The ThunderDragon

A leaked Home Office letter declares that crime will rise due to the credit crunch, which at first appeared to be downplayed as “just a draft”. But then they changed their tune and deemed it “blindingly obvious”.

All this would have received far less press coverage had it not been for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alastair Darling, declaring that Britain was facing the worst economic downturn for sixty years. Not the sort of thing that the Chancellor should be saying. Rather, he should be trying to do what he can to fix it, to prevent the downturn, not just prophesying it. All such talk will due is ensure that we get an recession.

As this leaked document came out at exactly the right time it almost seems like some sort of set-up in order for Labour to show that they are “prepared” or something. Well, it would if it wasn’t such a monumentally stupid plan.

However, if it is “blindingly obvious” that crime would rise with an economic downturn, why were they trying to tell us only just over a month ago that crime is ‘actually’ falling? Only one or the other of these can be true. Either economic problems = more crime or crime is falling. The Home Office can’t believe both. Unless it’s a schizophrenic government department.

Personally, I’m with the riot predictors. But to prevent it from breasking out, the Home Office really needs to pull it’s fingers out and get real police on the street.

Harassment is wrong and illegal. We all agree on that, right? OK. So why is Jacqui Smith asking the police to harrass yobs?

We’ve already agreed that harassment is wrong and illegal. And the police have a duty to uphold the law. Yet the Home Secretary is asking telling them to carry our harrassment. It isn’t right.

Even yobs have rights. They should not be harrassed by police. They should either be charged with and prosecuted for a crime, or left alone like the rest of us.

Two wrongs do not make a right, no matter what the government may think. If the yobs are breaking the law, then they should be caught and dealt with there and then. They should not be followed around and be checked up on just because. That is as wrong as the misdemeanours that most of them undertake.

Harassment is wrong, whether it is undertaken by yobs or the police themselves.

Cannabis is to be “upgraded” to a class B drug again, despite it being an utterly pointless gesture - especially since the police are already saying it will be “difficult to enforce” the stricter laws. After all, if they don’t pay attention now, I doubt they’ll bother when it suddenly overnight moves from a C to B grade substance. After all, all it brings is the possibility of an extra three years in prison - if they get caught and the police and CPS bother to waste our money prosecuting them, that is.

This advice even goes against that of the government’s own drug experts. What was that about “listening” again…?

Jacqui Smith says she is doing it because of the so-called “clear and serious risk to mental health”. Yet what about the very clear physical health risks of other legal drugs - such as alcohol, cigarettes, medicines… Are they to become illegal now as well?! No. Because that would be even more stupid than this announcement.

People make their own choices in life. if they want to smoke cannabis, let them. The papers are full of sob stories saying “MY CHILD DIED BECAUSE OF CANNABIS!” But that is no reason to change a law. They could just as easily be filled of equivalent stories on alcohol and cigarettes, but that is no reason to make them illegal substances.

In the end, it is their choice. If you educate people properly, then they will generally steer clear of this sort of drug, or at least be making a well-informed decision of their own. That is the only way to reduce the consumption of harmful drugs [and harmful excessive consumption of legal ones]: education. But then again, with the way that this government has managed to fail educating our children with the very basics, I doubt they could achieve this properly, anyway.

It also massively hypocritical of this Cabinet to attack drug use, considering their own histories…

The very idea of ID cards is bad enough. But that we would actually have to pay to give the government all of our personal details out of our own pockets just adds insult to injury.

I don’t want an ID card. My life is more than can be summed up in just a magnetic strip. And there is no fucking chance that I will pay them to have one.

So long as there is any compulsion in any way to have an ID card, it should be completely and entirely free, including no tax levy to pay for it “indirectly”. If they want me to have an ID card, the very least they can do is pay for it out of their own wallets, because there is sure as hell no way that I am.

ID cards are pointless and intrusive. At the very least, I will not be forced in to paying for one.

When the Home Secretary says that she wouldn’t feel safe walking around London on her own at midnight, she replied:

And she says this just after claiming that the streets at night are safer after ten years of Labour government. This demonstrates both that she can’t really believe that labour have made the streets safer and that she is completely removed from the real life circumstances which cause some people to have to do things which they wouldn’t choose to - like walk the streets at night.

Since 46% of Londoners said they don’t feel safe in the neighbourhoods at night, and that there has been a 21% rise in in violent crime nationally among 10 to 17-year-olds in three years shows that Labour have failed to do anything about increasing law and order in the past decade.

Image hat-tip: Curly’s Corner Shop

Not just 5,000, but 10,000 illegal immigrants are employed in the security industry. Double the number suggested before. So the Home Office is twice as abysmal as I thought.

It’s just not good enough.

Especially not when they knew about this issue back in July!

The Home Office isn’t fit for purpose, and it is seeming increasingly likely that neither is the Home Secretary.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, put spin before the safety of the public. Despite knowing about illegal immigrants being employed by the Home Office - as security staff, of all things - in July she did nothing. Well, nothing to protect us anyway. She was far too busy spinning to save herself. In August, a Home Office memo read:

So she knew, but did nothing about it.

How can they possibly justify knowing about it in July, yet doing nothing about it until November - five months later?

Can the first female Home Secretary survive much longer, or will David Davis claim yet another Home Secretary scalp for his collection?

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has apologised for misleading the British people:

Truly a shocking thing to hear from a Labour minister. Well, until she undermined it by continuing to speak after the first sentence.

But the most important thing is: did she show off her tits whilst making this faux apology?

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s, that is. She is complaining about journalists being “obsessed” with her cleavage and has told them “to get over themselves”. She says:

I think it is you who needs to get over yourself, Jacqui. Why would anyone be obsessed by your cleavage? You’re not exactly the most attractive woman in the world ["face like a horses arse" is one way of describing it...], and your breasts are hardly huge. And neither are you exactly the first woman to be in high ministerial office in Britain - and they managed to get by without claiming that journalists were obsessed with their tits.

So why would anyone be especially interested in your cleavage? The sort of cleavage in that I will be posting tomorrow or regularly at display over at Theo Spark’s, yes, but yours? Not a chance.

Source: BBC

There is no doubt that David Davis has scored a significant goal against Home Secretary Jacqui Smith with this open letter [extract below]:

There is just nothing I can add except to say go and read Dizzy’s post on the issue and watch this amusing video: Labour: Tough on crime, tough on manipulating the statistics of crime.

Video hat-tip: Daily Referendum
Source: The Times