Weaslley words

[modeller]

No apology from Blair for his failures. Total silence .
" Tough on Crime tough on the causes of Crime " 13 years of what .
Labour was a total failure in that respect with their slap on the wrist policies.

And the Tories ( The party for law and order. )
Cameron with his reported Hug a Hoodie and appointing that martinet against crime Kenneth Clarke. He was right in one respect .. We are a sick society .
We can't even look to the church for guidance they are too busy covering up for dodgey priests.

Have we any politicians capable of keeping their words ?

[DTCwordfan]

The police force across the UK definitely needs pruning, but not on the front line. Ihave said it before and I will say it again - we do not need County police forces as we have down here in the SW, each with a CC, then their Deps, each with their HR teams, their Finance teams, their PR advisers, separate communications budgets, legal advisers and all the rest of the "CRAP-Corportae Resources and Planning.

Assembling the SW into one team, one CC half the number of Dep CCs and the overheads will liberate plenty of dosh to help meet the front line and even put some money into the coffers for other regions or in meeting the enormous debt that the red mist left behind. As one, we would still be way smaller than say the Birmingham or Manchester police - and I bet this could be replicated elesewhere.

There seems to be a wonderful resistance to change management in this country.....and in assimilating the best practiices of of others - we always start with the differences, not what are the commonalities that we could share. Case in point with the boys in blue and the needless row over bringing across the NY cop to give advice, yes advice only, on gang management. Yes there are differences but I bet there are 70%+ issues of commonality that cabe be debated and shared. And it just happens to be that the Labour party (and unions) are lousy at assimilating change.

[jake-the-peg]

That rather assumes that people agree with what you think is Best Practice.

The Police themselves want to continue to police with community support and not follow the US style of aggressive police enforcement

They've made that perfectly clear.

As for a National Police Force - the idea has been about a long time but I don't think it's been truely debated enough.

I for one don't think I'm aware of what all the advantages and disadvantages are to it - there must be some strong disadvantages or it would have happened by now.

I think just putting it down to resistance to change is lazy cynicism - there have been plenty of changes in the police

[New Judge]

Yes Mike, I’d forgotten that option. Thanks for reminding me.

No Jake, you’re not even remotely close. I didn’t say anything about locking up “anyone suspected” (unless they are properly denied bail before conviction and/or sentence under the Bail Act). I didn’t say anything about internment. I believe those involved in law breaking should be dealt with in accordance with the law.

In the UK (as in most democracies) the citizens give up their right to take action against those who transgress against them and rely instead on the police and the justice system to do so on their behalf. In the last week the police failed in their overriding duty to protect people and property. The reasons were manifold and too complex to go into here. However, more pertinent than that is the fact that over the last 40 years the second agency party to this deal, the Criminal Justice System, has spectacularly failed to provide adequate sentencing of those convicted, especially where the miscreants are young. Victims (not all of them rabid Right-Wing Daily Mail readers) leave court without feeling that justice has been done. For their part, the few youngsters that do eventually end up in court leave with a smile on their faces and with no tangible consequences to fear from their criminality. This is one of the main reasons why low-level criminality is rife and why tolerance of such behaviour has led to the outrages we saw last week. My suggestions for robust policing and justice are simply what I believe is needed to restore some sanity.

Successive government policies have increasingly treated young criminals as victims and their victims as a nuisance. Senior police officers have been carefully handpicked for their willingness to remain “on message” rather than their proven ability to feel collars. Since 2002 the Association of Chief Police Officers has pursued a policy of differential policing depending upon who has committed the crime. The preposterous Macpherson report into the death of Stephen Lawrence labelled the entire service as racist and individual officers, terrified of being accused of racism, need instructions from their senior managers before dealing with outbreaks of trouble when policing “sensitive” areas. Further, they are confused as to whether they to act as law enforcers or social workers. The Police Force has been transformed into the Police “service”. (Most people do not want a Police "Service", they want a Police "Force" - it helps them sleep soundly at night to know that force will be used where necessary). All of this has taken place under the label of “progression” and it has been an absolute disaster.

Mr Cameron’s statement today that the riots were a “wake up call” is disingenuous. Many people have been wide awake to these problems for years but have been shouted down as reactionary bigots by the liberal intelligentsia that has held sway for decades. This is not about being Right Wing or Left Wing or Fascist or anything else. The law-abiding majority of this country does not deserve to be terrorised by greedy immoral youngsters who know no boundaries and have no “respect” for others whilst craving bucket loads of that very thing for themselves.

If wanting robust policing and sentencing labels me “Right Wing” then I (together with a huge number of others) am about as far to the Right as one can get.