Yesterday at the end of a four week trial at Southwark Crown Court, a jury found Metropolitan Police Commander Ali Dizaei guilty of having abused his position as a police officer by wrongly arresting and falsifying the case he brought against a young Iraqi web-designer in July 2008. Dizaei received a four year prison sentence.
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Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling has pertinently illustrated the pitfalls of interpreting crime figures.
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I don’t know whether the decision to subject literary genres routinely dismissed as unsophisticated to a scrutiny of sorts that will combine the sublime with the ridiculous is a) a timely and culturally constructive move or b) just the evolution of a school of thought preoccupied with ‘owning’ the child ostensibly in order to ‘control’ it.
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The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) is a little-known Clause in the Lisbon Treaty (the much embattled re-formulation of the failed EU Constitution, which came into force in Dec 2009). Under the ECI, 1million EU citizens from a “significant number” of EU states can submit an “appropriate” proposal to the EU Commission suggesting that it drafts new legislation.
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In November 2000, the European Union issued a directive intended to provide ‘a general framework for equal treatment in employment and occupation’.
While designed to prohibit employers from discriminating on grounds of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, its fourth article expressly stated that ‘the Directive shall not prejudice the right of churches… to require individuals working for them to act in good faith and with loyalty to the organisation’s ethos.’
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I used to want to be an astronaut. I also, aged 10 and a half, thought very seriously for a whole afternoon about becoming a Bond girl. At other points in my primary school education I just wanted to get full marks in my spelling test.
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