Silent
Majority Speaks
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TOUGH
JUSTICE
Tough
on crime, tough on the causes of crime. Consider the events
of the past few days.
First
Tony Blair goes back on a promise to give homeowners extra
protection when tackling burglars. Then judges are told
that they should not jail offenders if prisons are full.
And now a respected magistrate has been forced to resign
for demanding tougher sentences.
When
Adoline Smith, who had herself been burgled, said the minimum
sentence for this crime should be six months, defence solitictors
said her judgments might not be 'fair'. Frustrated at being
suspended, she resigned, depriving the justice system of
a JP known for being 'scrupulously fair, knowledgable and
considerate'. No wonder law-abiding citizens despair.
COMMENT - Daily Mail, January 17, 2005
Spin, not
face-to-face confrontations with the voters, is the Government's
chosen method of communication. Ordinary
people are dangerous. Ordinary people might ask a question
which throws a politician 'off message'; the Cabinet member
might reveal himself or herself to be a human being like
us, and not a programmed android. Worse still, he or she
might tell the truth.
Ann Leslie - Daily Mail, September
16, 2004
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New
Labour likes to use words to try to alter facts. Violent
crime is now called 'anti-social behaviour' - just as
most murderers are now accused of manslaughter. Letter
from A. Still, Ilford, Essex. - Daily Mail, May 25, 2005
Since
Tony Blair was elected in 1997, the rate of gun crime,
stabbings and all forms of violence has soared,yet the
Government continues to boast of a 'dramatic reduction'
where crime is concerned.
Now
the hooded pond life who infest our towns and cities have
sunk to a new low - attacking funeral processions. In
the unlikely event of this feral scum being prosecuted,
the 'defence' will, no doubt, cliaim that punishment would
be an infringement of their human rights. Why not just
de-criminalsie crime? Letter
from John Haynes, Welford, Northants. - Daily Mail, May
25, 2005
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| Without
a blush, Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt says the way to
stop young people binge-drinking and dying from liver cirrhosis
is to 'increase the tax on alcohol'. NO, Ms Hewitt! We don't
need more tax - just an end to the 24-hour drinking culture
your government so recklessly introduced against all advice
and every shred of common sense. Amanda
Platell - Daily Mail, October 28, 2006 |
A
year on, this is Binge Britain
Binge
drinking out of control
Free
to commit crime
Don't
put suspects in jail, use bail
Longer
pub hours blamed for surge in violent crime
Where
are all the police today?
Prison
works ... It's letting people out that doesn't
Justice
denied
- Thugs
offered a £500 let-off
Killings
up 35% under Labour
Prison
really DOES work
Foreign
jaunts for inmates freed early
Now
everyone's got a get out of jail free car ... except the law-abiding
Why
have our police lost all common sense?
We’re
too nice to expel foreign crooks
100
FREED EARLY TO RAPE AND MURDER
On-the-spot
fines denounced by JPs
Murder
of a good citizen
60%
of muggings 'not reported as we lose faith in police'
The
endless cautions
Let
burglars off with a caution, police told
Criminals
are the enemy. It's not rocket science
Restore
beat bobby
Dave
Consalvi (Mail) sums up perfectly the frustrations of
a great many crime victims (Letters). A growing number
of serving police officers, and retired 'old sweats' such
as me, despair at the state of the modern police service.
If
Sir Ian Blair, the Met's new Commissioner, is looking
for something to make his mark, he simply needs the courage
to return his force to the traditional and well-proven
methods of policing London. He should re-deploy his brave
and dedicated oficers to their primary purpose, which
is the prevention of crime and protection of the public.
Letter from Bruce Baker, Pinner,
Middlesex. Daily Mail 18/2/05
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Crime
and the Police
CRIME
and POLICE are two sides of the social coin characterising
a political system, be it democracy or dictatorship. Everyone
knows which side is uppermost in all authoritarian societies.
Here the range and severity of punishment, using punitive
laws, overwhelmingly favour the rulers and minimise crime.
But where should the line be drawn in democratic societies,
where laws are subject to legal challenge after legal challenge,
and 'human rights' are paramount?
Violent
crime still rising despite crusade on thugs
By
Ben Taylor, Crime Correspondent - Daily Mail, October
18, 2004
David Blunkett's crusade against
Britain's yob culture has been dealt a blow after
figures revealed that violent crime is soaring. It
is expected to have risen by around 10% on average
in figures released by the Home Office this week.
While the Government says that overall crime fell
last year, the increase in violence in the latest
quarterly figures will be a blow to the Home Secretary.
He has staked his reputation on turning
the tide on the rise of thuggery which many believe
is fuelled by binge drinking. However, critics
have warned that the Government's plans to relax licensing
laws and allow 24-hour drinking will only worsen the
situation, making town centres no-go areas for law-abiding
citizens at weekends.
Tory home affairs spokesman David
Davis said: "Government's failure to deal with
drunkenness offences, and their plans to relax drinking
laws, completely undermine their claims to take violent
crime seriously. After 7 years in power, Labour has
failed to get a grip on violent crime and it is appalling
to think that ordinary people are afraid to visit
their own town centres at night time."
In Sheffield, the situation is so
bad that mounted patrols have been introduced to restore
order to the crowds of weekend revellers. In London,
assaults on police officers soared by up to 36% in
the outer suburbs - prompting a summer crackdown by
Metropoltan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens.
The latest figures come as a debate
continues over the true number of offences overall.
The Govern-ment says crime was down 5% last year,
based on the controversial British Crime Survey which
is compiled from interviews with 37,000 householders
about their experience of crime. But those figures
ignore entire categories such as drug offences, sexual
assaults, murders, fraud crimes against businesses
including shop-lifting and any crime where the victim
is under 16.
During the same period, 2003/04,
recorded crime in England and Wales went up by 1%.
For violent crime, police figures showed an alarming
12% rise, yet the British Crime Survey claimed a more
reassuring 3% fall. The new figures expected to show
the continuing rise in violent crime recorded by police
in England and Wales cover April to June this year.
In one provincial force area, North
Yorkshire, offences are up 59%. Other rural forces
such as Devon and Cornwall, and Avon and Somerset,
also show large increases of around 20%. Other forces
to have recorded year on year rises include Cheshire,
Cleveland, Derbyshire, Dorset, West Yorkshire, South
Yorkshire, Northamptonshire, Suffolk, Norfolk and
Leicestershire.
Late night drinkers in the City of
London contributed to a larger than average rise in
the normally low-crime Square Mile. But following
a successful crack-down, the figures in Northumbria
- which includes the major city of Newcastle - have
fallen. Rural West Mercia - which includes Worcester,
Hereford and Shrewsbury - has also seen a smaller
than average rise.
One
in four youngsters say they carry a knife
One
in four children aged 11 to 16 claim they arm themselves
with knives, a survey revealed yesterday. A shocking
28% of boys and girls said they have carried some
sort of blade in the past year. 25% had penknives,
but 9% admitted they had armed themselves with flick
knives.
The
escalating problem was highlighted by the murder last
year of 14-year-old Luke Walmsley, who was stabbed
to death by a bully in a corridor at his school in
Lincolnshire. For boys only, the figures revealed
that more than four in ten - 42% - in mainstream schools
carried a knife. Among boys and girls excluded from
mainstream education, nearly half - 46% - carried
penknives and 30% armed themselves with flick knives.
For
boys in special units, the figure soared to 64% carrying
knives, according to an annual Mori survey for the
Youth Justice Board. On average, a child dies from
a knife attack every fortnight. The country's biggest
police force has launched a pilot scheme to supply
schools with X-ray machines that can screen pupils
for weapons. Head-teachers in London can ask the Metropoltican
Police for mobile scanners- anti-terror devices which
can see through clothes - if they are particularly
concerned.
Education
Secretary Charles Clarke is expected to unveil measures
to combat the growing knife problem in schools next
month.
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Labour
'tough on crime'? It's a joke
Letter
from R. Chapman, Paignton, Devon to the Daily Mail
- Nov 9, 2004
When
this Government was first elected Mr Blair promised
to be tough on crime. But over the years he's gone
soft. And as he's got softer, crime has increased,
drugs have been downgraded, licensing hours are going
to increase, causing more drunkenness and resulting
in more crimes being committed by those on drugs and
drink. All the Government has done is a lot of
talking.
As
a small shop, we have been inundated by drug users
who steal from us, intimidate us, and verbally and
mentally abuse us. Many of them are unemployed and
claim numerous benefits(for which we pay). Recently
we have suffered repeated thefts, intimidation and
abuse from a group of teen-agers.
Despite
banning them from the shop, they still come in and
steal from under our noses, taking no notice of the
fact that we demand that they leave our premises.
We
contacted the police twice last week, but we have
still not seen a police officer, despite being assured
that one would attend and take statements. We presume
they think it's just shoplifting and not worth the
bother.
Over
the past four years, our outgoings on business rates
and council tax have increased on the pretext of better
policing - more spin from Labour.
Now
the Home Secretary has decreed that shoplifting is
no longer to be a criminal offence, but instead will
be dealt with by on-the-spot fines/ fixed penalties.
This
will increase the amount of shop-lifting as those
concerned will be laughing at the law. Losses from
shoplifters can in some weeks amount to more than
£100 - in excess of £5,000/year.
Crime
isn't falling and will rise further with 24-drinking,
more gambling and a soft drugs policy. We should spend
the money being wasted on community wardens - policing
on the cheap - on more professional police officers.
Listen
to the people who are victims of crime before it's
too late. The old saying 'crime doesn't pay' should
be changed to 'crime pays well'.
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Within
the lifetime of any octogenerian, democracy in the UK has
been transformed by the law and 'political correctness', altering
the balance of power so much that it seems to many that minority
rights supercede majority needs, authority is ridiculed, and
anarchy reigns.
So
Tony Blair thinks the liberal thinking of the Sixties is responsible
for today's attitude to law and order. Perhaps our Tony might
think again if he reads this
letter.
"In
the past few years," Melanie Phillips writes in the Daily
Mail of June 28, 2004, "the police have degenerated from
forming our front line of defence against the forces that
undermine order into a fifth column for those very forces."
"Crippled
by political correctness," she goes on, "their main
preoccupation is no longer to prevent offences but to prevent
themselves from giving offence. As a result, they display
rather more concern for manipulative victim groups than for
actual victims, who are left unprotected by the absence of
officers on the streets while the 'thought police' busy them-selves
instead with targeting 'hate' crime.
"This
is why a deputy chief constable devotes his energies to composing
rap presentations to black officers, why senior officers call
for the legalisation of drugs; why it took a full three hours
before the police realised an elderly colonel found dead in
his cottage had been shot; why an intruder got into Windsor
Castle; or why the prosecution over the killing of Damilola
Taylor was such a debacle.
"Quite
simply, the police are suffering from profound and systemic
collapse of competence, craft knowledge and moral fibre that
goes back many years. Over-professionalism has meant officers
are promoted far too swiftly from one post to another, preventing
the development of professional expertise - let alone those
local contacts essential to the prevention and detection of
crime.
"Senior
police are thus appointed with no experience. Instead, they
have degrees - which are not only no substitute, but also
inculcate them with the loopy and destructive ideas so prevalent
in social science, such as that crime is all the fault of
society, or that crime is not the problem so much as an irrational
fear of crime.
"The
Home Office, however, is the last place to put all this right.
For its own incompetence and interference have greatly exacerbated
the disastrous decline of the police.
"The
Bichard report severely criticised the ministry for having
abandoned plans for a nationwide database for sharing intelligence
between police forces. Yet without shared intelligence, how
can the police possibly be effective.
"In
addition, the Government's innumerable policing targets, its
imposition of human rights law which makes a mockery of justice,
its mixed messages about illegal drugs and its demoralisation
of the police through the vilification over 'institutionalised
racism' all means that the Home Office is part of the policing
problem rather than its solution. The
police will recover only if they become fully accountable
to the public they serve. They cannot do so if their strings
are pulled by the Government."
Please
click one of the links above to cast your vote
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Chief
Constable of Nottinghamshire has his say on what should be
done
"We
must be brave enough to be tough. We must be tough enough
to make people understand that the world is not built to revolve
around a single person - and that we do not exist to indulge
the whims of the selfish and the destructive," says Mr
Green. Do you agree with him?
CANNABIS
Police have
also called for a Goverment U-turn over the softening of the
law on cannabis. Front-line officers claim the controversial
new rules have brought a 'sense of lawlessness' to the streets,
said Police Federation chairman, Jan Berry. Read the full
report here.
Smacking
your child could land you in court
Forty
years ago my seven year-old daughter accidentally dropped
the corner of an empty cardboard box on my big toe. The pain
was excruciating. Without thinking my arm swung round and
she received a painful smack on her bottom. My wife and I
were soon cuddling her and the incident forgotten. The following
day, however, she showed her school teacher the reddened skin
with a playful laugh and was told she probably deserved it.
Today, if that happened, I would have been reported, my family
investigated like criminals. Is that what we want families
to go through today? Should a minority of brutal parents create
a police state, where neighbours report the slightest incident
and children run amok?
Also,
please read this letter-writer's view on the real
cause of crime.
The
right of parents to punish their children is to be curtailed
with strict curbs on smacking, it has emerged. Read
the full report , then ask yourself this question:
The
mismanagement of the police is a national scandal. Gimmicks
and jargon are now substitutes for action, writes Iain
Gordon, formerly a Metropolitan Police Detective Inspecter.
Read about the 'lonely bobby'
Current
and prospective Parliamentary candidates of all Parties running
for election could share a platform at public forums in every
constituency. They would be presented with the results
of polls on this issue expressed by the majority of voters
in that constituency.
The
candidates could be asked if their own views and that of their
Party manifesto corresponded with the polls, and if not, how they
intended to represent the will of the majority of local voters.
Local and National Press, Radio and TV coverage would be arranged
and the results published on this web site.
Here
is another powerful strategy for using your vote effectively in
the forthcoming General Election. Send your sitting and prospective
MPs a letter defining your requirements if they want your vote.
This example deals with the proposed
EU Constitutional Treaty.
Your
letters would end: "If
you do not answer this letter, I shall take it that you intend
to follow the Government line. I shall act accordingly in the
forthcoming General Election."
Here's
one that will force Tony Blair to resign:
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Dear
Despite
his absolute and unequivocal assurances over the past year
of the serious risk to our security of Saddam Hussein's 'weapons
of mass destruction', Prime Minister Blair has admitted, that
the threat was non-existent. For that critical error of judgement
and for his gross incompetence in handling this very important
issue, I ask you to take immediate steps to ensure that Tony
Blair does the honourable thing and resign without delay..
I
would therefore be much obliged if you would propose and help
mobilise a Parliamentary vote of 'No Confidence' in Mr Blair
which, despite Labour's huge majority, would leave the PM
with no option but to resign.
If
I get no reply to this letter, I shall assume you will continue
to support Mr Blair as our Prime Minister. In such circumstances
I shall not vote for you in the forthcoming General Election.
Signed:
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Or
why not create a questionnaire that you send to all the candidates
in your constituency, getting them to give yes/no answers to questions
of your choice, and ending it with the same paragraph(above).
Download
a printable example of the questionnaire.
It
is high time for the people of this United Kingdom to stop allowing
themselves to be manipulated by politicians. We need our representatives
in Parliament to genuinely reflect the view of the majority in
their own constituency, even if this means going against their
personal and/or their party's policy. While they may argue their
case, hoping to change the minds of the majority in their constituency,
they should ultimately be obliged to reflect the majority view
of those who elect them.
It
will be argued by politicians of all parties that most voters
don't have the knowledge necessary to express an opinion on important
subjects at issue, and that our vote is a form of delegated democracy.
We should argue that it is their duty to ensure that we voters
do have ready access to such information as is necessary to form
an intelligent opinion. That, after all, is one main purpose of
Opposition Parties in our Parliamentary Democracy.
Most
important of all, such proceedings would rekindle in voters their
latent interest and obligation to cast their vote, knowing that
the candidate of their choice would be more likely to act in accordance
with their wishes. A much higher turnout in elections would be
the result.
Contact
your local Party Chairman. Gain his support for setting up public
forums in your constituency on these, as well as any other relevant
topics, well before the next General Election expected in 2005.
You should then, depending on the integrity of the candidate of
your choice, feel fairly certain that your view on any subject
being debated in Parliament will more accurately be reflected
by your representative in that assembly.
If
you have suggestions for additional subjects, or material to include
in the pages linked to the subjects listed, please contact
the webmaster.
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