Tuesday, February 06, 2007
I am very heartened by the news that the Conservatives are standing by our commitment to oppose id cards and longer detention without trial. The Government’s trying to sound off against this naturally:
Mr Reid said: "David Davis has shown today that he and David Cameron talk tough
while acting soft."
Let’s face it, we only have so many police, and the more tasks they have, the less well they are going to be able to do them. Not exactly rocket science. The police’s duties should be limited as much as possible to make them as effective as possible. Just imagine what the introduction, management and enforcement of this ID card scheme would waste in terms of resources and time of the police and Home Office. And with absolutely no benefit for us citizens to boot. Good on the Tories to stick the boot in. Let’s just hope they stay at it.
Labels: Conservatives, law & order, politics
Friday, February 02, 2007
Given the spate of recent stories about overflowing prisons, I have been hearing again and again this notion that Britain imprisons more than anyone else in Europe. Now in terms of prisoners per head of population that’s true. But is that really what matters? No, what matters is the proportion of prisoners to crimes and on that count Britain is third from the bottom in Europe, a point made very clearly by Robin Harris some time ago. In its newest press release Civitas also makes this clear with some up-to-date figures:
If we imprisoned offenders at the average rate (per 1,000 crimes) of EU members, the prison population would be 113,150 instead of 80,000. [. . .] Socialist Spain has the highest rate per 1,000 crimes and if her rate applied in England and Wales the prison population would be about 369,000.
Labels: law & order
Friday, February 17, 2006
I should be blogging properly on all of this, but it’s not so much anger but despair that marks my reaction to what’s been going on in the past days. Where to start?
ID cards. Has anybody anywhere seen anything resembling a convincing argument that we actually need these breathing licenses? Sure their cheerleaders have argued well, if not convincingly, that they won’t turn this country into a police state and that they won’t bankrupt us. And that’s it. And some of the cheek they use in their arguments - just consider our probable future prime minister:
This week has shown us to be in the last stages of intellectual decadence: ID cards are necessary, said Gordon Brown on Monday, "as a protection of people's individual civil liberties". A more dishonest justification for the extension of state power cannot be imagined.
More shocking abuse in Iraq . . . well not really. We get a journalistically indefensible running of abuse image of Abu Ghraib. Why this qualifies as “news” escapes me, as it’s the same incident, the same day, that we have already worked through and it offers nothing in the way of new evidence. The only thing it does is provide material to the opponents of the Coalition. It’s almost like the responsible media want us to lose this war . . .
And as for our own boys, am I missing something here? I only read about it and didn’t see the images so I was expecting something disturbing. So I was rather dismayed to see the whole furour was kicked up only about a few troops in rather desperate circumstances kicking and hitting a little too much during an arrest. Admittedly, too much is too much and it is necessary for disciplinary action to be taken. But given the circumstances of an mob assault on the Army base, a mere few kicks and hits are pretty mild to the possible alternative of machine gunning the crowd. Again, this abuse only really shows again how we remain on the moral highground even if we lose the PR battle.
Which moves us on to the smoking ban. What to make of that? Is this fox hunting for pubbers? I don’t really see how this can be popular, or why we need it. In consequence pubs will wither lose customers, or change their licences to being private premises. As for people who don’t go to pubs, and who are probably the majority backing this move, they’re not going to be showing up in Ye Old Rose anytime soon. The only change is that now we have to waste the resources of public order on implementing this idiocy. What a day for limited government.
The final straw I think was the bizarre Dick Cheney shooting incindent. Sure, given that the victim seems in good shape, it’s certainly worth a giggle and some jokes in satire shows, but can anybody give me any reason why this was given whole minutes on prime time British tv news? Or why does it warrant any real attention? It’s all beyond me. It does however, along with the above raise questions about the competence of the journalistic profession.
All in all I just feel that sensible argument is just being lost.
Labels: defence, economy, Iraq, law & order, media, nation, politics, society
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
So, Red China's head is on a state visit. Whilst I see the necessity of not being actively hostile to countries like Communist China, can someone please tell me why we roll out the red carpet (literally red!) for people like this? I mean business meetings with the Government is ok, but parading down the Mall with the Queen and the Household Division, having London landmarks lit up in red and having gigantic Chinese flag stuck on Horseguards Parade? I find it quite repellent. State visits should only be granted to visitors from moderately acceptable regimes. 'nuff said.
As for those elections in Azerbaijan, there are reports about quite a lot of irregularities and there has been at least verbal censure from the West, though I doubt anything much in practical steps will happen, as I hinted at recently. Katy at blogrel has some good news on the mood she picked up from Azeris about the Karabagh conflict. I think that is also the most practical solution to the conflict. All sides, particularly the outside powers, can keep their strategic goodies, but it would improve the lot of the people actually having to live there on the ground.
In the current imbroglio over the new anti-terror laws I notice one oddity about Blair's stance in regards to how he treats the advice of the "professionals", ie the police and intelligence services. It seems they are the best fount of knowledge when it comes to balancing political goods, in this case security and liberty. At the same time, there is some disgruntlement by Blair about Sir Christopher Meyer's views on Iraq. What this underlines is how, when it came to making the decision about Iraq, Blair was quite happy to ignore the wishes of the "professionals", ie the diplomatic corps and the military, when making a political decision. And quite rightly so, too. Strange though, that now the professionals agree with him, he's quite eager to roll their expertise out. Funny that . . .
Labels: Azerbaijan, China, law & order, terrorism
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Violent homophobic attacks have been on the rise so undoubtedly it’s good to see that the police is doing something about it and getting to grips with it, right? Well, yes and no. No I’m not normally inclined to be in much agreement with these fellows on domestic policy, but I can’t help but wonder whether Laban Tall and the English Castleman are perhaps on to something here.
I mean, what to make of this story:
A student at Balliol College was arrested and detained in custody for a night after he verbally abused a police horse early on Monday morning . . . Brown was fined for “causing harassment, harm or distress”, after he repeatedly called the officer’s horse “gay”. . . The arrest was made at 2.20am on Monday morning, and Brown was in a state which he described as “pissed out of my head”.
He had tried to escape the police by hiding in a doorway in Ship Street, but was found after back up had been called for. A total of six policemen were involved in making the arrest.
Labels: law & order, nation
Thursday, January 20, 2005
I only just now got round to checking out the current Speccie. Some good articles in there. I have mixed feelings about this one by Ross Clark on now-cancelled changes to the home defence laws. I probably have mixed feelings about it because I have mixed feelings about the whole issue.
One of my concerns with greater licence for homeowners is the risk that it would increasingly lead to situations were innocents were unacceptably harmed by home defence measures. As Clark ends his article:
We have been here before: in the 1840s when, horrified by the casualty rate of innocent citizens injured by the spring guns and mantraps then commonly employed by gentlemen to defend their property, MPs banned the devices.
Unquestionably the country has a crime problem, and I am all in favour of the police tackling it with more vigour than bureaucracy currently allows them to do. But that is no excuse to dismantle civilised values. It would be a tragedy if we were forced to learn once again the reality of granting the public a blanket right to the defence of property
Here’s the next argument:
Even old ladies can fire a pistol, it is true, but you can be sure that criminals will always be able to fire them faster and better.
This idea is wrong. Empirically so. Measured over the past century or so, the law has increasingly restricted the exercise of home and self defence. Simultaneously this has not led to less crime and less violent crime, but the opposite. Burglaries, what we’re talking about here specifically, has steeply shot up. This seems to suggest that crime has risen as the risks involved in it have fallen. From this it can be concluded that a tougher home defence law would deter potential burglars by increasing the opportunity cost to intolerable levels.
Of course there are other aspects to be considered, but better defended homes do not automatically lead to better armed burglars. The debate needs to tale that into account. Clark unfortunately misses this. Actually he contradicts himself, when he calls for the police to operate with “more vigour” – surely this would also lead to criminals arming themselves even more heavily in order to be stronger than the police. Surely Clark doesn’t want to encourage such a domestic arms race.
On the other hand, it’s more likely I’m right and a more vigourous response against criminal activity by both police and thevictims of crime would help push crime down.
In the end, as it goes with politics, the whole public demand will probably die down when the right event comes along:
Public enthusiasm for a blanket right of self-defence will last only as long as it takes a confused and frightened homeowner to kill a paperboy trying to stuff a copy of the Daily Mail through his letterbox
Labels: law & order
Monday, January 17, 2005
Carrying on the theme from last week’s posting on the legal status of terror suspect detentions I found this a good point, made by a Michael Chertoff:
Right now, much of the definition of the rules is being undertaken by the courts, in a more or less ad hoc manner. But we may need to think more systematically and universally about the issue of combatants. Two years into the war on terror, it is time to move beyond case-by-case development. We need to debate a long-term and sustainable architecture for the process of determining when, why, and for how long someone may be detained as an enemy combatant, and what judicial review should be available.
Indeed following the recent criticisms by Human Rights Watch -whether you think they’re warranted or not- I can only wonder why the Bush and indeed Blair governments are not putting more effort into defending their behaviour. As I have tried to show with last week’s posting, and what Chertoff’s article linked to above shows again, is that there are strong and compelling arguments that can be made to defend Gitmo, Belmarsh etc. As I pointed out as well, I remain to be convinced either way. But why on earth the government isn’t trying to defend its policy properly remains a mystery.
Labels: defence, law & order, terrorism
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
With the four left over British detainees from the US base in Guantanamo Bay apparently heading back to these isles soon, this is a good time to reflect in the legal and political issues surrounding the detention of these four and of course the hundreds of others being held in various places.
On these questions I found this article by a Ted Lapkin quite interesting. He makes several points about the legality of detention without trial and similar practices in fighting terrorism, showing that these practices are all perfectly withing the bounds of international legal accords. Well, it’s a convincing read. However, I’m no legal expert and I found that articles making the opposite point sounded equally convincing, so I’m keeping an open mind about this for now. (see Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch for the other side of the argument.)
But Lapkin touches on a different problem in his article as well (scroll down to the final paragraph under the heading “Do Human Rights Groups Undermine International Law?”):
The authors of the 1949 Geneva Conventions were realists who recognized that by attempting to ban everything, they would stop nothing.
Distinction between permissible and impermissible violence is the keystone of international humanitarian law. . . . The practical implementation of the rules depends upon soldiers' ability to discriminate between what is military and what is not. . . .
Anything that obscures the distinction between combatant and noncombatant undermines the entire foundation of international humanitarian law. Any erosion in the ability to differentiate between civilians and soldiers on the battlefield inevitably would automatically place noncombatants at greater risk. . . . Yet, by seeking to ban detention of illegal combatants in facilities like Guantánamo Bay, this is precisely where the recommendations of the human rights industry would lead.
. . .
To blur this distinction and to unnecessarily apply the Geneva Conventions to illegal combatants would erode that distinction and constitute not only a legal mistake, but an ethical one as well.
Labels: defence, law & order, terrorism
Friday, December 17, 2004
A school banned pencil sharpeners after a 10-year-old boy took one apart and used the blade to injure a classmate.
And then there’s this:
A 14-year-old Hertfordshire student has been suspended from school for using topless pictures of the model Jordan in an English project
Good to see that schools understand where to set their priorities: it’s only twice as bad to slash up someone’s face and possibly disfigure them for life than looking at boobs?
Labels: law & order, nation, public services
