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Parents Fined For Taking Child On Holiday

What’s the ****’s going on in Britain these days? Parents take their kid on a five day holiday to Spain in May and are fined 60-quid by the local education authority? I’d tell them to go to hell. Surely, the law (whatever it is) is meant to apply to parents who fail to send their kids to school without a valid reason, not because the kid has a chance to visit a foreign country for a few days and enjoy themselves in the process.^[1]

Dear god, when we were kids my folks would often take a holiday in term time. They’d notify the headmaster we’d be away between certain dates, and that was that. No one even suggested it was wrong., and definitely not against any law. Parents had the final say, because – as Catherine Flint of Queen Square Chambers informs us:

Prior to 2013 the regulations governing school absences referred to parents applying for family holidays in ‘special circumstances’ and schools having a discretion to grant up to 10 days’ holiday per year.

So, what’s the problem Catherine? Why the sixty quid fine?

This changed with the introduction of The Education (Penalty Notices) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2013 No. 757. Now leave of absence during term time shall not be granted unless there are ‘exceptional circumstances’. This has led to more unauthorised absences and an increase in parents being fined by way of penalty notices

So ‘special circumstances’ included holidays taken in term time, but ‘exceptional circumstances’ does not.

What a load of bollocks! I’m getting totally sick of half-baked authority telling people they can’t do this, or mustn’t do that. Britain’s fast turning into a police state.

You can bet your last euro that if Lord Bloody Asshole decided to take his son out of Harrow or Eton, for a week at Asshole Villas in the Bermudas, the local authority wouldn’t be rushing to chase him for sixty quid. Laws for the poor and none for the rich.

But can’t a family holiday be classed as an ‘exceptional circumstance’? Apparently not, since the earlier case of a Mister Platt who, in true British tradition, steadfastly refused to pay the fine imposed and was summoned to appear before the magistrates.

Catherine again:

Section 444(1A) [of the Act] goes on to state [that] If in the circumstances mentioned in subsection (1) the parent knows that his child is failing to attend regularly at the school and fails to cause him to do so, he is guilty of an offence. Mr Platt was prosecuted under the less serious section 444(1), prosecutions under (1A) usually being reserved for cases of persistent truancy. His case turned on the definition of “regularly”. His argument was that as his daughter had 90.3 percent attendance, and as the local authority’s policy on satisfactory attendance was between 90 – 95 percent, she had not failed to attend school regularly. The magistrates agreed and found there was no case to answer.

So, end of story? No, I thought not:

The local authority appealed by way of case stated and in June 2016 the Divisional Court of the Queen’s Bench Division held that “[a] child’s attendance outside the specified period is relevant to the question whether the offence has been committed.” The local authority appealed to the Supreme Court and judgment being handed down on 6 April 2017.

In her judgment, Lady Hale DP declared that for the purposes of section 444 “regularly” means “in accordance with the rules prescribed by the school”. Therefore, any unauthorised absence is a criminal offence.^[2]

I’ll just bet Lady Hale DP (or to give her her full title, “The Right Honourable The Baroness Hale of Richmond DBE PC FBA) is mates with The Right Honorable Lord Bloody Asshole and his son, The Right Honorable Master Bloody Asshole of Harrow School.

‘Right Honorable’, indeed! Who are they kidding? That shower are about as honorable as a pair of pickpockets working Wal-Mart on a Saturday afternoon.

Surely it’s time for a Peasant’s Revolt?

^{[1] “Dad ‘marks’ schools boss’s holiday fine letter” BBC, August 10th 2018}

^{[2] “Another Brick in the Wall: Section 444 of the Education Act 1996” Catherine Flint, Queen Square Chambers, Undated}

Who does she think she is – the next Doctor Dolittle!^[1]

Or, perhaps, John “Grizzly” Adams, reincarnated.

Only last year I wrote a post entitled, “”Heaven Preserve Us From Animal Lovers” about an image of a very stupid girl standing neck deep in water while kissing a crocodile/alligator. It was a smaller reptile than this latest four metre monster.

When will folk stop thinking they have some magical power over wild animals that the rest of us mere mortals don’t have? This girl is in an incredibly dangerous situation, one she thinks she can handle because she has some power, a “special relationship”, with the alligator. All it will take is for one instinctive notion to fire off in the creature’s reptilian brain and she’ll be its next meal.

I wonder if she’s ever heard of Dicko Toke…

…he was a keeper charged with caring for crocodiles at the sacred lake Yamassoukrou on the Ivory Coast.

Here’s an excerpt from the International Business Times dated September 2012:

Dicko Toke had been a crocodile keeper at the sacred lake Yamassoukrou, Ivory Coast, for 30 years when “The Captain” dragged him underwater to eat him.

The artificial lake had been built by Ivory Coast’s founding father Felix Houphouet-Boigny Le Vieux around his presidential palace in the early 1980s.

Houphouet-Boigny wanted the lake to be blessed by animists and filled with massive crocodiles as the animals were considered almost sacred by his ethnic group – the Baoule.

Toke was responsible for looking after the animals, who all had fancy names such as Capitain, Vice-president and Parliamentary speaker. He would call them by name to the shore and feed them live chickens to entertain tourists.

His pose for a group of Pakistani UN soldiers, however, proved fatal. Capitain grabbed his robe and did not relax his grip despite being stabbed twice with a machete by Toke.

Toke, who was close to retirement, was pulled into the middle of the lake and dragged underwater with the help of another crocodile – Chef de Cabinet.^[2]

Dicko Toke lasted thirty years before his charges finally ate him alive. I wonder if the young lady from Texas in the image above will last that long.

I doubt it.

^{[1] “Texas student poses with alligator in graduation snaps” BBC, August 7th 2018}

^{[2] “Ivory Coast: Presidential Crocodiles Eat Feeder Dicko Toke” International Business Times, September 13th 2012}

Who are the Jews? They’re a religious group, a minority section of the world’s population, a bunch of folk consisting of good and bad, with most residing somewhere in the middle. In other words, they’re just like the rest of us. With one unique difference, they have a special homeland, should they choose to live there, bequeathed to them under the Balfour Declaration of 1917 by the eventual victors of the Great War, an act designed initially to bolster the support of British Jews in the war.

It takes a lot to rile me these days. Even the crazed antics of the latest American to think he knows what he’s doing while inhabiting the White House, don’t really conjure anger in my breast. After all, I’ve lived long enough to realise that those who think they’re the answer to the world’s prayers are generally the ones who couldn’t organise a successful piss-up, even if it were held in a brewery.

But, dammit, reading an article in the Guardian today really caused my aging red corpuscles to steam. For some years now the UK’s Labour Party has been beset by bad press amid allegations of antisemitism within its ranks. It’s long been an almost standard form of attack by Tory governments attempting to besmirch their socialist opponents, and this latest one resurfaced around 2012 after Labour’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn, defended a London mural by the L.A. political activist artist, Mear One (Kalen Ockerman), after accusations it was antisemitic.^[1]

Ockerman denied it was rascist, stating that the mural was about class and privilege, and that the figures sitting around the table were both “Jewish and white Anglos”, but Lutfur Rahman, the then mayor of Tower Hamlets, where the mural was situated, saw an opportunity for making political capital and made a great show of describing it thus:

“…the images of the bankers perpetuate antisemitic propaganda about conspiratorial Jewish domination of financial and political institutions”. ^[2]

Tower Hamlets was an ideal area for Mear One’s work of art. Run down, poor, with Black, Asian, and other ethnic minorities outnumbering the white population 2-1, it’s one of the world’s most diverse zones, and one of England’s most deprived. A mural decrying class and privilege was certainly not out of place.

Luftur Rahman was later banned from holding political office, accused by two well-known UKTV documentaries of corruption, and, according to the Law Society Gazette:

Lutfur Rahman, the disgraced former mayor of London’s Tower Hamlets borough, was today struck off the roll of solicitors and handed an £86,400 costs order.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found all allegations put forward by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to be proven, bringing an end to a case which dates back nearly three years.

Rahman, a family law specialist, was ordered to vacate his position of mayor in 2015 after an election court found him guilty of illegal and corrupt practices.

The SRA subsequently charged Rahman with failing to uphold the rule of law and administration of justice, failing to act with integrity and failing to behave in a way that maintains the trust the public places in him and in the provision of legal services.

On the third day of a hearing, a three-person tribunal this morning found Rahman liable on all counts.^[3]

We can really take the opinions of this guy seriously!

Frankly, I find this the biggest load of bollocks I’ve heard in a long time, notwithstanding the crap emanating from the mouth of the Trump. There was nothing anti-Jewish in this mural. It’s all about the corruption of Capitalism and the possibly emerging new world order. The artist stated categorically that the figures represent an ‘elite banker cartel of the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, and the Morgans, and that the pyramid symbolised Freemasonry.’

Of the wealthy banking families he identifies one is Jewish, one is Protestant, and the other was possibly Episcopalian. Why did no-one condemn this art work as anti-religious, or even anti-Freemason?

The Labour Party is under attack because the present UK government is corrupt, hanging onto power by a thread, used foul tactics to coerce the public into narrowly voting for Brexit, and made an unholy mess of it since. Accusations of ‘antisemitism’ are now the weapons being used to turn voters away from what the Tories fear is a political party well able to wrest power from them.

Sadly, so heavily is the germ of ‘antisemitism’ embedded in society that there are influential members of the Labour Party themselves screaming the word from the party headquarters and calling for Corbyn’s resignation. Disaffected young people, easily swayed, are taking up the banner and demonstrating against Corbyn’s leadership.

I’m sick to my toes of this ridiculous guilt-trip we’re all supposed to be riding because of what occurred nearly one hundred years ago under the Nazis. Jewish people living outside of Israel are a minority, just like other minorities in countries throughout the world. As such they deserve to be treated with an equal importance to all other citizens – but not more so.

We non-Jews today did not send them to the Nazi gas chambers, anymore than we were responsible for the dreadful suffering of African slaves, or the other atrocities of empire. I was equally riled by the then UK prime minister, Tony Blair, apologising in my name for what my ancestors apparently did to Africans. As yet no politician has tried to apologise on my behalf for the slaughters that took place in India under the Raj, Malaya, or many other so-called nations of the British Empire. I sincerely hope they never do.

I abhor violence, or incitement to violence, against any community whatever their race or creed, but this antisemitism fever is nothing more than a block on freedom of speech, and a go-ahead to successive Israeli governments to steal more land and inflict more suffering on the Palestinians they’ve evicted from their homeland.

I began this by asking: who are the Jews? I believe the vast majority are simply good, ordinary, folk getting on with their lives like the rest of us. Unfortunately, there are a few in powerful positions, with huge chips on their shoulders, who believe we still owe them something for what happened a long time ago.

They’re wrong.

^{[1] “Antisemitism: Corbyn and the crisis that won’t go away” Guardian, August 5th 2018}

^{[2] “Did Jeremy Corbyn back artist whose mural was condemned as antisemitic?” Jewish Chronicle, November 6th 2015}

^{[3] “£86,000 costs as tribunal strikes off former mayor” Law Society Gazette, December 20th 2017}