Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: UK Bans Smell of Cooking Bacon

Here’s some more about the nonsensical socialist nanny-state utopia that is Great Britain: a cafe owner has been ordered to remove an exhaust fan because neighborhood Muslims claimed they were offended by the smell of cooking bacon.

A hard-working cafe owner has been ordered to tear down an extractor fan – because the smell of her frying bacon ‘offends’ Muslims.

Planning bosses acted against Beverley Akciecek, 49, after being told her next-door neighbour’s Muslim friends had felt ‘physically sick’ due to the ‘foul odour’.

Great Britain and Property Rights

Imagine going on vacation. When you get back, your house has been occupied by 15 homeless people, who have changed the locks and will not let you into your own home. You call the police to have the intruders removed, and are told that they can’t do anything, because squatting is a civil offense, not a criminal one.

Surely, such a think couldn’t possible happen in real life, at least not in a civilized country, right?

Well, it happened in Britain:

In the middle of completely refurbishing his five-bedroom house, Connan Gupta felt he deserved a week off.

It is a decision he is now regretting because 15 squatters took advantage of his short absence to occupy the £700,000 property.

More Joys of Socialized Medicine

From the wondrous, miraculous, and highly efficient UK socialized health care system, we are brought the case of an elderly woman who was taken of the waiting list for an operation because she dared to consult a private physician.

From the Daily Mail:

A woman with crippling back pain who has been waiting months for an operation was removed from the NHS waiting list because she had a private consultation.

Breast cancer survivor Jenny Whitehead was told by her NHS trust in December last year that she would have to wait five months before she could see an orthopaedic surgeon after a scan revealed a cyst on her spine.

Having suffered back pain since 2008 and unable to face months of waiting in pain, she decided to pay £250 for a private session with the same doctor the following week.

He assured the 64-year- old retired museum assistant that he would add her to his NHS waiting list for an operation to have the growth removed.

But she was shocked when Bradford and Airedale NHS Trust told her she had been taken off the waiting list because her private consultation disqualified her from any further NHS treatment under that referral.

With service like that, I am shocked and amazed and astounded that we haven’t completely and unquestioningly adopted that system over here. (Yes, that was pure snark.)

Hat tip: Van Helsing at Moonbattery.

Climate Skeptics = Terrorists

Vladimir at Red State brings us the story from the UK, where those skeptical of climate change, who called for Freedom of Information releases of climate data, are being investigated by counter-terrorism experts.

Individuals who made Freedom of Information inquiries of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit have come under police scrutiny, including interviews to determine their political beliefs, scientific qualifications, and details regarding computer usage, according to an article in The Financial Times. [Link requires registration.]

Even more troubling, local police are being aided in their investigation by members of the National Domestic Extremism Team, the unit set up to counter home-grown terrorists and radicals. The purported reason for their involvement is their skills in computer forensics and their experience dealing with environmental terrorists.

But it’s curious that, given the very real threat of terrorism, both in the U.K. and the U.S., precious resources are allocated to tracking down a culprit who would be glorified as a “whistleblower” if his politics were different.

Read the whole thing here.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: Sex Crimes in UK

A little while back, Reason Magazine feature an astoundingly stupid story from the UK, in which a woman was arrested for having sex, with her husband, in her own home. You see, she was too loud.

Well, it seems that the fascist police state that the UK has evolved into wasn’t satisfied, and she was arrested again. The Daily Telegraph covers the story:

Mrs Cartwright avoided jail in January when a judge at Newcastle Crown Court handed her a suspended prison sentence after she was caught breaching a four-year Asbo which bans her from having loud sex sessions.

Hate Register

Jason Kuznicki at the Cato Institute recently penned an analysis that argued that hate speech laws encourage outrage over increasingly petty offenses. (I can see it as a valid argument — now all you have to do to be a racist is diagree with the President’s spending proposals.) Kunznicki has found more evidence for his argument: in the UK, grade schools have established “hate registers” which record alleged hate crimes on students’ records.

Oh, the Irony

A new Tea Party movement is starting up — in Great Britain.

Apparently the mantra of “Taxed Enough Already” is spreading across the pond. I guess the Brits aren’t as happy with high-cost nanny-state socialism as we are led to believe.

UK Affirms Hindu Man’s Right to Funeral Pyre

Here’s a really interesting case from Great Britain, compliments of Religion Clause. The British Court of Appeals has affirmed the right of a practicing Hindu to be cremated in a funeral pyre.

I’d love to be cremated on a funeral pyre.

Facebook Pulls Prisoner-Run Intimidation Pages

I’m all for free speech, and the UK isn’t neccessarily so, but I also recognize that website have terms of service agreements, and that a website such as Facebook doesn’t constitite a protected public forum, since the server is private property. I also have no problem with Facebook deleting groups that prisoners are using to intimidate their victims.

Full Body Scans vs Privacy

The United Kingdom has installed those fancy full body scanners that let people see through your clothes. You know, the ones that have people over here worried about privacy issues. Of course, if the UK were so worried about privacy they wouldn’t have the highest per capita number of security cameras or be employing military drones to monitor their citizens, but I digress.