Tag: united kingdom

Retired BBC producer caught with over 800 child abuse images spared jail time due to ‘poor health’

76-year-old Victor Melleney, a retired BBC producer, was caught with 832 indecent images of children stored on a range of devices.

Melleney, who worked on top shows such as Question Time and Panorama, was spared jail time Friday after a judge decided a prison sentence would be “particularly challenging” for the septuagenarian in “poor health.”

Melleney admitted he is addicted to legal pornography, but maintained he had no interest in indecent images of children, the Kingston Crown Court heard.

According to the Daily Mail, when Melleney was arrested in 2018 at his west London home, National Crime Agency officers found 612 of the 832 images on a hard drive, but he insisted he had no idea how the illegal material got there.

The officers also found illegal stun guns at the time belonging to Melleney, and he admitted to four charges of possession of prohibited weapons for discharge of noxious gas, namely three Tasers and CS gas spray, at an earlier hearing.

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UK Government Greases Skids For Fleets of Surveillance Drones Over Cities

In what appears to be a cynical PR stunt, the UK government is considering plans to allow women who feel threatened on the street to call upon surveillance drones that would arrive in minutes and shine a bright light on any potential attacker.

What could possibly go wrong?

“Women in fear of an attack will be able to use a phone app to summon a drone, which could arrive within minutes armed with a powerful spotlight and thermal cameras to frighten off any potential assailant,” reports the Telegraph.

Trials will take place on campus at Nottingham University at a cost of £500,000 during which the tech will be used to “protect students and staff.”

The scheme will be submitted to the UK government’s Innovate research program, and could eventually see helicopters being replaced by drones as a front line tool of law enforcement.

“It is a high capability drone that costs just £100 an hour but can do 80 percent of what a police helicopter can do,” said Richard Gill, the founder of Drone Defence. “It cannot do high speed pursuits but it can do the other tasks such as searching for people and ground surveillance.”

Gill noted that 25 drones could do the job of one police helicopter in London for the same price, with the drones being housed at five base locations across the city.

The idea of countless government drones whizzing around a city keeping tabs on people is garishly dystopian.

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UK Inches Closer To Eliminating Private Car Ownership

Soon, Brits will own nothing and will be happier for it…

UK Government Transport Minister Trudy Harrison recently spoke at a mobility conference, addressing the future of personal mobility. In her comments, she said it was necessary to ditch the “20th-century thinking centred around private vehicle ownership and towards greater flexibility, with personal choice and low carbon shared transport.” That’s right, she said the quiet part loud and showed the hand of a growing number of government officials.

Harrison went on to praise not only public transportation but also bike share services, e-scooters, and ride sharing platforms. All of these are supposed to tune down how much carbon the UK is emitting into the atmosphere. As with all choices, this comes at a cost, particularly for those living in rural areas.

What’s more, 300 residents in Coventry recently expressed interest in giving up their personal cars. The tradeoff from the government reportedly would be a mobility credit worth up to £3,000. This mobility credit program has been going since March of this year, with 73 cars turned in and crushed. No, this isn’t a joke, but I wish it were.

Understandably, many Brits are upset about this. Some have asked if they should start riding their horse instead, all the in the name of “progress.” Others are tying this statement by Harrison with the looming government ban of internal combustion engines for cars by 2030. After all, EVs aren’t exactly cheap, so what better way to force people onto public transportation than by pricing them out of the vehicle market?

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Children with disabilities offered ‘do not resuscitate’ orders amid pandemic

The so-called ‘do not resuscitate’ orders, known as DNACPRs, were offered to families of children with autism and other learning disabilities amid concerns about pressure on the UK’s socialized National Health Service, The Telegraph reported on Sunday. 

The media outlet cited interviews with families that were presented the opt-out for resuscitation during routine medical appointments. For instance, the mother of a 16-year-old boy with Down’s syndrome said that a clinic employee offered her the option of a DNACPR for her son during a checkup.

“It is a disgusting question,” the mother, Kent resident Karen Woollard, said. “The health assistant was following a form and she was very polite about it – suggesting she knew I wouldn’t want it to be ticked – but the question should not have appeared. It was very upsetting.”

The mother of a 16-year-old boy with autism said her son was offered a DNACPR during an NHS appointment and initially agreed because he didn’t understand the question. The boy is happy and healthy and has won gold medals in swimming competitions, his mother, Debbie Corns, said.

“I collapsed on the floor crying when I got home,” Corns said. “I am a strong person, but I was devastated… The doctor devalued his life.”

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Door-to-Door COVID Jab Teams to Be Sent to Homes of Unvaccinated Brits

Door-to-door teams armed with Covid jabs will be sent to the homes of unvaccinated Brits in plans being considered by Ministers to reach the estimated five million people yet to be inoculated.

Discussions between the Department of Health, NHS England and No 10 over the past week have looked at a nationwide drive to send vaccine teams to areas with low uptake rates as a crucial way to avoid lockdown and other restrictions.

It is also seen as a way to get jabs to rural areas or households where people cannot easily get to a vaccination centre.

One Cabinet Minister last night backed the plan, saying: ‘I think anything that encourages the vaccine-hesitant is sensible,’ before warning: ‘The mood in the country is hardening against people who refuse to be vaccinated.

‘I am all in favour of free choice but there comes a point when you cannot lock up 90 per cent of the country who are vaccinated for the ten per cent who refuse to be.’

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UK: Romanian Sex Trafficker Can’t Be Deported After Judge Ruled Jail Would Affect Her Mental Health

A Romanian who illegally trafficked young girls into sex slavery in the Czech Republic cannot be deported back to her home country to serve her sentence, after a British judge ruled jail would affect her mental health.

Ildiko Enderle, a 45-year-old Romanian sex trafficker, was placed on Europol’s Most Wanted List, after selling teenage girls from the Czech Republic and her home country into slavery in the Czech Republic. Enderle promised them jobs and accomodation in journey, but the girls, some as young as 15, instead became prostitutes at a nightclub called Lady Bar 69. Enderle reportedly beat the girls repeatedly if they refused to sleep with a “client.”

Enderle was sentenced to 7 years in prison by a Romanian court in 2014, but escaped the country and fled to the UK. She was eventually found by Manchester police in December 2019, after 4 European Arrest Warrants were placed out for her. Initially, the Romanian sex trafficker was expected to extradited to Romania, after Westminster Magistrates Court ordered her deportation.

However, last month, Judge James Holman, of the High Court of England and Wales, blocked her removal from the country. Enderle had claimed that because her daughter and partner had now settled in the UK, she would suffer “anxiety” at the prospect of not seeing them again. Despite Holman condemning her “vile” crimes, he claimed that extraditing her to Romania would somehow be too “oppressive.”

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Britain may outlaw catcalling

Pestering women on the street and in bars could soon become an offense as part of an overhaul of laws to protect women against violence.

Loopholes in current laws mean there is no specific offense for sexually harassing women verbally in the street.

Now a Government-commissioned review will next week call for public sexual harassment and inciting hatred against women to be made criminal offences, reports The Telegraph.

The proposed change is part of a push to outlaw “public sexual harassment”.

However, calls for misogyny to be made a hate crime will be rejected — as it’s thought it be ineffective, according to sources.

A Whitehall source told the paper: “The Law Commission is not going to class misogyny as a hate crime because it would be ineffective and in some cases counterproductive.

“But it will call for a public sexual harassment offence which doesn’t currently exist.

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United Kingdom Offers Government Employees Time Off To Attend Free Crystal Healing Sessions

Civil servants in the Westminster government are being offered crystal healing sessions, well-being events, and other “hocus pocus bollocks,” allegedly all paid for by the taxpayer.

First publicised and uncovered by the British politics blog, Guido Fawkes, British civil servants working in Westminster are currently offered a number of strange free courses to attend throughout the week, giving them the opportunity to skip work to attend these sessions.

The schedule for November 3 included a 9 a.m. “counselling session” for any ethnic minorities, a two-day “well-being event” entitled “it’s all about me,” and an interactive session at 12 p.m. entitled “reshaping negative thoughts and language into positive affirmations.”

Guido highlighted probably the most insane event of them all, which was “a beginners guide to crystal healing and deep relaxation,” which took place at 2 p.m. The programme invited the government employees to learn about the “benefits of crystals,” and then engage in a “deep relaxation” session. Speaking to Guido, a government minister slammed the sessions as being “hocus pocus bollocks,” and something that you’d expect to find in Los Angeles, “not in Whitehall!”

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The UK plans to make online “pile-ons” a crime, in chillingly broad attempt to suppress speech

The UK is preparing to criminalize what is perceived as internet trolling that causes “likely psychological harm,” thanks to the country’s upcoming Online Safety Bill that is introducing a new set of criminal offenses.

And while the punishment internet users in the UK could face under the new legislation is clear – up to two years in prison – the definitions of their “crimes” are a good deal murkier.

In addition to their posts “likely” causing psychological harm, users can also be accused of committing a crime if they post messages containing “threatening communication” – but not necessarily, as defined in the previous law dealing with online hate speech and abuse, because they are found to intend to follow through on the threat.

Instead, it would be enough to “prove” that the recipient of such posts and messages “feared” the threat was real.

Another offense has to do with spreading information that internet users “know” is false, again, in order to cause emotional or physical harm to their “likely audience.” The proposed bill is littered with equally vague and subjective definitions of future crimes that could be hard to prove in a court of law.

The Department for Culture, Media & Sport incorporated the “likely psychological harm” as a basis for the new legislation, as recommended by the Law Commission, and will include them in the bill once it is forwarded to the UK government, which should approve it before it hits parliament in November.

Another recommendation that has been accepted is to make online “pile-ons” a crime – i.e., several users sending trolling messages perceived by the recipient as harassing, while one example a government source gave to the media of what it means to “knowingly” spread false information would be if a vaccine skeptic or a vaccine hesitant person speaks about their conviction – that is apparently automatically considered untrue, while the author is held responsible for “knowing” it.

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People in UK Who Post “False Information” About Vaccines Could be Jailed For Two Years

People in the UK who post “false information” about vaccines online could face two years in prison under a new law.

Yes, really.

The Online Safety Bill, described as “the flagship legislation to combat abuse and hatred on the internet” has faced fierce criticism from civil liberties groups for its broad overreach.

The law would create a “knowingly false communication” offence which, according to the Times, “will criminalise those who send or post a message they know to be false with the intention to cause “emotional, psychological, or physical harm to the likely audience”. Government sources gave the example of antivaxers spreading false information that they know to be untrue.”

Given that authorities have deemed all kinds of information about the pandemic and vaccines “false” that later turned out to be true, this is a chilling prospect.

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