Thousands of disease-ridden foreigners ready to invade UK

Acid Rabbi doesn't often even bother to look at the Daily Mail, finding little of interest in the paper due being the sort of person who likes to make his own mind up rather than a small-minded nimby fascist with middle class pretentions and an inability to form opinions of his own without being told what to think. Once in a while, however, we trawl the Internet's murkier depths where the light of reason and common sense cannot reach and stumble upon their webpage.

It's the usual Mailesque stuff we've all come to know and despise: a story about a woman who could be murdered after her lover was doused with acid, illustrating the supposed inherent evil of Islam and all Muslims (odd that. All the Muslims we know seem to be quite nice - and since a lot of shopkeepers are Muslims, they probably account for quite a high percentage of the Daily mails sold each day); another about a female teacher charged with sexually assaulting a schoolgirl, thereby proving beyond doubt that all gay people are evil too; a man attacked by chavs who feels "let down by the system" and - shock, horror - news that the Church of England has thrown off 2000 years of history and will now allow children born out of wedlock to be baptised at the same time as their parents get married, effectively meaning that the Church has now caught up with the rest of society and will no longer damn those who have sex before being legally declared man and wife. Oh, plus one article about a police chief being investigated following racism claims (the paper is unexpectedly not surprised that the chief in question - who also happens to be a woman - has managed to reach such a responsible position despite the supposed limitations of her sex) and another about a "racist BNP teenager" who has just been convicted of driving a pupil at his school to the brink of suicide (with a terrifying photograph of two teenagers in hoodies, the Mail's favourite enemy ever since changes in the law prevented them from printing headlines saying "We Hate Wogs") - they need to get those stories in there somewhere just in case anyone remembers the paper's sympathy and support for Hitler, Mussolini and Oswald Mosley's British fascists just before WW2; after all, though the paper is designed to appeal to a particular type of racist, racism is a dirty word nowadays and nobody likes to be called it even if they would try to stop their daughter marrying a black man.

Ever the traditionalists, the Mail's "journalists" do their utmost to keep old customs alive and one example on which they are particularly keen is stirring up hatred toward those cheese-scoffing barbarians across the Channel, the French. Never mind the fact that 50% of Brits would up sticks and bugger off to the Dordogne for a life of cheap quality wine and olives given half a chance, the Mail does everything it can to remind us Pierre's an ill-educated snail-eating slob and his wife Vianne's a slapper who, worst of all, doesn't shave her armpits. Let's not forget the Hundred Years' War either, nor Trafalgar. As a result, they've devoted several of whatever the online equivalent to column inches is to the story of a group of innocent British school children who were treated like "dangerous criminals" because they were showing 'flu-like symptoms before being booted out of the Republic. "Go back to your disease-ridden country!" they were allegedly told - wonder what would happen if a coachload of French kids showed up at Dover for their yearly exchange visit with signs of a highly contagious disease right in the middle of a nation-wide panic-demic? (Ooh, have any of the red-tops thought of "panic-demic" yet? That could be worth trademarking before they start printing the "false alarm" stories... Ed.)

That's not all they have to say on the topic of Jean le Foreigneur today either - it seems dear old Blighty is on the brink of being invaded by thousands of Frenchies "carrying potentially fatal diseases" too. But, just for once, the Mail's not taking a pop at immigrants - or not human ones at any rate. These plague vectors are chipmunks, no less. Apparently, the little devils have been spreading across Europe in much the same manner as Albanian gypsies and have already reached Paris, which is good timing on their behalf because they'll be there to see Bradley Wiggins (allez!) on the winner's podium following the last stage of the Tour de France on Sunday. French experts say that the animals, which can carry rabies and the ticks that cause Lyme's disease, will soon get as far as Calais where they could sneak aboard vehicles and hitch a lift over here.

Bloody foreigners! I expect they'll be pickpocketing, stealing our credit card details and taking jobs from hard-working British people too, not to mention living in all the council houses and putting a burden on our cash-starved NHS. You know chipmunks aren't Christians, don't you? - it'll only be a matter of time before our politically-correct Liberal councils ban Christmas to avoid offending them.

How will you protect your children from the froggie chipmunk hordes?

Lords sides with Muslims over MPs

The Government has suffered yet another defeat in the House of Lords after peers voted in support of establishing a new independent commissioner for terrorism suspects.

This is not the first time the Lords has opposed the Commons over anti-terrorist legislation, much of which has been highly contentious, with notable past defeats including Tony Blair's attempt to increase the maximum time a terrorist suspect can be held without charge from 28 days to 90 in 2005. In 2008, another attempt to extend it to 45 days was made, briefly accepted and then overturned by the Lords. Law Lords led by Lord Philips of Worth-Matravers have also recently attacked controversial control orders which can be used to prevent a suspect from seeing evidence being used against him or her, effectively denying them the right to make an appeal. The Common's opposition to the creation of the new post was backed by MPs from the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and some cross-party members.

A group of peers led by Lord Lloyd of Berwick (pictured right), a retired Law Lord, demanded that the new post be created and won the vote by 145 votes to 102. He said that the commissioner would act as the "the eyes and ears of the judge," entirely independently, in those cases where the police try to extend a suspect's detention prior to a charge being made.

In essence, the new commissioner will help to ensure that innocent people will not be detained for any longer than is necessary. Fears that it might lead to guilty people being freed are dismissed by former Chief Inspector of the Constabulary Lord Dear, who says he believes "that the greater good that may be achieved by the creation of the commissioner post far outweighs any potential disadvantage." The commissioner will be granted access to secret evidence, available to neither the suspect nor the suspect's lawyer, in order to be able to advise the judge on the best course of action.

Although Lord Lloyd points out that the creation of the post will reassure Britain's 2.4 million strong Muslim community, of which some members have been feeling (not without reason) distinctly alienised and even criminalised by various legislation and the extreme opinions of a small minority of the non-Muslim population, it will be of equal service to anyone of any other background who is unfortunate enough to be falsely suspected of plotting or carrying out terrorist offences.

The Guildford Four were wrongly convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in the 1970s. After many years in prison, their convictions were overturned. The people who carried out the bombings for which they were blamed remain free. Had the commissioner for terrorism supects have existed then, these innocent people might never have been convicted - and the police investigation would have continued, perhaps eventually capturing the real perpetrators before the trail went cold.

Had the commissioner have existed in the 1970s, the trial of the Guildford Four - wrongly convicted and imprisoned for a number of years after being sentenced to life for bombing attacks they did not carry out - may well have had a very different outcome. When an innocent person is convicted of a crime they did not commit, the investigation into that crime ends which allows the real perpetrator to remain free. The police are, unfortunately, not infallible and in some cases may be too keen to be seen to be achieving results which can lead to wrongful convictions - the new commissioner will decrease the likelihood of innocent people ending up in jail and increase the likelihood of guilty people facing prosecution.

House of Commons ministers have argued that one commissioner will be insufficient to cover the entire country and that the plan will cost far more than Lord Lloyd claims. How much is too much to ensure innocent people remain at liberty and terrorists, who seek to or may even successfully kill large numbers of men, women and children, are removed from society and given the long sentences they deserve?