of significance for Britain. Though by no means a Freidman-esque freemarketer, he moved his party to the right by abandoning his parties protectionist platform for a more pro-market approach. Most importantly, however, Blair will be remembered for his Churchillian stand against radical Islam and global jihad. We can only hope his replacement will be as unwavering in the face of this barbaric threat, so that Britain and the United States can continue to stand together in the fight against evil.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said Thursday that he will step down as prime minister on June 27, after a decade in office in which he brokered peace in Northern Ireland and followed the United States to war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Surveying his time in power, Blair, 54, told supporters: “Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right.”

Following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S., it was right, Blair said, to “stand shoulder to shoulder with our oldest ally, and I did so out of belief.”

“And so Afghanistan, and then Iraq - the latter bitterly controversial.

Britain just won’t be the same without Blair at the helm. He was a tremendous ally to this country, and a capable leader for his own.

But as with all leaders in the free world, there comes a time when you just have to step aside. The trouble is getting those in congress to understand this.

I’m just relieved that Blair didn’t decide to remain prime-minister for the next 18 thousand years as this Foxnews headline from September of last year would suggest:

Apparently Connor Macleaod isn’t the only immortal from Britain.

I know many of you are wondering why we’re talking about the French elections. Here’s why you should care. The French election this year offered a clear choice between the far-left socialist Royal and the right leaning Sarkozy. The choice made by the French will make a dramatic difference if they are to turn around their floundering economy. Most importantly, however, is what this means for the war against global jihad. All indications point to Europe becoming the future center of conflict against the jihadists. A large swath of unemployed young French Muslims would be a boon for jihadist recruiters. And while many of you are probably saying, “So what, Europe deserves it for their persistent policies of appeasement,” and you certainly make a good point, we have to consider a Europe in chaos not to be a good thing.

Another story you won’t be hearing about in the American media is how this caps a decidedly pro-American turn in Europe. The mantra, repeated without though since the beginning of the Bush administration, has been that Bush has alienated our allies and Europe. And yet, during his tenure, Bush has seen both Germany and France elect leaders more favorable toward America than their predecessors. In the case of France, Sarkozy is much more favorable. The son of a Hungarian immigrant, Sarkozy once declared that he was proud to be called more American than French, which was no doubt a response to an intended slur from one of his opponents. A Sarkozy presidency will be much less sympathetic to Palestinian terrorism than his predecessor Chirac and more supportive of American and Israeli efforts to defeat the jihadists. And that’s why we should all care that he has defeated S?gol?ne Royal.

The French “conservative” candidate is looking like he might win the French Presidency. Nicolas Sarkozy received 31.2% of the vote in the first round, and is leading by over five percent over Socialist candidate Segolene Royal in recent polls for the election to conclude on Sunday. But as always seems to be the case, if the left loses the election there could be trouble.

PARIS (Reuters) - Socialist opponent Segolene Royal said on Friday that France risks violence and brutality if her opponent right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy wins Sunday’s presidential election.

On the last day of official campaigning, opinion polls showed Sarkozy enjoyed a commanding lead over Royal, who accused the former interior minister of lying and polarizing France.

“Choosing Nicolas Sarkozy would be a dangerous choice,” Royal told RTL radio.

“It is my responsibility today to alert people to the risk of (his) candidature with regards to the violence and brutality that would be unleashed in the country (if he won),” she said.

Pressed on whether there would be actual violence, Royal said: “I think so, I think so,” referring specifically to France’s volatile suburbs hit by widespread rioting in 2005.

Let me translate: If the socialist candidate doesn’t win, the spoiled children on the left and their pet Muslims in the ghettos will throw a temper tantrum. I imagine this is a true statement. But why say it? Does she think she can scare people into giving her their vote at the last second? I guess in France it’s no different than it is here: when you don’t have any ideas, you play to peoples’ fears.

Royal is quoted criticizing Sarkozy for his tough law and order stances, stating that “he is unable to enter some neighborhoods for fear of provoking violence.” Tell us something we don’t know, you commie wench. They’re called no-go zones, or Zones Urbaines Sensibles in the man-woman tongue of former Gaul. And they’re not very hospitable to much of anyone, other than the subjects of Dar al-Islam - that goes for police, politician and civilian alike. These “sensitivity zones”, which are in effect no longer part of the Republic of France, are the direct result of European leftists’ self-hating multiculturalism, and their tendancy to ignore problems so as not to offend those who deliberately cause them. Look at all the flak Zarkozy took for daring to degrade participants in the recent Paris riots as voyous - “thugs”. Some people thought this was too strong a word to describe those out destroying whole neighborhoods and brutalizing the police.

The solution to France’s problems is more of Sarkozy’s policies and less of Royal’s. Sarkozy is nowhere near what I could call a conservative, but if I were a Frenchman he would have my vote over the alternative. I would probably also smell worse and have a mistress.