GRIMLY FIENDISH

I dont actually support any of them.. Which surely makes it even worse if I'd rather Paul win the Presidency than O-bomber get another four years to do yet more nothing and allow yet more Wall St criminality and excess.... As Matt Damon said "I'd rather have had a one term President with some balls...". Amen...

At least he'll actually do something as opposed to Obama just sitting on his hands for the next four years, continue to let the banksters ruin the country, sign off on even dodgier legislation which destroys the Constitution like the Indefinite Detention Act and SOPA (both of which Paul utterly opposes I believe...). The mainstream press dont like Ron Paul because he is the one candidate who's a bit of shit-stirrer... Where is the shit-stirring from the so-called "liberal" camp in the US coming from.. They all seem to be too busy hand-wringing and being apologists for O-bomber.... It's only people Cenk Uygur on the Young Turks, Keith Olbermann and bloody MATT DAMON of all people, who seem to be the only vaguely leftist voices of dissent.... And unfortunately, none of them are running for President...

Cheerleader must compensate school that told her to clap 'rapist' http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/am...dependent.co.uk A teenage girl who was dropped from her high school's cheerleading squad after refusing to chant the name of a basketball player who had sexually assaulted her must pay compensation of $45,000 (£27,300) after losing a legal challenge against the decision. The United States Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a review of the case brought by the woman, who is known only as HS. Lower courts had ruled that she was speaking for the school, rather than for herself, when serving on a cheerleading squad – meaning that she had no right to stay silent when coaches told her to applaud. She was 16 when she said she had been raped at a house party attended by dozens of fellow students from Silsbee High School, in south-east Texas. One of her alleged assailants, a student athlete called Rakheem Bolton, was arrested, with two other young men. In court, Bolton pleaded guilty to the misdemeanour assault of HS. He received two years of probation, community service, a fine and was required to take anger-management classes. The charge of rape was dropped, leaving him free to return to school and take up his place on the basketball team. Four months later, in January 2009, HS travelled to one of Silsbee High School's basketball games in Huntsville. She joined in with the business of leading cheers throughout the match. But when Bolton was about to take a free throw, the girl decided to stand silently with her arms folded. "I didn't want to have to say his name and I didn't want to cheer for him," she later told reporters. "I just didn't want to encourage anything he was doing." Richard Bain, the school superintendent in the sport-obsessed small town, saw things differently. He told HS to leave the gymnasium. Outside, he told her she was required to cheer for Bolton. When the girl said she was unwilling to endorse a man who had sexually assaulted her, she was expelled from the cheerleading squad. The subsequent legal challenge against Mr Bain's decision perhaps highlights the seriousness with which Texans take cheerleading and high school sports, which can attract crowds in the tens of thousands. HS and her parents instructed lawyers to pursue a compensation claim against the principal and the School District in early 2009. Their lawsuit argued that HS's right to exercise free expression had been violated when she was instructed to applaud her attacker. But two separate courts ruled against her, deciding that a cheerleader freely agrees to act as a "mouthpiece" for a institution and therefore surrenders her constitutional right to free speech. In September last year, a federal appeals court upheld those decisions and announced that HS must also reimburse the school sistrict $45,000, for filing a "frivolous" lawsuit against it. "As a cheerleader, HS served as a mouthpiece through which [the school district] could disseminate speech – namely, support for its athletic teams," the appeals court decision says. "This act constituted substantial interference with the work of the school because, as a cheerleader, HS was at the basketball game for the purpose of cheering, a position she undertook voluntarily." The family's lawyer said the ruling meanst that students exercising their right of free speech can end up punished for refusing to follow "insensitive and unreasonable directions". ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Question - just why is this rapist bast*rd even still in the school after doing what he did? That's first off.. Second off, just what kind of perverse "law" is it that rules in this manner against the victim of a crime...? And there certainly does seem to be a very curious interpretation here of "free speech".. Of course, we can kind of answer the first question. He's still in the school because he can throw a ball around, and, as we know, the "jocks" rule all in US schools, have their every whim indulged, are treated like some kind of royalty, just because they can throw a ball around... Pathetic... Oh, and of course it brings money into the school... Which is basically what this boils down to. The school doesn't want to chuck this rapist bast*rd out because money talks, so he gets to stay in school...

Errr, he's publically stated that he's against a war with Iran. He's also going to do something about corruption on Wall Street and wants to end the current regime in the Federal Reserve Bank.. Good luck to him, I say. He's the one guy who isn't in service to J P Morgan or Goldman Sachs... He might even have the guts to actually JAIL some of these banker-scum who have fukked the American economy, god knows Barack Obama has proven himself to be a spineless worm where this is concerned.... <_<

Well, for a start, probably not spending billions invading Iran..... :rolleyes:

Couples with children 'to be hardest hit' by coalition tax and benefit changes http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/ja...P=FBCNETTXT9038 A couple with two children will be £1,250 a year worse off by 2015 as families "shoulder the burden of austerity", according to an Institute for Fiscal Studies report published on Wednesday. The study, commissioned by the Family and Parenting Institute charity (FPI), examines the impact of the package of tax and benefit reforms being introduced between January last year and April 2014, including the introduction of universal credit, which brings together benefit and tax credits. According to the report the income of families with children will feel the most impact, falling by 4.2% in the five years to 2015. By contrast, families without children will see a loss of only 0.9%, equating to £215, underlining the degree to which spending cuts are impacting on support for children. The figures suggest families with children under five, families with more than two children, and jobless lone parents will bear the biggest financial pain. Non-working lone parents lose more than 12% of their income on average – equivalent to £2,000 a year. The FPI claims the research is the first attempt to set out the prospects for poverty rates and income for different family types up to the year 2015. The research also forecasts that 500,000 families with children under five will fall into absolute poverty by 2015-16,with most coming from households where the youngest child is under five. The median household with a child under five faces a drop in income of 4.9% by 2015-16. The government's social mobility tsar, Alan Milburn, last month urged the coalition to admit that it would fail to meet the child poverty targets set out in law. Ministers are increasingly critical of the value of the poverty targets they inherited from Labour, which fix the relative poverty line at 60% of the median income. The IFS research shows larger families will suffer a disproportionate financial hit. For example, the median household with three children sees income fall by 6.8% by 2015-16, compared with the median household with one child which sees it fall by 3.3%. As a result ethnic minorities, who tend to have more children per family, will suffer a greater loss of income. For example, the absolute and relative poverty rates for Pakistani and Bangladeshi children increases by more than five percentage points by 2015-16 (the relative increase is from 49.2% to 54.6% and the absolute increase is from 49.2% to 55.8%). The study also suggests the introduction of universal credit, due to be introduced for existing claimants in 2014, will not alter the fact that pensioners or adults without children will fare better. This reflects the fact that benefits for those of working age are being cut, and families with children are more reliant on benefits than those without children. The report suggests that even after the introduction of universal credit, families in the poorest income decile will be 6% worse off in 2014–15 than they would have been had no changes been made to the tax and benefit system. The report offers evidence that although universal credit strengthens work incentives for most individuals, as claimed by the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, it weakens the incentive for a second earner in a couple, typically the mother in a couple household, to take up employment. Dr Katherine Rake, chief executive of the Family and Parenting Institute, said: "These figures reveal the full extent to which families with children are shouldering the burden of austerity. "Having children has always been expensive. But now many families with children face an extra penalty of more than £1,000. "It is particularly surprising to see that some of the most vulnerable groups – such as families with new babies and lone parents out of work – are bearing the brunt of the tax and benefit reforms." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, basically, the next time a Tory or Lie Dem politician gets up and starts spewing on about "Family Values" and how the Coalition's economic policies are there to "help" families, we can call them a bunch of utter liars and frauds... The Instituted of Fiscal Studies delivers yet another damning indictment of Coalition fiscal policy, and particular to Iain Duncan Smith's Welfare "reforms"... And not only that, the policies are quite anti-woman as well, appearing to totally disincentivise mothers returning to the work-place after being on maternity leave.. Yep, this is Sca-Moron's "great" Patriarchical vision of a return to the 1950s Suburbanite Fairy Tale, where the man is the bread-winner and the "little woman" is chained to the kitchen bare-foot and pregnant.... bast*rds.... <_<

TBH, I'm beginning to find Ron Paul slightly preferable to Obama.. At least Paul is a Libertarian, Obama is just a disgrace and a traitor to everything that African American leaders such as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X ever stood for.... Neither of them would ever have signed off on something like this....

President Obama Signs Indefinite Detention Bill Into Law http://www.aclu.org/national-security/pres...ention-bill-law WASHINGTON – President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law today. The statute contains a sweeping worldwide indefinite detention provision. While President Obama issued a signing statement saying he had “serious reservations” about the provisions, the statement only applies to how his administration would use the authorities granted by the NDAA, and would not affect how the law is interpreted by subsequent administrations. The White House had threatened to veto an earlier version of the NDAA, but reversed course shortly before Congress voted on the final bill. “President Obama's action today is a blight on his legacy because he will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law,” said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU executive director. “The statute is particularly dangerous because it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield. The ACLU will fight worldwide detention authority wherever we can, be it in court, in Congress, or internationally.” Under the Bush administration, similar claims of worldwide detention authority were used to hold even a U.S. citizen detained on U.S. soil in military custody, and many in Congress now assert that the NDAA should be used in the same way again. The ACLU believes that any military detention of American citizens or others within the United States is unconstitutional and illegal, including under the NDAA. In addition, the breadth of the NDAA’s detention authority violates international law because it is not limited to people captured in the context of an actual armed conflict as required by the laws of war. “We are incredibly disappointed that President Obama signed this new law even though his administration had already claimed overly broad detention authority in court,” said Romero. “Any hope that the Obama administration would roll back the constitutional excesses of George Bush in the war on terror was extinguished today. Thankfully, we have three branches of government, and the final word belongs to the Supreme Court, which has yet to rule on the scope of detention authority. But Congress and the president also have a role to play in cleaning up the mess they have created because no American citizen or anyone else should live in fear of this or any future president misusing the NDAA’s detention authority.” The bill also contains provisions making it difficult to transfer suspects out of military detention, which prompted FBI Director Robert Mueller to testify that it could jeopardize criminal investigations. It also restricts the transfers of cleared detainees from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to foreign countries for resettlement or repatriation, making it more difficult to close Guantanamo, as President Obama pledged to do in one of his first acts in office. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark this date well, because it is surely a "day that will live in infamy" as another American president (a REAL Democrat by the way) said. This is a betrayal of everything democracy, the rule of law (and even Obama's own principles when he was a Senator), the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and Habeas Corpus ever stood for. This basically makes it legal for the US state to imprison anyone the like without proper trial, without any proper due legal recourse... This is the nightmare that Kafka envisioned when he wrote "The Trial". This is the sort of thing Stalin and every other tin-pot dictator throughout the world would be proud of.... This is the day democracy died....

..And here's another reason to say "rot in Hell Twatcher...." <_< I'd always suspected this to be the case, now it appears the proof has come out into the light... http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/12/31/th...nst-un-mandate/ They prosecuted the guys who supplied the "Super-Gun" to Saddam, so why the f**k did she get away with it...? Belgrano + this = War Criminal.. State Funeral..?? My arse....

That was just utter baloney... PR/Spin bullsh!t... A really under-hand and sneaky method of selling off national assets to foreign investors and hedge funds... The vast majority of people who bought shares in the 80s wouldn't know a Gilt from a Derivative, they didn't have clue one about how the Stock Exchange worked (or rather didn't work as it's now become apparent)..

I thought this was a good film... Right up until the slightly pointless and rather rambling epilogue... Salander NEVER developed "romantic" feelings as such for Blomkvist, That's a tad too Hollywood-ish for my liking, she just f/ucked him because she wanted to.... Why does mainstream Hollywood have to turn a strong female character into a schoolgirl with a crush..? That's really my major issue with the film, apart from that, it's good work by Fincher...

So, you're not arguing that Cameron shouldn't be taken out and shot like a dog then.... :lol:

What's so positive about the type of rampant consumerism that we have now...? I see it as being a part of what's decayed our society and created a generation of selfish, stupid "individuals" who think more of the vapid idiots they see on Realilty TV shows than they do of their parents, teachers and others who are making a positive contribution to society.. Choice..?? Choice only exists if you're rich enough to afford it. If you're poor, you have to live beyond your means in order to achieve "choice"... And ultimately, it's the bad credit that's accumulated from this supposed "choice" and this rampant consumerism and this ridiculous desire that people seem to have that they "must" have something, that's led to the credit crunch and our current financial state.. It's all been built on a house of cards... As Tyler Durden says in Fight Club - "Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off". Open Markets?? Again, a total fallacy.. We dont have Free Markets. What we have is Crony Capitalism and Corporatism which stifles and strangles real entrepreneurial and innovative spirit, and creates false "gods" out of twats like Lord Sugar, Donald Trump, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs who stole all of their ideas off of much more talented and creative people who never got the recognition they deserved.... This is what your Thatcher and Reagan gave us.... I grew up with this shite, I know all about it, I know a hell of a lot more about it than probably about 90-odd percent of everyone on this site, and a hell of a lot more than I really want to... So, seriously I dont need to be lectured on it.... No offence mate, but I lived it, so I know that it's all a lie and just "Emperors New Clothes"... -_-

She changed the country alright.. For the absolute worst... Everything that has happened in the past 30 years that is bad about Britain is down to her.... -_- And now we have Son of Thatcher, David Cameron, who frankly should be taken out and shot like a dog before he does even more irreperable harm to the country....

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peterobo...-from-this-one/ Margaret Thatcher deserves every honour – apart from a state funeral Peter Osborne Plans to give the former prime minister a state funeral insult many honest, patriotic people For all the sad picture of Maggie Thatcher in old age portrayed in Meryl Streep’s new film, our former prime minister remains magnificent: brave, impervious, indomitable, the giantess of our time. Nevertheless, preparations for her death are inevitably afoot. No official announcement has been made, but it is already widely understood that she may be granted the very rare honour (outside the Royal family) of a state funeral, which would probably take place at St Paul’s Cathedral. The discussions have been held in secret, without public debate, through a series of meetings in the inner recesses of what used to be known as the British Establishment. The most recent of these, reportedly chaired by Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude and attended by Sir Malcolm Ross, a senior member of the Royal household who oversaw the sensitive funeral arrangements for Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997, took place last week. I understand this meeting agreed that, while not on the scale of royalty, Baroness Thatcher will get a fine public send-off. Such secrecy is understandable: public discussion of the funeral arrangements of any living person can be distasteful and upsetting. However, this decision to grant a state funeral, with all it involves in terms of honour, ceremony and cost, is controversial. It needs to be challenged now, because when the time comes it may be too late, and the atmosphere too fraught, to change course. I believe it would be wrong to give Lady Thatcher a state funeral, even though I accept that she was a very great woman, one of the six or seven most important and admirable prime ministers to occupy Downing Street in the almost 300 years since the office was invented. The problem is that talk of a state funeral for Lady Thatcher reflects a troubling failure to understand what such events are about. They are so very rarely awarded because they have been designed for a category of great men and women who have come to represent the nation as a whole, rather than a particular sect or faction. The first of these are monarchs. It is they who represent the British state in all its pomp and glory, while their heads of government (prime ministers) fulfil a much more workmanlike function. So all monarchs receive a state funeral: that is because they are above politics. The second class are warriors. Horatio Nelson was given a state funeral after his heroic death at Trafalgar in 1805, and so was the Duke of Wellington in 1852 (acknowledgment of his superb role in the defeat of Napoleon, not for his undistinguished premiership later). Earl Haig, Britain’s leading First World War general, viewed by some historians as an unimaginative butcher, was awarded a state funeral in 1928. The third class are brilliant men: Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin both got state funerals. Finally, we come to politicians. Only four prime ministers have been awarded the honour in the past 200 years – Wellington, Palmerston, Gladstone and Churchill. Of these, Churchill was the symbol of our lonely resistance to Hitler in 1940; Palmerston (probably lucky to get his) and Gladstone both stepped down in ripe old age, by which time they had almost completely transcended party politics. Does Margaret Thatcher rank alongside those two massive figures? I believe that she does. She transformed Britain very largely for the better during her great premiership of 1979-1990; like Gladstone, she sought to inject a powerful morality into the heart of our national life. Yet her greatness as a prime minister is not enough. State ceremonies can be very damaging unless (as with the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton) the whole nation can come together. This will not happen after Lady Thatcher’s death. There are too many people – for example, shipyard workers from Glasgow, miners from Yorkshire and the Welsh valleys – whose livelihoods were destroyed during her premiership. They struggled against her government passionately at the time, and many still abhor her memory. Here is an up-to-date example. On Tuesday, David Farham, a former miner, had a letter published in his local newspaper, The Shields Gazette. He wrote: “I am proud to say I was on strike for 12 months in the 1984-5 strike, when Thatcher used the full might of [the] state to defeat us. “I would stand on a picket line now if it would prevent her having a state funeral. She had a near-pathological hatred of trade unions, and referred to us as the 'enemy within’, but what did we do that was so treacherous? “We struck to prevent pit closures and protect jobs – with disastrous consequences. Look at the ghost towns of former pit villages which she left devastated.” As it happens, I reluctantly take the view that Mrs Thatcher was right to take on the trade unions as she did, even though the human consequences were dire. But Mr Farham – who accurately states in his letter that there are “hundreds of thousands like me” – has every right to believe what he does. He is a British citizen just as much as the most ardent of Thatcher fans, with the proviso that, as a miner, he probably worked harder and risked more for his country than they did. Yet the British Establishment is now planning to insult Mr Farham, and the many honest and patriotic people who agree with him, by making Lady Thatcher the first prime minister to be given a state funeral since Churchill. This cannot be right. Clem Attlee was deputy prime minister during the Second World War, and went on to lead the Labour government which founded the National Health Service and created the modern welfare state. He was mourned at a quiet funeral at Temple Church near Westminster. Harold Macmillan was put to rest at a small service near his Sussex home. Such modesty does not suit our self-aggrandising modern politicians. Wander around Portcullis House (itself a hugely expensive monument to the hubris of the political class). There are gorgeous portraits on the wall, paid for by the taxpayer, even of absurdly minor figures: Diane Abbott, Menzies Campbell, Paul Boateng. Prime ministers used to retire quietly. Now they expect to be treated as if they were ex-presidents, with entourages and large corporate offices. And once Lady Thatcher has been given her state funeral, why not Brown, Blair, Major and Cameron? It is nearly 50 years since Sir Winston Churchill died. When the boat containing his coffin passed through Docklands, London dockers lowered their cranes as a mark of respect. It was such a profoundly moving moment because these working men were saying that, while Churchill had been born an aristocrat, he was also one of them because he had led them in the war against fascism. I wonder how many of those dockers would have paid such a tribute to Margaret Thatcher. She cannot be blamed for this. The proposal for a state funeral came from Gordon Brown, who used it, I would guess, at least in part as a device to suck up to the Conservative Right at a time when he was trying to destabilise David Cameron. By all means allow Margaret Thatcher to be buried, as Attlee was, in Westminster Abbey. This greatest of modern politicians should be honoured beyond measure when she dies. But David Cameron, the Prime Minister who loves to pretend that “we are all in this together”, would be well advised to lay the idea of a state funeral to rest. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I would imagine there are many things upon which Peter Osborne and I would completely disagree, but on this we speak with the same(ish) voice.. Particularly with regards to how many hundreds of thousands of working class people will be insulted by this.. As he says, Churchill was an aristocrat, and yet ordinary working class people respected him because he defended the country against tyranny in the form of the Third Reich, and didn't try to appease Hitler..

Nope, sorry, completely disagree.. People should only be honoured if their legacy is actually positive. That can be said for Churchill, it cannot be said for Thatcher. Everything that is going wrong with our economy now started with her, and continued with Major, Blair and Brown... They're all scum, simple as, and the country doesn't respect them, or their legacy (do you honestly want to see Tony fukkin' Blair get a state funeral? It's pretty much the same thing really as giving Thatcher one).... Churchill may have been an aristocrat, he may have made mistakes, but he was a man of honour. Thatcher and her cronies had no such honour, they did everything for the banks and for the 1%, Thatcher probably would have done a deal with Hitler and Mussolini. Churchill was respected by the common man and woman, Thatcher never will be.... Therefore, she does not deserve the honour.. I would piss on her grave, absolutely... You talk about the way Thatcher "profoundly changed" the country... Well, so did Clement Attlee and Nye Bevan by the creation of the NHS and the Welfare State. Now THAT is something worthy of respect....

Well, put it this way, even The Daily Torygraph doesn't think that she should have a State Funeral.. It would be far too divisive and almost impossible to police.. We may end up with even more riots. I think a lot people who have been advocating this in politics or in the news are either too thick or perhaps to young to realise just how much resentment and anger Thatcher's name still inspires amongst many in the country.... Frankie Boyle puts it best I think... "They could give everyone in Scotland a shovel and we could dig a hole so deep, we could hand her over to Satan personally...!" BOOM..... :lol:

And here we have the final proof of the Government's claims that "things are still being negotiated" is an absolute bunch of crap, and the Unions were right all along.... Government to impose pension reform http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-...rm-6278010.html The Government today confirmed it was pressing ahead with raising pension contributions next year for teachers and civil servants even though there is no agreement with unions. Up to two million public sector workers went on strike last month in protest at the controversial pension changes, and intensive talks have since been held to try to break the deadlocked row. The Education Department and the Cabinet Office today announced that changes from next year would go ahead, although further talks will be held about future arrangements. Unions attacked the announcement, saying increased contributions were being imposed without agreement. Most teachers will contribute more under the changes, which ministers said were part of the Government's long-term reforms to control the increased costs of people living longer and to "re-balance" the contributions paid by scheme members and taxpayers. The changes, which will save £314 million from the teachers pension scheme next year (2012-13), are part of the wider £2.8 billion savings from public sector pensions by 2014-15 which the Chancellor announced in last year's Spending Review, which will see public sector workers pay an average contribution rise of 3.2%. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, Francis Maude and his side-kick Danny "Beaker" Alexander can go f**k themselves.. Time for a General strike.. One out. ALL OUT....

I'm not accusing any one particular individual of murder, I'm accusing the Metropolitan Police of institutionalized murder, manslaughter and cover up, I'd frankly like them to take me to court and disprove it... The Metropolitan Police engenders a certain attitude which attracts a certain person with a certain type of mentality into their ranks.. They've been proven guilty of Institutionalized Racism, I'm just taking it one step further... Over 1500 deaths in Police Custody since the 1970s, countless examples of assault and battery over the years... Yeah, I'd LOVE them to press a Civil Suit, the burden of proof is on them to prove that they're not guilty of murder or manslaughter and frankly I doubt they can prove it because I would bring up each and ever one of these cases of "mysterious death" in police custody individually, and they'd have to answer the charge... The Met has been found by Coroner's Courts to have caused wrongful death in more than one case, including that of Iain Tomlinson.. I'm pretty sure I have a strong case and the Met itself absolutely has a case to answer... Mark Duggan is just another one in a very LONG line of working class people - whether black or white, immigrant or indigenous - that they've done in.

..And now we can perhaps look at the interview with Darcus Howe in a different light...... mzDQCT0AJcw

Duggan family's 'breakdown in confidence' in IPCC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16141820 The family of Mark Duggan has suffered a "complete breakdown in confidence" in the police watchdog, a pre-inquest review has heard. Michael Mansfield QC, for the Duggan family, said "from the beginning there has been misinformation, a lack of information" from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). Mr Duggan, 29, was killed by armed officers in north London on 4 August. The IPCC admitted making a "mistake" by saying Mr Duggan had fired at officers. No fingerprints Anger over the shooting sparked riots in Tottenham on 6 August, with the unrest spreading across London and to other parts of England. Mr Mansfield, who is also representing Mr Duggan's fiancée Semone Wilson, questioned Colin Sparrow, the lead investigator for the IPCC, during the hearing at North London Coroner's Court in High Barnet. He said: "My first question is, you appreciate the anxiety that the family have about the investigation? Continue reading the main story “Start Quote The problem for the family is a complete breakdown in confidence for this investigation” Michael Mansfield QC "And you are aware at least, one of the reasons is the misinformation that was broadcast at the beginning, close to the time Mark Duggan met his death. "Misinformation suggesting some form of shoot-out, and you accept that was a serious mistake?" Mr Sparrow replied: "It wasn't accurate", before adding: "It was a mistake." Mr Mansfield continued: "The problem for the family is a complete breakdown in confidence for this investigation. "While normally this question might not have to be asked because confidence is automatic, on this occasion, from the beginning, there has been misinformation, a lack of information, and conflicting information." When questioned, Mr Sparrow agreed there were no fingerprints, DNA or blood relating to Mr Duggan on the non-police firearm found at the scene. The court was told that a gun initially linked to Mr Duggan was actually found 14ft (4m) away from the crime scene in Ferry Lane, and on the other side of a fence. Mr Mansfield said witnesses had said they had seen a police officer throw the weapon there. He asked Mr Sparrow: "How on earth did the gun get over a fence 14ft away? Was it thrown there by a police officer?" Mr Sparrow replied: "That's a suggestion, yes." The barrister asked Mr Sparrow to explain why the pathologist's interim report was not made available to the family, who were also not told about the trajectory of the fatal bullet which would have clarified the position of the officers and Mr Duggan. The investigator for the IPCC, which has been granted interested-party status in the inquest, said the report contained only a cause of death and the family were told verbally. Mr Mansfield also told the hearing the family requested that an independent pathologist carry out tests on Mr Duggan's body, and for them to be given the chance to discuss their findings with the original pathologist - but this had not been allowed. Mr Duggan, a father-of-four, was a passenger in a minicab which was stopped in Tottenham by police as part of a planned operation. He died of a single gunshot wound to the chest. Initially, police said Mr Duggan had shot at officers, a claim that ballistic tests proved to be untrue. Mr Mansfield told the hearing that two types of blood had been found on the gun - but neither belonged to Mr Duggan. After the hearing, the IPCC released a statement in which it said Home Office pathologist Dr Simon Poole also found a second bullet had struck Mr Duggan's upper right arm. The watchdog said two police-issue bullets and two police-issue shell casings had been recovered from the shooting scene. Forensic tests showed both bullets and shell casings were fired from a single CO19 officer's MP5 carbine, while a non-police-issue firearm was also recovered. The IPCC said it now estimates the investigation will be completed in April 2012. Meanwhile, the hearing was told the full inquest into Mr Duggan's death would last between four and eight weeks and aim to begin during the second week of September 2012. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I think it's pretty obvious now that the Met Police quite probably planted a "throw-away" weapon at the scene.. No DNA, no fingerprints, no blood evidence... NOTHING whatsoever to tie Mark Duggan in with the gun found at the scene... The Met kill another unarmed person, and create a narrative to try and cover their arses...... <_< We can add the name of Mark Duggan to Jean Charles De Menezes, Smiley Culture and Iain Tomlinson, Police murders which have taken place in the past few years, and NOT A SINGLE COPPER has been convicted as yet for any of it.... Will the family of Mark Duggan get any kind of justice...? So far, given the IPCC's disastrous handling of this affair, it's really not looking at all good.... But even more sinister is the Media silence over this. I had to find out about this on the BBC London page, there was a report on BBC London News about it yesterday, but I seem to remember the shooting of Mr Duggan being a national story at the time, as it was tied into the riots and was ultimately the root cause of the riots that happened in August.. So, basically, when the narrative is - "Police shoot armed drug dealer", the national media are all over it, when it's "Police Possibly Plant Evidence", the national media suddenly dont want to know and the story gets relegated to local outlets... Instead the BBC News chooses to regale us for five minutes with the stating-of-the-bleeding-obvious contained in the FSA's report into why RBS went tits up..... Yeah, like we didn't know the reasons for that three years ago..... Shame on you BBC, and others, for not having the balls to run a story nationally that's critical of the Police.... -_-

That's a good point.. Take the Pub Smoking ban for example as well, many of Germany's federal States, for example, dont actually enforce it... A lot of it is down to interpretation...

You assume that I think that last "Labour" government were anything other than Tories in disguise.. As far as I'm concerned, Blair and Brown were just as bad as Thatcher and Major ever were... Governments borrow heavily because too many Corporations and millionaires are using tax-avoidance measures, and they get away with it because so-called "democratically elected" governments are in hock to them.. Big Money should be out of politics, this is the whole problem as I see it, both here and in the US, these people and their lobbyists have far too much power, they buy-off politicians.. Follow the money, look to who the big campaign contributers are, it's J P Morgan, Goldman Sachs, the City, Wall Street, wealthy Landowners, Corporations... "Liberalised Democracy" is bullshit, it's all bought and paid for, what we need is a Revolution, which is why I support the Occupy Movement 100%, it's ordinary people wanting to take back the rights they always should have had....

I actually agree that Greece should default, leave the EU and go back to a devalued Drachma, which was probably what Papandreou was going to do if he'd gotten his Referendum... I think that is genuinely the only way out for them.. Italy on the other hand has something like $500bn in gold reserves, which, no doubt, the Banksters would dearly love to get their mitts on..... BUT, that does not mean to say that Cameron made the right decision. As much as there is wrong with the EU and, god knows it certainly needs reforming, we're better off inside than out...

Spot on...