Category: Law & Order

Wouldn’t it be better for our politicians to concentrate on what is and isn’t a crime before getting the dog whistle out and calling for the death penalty to be brought back?

If there is one thing that can be trusted from this political class, it’s that whatever the reasons may appear to be for anything they do, the real reasons won’t be the ones we actually see.

Whilst the media carries on reporting everything from Westminster as if all is normal, the issues the country is facing are normal, and all of our MPs are in touch and dealing with anything that the media deems to be important as if that’s normal – the truth is that there is a hell of a lot more going on. And it is being obscured from view by the focus only ever being on the narrative that the establishment wants us all to see.

Horrifying as it may sound to anyone who has a basic moral compass and an understanding between the difference of right and wrong, we only have laws and punishments for breaking them because someone somewhere has already gone through a process of deciding whatever the ‘crime’ might be, needs a rule, and have then gone through whatever process necessary to put them there.

The cold hard reality is that even murder, that most serious of crimes, is only legislated for and punishments applied, because whoever was in charge at the time decided that it should be so. Not because there was a set of rules that existed for mankind to follow at the beginning of time.

It’s important to understand this, as everything we are experiencing now in terms of behaviours being outlawed, frowned upon or made politically incorrect – that in reality are just based on a different opinion and what is deemed incorrect for the times – could very soon become legislated against as a punishable crime.

When you can accept that one opinion or thought is no more wrong than any other, you can soon see the problem with outlawing or rather attempting to outlaw the way people think, just because it’s not the same way that someone else thinks, and that other person then decides that thinking contrary to their own should be a crime.

Outlawing thought is an attempt to exert full control over the person whose thoughts are being outlawed.

People are thinking all manner of things, all of the time. Some of those things IF enacted, would certainly constitute a crime. But thought is not action and action can only become a crime when the right of another to exist freely and without harm or restriction has itself been denied. The key to the whole equation is to always remain conscious that in a free world, this process is and always will be a two-way street.

Careers ruined, social rejection and ‘cancellation’ could soon be considered amongst the lightest punishments possible, if our politicians genuinely now believe that we should return to capital punishment and the death sentence. All when crime isn’t crime, and knee jerk responses that bend to publicised opinion are the only motive that weak, rudderless and morally deficient politicians actually have.

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Our leaders aren’t leading. So who’s really in charge?

The one thing that many people in leadership positions fail to understand is that if they are having to look outside themselves for every answer,  they aren’t leading anything at all.

Events have led to reactions by the Police and Politicians which they all believe are examples of good leadership.

Two Metropolitan Police Officers ‘took the knee’ to show they were ‘with the crowd’ a couple of hours before their colleagues were attacked.

Keir Starmer and Angela Raynor provided Twitter with their fully choreographed version on Tuesday afternoon too.

Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees did a grand job of making an Interview with the BBC about the drowning of Edward Colston’s statue all about him, whilst Sadiq Kahn has pretty much picked up the phone and had a Slaver’s Statue in London’s Docklands removed overnight.

Since the weekend itself, Boris has rolled out Home Secretary Priti Patel to talk tough at the Despatch Box whilst he has provided plenty of the baffoonal bluster over the topic that he has now become renowned for.

Left or Right, supposedly impartial public servant or politician. What all of these actions share in common is they are not acts of leadership. They are the actions of people in positions of responsibility with a remarkable level of power to do something good, but are instead being led by the mob.

Covid-19, The Lockdown and Social Distancing has taken over life to such an extent since March that the Black Lives Matter protests feel like they have come completely out of left field.

From this point of view, some would argue that these actions are an appropriate response to the public mood. They are not.

As Boris did with the Leave Campaign, with the pre-Covid-19 phase of his Premiership and his response to the Coronavirus Pandemic too, these actions are opportunistic. They are responsive to events and what people are already doing, rather than defining a direction of travel and being used to inspire people to think differently before these supposed leaders then back up the words with action that can really deliver and get things done.

What we are witnessing through the absence of leadership during all the events that seem to be taking over our world is all symptomatic of a systemic rot.

The mealy-mouthed words and platitudes to Black Lives Matter haven’t been constructed with any great thought. These are not the sentiments of people with responsibility who care about the injustices within our own society, let alone any place else. They are about managing the fear that these individuals have for the loss and threat to their own positions, about the safety and reduction of risk to themselves, and in the case of the Politicians about ensuring re-election just as soon as they can.

Police Officers and Politicians are not appointed to demonstrate that they are one with us. They are appointed to show impartiality, integrity and an ability to think beyond us as they go. that will allow normal people to go about and enjoy their normal lives knowing that they are safe and being looked out for in ways of every kind.

We expect the police to watch over us and maintain the interests of the common good.

We expect the Politicians to translate the events that are happening into words and meaning that we all understand, make sense of it and then lead and inspire us to all be better in our relationships with others wherever we can.

We expect public servants of all kinds and at all levels to do the things for us all collectively that we as members of the public simply cannot.

Right now, The Government, The Opposition, Local Politicians and the Police are all failing us and failing the mob that wants to inflict its own form of justice on us all by erasing history as a part of what they do.

Nobody can lead when they are already being led. The people that we have elected to lead us along with those who have been appointed to watch over us are all being led by events.

It is the crowd and the media that sensationalises their actions that is leading our leaders today.

Those who are leading our leaders are being led not by any form of experience or logic. They are being led by emotions and responses to the events of a cruel world that with the right leaders in power for the right reasons, they should and would never have to try to understand.

The lack of leadership that is the result of a broken political system has just about circled itself once more. It’s anyone’s guess what will happen when all of this hits the floor.

 

 

 

 

 

The sharp fall in number of young Police Officers: When Criminal Law once again begins to mean something through the interpretation of its results, then so will having a career in its enforcement

As the son of a former Policeman who walked the beat on the streets of Gloucestershire in the 60’s and early 70’s, I count myself very fortunate to have heard those first hand stories of a time when the application of Law in the first hand had a profoundly different and positive impact within our Communities.

Whether you were an innocent member of the public, a testosterone and cheek-filled proponent of the misdemeanour, or a fully fledged member of a criminal fraternity, you would never have dared imagine how things would change within just 50 years and how little the Police and the careers behind it are respected as they once were. It is therefore hardly surprising that the number of frontline Officers under the age of 26 has dropped by 50% in the past two years.

But are budget cuts and a lack of diversity the real causes of this difference in public perception, or is there something far deeper and fundamental behind this change of understanding which leaves many wondering if the Police really want to do much more than target the law-abiding of middle England for trivial offences which often generate fines and leave the Nations bill-payers paying even more?

In a time when Police Officers were respected, the slightest fear or embarrassment generated by being stopped by a Constable would be enough to teach far-reaching lessons and probably halt the fall of many a young person, without any need of further recourse or entry to a Court system which at that time was frighteningly efficient in comparison to today.

Those who saw their role as a Police Officer as being a vocation were supported in their work by a system which worked on the basic practicalities that fear of an effective system of law create. They were confident in their actions, well knowing that when cases were taken before even a Magistrate, that very same system of Law would recognise that they had not taken up the time of the Bench or Judiciary without good reason.

But things have changed, and the actions of a few who abused that system, ultimately have made it impossible for the many who follow behind them today.

An obsessive drive by idealist reformers to eliminate even the slightest chance of conviction for anything less than 100% surety of guilt, followed swiftly by the heralding of the human rights of criminals who surrendered those very rights through their actions, have rendered the system sterile from one end to the other.

It is therefore little wonder that young people have as much interest in enforcing the Law as the rest of the Nation has in their contempt for it.

It doesn’t matter if a policeman is young, old; black, white; male, female: tall, short; fat or thin if the Law is feared which sits behind them.

It’s time that Politicians accepted that idealism in Law and Order simply doesn’t work when applied in practical form. When Criminal Law once again begins to mean something through the interpretation of its results, then so will having a career in its enforcement.