With the American housing market in its worst crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s – caused directly by international capital funding the wave of Third World immigrants into that country from Mexico and other South American countries — President Bush is authorising new legislation to pave the way for massive new government intervention designed to slow the slide.

Faced with seemingly never-ending falls in the value of their properties, some of these new American home-owners are taking radical action; they are choosing to walk away from homes and their mortgages.

Though banks can repossess and sell the homes of borrowers who stop paying their mortgages, under a legal quirk originating in the Great Depression of the 1930s, banks cannot easily pursue borrowers for any balance outstanding on the main mortgage on their homes.

Professor Nouriel Roubini of New York University, one of the first economists to warn of the dangers of the American house price boom, believes the number of people positively choosing to walk away is growing rapidly.

“This is becoming a tsunami of voluntary defaults,” Professor Roubini says. The losses for the financial system from people walking away could be of the order of one trillion dollars when the entire capital of the US banking system is only $1.3 trillion.”

“You could have most of the US banking system wiped out, so this is a total disaster.”

Which is why it is not just US policymakers who are hoping America’s new, multi-billion dollar initiative to stabilise the housing market will succeed in its aims and thus make walking away less attractive.

Because if it fails, the economic fallout could be felt far beyond America’s shores. 

This is the true face of the coming EU Superstate: alongside are some photographs of the European Gendarmerie Force, the EU’s new Europe-wide police force, made up of contingents from France, Spain, Holland and Portugal, shown training in barracks in Vicenza, Italy.

The officers wear steel helmets, carry interlocking shields and heavy automatic weapons. They are organised as a military force. Having different nationalities drilling side by side is clearly part of a plan to create a unified EU force.

The armband each man wears bears the EU flag and the ominous image of a flaming grenade. The Treaty of Velsen gives the force a legal basis under EU auspices.

How different this is from the tradition of British policing. Far from speaking of service and inspiring confidence, the photograph of the force evokes fear of repression.

Could this force be deployed in Britain?

Justice and home affairs are still an EU member state’s prerogative. But under the Lisbon Treaty they will be EU “competences”.

Our Government’s “red lines” are supposed to safeguard our national autonomy; but parliamentary committees have said they could be of little worth. Many of our powers of veto have been lost.

The Government and much of our media keep silent about the EU domination under which we live. Article 6.3 of the Treaty of Velsen allows the EU Gendarmerie to be deployed in any country with that state’s consent.

During Parliamentary debates, an MP and a member of the Lords asked to be assured that, in Britain, such consent will never be given. No such assurance was forthcoming.

All of this, without the referendum which was promised, and then denied.

“This outrageous abuse of taxpayers’ money must stop!” was the reaction of London BNP Greater London Assembly member Richard Barnbrook after his office revealed that official GLA figures show that the Tories, Labour and Lib-Dems took in excess of £30,000 for themselves for the mysterious purpose of “promoting the GLA” – at their OWN party conferences!

This latest revelation follows on reports that Conservative GLA member Brian Coleman spent £8,231 of taxpayer’s money on cabs between April 2007 and March this year — despite having a free Travelcard.

However, it has now transpired that all three old gang parties have been receiving ridiculous payments directly to themselves for ‘promoting the GLA’. Last week, details of GLA Payments made for the first two quarters of the year were released.

In the first quarter of this year payments were made to the Labour Party, Liberal Democrats and Conservatives for having a “GLA stall” at their own internal party conferences.

Well, these stalls must have been very impressive. The Conservatives received £10,050.00 for their stall at their own conference and the Liberal Democrats took £10,292.00. The most impressive stall must have been Labour’s, as they were paid a whopping £11,521.28.

This came to light in the same week that Tory Mayor Boris Johnston refused to help the much-needed Air ambulance, justifying his actions by saying that “I do not believe it would be appropriate to use GLA funds for this service.”

“It’s ludicrous that this type of thing is allowed to happen,” said Richard Barnbrook.  “These old gang parties have been given more money to fund their own internal party conferences than what many hard working Londoners get paid in a whole year! We demand an explanation for this gross abuse of the public purse, and will continue to expose the old party corruption until they are brought to a fall.” 

Some years after the BNP raised the life-or-death problem of the Peak energy crisis, but well ahead of the Government or the Tories, The Sun has woken up to the gravity of the situation. Britain’s largest-selling paper has just run a major story on the energy crisis, pointing out how spiralling energy costs are set to crucify the less well off.

Under the headline illustrated above, the paper warns that: “It’s odd to talk about heating bills in the hottest spell of the year, but many Sun readers must be scared about the coming winter.” Last week’s rises of 22 percent for gas and 17 percent for electricity are terrifying, it adds, warning: “There’s worse to come. Prices are sure to rise AGAIN in the winter, and by Christmas families could be paying £30 a week or more for light and heat – nearly double last winter’s bill.”

“The Government appears clueless. Labour have been asleep on the job as the rest of the world has been busy building nuclear power stations. Our own nuclear stations are years away.” The paper adds: “Thanks to Labour inaction we can store only 13 days’ worth of gas compared to 122 days in France. That leaves us at the mercy of sudden global price changes.”

“Instead of plotting to remove Brown, Labour ministers should be plotting how to avert misery for millions this winter,” with the payoff line, “Lives will be at stake. It is as serious as that.”

The Useless Tories, meanwhile, are so caught up in Cameron’s neo-leftist ‘green’ taxes obsession that they have totally failed to call the Government to account. As a result, the 30,000 deaths of pensioners from cold in an average British winter in recent years is certain to soar this winter as hundreds of thousands more are driven into fuel poverty by a combination of Peak energy, Government inaction, foreign-takeovers in the Thatcher/Blair privatisation scam, and energy company greed. 

If we get a hard winter this year, it is almost inevitable that the death toll among pensioners as a direct result will at least double to 60,000. With yesterday’s announcement that Centrica are increasing gas prices by more than a third, and that the other companies will follow suit within days, this shocking figure could rise even higher.

Nothing could better illustrate the bankruptcy of the old political parties, especially Labour, whose MPs cannot think of anything other than the battle to save their own seats by rearranging the deckchairs on their sinking party ship. They’ve lost the plot, they’ve lost control, so thousands will lose their lives this winter.

North Shropshire British National Party recently held a social meeting specifically for Oswestry members and supporters.

This is a fast growing town for the BNP, membership wise, and as the North Shropshire area is rather large, it was decided that localised meetings would be the best way to ensure as many members as possible were able to meet each other face to face without the issue of travelling long distances stopping some members from ever meeting each other.

The meeting was held in an exquisite hotel, and over two thirds of the entire Oswestry membership base managed to attend.

When meeting members for the first time, an Organiser might perhaps expect to have to answer a great deal of questions from new members. Not so on this occasion, for the calibre of members was high.

Well read, well travelled, enthusiastic and very switched on are the only ways to adequately describe those who made the effort to attend this meeting, and it is very clear that Oswestry has a lot of potential as far as the BNP is concerned. Some of our members have lived and worked abroad, often under different laws and religious regimes.

For the media to ever call BNP members ‘prejudiced’, said media should consider purchasing a dictionary, for we do not ‘pre-judge’. We judge exactly as things are, our members having experienced all manner of places and people.

A number of things were discussed at our meeting, including how best to promote the Party in the town of Oswestry and the important outlying rural areas, with the result that Local Patriot leaflets are now being designed with the emphasis on issues which the people of Oswestry are most concerned about.

Our next step is to find a local printing firm who can offer good rates for printing A4, double sided, black and white leaflets onto standard weight paper. The BNP is a locally orientated Party, and as such if any local printing firms from Oswestry or elsewhere in the North Shropshire area wish to offer us a reasonable quote, with the certainty of ongoing repeat custom, the email address to contact is: northshropshire@bnp.org.uk

Also on the agenda was how to promote ourselves positively in the local community, both in town and in the countryside. One excellent idea put forward was the possibility of forming an associated “Proud Brit’s Rambler’s Club”.

This fits very well with the BNP, for our Party is chock full of nature lovers, conservationists, ornithologists and others who merely enjoy being out and about in the fresh air. There is great potential here in winning the hearts and minds both of those friends and family members who are invited on such walks and also those who come into contact with us when the ramble ends at the obligatory ‘watering hole’!

The initial aim of this meeting was to bring members together – members who perhaps did not realise they were surrounded by quite so many likeminded folk. Yet we came away from the meeting having accomplished more than we might have done had we booked a room and arranged to have a guest speaker, for in having an open discussion, ideas have been formed which will see the BNP progress in the town of Oswestry.

Organisers take note – with the high calibre of members now joining the Party, consider social ‘brainstorming’ sessions such as this. With care and sensible direction, the results can be phenomenal.

An 83 year grandmother who faces going blind is being refused treatment on the NHS, which will save her sight – while the Labour/Tory-supported illegal and immoral Iraq war costs in excess of £1 billion per year.

Anneliese Cheslin from Old Swinford suffers from dry and wet Age Related Macular Degeneration, an eye condition which results in the loss of vision and can affect people as young as 50. Mrs Cheslin needs the drug Lucentis which will prevent her from going blind, but currently under Dudley PCT guidelines this treatment is not offered on the NHS.

In order to save her sight Mrs Cheslin will have to pay £1,800 for one injection and will have to have an injection every month for three months, followed by another injection every six months. The news has left the pensioner angry. She said: ” I have worked all my life and I have had never needed anything before from the NHS and when you suddenly need something, you expect the NHS to give it you.

“I can’t afford this treatment, I haven’t got the money to pay for it.” She added: “It is not very nice, I have already lost 50 per cent of my vision if I don’t have the treatment I will lose it all together. “If I lose my sight it will be terrible, my life will not be worth living.

A Dudley PCT spokesperson said: “Following a review of ICaps by the Area Medicines Management Committee, the decision was taken not to include the supplement in the Trust’s Drug Formulary, this decision was based on both clinical and cost effectiveness.”

The total cost on the UK defence budget since the invasion of Iraq exceeds £5.3bn, and costs continue to spiral month on month.

Immigration has topped the list of factors most likely to influence how people will vote in the next UK general election, according to a poll by TNS.

Thirty per cent of people rank immigration as their priority election issue – beating concerns over crime, health and education.  And despite the gloomy economic outlook, personal tax still ranks far behind immigration as a voting priority – with just 20 per cent ranking it number one.

The results, from a TNS study of 13,000 consumers, highlight the gulf between the Government’s perceptions and the reality of what issues are really concerning Britain. 

Andrew Czarnowski, managing director of TNS UK, comments: “These figures suggest that the Government really needs to be turning its attention to voting issues closer to home.”

Voters in England and Wales are most concerned by immigration, while in Scotland, crime tops the tables; it is named as the priority issue by 29 per cent of people. 

This is all good news for the British National Party – the only party which has the guts to tackle the immigration issue head on, in a balanced and fair manner which will see current trends, which, if left unreversed, will see this country overrun within the next few decades.

Make a statement!  Wear this t-shirt in public and get people’s attention! Excalibur is now stocking a fabulous Enoch Powell T-shirt. On the front of this high quality garment is a striking picture of Powell, while on the reverse is an extract from his famous “Rivers of Blood” speech made 40 years ago.

The writing reads: “Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependants, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant-descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre. So insane are we that we actually permit unmarried persons to immigrate for the purpose of founding a family with spouses and fiancés whom they have never seen. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood.”

Available in sizes M, L, XL, XXL and XXXL. £11.25 (£9.00 each, plus postage and packaging.)

Three ways to order:

- The quickest — Click here to order online.

- By telephone on 0871 0500 242 office hours Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm;

- By mail to Excalibur, P.O. Box 158, Deeside, CH5 2WW (cheques/postal orders to “Excalibur”)

Apart from illegal immigration and bogus “asylum seekers”, so-called “students” are by far the biggest category for long-term visitors to Britain, with 1.6 million visas handed out in the last five years.

While many of this number are of course genuine students who, upon the completion of their studies, return home, increasing numbers do not, simply overstaying their allotted visa period, safe in the knowledge that soft-touch Britain will not deport them.

In 2006, 309,000 foreign students arrived here, up nine per cent in a year, and more than double the number of foreigners who were granted work permits.

Under the current rules foreign students can work for an extra 12 months after graduating. However, this time period will be increased to two years from 2009, supposedly in order to “give foreign students more time to work legally here before going home.”

This is of course nothing but a backdoor way of offering an amnesty to overstayers, as the current government simply refuses to enforce any sort of real immigration or border control at all.

Earlier this year it was reported in the media that immigration officers had been ordered to stop deporting foreign students who overstay their visas. A leaked memo suggested they are not regarded as a high enough priority.

Hundreds of thousands of students, including many who never intended to study in the UK, could be staying illegally but are effectively being granted an amnesty.

Immigration bosses have been accused of focusing their deportation priorities on cases that attract media attention like foreign prisoners and failed asylum seekers while ignoring thousands of other illegal immigrants.

A shortage of funds has also led to immigration officials being told not to work after official hours or over weekends, allowing illegal immigrants to run free during those time periods.

Following on from the declaration of a state of emergency in Italy sparked off by the illegal immigration invasion that country is suffering, the Italian government has announced that it is sending troops onto its streets to help curb illegal immigration.

The government signed a decree yesterday that will deploy 4,000 soldiers starting next week. They will patrol with police officers in large cities such as Rome, Milan, Naples and Palermo. They will not have powers of arrest, but will be able to detain people until police arrive.

They will also guard ’sensitive targets’ of terrorism, such as the Vatican, stations and embassies, and guard illegal immigrant detention centres on Italy’s southern coast.

“This proves that we are determined to eliminate citizens’ fears,” La Russa said of the plan, which will remain in effect for at least six months.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom swept to power in April’s election promising a tough line on illegal immigrants and crime.

Immigration has jumped to the top of the political agenda after a spate of crimes linked to illegal immigrants, prompting legislation by Berlusconi’s government.

Last week, the government declared a state of emergency to deal with an influx of illegal immigrants, giving police and local authorities added powers to tackle related problems.

* Illegal immigrants in Brussels, Belgium yesterday occupied the top of several construction cranes in that city in an attempt to blackmail the Belgians into granting them permanent residence.

About 40 illegal immigrants took part in the protest. The protestors said they were on a hunger strike and were not drinking liquids either.

EU countries have been cracking down on illegal immigration recently, agreeing tough new rules forcing the 27 member nations to give residency permits or send them home.

Campaign groups that help illegal immigrants estimate that 100,000 foreigners reside illegally in Belgium.

Last year, Belgium deported 9,000 illegal immigrants and helped arrange for 2,500 others to leave the country voluntarily.

Three illegal immigrants living in Oldbury who ran a large scale cannabis farm containing plants valued at £50,000 have been jailed for a total of more than five and a half years.

Vietnamese illegals Thang Nguyen and Hoc Pham, both aged 41, and 29-year-old Duyen Le, all of Birmingham New Road, admitted producing cannabis at a house in Smethwick.

Edward Soulsby, prosecuting, told Wolverhampton Crown Court how police were alerted by the men’s landlord and when they went to the house found over 300 “strong” growing cannabis plants.

The officers also recovered “sophisticated” equipment to heat and water the plants, with the electricity supply tampered with to obtain free power.

Recorder Barbara Carter told the men: “This was clearly a commercial enterprise.” She added: “You have all been exploited by traffickers who asked you to look after the operation.”

Pham, who further admitted illegally abstracting electricity to run the farm, was jailed for 32 months. Le was jailed for 20 months while Nguyen, who played a smaller role in the operation, received a 16 month sentence.

Barristers defending the three men stressed they were way down the chain of command and had acted simply as gardeners for the growing plants. The court was told they had all been caring for the plants under the instructions of other men.

The Recorder, passing sentence, told the three men their status in this country would have to be examined by the immigration authorities.

After what the BBC described as marathon talks in Geneva aimed at liberalising global trade, Pascal Lamy – Head of the World Trade Organisation – said that negotiations had collapsed because China, India and the USA had failed to agree on import rules.

For years and years, the Labour government and others have been preaching Globalisation and the merits of globalisation that are nothing else but a myth. The naked truth is that countries that can protect their markets do so and that those who are not strong enough to protect their markets see their assets taken away by powerful foreign capitals.

In Labour driven madness, something that has been supported by practically the entire ‘mainstream political community’, Britain gave away its fisheries, stopped investing in agriculture, sold its factories, its financial institutions and also its utilities. Consecutive governments have sold almost everything that had some value and we have very little left. Our farmers go to the wall, while Britain is being flooded with foreign imports and we could say the same at practically every level of the British economy. (Image: The closed down Harland and Wolff Shipyards in Belfast).

Because the powerful British manufacturing base no longer exists and farming, agriculture and sea based industries are merely shadows of what they used to be, our Labour government can only maintain public services by borrowing more and more money and as competition between the powerful becomes ever more intense we are like a soldier in the heat of battle that has been left naked and unarmed.

The British National Party knows very well the weakness of our economy and knows that the only way out of the nightmare we are in comes from the economical revival of Britain through job creation with nationalist policies that would re-invigorate every single area of our economy.

We need manufacturing; we need farming and agriculture; we need our sea industries; we need every single job that we can create for the British people. We need companies that are owned and run by British peoples for the British peoples.

The well-known Egyptian Islamic TV evangelist ‘Amr Khaled, has predicted that Muslims will be a majority in Europe within 20 years.

Khaled made the prediction during an interview which was aired on Dream 2 TV. To view this clip, click here.

“The Muslims keep having children, while the Europeans do not – this means that within 20 years, the Muslims will be a majority,” he said.

Interviewer: “How do you view the Islamic scene in Europe?”

Amr Khaled: “The most important thing is that there are 25-30 million Muslims in Europe. This figure has many implications.”

Interviewer: “There are 25-30 million Muslims in Europe.”

Khaled: “The Muslims keep having children, while the Europeans do not. This means that within 20 years, the Muslims will be a majority, which may have an exceptional influence on the decision-making. This makes other groups very angry, and they consider this to be very dangerous. These are the enemies of Islam, as we know full well.

Khaled: “The goal of the enemies of Islam is to drive the 20-30 million [Muslims] out of Europe, or to provoke them in a way that would lead to their banishment. If [the Muslims] remain in Europe, this will be dangerous, so they must leave.”

Interviewer: “So you are making a very important claim – that there are intentional and premeditated provocations in order to drive the Muslims out of their current home – Europe.”

Khaled: “Yes. When the offensive cartoons first appeared, it was strange to see that the button they press [to provoke] the Muslims – the Koran and the Prophet Muhammad, which are sacred to them – is the same button that is sacred to the West – freedom of speech. What is sacred in the West – freedom of speech – is their equivalent of the Koran… That is what they hold sacred. The West is attacking what the Muslims hold sacred by means of what the West itself holds sacred.”[...]

Europe’s “30 Million Muslims… [Must] Infiltrate [Society]… Each Person Should Say: ‘I Am An Ambassador For Islam’”

“What is the solution? We must be very realistic and positive. What needs to be done? What we need is for the 30 million Muslims in Europe to infiltrate [society], and to show European and Western society how respectable and successful they are. Those are the key words: ‘I am respectable and successful.’ If the 30 million Muslims manage to ignore these provocations, and to channel their anger in support of the Prophet Muhammad and of Islam into becoming walking propaganda machines…

“Each person should say: ‘I am an ambassador for Islam,’ and they should all take action throughout Europe – in the companies where they work, in sports clubs, and in any place where they can mingle and fit in with the Europeans, and where they can show them their moral values and success. That will abolish the plan, and the Muslims will remain in Europe. We really need 10 years for the Muslims in Europe to become firmly established and very successful.”

An Iranian delivery driver who sexually assaulted a 17-year-old girl has been ordered to attend a programme to improve his attitude to women.

Morteza Jafari, 36, told probation officers that in his home country it is generally believed that white women are promiscuous, South Western Magistrates’ Court has heard.

Jafari, of Bushbury Road, Wolverhampton, previously admitted sexual assault after squeezing the girl’s breast while making a delivery to her place of work.

She called her boss who asked Jafari what he had done, to which he replied, “I asked her for sex. She’s a sexy girl”. He later admitted everything in police interviews, saying it was a “moment of craziness” and that he was sad about it.

Jafari, who lost his job and now relies on benefits, was given a two-year community order. He is to meet periodically with probation officers regarding victim awareness and was ordered to sign the sex offenders register.

More money is spent on food for prisoners in police cells than for NHS patients and frontline troops combined, it has been disclosed.

Police are given £12 a day for each inmate held at a police station, the Ministry of Justice has admitted. This is six times more than is given to primary schools to feed each child and more than the sum of £8.49 for a hospital patient and £2.69 for a soldier in Afghanistan.

The Ministry of Justice said that more than £600,000 is being spent each year on feeding inmates held in police stations due to a lack of prison places.

In 2006-07, convicted prisoners spent a total of 61,000 days in police cells under ‘Operation Safeguard’, the scheme brought in by John Reid, the former Home Secretary when the prisons system reached maximum capacity in 2006. It costs a total of £385 to keep a prisoner in a police cell for a night.

The stabbing death of 14-year-old David Idowu (picture), who was targeted because of his school uniform, has caused many inner-city schools with large ethnic populations to advise their pupils to change out of uniform for the journey home to prevent them being assaulted.

Rivalry between pupils at some secondaries is so intense that children are being advised not to display their school colours, Sir Mike Tomlinson, senior government advisor, has warned.

The precaution emerged after news that pupils at a prestigious private school were being advised to cover up their uniforms to avoid being mugged on the way home.

Police said the children at £13,000-a-year Highgate School in North London were targeted because muggers believed they would be carrying cash.

Now Sir Mike, chief adviser to schools in the capital, has highlighted the threat posed by inter-school tensions. ‘I have heard of schools where kids are told to change out of uniform to stop them being picked on,’ he revealed.

Ministers have given their backing to school uniforms as a way of establishing a school ethos and identity. But guidance issued last year advises schools to look out for pupils wearing gang colours, bandannas and jewellery.

Schools were urged to consider the impact of ’styles and colours of clothing associated with gangs’ when drawing up uniform policies.

They were told they can prevent pupils wearing items such as scarves, wristbands, hooded tops, bandannas and baseball caps to ‘protect young people from external pressure’.

An instructive image gallery of teens killed on London streets can be found here.

Britain’s most senior policeman – who once accused the media of being institutionally racist — is facing a fresh leadership crisis after being placed under formal investigation over how a close friend won more than £3m of contracts with his force.

An independent investigator has been appointed to scrutinise Sir Ian Blair’s role into how his skiing companion Andy Miller got a series of lucrative contracts at Scotland Yard.

The announcement came after an emergency meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority’s professional standards committee. Members discussed the issue and decided that an independent inquiry was the best way to proceed.

Depending on what evidence is uncovered, it is possible that the Scotland Yard chief may be suspended during the course of the inquiry.

Senior sources remarked that if the same situation arose in a provincial force, with a chief constable under investigation, they would be suspended straight away to ‘preserve the integrity of the inquiry’.

The force is in mediation with Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur who is threatening to launch employment tribunal proceedings for race discrimination.

It is also awaiting a tribunal judgement of another senior officer Shabir Hussain alleging racism.

It seems as if Sir Ian may also yet personally taste the fruits of his years of shoving “race-hate crimes” down British people’s throats.

An indication of the increasing Islamification of Britain has come with the launch of the first sharia-compliant insurance company on Monday, offering “motoring policies in line with the Islamic legal code.”

Salaam Halal insurance uses contributions to invest in “sharia-compliant investments” – in other words, other Islamic ventures.

“The launch of Salaam insurance — the first independent, fully sharia-compliant Takaful operator available in this country — is a significant step for the growth of Islamic finance in the UK,” said Abdulaziz Hamad Aljomaih, the chairman of Salaam insurance.

The group, authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority,  an independent watchdog, hopes to launch home insurance policies later this year. Their call centres in Britain can take calls in English, Arabic, Bengali, Gujarati or Urdu.

In 2004, Britain authorised a 100 percent Islamic bank, the Islamic Bank of Britain. And the traditional bank Lloyds TSB last year launched Islamic finance products targeted at businesses, and offered sharia-compliant bank accounts.

The practice of forced marriages amongst Britain’s ethnic communities form Pakistan, Bangladesh and India is being used as an immigration scam – and dozens of the young people involved are actually mentally disabled, a report has revealed.

More than one in five of the forced marriages reported to the Government involve disabled people, but experts fear that the true scale of the problem could be far worse.

Last week, senior police officers, lawyers, social workers and campaign groups held urgent talks in London as the scale of the problem emerged.

The Foreign Office’s Forced Marriage Unit dealt with 400 cases last year – and more than 80 of these involved people with learning disabilities.

The majority of cases reported involve families from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. Rape, domestic violence and abandonment are common consequences of such marriages, according to support groups.

Many care workers are however reluctant to oppose the forced marriages for fear of being branded “culturally insensitive.”

According to Mandy Sanghera, a social worker with Voice UK, a charity which helps people with learning disabilities, she has “worked with more than 100 people with learning disabilities forced into marriage, from south Asian, African and Middle Eastern communities.”

According to Saghir Alam, of the Orwellian-named Equality 2025, the Government’s disability advisory body, social services must become more culturally sensitive so parents do not feel that marriage is the only long-term care option. Asian families are consistently less likely to seek or receive outside help.

The number of British Asians bringing in spouses from the Indian subcontinent has doubled over five years, according to a recent report by Migration Watch UK.

Chronic underfunding within Northamptonshire Police has been blamed for the county’s high crime rate, which is officially the worst in England.

Local MP Brian Binley (Con, Northampton South) said the county should be given a “fair deal” from central Government, saying that he would write to Home Secretary Jacquie Smith and was considering writing directly to Gordon Brown to raise the issue, Wow, Brian, steady on, someone might thing you want to actually do something about it.

MP Sally Keeble (Lab, Northampton North) said she would be talking to Chief Constable Peter Maddison about the result saying “We do have to look very carefully at what has happened and arguments about not enough money don’t wash because if you look at the investment in the police in Northamptonshire, it’s been proportionately higher than in other East Midlands’ forces over the past 10 years”. Well Sally would spring to the defence of her party that created the problem by overcrowding the county without the proper resources in place.

Roger Kingston, chairman of the Northants Residents’ Alliance, added: “This is terrible news for residents. Northamptonshire is being ripped off, and we are heading towards a poverty of services in this county.The chief constable has been complaining about underfunding for a couple of years now at least, and it’s time for our local representatives to start making a hell of a lot more noise about it.” If you are lucky Roger you might just hear Brian Binley scribbling away on a notepad.

Teenage crimewave, Imran Ali, is today starting his latest spell at a young offenders’ institution for the violent robbery of a Northampton petrol station. Wearing hoodies and scarves over their faces, he and two accomplices assaulted the cashier of the BP garage in Mill Lane, Kingsthorpe, before making off with £268 takings from the till.

At Northampton Crown Court, the 19-year-old was sentenced to 21 months’ detention for the robbery, with 18 months consecutive for a house break-in and 34 other similar offences. At one stage during the hearing, the judge, Recorder Sam Mainds, told him: “Stop laughing. This is a serious matter.”

Ali, formerly of Hester Street, Semilong, was one of the ringleaders of the ‘Aldi Crew’ known to terrorise St James’ shoppers and residents. Sentenced to 21 months’ detention at a young offenders’ institution for the attempted robbery of a pizza delivery driver in December last year, he was also given a three-year anti-social behaviour order banning him from Victoria Park, the car park of Aldi supermarket in St James and from drinking or being drunk in public.

If Ali was sentenced to 21 months for attempted robbery last December, what the hell was he doing free in order to hold up a petrol station?!