LibDems and Tories have got it wrong on how to cut crime
Neither the LibDem home affairs spokesman, Chris Huhne, nor the Tory shadow home secretary, Dominic Grieve, have got a clue when it comes to reducing crime.
According to Chris Huhne: "The answer's simple. Catch criminals to cut crime".
According to Dominic Grieve: catching criminals will not "cut crime unless you provide the prison places to deal with the criminals once apprehended".
In my view, they have both missed the blindingly obvious. Catching criminals after the crime, whilst it is desirable to catch criminals, this is too late because the act has already been committed. The only sensible way to cut crime is to have an effective crime prevention policy in the first place. Prevention is better than a cure.
Is it too much to ask that when the Labour Party conference gets under way on Saturday, that both the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, and justice minister, Jack Straw, will talk about closing the gate before the horse has bolted?
A mixture of law, politics, autobiography and humour. Once described as "The Devilish Advocate" (Guardian), I do have the ability to provoke a response. Sometimes it comes from someone who uses a thought process, and sometimes from jerks usually associated with the knee.
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Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Friday, June 01, 2007
Tory blogs, politics, and Question Time
I was quite interested by an exchange on 18DS last night between Phil Hendren (Dizzy Thinks) blog and presenter Iain Dale (Iain Dale's Diary) blog. Someone had emailed in and asked what Phil Hendren's blog was about. Iain Dale gave him 30 seconds to give his sales pitch. Several valuable seconds were wasted as Phil Hendren appeared to be rendered speechless by the simple question, and he had to think about it. Pregnant pause over, he must have thought he was Harold Pinter writing a play, when all that was required was for him to depress the mental play button and put his brain into gear. It was hardly a great advert for Dizzy Thinks. Desperately, he offered "opinionated arrogance". Duh! That's the header on your blog stupid! He might have been better stating politics and government. In any event, the exchange which got my attention most was that both Phil Hendren and Iain Dale were claiming the crown for being the most arrogant. Hardly a title which I would fight either of them for, because it is not the most flattering of labels I can think of. Iain Dale already has the titles of being a liar and a hypocrite to contend with, perhaps we should leave the pretender to the throne with the arrogant title?
Even imbeciles think, so I won't go as far as saying Phil Hendren (Dizzy Thinks) doesn't think. However, I do believe that his thinking skills are being overrated in the blogosphere. I say this because Phil Hendren gave the game away last night by stating how he cobbles his posts together. Some analogies spring to mind, he is like a vulture hovering overhead and swooping down to pick over a carcass to see what others have left. A parasite bloodsucking away at a story. One of his sources is Hansard, another is the BBC.
Ironically, Steve Richards (The Independent) also a guest on Vox Politix and a former employee at the BBC, described how the BBC News at Ten team scoured the leaders of the mainstream media and blogs like Iain Dale's and Dizzy Thinks for its stories to feature. They all seem to feed off each other. Whilst Iain Dale stated that in his opinion Dizzy Thinks is a rising star, Julian Glover (The Guardian) opined that Guido had now become a spent force.
When the programme dipped a bit, I popped off to watch Question Time where four out of the five panelists happened to be ex-Grammar school wallahs. And, of course, the should there be more grammar schools question came up. The Tory MP Caroline Spellman made a complete hash of putting forward David Cameron's argument, luckily for her that Roy Hattersley came and bailed her out and gained the applause from the audience. Iain Dale, who is basically a gossip columnist akin to Marjorie Proops, wanted to stoke the fires a bit on this issue but bottled out. Given that David Cameron, in effect, sacked Graham Brady this is probably a wise move. Iain Dale likes to see himself as a mover and shaker within the Tory Party. Recently, there has been quite a few Tory bloggers speaking out which way the Tory Party should be going. It may be that this will lessen now that the Tory Party has appointed its own media person Andy Coulson to move and shake things. I seem to recall Margaret Thatcher once saying words to the effect that that there is no society but a collection of individuals. This reminds me of the Tory Party. It's not a party at all, but a collection of self-serving individuals. We will just have to see if David Cameron (not ex-grammar school) is up shit creek without a paddle on this one.
Even imbeciles think, so I won't go as far as saying Phil Hendren (Dizzy Thinks) doesn't think. However, I do believe that his thinking skills are being overrated in the blogosphere. I say this because Phil Hendren gave the game away last night by stating how he cobbles his posts together. Some analogies spring to mind, he is like a vulture hovering overhead and swooping down to pick over a carcass to see what others have left. A parasite bloodsucking away at a story. One of his sources is Hansard, another is the BBC.
Ironically, Steve Richards (The Independent) also a guest on Vox Politix and a former employee at the BBC, described how the BBC News at Ten team scoured the leaders of the mainstream media and blogs like Iain Dale's and Dizzy Thinks for its stories to feature. They all seem to feed off each other. Whilst Iain Dale stated that in his opinion Dizzy Thinks is a rising star, Julian Glover (The Guardian) opined that Guido had now become a spent force.
When the programme dipped a bit, I popped off to watch Question Time where four out of the five panelists happened to be ex-Grammar school wallahs. And, of course, the should there be more grammar schools question came up. The Tory MP Caroline Spellman made a complete hash of putting forward David Cameron's argument, luckily for her that Roy Hattersley came and bailed her out and gained the applause from the audience. Iain Dale, who is basically a gossip columnist akin to Marjorie Proops, wanted to stoke the fires a bit on this issue but bottled out. Given that David Cameron, in effect, sacked Graham Brady this is probably a wise move. Iain Dale likes to see himself as a mover and shaker within the Tory Party. Recently, there has been quite a few Tory bloggers speaking out which way the Tory Party should be going. It may be that this will lessen now that the Tory Party has appointed its own media person Andy Coulson to move and shake things. I seem to recall Margaret Thatcher once saying words to the effect that that there is no society but a collection of individuals. This reminds me of the Tory Party. It's not a party at all, but a collection of self-serving individuals. We will just have to see if David Cameron (not ex-grammar school) is up shit creek without a paddle on this one.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Islington (North) a Vulture's Paradise
I am glad that I don't live in Islington, because it is where "The Hitch" lives and more disturbingly it is the stomping ground of a secret BNP member who is the Vice Chairman of Islington (North), No Cool Hand Luke namesake, but not as nice a character, Paul Newman. He blogs and posts comments as Newmania, and his even nastier side of his character comes out in his posts under the name "More Vulgar Than A Vulcan's Vulva". The name sums him up. It is nice to know that the caring, new image of the Conservatives, think so highly of him. It shows their true colours. Never mind think Green vote Blue. Unless we are talking about slime and Paul Newman's language. How can the Conservative's claim that they are not a racist party with Paul Newman within its ranks? It is interesting that when I typed in Paul Newman Islington (North) the only entry to come up was BNP election results. But, this is not the link I am referring to, its his association with BNP member The Hitch who is also friendly with Guido who, readers will recall, had BNP links in Hull.
Monday, April 09, 2007
Political blogging
From Oliver Kamm
This article appears in The Guardian today.
Political blogging has come of age. At least, that was the idea behind the BBC's Newsnight screening of a report by a high-profile blogger who writes under the pseudonym Guido Fawkes. His film argued that blogs provided more acute and independent political analysis than traditional journalism, owing to the absence of an editor, proprietor or regulator. Theatrically insisting on being filmed in darkness to maintain his supposed anonymity, "Fawkes" debated his thesis with Michael White of this newspaper.
It was a catastrophic performance, mainly because the blogger required continual correction on points of fact. He thereby illustrated blogging's central characteristic danger. It is a democratic medium, allowing anyone to participate in political debate without an intermediary, at little or no cost. But it is a direct and not deliberative form of democracy. You need no competence to join in.
To some, that is a virtue. In a recent lecture, the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, pointed to the proliferation of blogs and enthused: "In politics and in the media we've both assumed that we do the talking and the people listen. Now the people are talking back. It's exciting, liberating, challenging and frightening too."
Such is the ideological chaos of modern Conservatism. Osborne invoked the notion of the wisdom of crowds: knowledge emerges in a collaborative process rather than being dictated by experts. But political bloggers are not the required type of crowd. They are, by definition, a self-selecting group of the politically motivated who have time on their hands. In his speech, Osborne commended the work of Conservative-supporting bloggers. The notion that a political party becomes credible by being responsive to its activists is an error that Labour disastrously adopted in the 1980s. Political blogging is a new vehicle for an enduring force: what James Madison, in the Federalist Papers, termed "the mischief of faction".
Blogs are providers not of news but of comment. This would be a good thing if blogs extended the range of available opinion in the public sphere. But they do not; paradoxically, they narrow it. This happens because blogs typically do not add to the available stock of commentary: they are purely parasitic on the stories and opinions that traditional media provide. If, say, Polly Toynbee or Nick Cohen did not exist, a significant part of the blogosphere (a grimly pretentious neologism) would have no purpose and nothing to react to.
The great innovation of web-based commentary is that readers may select minutely the material they are exposed to. The corollary is that they may filter out views they find uncongenial. This is a problem for a healthy democracy, which depends on a forum for competing views.
In its paucity of coverage and predictability of conclusions, the blogosphere provides a parody of democratic deliberation. But it gets worse. Politics, wrote the philosopher Michael Oakeshott, is a conversation, not an argument. The conversation bloggers have with their readers is more like an echo chamber, in which conclusions are pre-specified and targets selected. The outcome is horrifying. The intention of drawing readers into the conversation by means of a facility for adding comments results in an immense volume of abusive material directed - and recorded for posterity - at public figures.
The blogosphere, in short, is a reliable vehicle for the coagulation of opinion and the poisoning of debate. It is a fact of civic life that is changing how politics is conducted - overwhelmingly for the worse, and with no one accountable for the decline.
Comment: The problem with Oliver Kamm's piece is to tar all bloggers and all political bloggers with the same brush. That is, just because Guido Fawkes is incompetent, all bloggers are incompetent. Given that Kamm argues that Fawkes's weak point is that his performance lacks facts, this is not in dispute, the dispute comes with Kamm arguing that all bloggers arguments lack facts. Now, if he would like to go head to head with me on facts of prison I would be happy to oblige. Mine would be facts of life whereas the best he could do is quote from books. Moreover, my blog provides both news and comment. I neither read Polly Toynbee nor Nick Cohen, but leave these to the likes of Guido and Iain Dale.
Oliver Kamm, nice to meet you. Who did you say you were again?
This article appears in The Guardian today.
Political blogging has come of age. At least, that was the idea behind the BBC's Newsnight screening of a report by a high-profile blogger who writes under the pseudonym Guido Fawkes. His film argued that blogs provided more acute and independent political analysis than traditional journalism, owing to the absence of an editor, proprietor or regulator. Theatrically insisting on being filmed in darkness to maintain his supposed anonymity, "Fawkes" debated his thesis with Michael White of this newspaper.
It was a catastrophic performance, mainly because the blogger required continual correction on points of fact. He thereby illustrated blogging's central characteristic danger. It is a democratic medium, allowing anyone to participate in political debate without an intermediary, at little or no cost. But it is a direct and not deliberative form of democracy. You need no competence to join in.
To some, that is a virtue. In a recent lecture, the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, pointed to the proliferation of blogs and enthused: "In politics and in the media we've both assumed that we do the talking and the people listen. Now the people are talking back. It's exciting, liberating, challenging and frightening too."
Such is the ideological chaos of modern Conservatism. Osborne invoked the notion of the wisdom of crowds: knowledge emerges in a collaborative process rather than being dictated by experts. But political bloggers are not the required type of crowd. They are, by definition, a self-selecting group of the politically motivated who have time on their hands. In his speech, Osborne commended the work of Conservative-supporting bloggers. The notion that a political party becomes credible by being responsive to its activists is an error that Labour disastrously adopted in the 1980s. Political blogging is a new vehicle for an enduring force: what James Madison, in the Federalist Papers, termed "the mischief of faction".
Blogs are providers not of news but of comment. This would be a good thing if blogs extended the range of available opinion in the public sphere. But they do not; paradoxically, they narrow it. This happens because blogs typically do not add to the available stock of commentary: they are purely parasitic on the stories and opinions that traditional media provide. If, say, Polly Toynbee or Nick Cohen did not exist, a significant part of the blogosphere (a grimly pretentious neologism) would have no purpose and nothing to react to.
The great innovation of web-based commentary is that readers may select minutely the material they are exposed to. The corollary is that they may filter out views they find uncongenial. This is a problem for a healthy democracy, which depends on a forum for competing views.
In its paucity of coverage and predictability of conclusions, the blogosphere provides a parody of democratic deliberation. But it gets worse. Politics, wrote the philosopher Michael Oakeshott, is a conversation, not an argument. The conversation bloggers have with their readers is more like an echo chamber, in which conclusions are pre-specified and targets selected. The outcome is horrifying. The intention of drawing readers into the conversation by means of a facility for adding comments results in an immense volume of abusive material directed - and recorded for posterity - at public figures.
The blogosphere, in short, is a reliable vehicle for the coagulation of opinion and the poisoning of debate. It is a fact of civic life that is changing how politics is conducted - overwhelmingly for the worse, and with no one accountable for the decline.
Comment: The problem with Oliver Kamm's piece is to tar all bloggers and all political bloggers with the same brush. That is, just because Guido Fawkes is incompetent, all bloggers are incompetent. Given that Kamm argues that Fawkes's weak point is that his performance lacks facts, this is not in dispute, the dispute comes with Kamm arguing that all bloggers arguments lack facts. Now, if he would like to go head to head with me on facts of prison I would be happy to oblige. Mine would be facts of life whereas the best he could do is quote from books. Moreover, my blog provides both news and comment. I neither read Polly Toynbee nor Nick Cohen, but leave these to the likes of Guido and Iain Dale.
Oliver Kamm, nice to meet you. Who did you say you were again?
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