BC Local News: Abbotsford dad still fighting to have daughter returned home
Over the past few months I’ve been following the case of Ayn Van Dyk, a 9-year-old autistic girl from British Columbia (Canada) who was taken into care very suddenly in June after briefly going missing from her father’s back garden. She was found safe and well a few hours later, playing in a neighbour’s back garden, but social services (Ministry for Child and Family Development) seized the young girl from school, as the incident followed a number of incidents of unmanageable behaviour at school, although this was the first time anything untoward had happened at home. Ayn and two brothers, one of them also autistic, were being cared for by their father, Derek Hoare, after he had split with their mother (Amie Van Dyk) a few years ago. Since Ayn was removed, she has seen her mother on some occasions, but not her father.
Yesterday it was announced that the Whittemore-Peterson Institute in Reno, Nevada had won a long-running campaign for a $100,000 grant from the Vivint home security company (formerly APX Alarm) called the 
Of late I’ve seen a number of tweets and blog articles questioning why some “good liberals” suddenly go hard-line when it comes to allowing the English Defence League to have their marches, and start supporting banning them, particularly the one which is meant to take place in east London tomorrow. I’m not a liberal in the same way as the people being referred to, and to me it’s not a matter of principle but a matter of people’s safety, if not life and death, that these marches not be allowed to go on.
These days, if you go into hospital for virtually any procedure or any surgery, chances are high that you will be out in much shorter time than you would have been in the past. I recall reading a book by Judy Blume, titled Deenie, about a girl who had to wear a back brace for scoliosis, and the doctor told her that the options were the brace or an operation. However, the operation would mean months on her back and possible complications. These days, people are up in days and out in weeks following that operation, and nobody wears a Milwaukee brace anymore. However, it seems that more and more procedures are being done on a day or overnight basis, and there is an obvious reduction in after-care and the potential for things to go wrong once the patient is back home.
I have held off writing about the wave of rioting and looting that hit London and some other English towns and cities early last week partly because I was busy (work, Ramadan and an overhanging article on ME) and partly because I did not feel I knew enough about the situation to write anything of value — I do not live near where any of the major violence took place, I did not witness any of it, I do not have strong connections to the communities involved, and so could not write much that has not already been said by others. Croydon was my home town until 2001; I used to go to London Road a lot, and I was quite shocked that there had been so much destruction there when there was no protest motive and the people whose property was damaged could not possibly have done anything to offend, let alone oppress, the attackers. I read an edited version of 
This past weekend was dominated by two major death-related news stories: the bombing and subsequent massacre in Norway on Friday, and the death (to me at least, sudden and unexpected) of the singer, Amy Winehouse, in London on Saturday. Readers abroad may find it astonishing that I put the two stories in the same sentence, but Amy Winehouse was a big star here even if she was a one-hit wonder in some other countries, even though, as 
