Keep Him Out!

A Florida pastor has been invited to the UK to speak at an English Defence League rally in February.

One wonders why the pastor of a church with less than forty members should be invited to speak but, of course, this is the man who achieved international notoriety for threatening to burn the Koran on the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

It has rightly been said that extremism breeds extremism, and we have enough extremists of our own without inviting any more into the country to stir things up. So I for one would welcome a decision by the Home Secretary to keep this fellow out of it!
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Yes, But What Are They Going To Do About It?

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‘Stop the Rot’ is a report by the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Sir Denis O’Connor, who says that keeping the peace has been relegated to a ‘second-order consideration’ and that the removal of officers from streets has fuelled antisocial behaviour. I think that many of us have realised this for some time.

Sir Denis is our top police watchdog and so his views need to be taken very seriously by the Home Office and every police authority around the country. In what he calls a 30-year ‘retreat from the streets’, millions of acts of drunken loutishness and vandalism have gone unreported as they have become ‘normalised’.

In an HMIC report last July, it was disclosed that just eleven percent of officers were visible and available to the public at any one time. In this report, Sir Denis repeats his fear that front-line officers would be the first to go if spending cuts bit into police budgets, and reminds the government that what the public want is ‘boots on the ground’.

The new Home Secretary said: ‘This report, yet again, shows that for too long this problem has been sidelined and victims, especially those who are vulnerable, have been let down.’

What she hasn’t said is what the government are going to do about the situation.
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Gone!

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Perhaps few government proposals in recent years, other than the hated Poll Tax which bought about the downfall of Margaret Thatcher, have aroused so much hostility as the last government’s introduction of identity cards.

The introduction of these cards elicited claims that they were an intrusion and that the country was moving closer to a police state. Others took the view that many countries used identity cards and that their citizens didn’t seem to mind having them. Indeed, when living in America I had to have an ID card and it came in very handy when cashing cheques and making some purchases.

Anyway, the Home Secretary has now announced that the first bill of this new parliament, the Identity Documents Bill, will abolish identity cards within one hundred days. For many, this will be good news. But, perhaps, those who had lashed out £30 on a shiny new ID card won’t be too happy to learn that they will not be getting a refund.

What has come out of yesterday’s announcement is the news that the ID card scheme has so far cost the country £250 millions and that scrapping it will save £800 millions over the next ten years.

That’s some saving!
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Assault With A Pritt Stick?

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Years ago most police prosecutions were overseen by an experienced police officer who looked through individual case notes and decided whether the evidence was such as to make proceeding worthwhile.

But then politicians tinkered with court systems and the Crown Prosecution Service became the body to decide whether cases should be sent to the courts. Since then there have been a number of instances when commonsense seems to have been thrown out of the window.

Take for example the recent case of the art teacher with an unblemished thirty-year career who was arrested on suspicion of causing actual bodily harm to a 12-year-old special needs pupil with, of all things, a Pritt Stick. In evidence it transpired that the superficial wound to the pupil’s thumb by the aforesaid glue stick was caused accidentally and the case was thrown out.

You’d have thought that someone would have looked at the case notes of this heinous crime and wondered why so much time and effort had been spent on it thus far. But no, the Crown Prosecution Service sent the case to court, incurring costs over a three-day trial in Swansea Crown Court estimated at £30,000.

The Home Secretary has promised to give some powers back to the police.

She could start by ordering that someone sort out the Crown Prosecution Service.
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Alcohol Abuse

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I think my views on ‘Nanny’ governments are fairly well known, but I think for once I agree with the Home Secretary’s plans to outlaw ‘all-you-can-drink’ promotions and speed-drinking competitions and to tighten regulations concerning alcohol abuse.

We frequently see the results of teenagers’ and young folks’ drinking sessions on television and sometimes also locally where the bottles and cans strewn on pavements near pubs and bars and even at isolated beauty spots show that a drinking spree has taken place.

I’m not sure that these measures will entirely deal with the problem of alcohol abuse. Education and discipline come to mind but I can’t see any government trying to sort these two out. Nor will raising the unit price of alcohol as has been suggested.

What I do think might help the situation is to take another look at the price-cutting that goes on in supermarkets, for they effectively are in competition with the pubs and bars. The problem here is that any controls over supermarkets will hit consumers generally.

Nonetheless, the proposed measures should surely help.
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Body Scanners

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Concerned that body scanners to be introduced into UK airports will breach human rights, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has written to the Home Secretary and asked for the justification for bringing in the new security measure.

Personally, I would have thought the reason for the scanners was obvious.

Maybe folk like body-enhanced movie stars might have a concern that their innermost secrets will be revealed, but I can’t get too worked up about the scanners since my naked body is unlikely to interest anyone.

In any event, pity the poor devils who will have to spend their working days looking at naked bodies. Groan! After you’ve seen a dozen or so, you’ve seen the lot!
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Deceit

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Home Secretary Alan Johnson has accused David Cameron of being deceitful in blaming ‘big’ government for many of the social problems affecting the country these days.

Mr Johnson has unwittingly put his finger on the nub of the voters’ dilemma in the run-up to the next General Election.

And that is - which party is less deceitful than the others?

It’s quite a question!
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Commonsense At Last?

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If Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, is to be believed, Britain will not be forced to take migrants from the ‘Jungle’ camp in Calais which French police have cleared.

Commonsense has also been sounded by Sir Andrew Green, Chairman of the Migrationwatch think-tank, who has said that Britain's immigration policy was part of the problem. ‘Britain is regarded as a soft touch,’ he has correctly said.

More commonsense has come from Richard Ashworth, Conservative MEP for South East England, who said that, ‘It is now incumbent on the French government to deal with illegal immigration at the point of entry into France, and not simply funnel them through creating this sorry bottleneck along the Pas de Calais and Normandy coasts’.

But will commonsense prevail? We will have to wait and see.
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Hacked Off

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Suppose an American hacked into the computer system of the MoD or MI5 and caused half a million pound’s worth of damage. Would the British public support the government if it sought the extradition and trial of the young man concerned.? Very probably.

Why then is there so much fuss over the American government’s bid to extradite Gary McKinnon who is said to have hacked into 97 US computer systems, including those of the US Navy and NASA, causing $800,000 worth of damage? Is it because he is said to have Asperger's syndrome and/or because he faces up to 70 years in jail if convicted?

As it happens, though the High Court has rejected an appeal against the decision of the Home Secretary to allow Mr McKinnon’s deportation, the appeal process will doubtless keep the man safe for some time to come.

The case brings to mind the 1983 movie ‘War Games’, starring Matthew Broderick, whose character hacked into the US military’s central computer system and so started off a war game which threatened to initiate a real thermonuclear war. In the end, of course, he managed to stop the game and so avert disaster.

Perhaps the Americans should pay Mr McKinnon to show them exactly how he managed to hack into their computers and so make them a little safer from such attacks?
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Order! Order!

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Yesterday, the Home Secretary announced that the government has dropped plans to make ID cards compulsory for pilots and airside workers at Manchester and London City airports. Whoopee!

This announcement, like so many by this current government, was made through official press channels before being made to the House of Commons. This led the Shadow Immigration Minister to accuse the Home Secretary of a ‘flagrant breach’ of a ruling by the Speaker that ministerial announcements should first be made to the Commons.

You cannot argue with that, for it is right that ministerial announcements should first be made to the people who are supposed to represent us.

Given that the Tories were whispering that the new Speaker was a closet Labour supporter, it doesn’t seem that the government has given him any support.

Order! Order! Oh, please, let’s have some order!
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