Reprehensible, abhorrent, dispicable… criminal?

After being convicted and imprisoned for four months at Minshull Street Crown Court, what he daubed on his T-shirt was described by police as ‘morally reprehensible‘.  No one denies what Barry Thew wrote and then paraded around Radcliffe was grossly offensive.  Many people will agree his actions were appalling, odious even.

This follows on from the jailing for three months of Matthew Woods for ‘abhorrent’ and ‘dispicable‘ comments made about missing children Madeleine McCann and April Jones, after he pleaded guilty in court.

But in jailing Thew for ‘a public order offence’ and Woods for ‘sending a message or other matter that is grossly offensive by means of a public electronic communications network’, the powers that be have gone too in criminalising expressions and viewpoints that, while disgusting and probably demonstrating severely warped minds, incite neither violence nor any other crime.

Quietly over the years the constraints on speech that were designed to prevent incitement to engage in criminal actions have been altered to fold in words that offend.  No matter how much outrage and upset we feel about the views and comments people like Thew and Woods decide to spew forth, what we are seeing is increasing restriction and a disturbing erosion of an individual’s freedom of expression.

While in itself this erosion may seem like no bad thing in the case of Thew and Woods, we should be feeling real concern about how further restrictions and erosions may be applied in order to criminalise normal and necessary dissent against the authorities, or even a supposed consensus view on an issue.

These two episodes show we do not have a free society where no one has the right to not be offended, but an increasingly authoritarian and paternalist society where periodical fits of morality – that phrase to beautifully turned by Thomas Macauley to describe the ridiculousness of the public getting on its high horse to exhibit virtue – among members of the public are seized upon by ‘the powers that be’ to further curtail essential rights and freedoms.

Sending these grotesque specimens to prison for what they have thought and said, when people convicted of offences against the person such as assault, or who kill people through poor or dangerous driving, are allowed to retain their liberty should be sounding warning bells.  The State is more concerned about going after people for their thoughts than going after those who commit harmful and criminal acts.  It’s an injustice.  But it is also a very real danger.

Cleveland Police tells Officers to stop night vehicle patrols

Just over one week ago in the north east of England, it was announced that Cleveland Police, like other forces around the country, would reduce the number of its officers in an effort to meet a cut in government funding.

Cleveland Police Authority said that to meet its 20% funding cut the force’s officer establishment would reduce from 1,727 to 1,572 over the next 12 months with another reduction of 75 to follow the year after. The number of PCSOs would also reduce from 197 to 182.

The reported measures to meet the cut in funding, chosen by Cleveland’s policing authority, include savings on overtime, Bank Holiday staffing, reduction in staff posts in the police executive and authority and reduced expenditure on uniforms.  But news arriving at Mind Towers concerns a cost saving measure that has not been shared with the public and is likely to cause anger in the county.

For word reaches us that the Chief Constable has instructed rank and file police officers in Cleveland to cease night time patrolling in police cars.  We are told the instruction to officers on night shift is to stay in the station or find somewhere outdoors to park up and spend their time doing paperwork, and that Officers have been told to only respond to major emergency calls.  The reason?  To reduce police vehicle fuel costs.

Our source tells us the mood among Officers is one of incredulity given that night is the prime opportunity for the commission of crimes and removing the deterrent of night time police patrols will result in more crimes being committed and more money, time and effort being spent on detection.  Response times are expected to suffer, particularly in rural areas.

It seems that Durham Constabulary have also issued similar instructions.  FOI requests have been placed with both forces accordingly.  The question is whether this is a nationwide instruction by Chief Police Officers who are putting costs before policing.  Perhaps it would be appropriate for Cleveland to change their motto to ‘Putting Costs First’.

Ford Prison riot underlines government incompetence

News of the riot at Ford Open Prison in Sussex will not come as a surprise to anyone who has followed events there over recent years.

The ‘inmates’ rioted because prison officers had the temerity to attempt to administer breath tests after alcohol was found in the prison. Any attempt by an offender in an open prison to evade such a test should result in automatic return to a higher category prison, but there is no effective sanction. The system at Ford is so lax and lacking in basic resources it has previously experienced problems with burglars going into the prison to steal items. Documents have also been removed by ‘inmates’ due to the lax conditions. For years there have been repeated reports of drugs, alcohol and mobile phones being taken into Ford at will, despite these items being banned as they should be in a prison. But Ford is a prison in name only.

‘Prisoners’ come and go almost at will, irrespective of the terms of their resettlement release, because their rooms are unlocked and it is easy to leave the grounds. Many wander out at night to buy drink and drugs, blatantly flouting the regulations. The place is a government run holiday camp that far from preparing offenders for release back into society practically leaves them to their own devices when they are not working in the vegetable plots or the workshops.

But what else can we expect when over 200 ‘inmates’ are being supervised by only two prison officers and four support staff? Is it any wonder over 70 ‘inmates’ absconded in 2006 alone? Is it any wonder that a soft soap attempt to enforce the no alcohol rules among Ford’s ‘non violent’ offenders resulted in a riot, destruction of facilities and arson?

This is what happens when those in authority are not in charge and are continually starved by the government of the resources and manpower required to ensure the prison is run as it should be. The incompetence of successive governments is inexplicible given the tough talk about criminal justice. But when you understand that the promises are just rhetoric and the politicians have no intention of following through on their campaign pledges it all becomes clear.

Incidents like this give people opportunities to say that prison doesn’t work. Prison does work, but only when the regime is effective and offenders are rehabilitated in a disciplined environment. Ford is anything but a disciplined environment and that is the fault of governments who squander money on vanity projects but starve services essential in a civilised society of what they need.

Silencing Gilfoyle is an outrageous injustice

After 18 years behind bars, found guilty of a murder he has always maintained he did not commit, Eddie Gilfoyle has been allowed out of prison on parole. However, he has only been allowed out on condition that he does not comment on the case.

Last year, police investigation notes that the Merseyside force had always maintained did not exist, were uncovered. They showed that the doctor who declared Mrs Gilfoyle dead told police that she had died six hours earlier – when her hospital porter husband was at work. Paula Gilfoyle had been discovered dead by hanging and there was a suicide note. The police detectives working on the case argued that Gilfoyle had tricked his wife into writing the suicide note, convinced her to put a noose around her neck and climb a step ladder, and then pushed her to her death.

The information that the time of death coincided with Eddie Gilfoyle being at work was withheld from the jury and never mentioned during his trial. Clearly they would have cast reasonable doubt on his guilt. So they were conveniently left out, which is a travesty of justice.

But the injustice continues with this news that the Parole Board made it a condition of Gilfoyle’s parole licence that he must not comment to the media, either himself or via a third party. Who the hell do these people think they are? Presumably they will argue this is for Gilfoyle’s own good, but you can be certain their motives will be entirely selfish. No one must have their freedom of speech curtailed in this way.

There are safeguards under the law to deal with incitement to violence or slander. It is perfectly proper that there should be. But there is absolutely no justification to silence a man, whose conviction was demonstrably unsafe, from speaking about it. It is an outrageous injustice, a wrongful infrigement of liberty and an example of the censorious nature of bureaucrats in this supposed democracy.

Justice must be done but it must also be seen to be done. But increasingly we are seeing people prevented to telling their story in order to protect the establishment from scrutiny and embarrassment. There is this current instance and there are many instances, as Christopher Booker keeps highlighting, such as families that have been ripped apart as their children have been taken from them in kangaroo court hearings who are similarly gagged from speaking about their cases to suit the interests of the authorities.

This enforced silence is utterly wrong. The right of free people to speak to whomsoever they wish must be protected under the law. But instead the law is being used as a cudgel against the people rather than a protection for them. There is something rotten about a country whose officials abuse the law in order to withdraw the rights of others to suit their own ends or hide their failings. The self serving parasites who seek to operate with impuntiy in this way must be stopped if the people of this country are to be genuinely free.

Assange: Is CPS taking orders from elsewhere?

What is the Crown Prosecution Service up to?  Irrespective of the rights or wrongs of the WikiLeaks release of US diplomatic cables, the CPS seems to be playing politics to deny Julian Assange his liberty without good reason.

Earlier this week Gareth Julian, head of extradition at the CPS, appealed against the decision to grant bail to Assange, in an attempt to keep him in custody pending the decision of whether or not to extradite him to Sweden to answer charges of sexual offences.  It was widely believed and reported in the media – without contradiction by the CPS – that Swedish prosecutors has opposed bail for Assange.

However the Swedes have gone on the record today (to Tim Marshall at Sky News) to state clearly they had no view about bail and had not made any such request of the British authorities. The CPS is not denying what the Swedes are saying. So why did the CPS oppose bail, in a case in which it was representing Sweden, when Sweden had no problem with Assange having his liberty until the extradition hearing?

Is it delving into the realms of conspiracy theory to suggest the CPS is taking instructions from elsewhere, such as the US government or the British government in an attempt to neuter Assange as the release of US cables continues?  Is it because the Americans want Assange in custody until they can make a move to have him shipped to Washington, where some of the more hysterical talking heads describe him as a terrorist?

What is clear is that Gareth Julian should be asked to explain why he opposed bail and who was instructing him to do so.  This has implications for the justice system in the UK and the matter should be completely transparent.

The Howard League for Penal Eradication

That would be an appropriate name revision for the Howard League for Penal Reform. Over time the Howard League has shown its agenda to be not merely the reform of the penal system, but the eradication of effective and appropriate sentencing of criminals who have broken the law and thereby offended against society.

Note that description – offended against society. Someone who breaks the law is an offender. But to the aptly named Frances Crook, the head of Howard League, the word ‘offender’ is now considered to be an “insulting” term that demeans individuals and hinders their rehabilitation. You could not make this stuff up. She says:

“Someone who commits an offence is not an offender, they are someone who has done something [yes, committed an offence you idiotic dolt]. The action does not define the whole person. They may also do good things and they will certainly fit into other categories that can offer a different definition like parent or friend. By insisting that the offence overcomes all other parts of the person we are condemning them to a sub-human category for whom there is no hope.”

Offenders are not sent to prison for being a parent or a friend. They are sentenced for being an offender which is the only suitable and appropriate definition.  Frances Crook and her fellow travellers will not be content until there are no consequences or sanctions for offenders who commit crimes that mark them as part of a minority in society that refuses to conform to the law and feels entitled to cause harm and distress to other people.

The Howard League has become a parody of itself. Its permanent state of handwringing to minimise the punishment component of a sentence and focus exclusively on rehabilitation – which they believe should preferably be in the very society that needs to be protected from such offenders – demonstrates it has lost touch with reality.

Is there some kind of anarchist conspiracy in this country that is determined to undermine anything and everything?

Rarely does any form of interaction with the State achieve its required aim. There is always some antidote to common sense lurking ready to prevent people from rectifying a problem. There are always ‘rules’ and ‘procedures’ to follow that should take days and end up taking months. Then we have groups like the Howard League determined to stop any offender going to prison. We have groups determined to allow any migrant into this country who feels like pitching up here, regardless of the effect on infrastructure, services and required public spending to support them. We have organisations demanding the handout of every conceivable benefit and grant who don’t stop to think where the money to fund it will come from. We have groups that are determined to drag us back into the Georgian era in order to ‘fight climate change’ whose idea of a solution to this faux problem is to tax everyone to the hilt and if possible prevent the continuation of our species. There’s more besides. There is an insanity attending the bureacucracy that is destined to result in chaos. Is there any way out of it?

Copying the Swiss in deporting foreign criminals automatically

Writing in the Barclay Brother Beano, Alex Singleton observes that the independent and sovereign Swiss have voted to deport foreign criminals automatically.

‘Let’s copy them’ intones Singleton.  (Hat tip: 13th Spitfire). He goes on to rail against the ‘latte liberals at Amnesty International [who] are appalled and – revealing their utter contempt for democracy – are calling on Swiss politicians to ignore the will of the people’. But that takes us off the main point, for as Singleton explains:

The new Swiss policy is so obviously a sensible idea that we ought to copy it here. Having very high levels of immigration, and having allied ourselves with America in the fight against terrorism, we have an even bigger problem with foreign criminals. In Opposition, David Cameron promised to allow their deportation by abolishing the Human Rights Act, which makes British courts follow the European Convention on Human Rights. Now that he’s in office, he won’t do that, because it would involve leaving the European Union, which he isn’t prepared to do.

Perhaps we could if we had representatives sitting in a sovereign parliament (like the one pictured, which has far more power than Westminster) who would enact such legislation. But we don’t. Our government resides in Brussels despite the British people never having given a mandate to rule from abroad by an alien entity. Therefore Singleton’s suggestion is fatuous.  He knows we can’t copy the Swiss and won’t copy them because our political class bows down to the EU. The British people are not in control of Britain or its laws. Singleton then goes on to say:

That’s a mistake, because it leaves Britain in a wholly unsatisfactory position. We are a nation that acts as a magnet to immigrants from around the world, but we are not allowed to control which ones can remain within our borders, even when they threaten out way of life. Cameron, like Brown and Blair before him, will hope the problem of foreign criminals goes away. It won’t – and it’s the public who will be the victims.

It’s not a mistake. It is an outrage. An effective coup d’etat has been staged that David Cameron goes along with and is helping to cement. It’s all well and good saying the Swiss know how to stand up for themselves. But then, however much it frustrates them, Swiss politicians have to do what the Swiss people tell them to. That’s what is supposed to happen in a democracy. But as people are starting to realise, Britain is not a democracy. Therefore we must continue to play host to foreign criminals and extend to them all the services and support of the State at our expense.

It will remain thus until the mainstream political parties are defeated or a revolution sweeps the political class into the dustbin of history. Not that we can expect Singleton to spell it out so explicitly. The political class would not like that, and that would never do.

Ignore Special Immigration Appeals Commission – remove Abu Hamza’s passport

We’re stuck with him. That is the decision of the morons on the Special Immigration Appeals Commission – it would be more accurately described as the Special Immigration Abettor’s Commission – who say that Abu Hamza al-Masri cannot be stripped of his British passport and therefore deported.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for the government to take decisive action to put this right. They will roll over as they always do at the first sound of the words ‘Rights, Directive, Judgement, European’.

Surprise, surprise, it is the Human Rights Act once again that comes leaping to the defence of another lawbreaking alien who hates this country and works actively to do it harm, yet cravenly seeks the protection its liberal laws provide. Despite there being no proof that Egypt has withdrawn Hamza’s citizenship, the Commission has decided it is so and said Hamza must keep the British citizenship he acquired through marriage, or else he would become stateless.

So bloody what?

Perhaps if we showed some guts and acted in our own interests the spiteful hate mongers who come to this country and are determined to attack it at every turn would learn there are consequences for their actions and stay away. This bleeding heart decision is a travesty and exposes how we have been weakened by the community of activists judges and campaigners who pontificate about moral superiority and are loathe to take action against those who mean us harm.

As it is Abu Hamza is still fighting a case in the European Court of Human Rights to prevent deportation to the United States for investigation into alleged terror offences. No doubt the left wing academics who make up that illegitimate kangaroo court will fall over themselves to rule that he must not face justice and must stay in Britain, taking up a prison cell or sponging off the welfare state.

Abu Hamza al-Masri and his ilk will be laughing like drains at the stupidity of these moronic commissioners whose hand wringing further undermines the interests of this nation. The man is Egyptian. His own country despises him and refused him a new passport, but it has never stated that his citizenship has been revoked. We should test it by putting his oversized, taxpayer subsidised arse on a plane to Cairo and permanently refusing him entry to this country again.

If the Egyptians don’t want Hamza, for a few hundred dollars they can strap him into seat on a plane bound for Washington where the Americans are very eager to play host to him. In fact, a phone call to the US Embassy would probably see a transport aircraft divert to Egypt to pick him up and save Egyptian taxpayers the trouble of sending him packing.

Britain’s slow self destruction – Binyam Mohamed allowed to live in UK

Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed, a cause célèbre of the BBC because of his story of torture under interrogation, has been granted permanent residency in Britain.

Despite possessing a story about his movements so full of holes a colander is watertight in comparison, and despite trying to return to Britain (where he was already seeking asylum) from an extended trip to the heroin and jihadist training capital of the world (Afghanistan and Pakistan) supposedly in order to get off drugs (stop laughing a the back) he attempted to use a forged passport (although allowed into Britain with his own). Now despite this questionable activity this Ethiopian Islamist has been granted permission to remain permanently in the UK.

But for a tiny molecule of common sense from a judge, we would not even know about this decision as Binyam Mohamed’s legally aided team of lawyers sought an injunction to keep the decision secret from the British public.

What kind of insane desire to self destruct leads a country to give people, who offer nothing but a threat to its citizens, the right to live among them?

Committing a criminal act as serious as using a false passport to enter Britain should have instantly excluded Binyam Mohamed’s existing asylum claim. It raises serious questions about what his intentions were, something that has never been explained. With Afghanistan already being in a state of sustained conflict in 2o02, Mohamed’s reasoning for going there in the first place doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. The media focus on his claims of UK complicity in his alleged torture while in US custody has ensured Mohamed’s own actions have largely been ignored.

In just about every civilised country the first responsibility and priority of a government is the protection of its citizens. In Britain the protection of the citizenry comes some way down the priority list. Instead in Britain the slavish adherence to nonsensical human rights laws and the pervasive influence of the sopping wet liberal bleeding heart guilt mongers, who feel they must atone daily for our history of colonialism and further their desire to sweep away national borders, sees decisions such as this handed down on a regular basis.

Make no mistake, these decisions are made by an out of touch elite that can afford to live well insulated from the effects of those decisions. An out of touch elite that views Britain as a small, insignificant country with delusions of power and influence that is crass and insulting to their supposedly enlightened and internationalist worldview.

So it is that Britain continues to self destruct. So it is that the Britain of just two generations ago, where the population was bound by common values and identity, is transformed into a haven for the world’s flotsam and jetsom – many of whom despise our values and have no interest in sharing our identity. So it is that Britain leaves itself wide open to attack from those extremists who seek to speed our destruction, while the authorities sweep away the privacy and rights of the host population.

Such insanity cannot be allowed to continue. But our political class is not interested in addressing these concerns because what matters to us does not matter to them. As such we will continue to be exposed to avoidable risks. So we can expect to see more examples of this insanity as Britain slowly unspools and loses all vestiges of what defined it as a sovereign nation.

Abid Naseer deportation case is utter insanity

Are you an Islamist terrorist?  Do you want to wage violent jihad against the decadent infidel in the west?  Would you like the security of knowing that if you’re from a country that has the death penalty – and you are caught by the security services of your target nation – they will allow you to stay, at the cost of and under the protection of the people you had set out to murder and maim?  If your answer to these questions is ‘Yes’ then you should be trying to attack the United Kingdom!

A special immigration court, hearing an appeal against deportation, has ruled that Abid Naseer was an al-Qaeda operative – but could not be deported because he faced torture or death back home in Pakistan.  This is the man identified as the leader of an al-Qaeda cell that, MI5 and the police say, intended to bomb shoppers in Manchester.  Despite his intentions, this Pakistani national is being allowed to stay in this country.

Only a country run by craven bureaucrats could construct a process that enables a foreign national accused of planning terrorist atrocities against civilians to remain in that country for his own protection, at the cost of the people he was planning to kill.  Not only is our judicial system incapable of dealing with fanatics who wish to murder us, it is determined to put their ‘rights’ before our ‘interests’ and force us to cohabit with them on these islands. It is a perversion of common sense and an example of the warped moral relativism that is undermining this country.

I wonder how many Britons like the idea of a special immigration court blocking the deportation of a member of a terrorist organisation who allegedly sought to bring death and destruction to these shores. Why should the political class and their judicial activist friends be allowed to undermine the interests of the United Kingdom because a sovereign country has the death penalty and the terrorist who is a citizen of that country might lawfully be subjected to it as a consequence for his actions?

Does anyone believe the new politics address this insanity?  Don’t count on it, the politicians don’t care what we think.  A point made all to clear by our new Home Secretary, Theresa May, who while ‘disappointed’ is stating she doesn’t intend to appeal the decision.  Don’t like it, ordinary citizen?  Tough.  Our political class has spoken.  Enjoy the new politics – it’s not much different to the old.

We should not suffer fools such as Dr Maggie Atkinson

When calling for the age of criminal responsibility to be raised from 10 to 12 years, comments made by Children’s Commissioner, Dr Maggie Atkinson, about the murder of James Bulger by Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, defy belief.

In Dr Atkinson, fans of political comedy The Thick of It, may have found a real life subject worthy of Armando Iannucci’s witty and cutting description ‘disconnected to the point of autism’.  How else to explain Dr Atkinson’s assertion that:

“What they did was exceptionally unpleasant and the fact that a little boy ended up dead is not something the nation can easily forget, but they shouldn’t have been tried in an adult court because they were still children.” (emphasis is mine)

Exceptionally unpleasant?  I apologise for the graphic nature of what follows, but the context is essential.  It was a brutal and sadistic killing.  James Bulger did not ‘end up dead’.  It was not an accident.  Thomson and Venables sexually assaulted the toddler and then systematically tortured him to death with kicks, punches, beating with bricks and blows with an iron bar.   They then laid James across a railway track, covering his head with bricks,  so his body was severed by the wheels of a train.

If this is Maggie Atkinson’s mealy mouthed, politically correct interpretation of exceptionally unpleasant then I dread to think what her definition of brutal and sadistic violence could be.  The murder scene was one of unimaginable horror.  It is impossible to comprehend the suffering of that James Bulger, or the agony his family have endured.  She clearly has a problem with facts too, having asserted that Robert Thompson and Jon Venables had been jailed.  For as James Bulger’s mother, Denise Fergus rightly points out:

‘They never spent a day in jail. They were sent to children’s homes where they were given kid glove treatment, computer games and the best of everything. They were rewarded for murder and left thinking they had got away with it.’

Is there some special academy somewhere that churns out insensitive, moronic, politically correct nonentities like Maggie Atkinson for recruitment by authorities, agencies and quangos, or appointment to commissions by politicians?  Where on earth do these people come from?  They clearly struggle to recognise the real world around them that the rest of us inhabit.

At a cost of £138,000 of taxpayers’ money per year, we have had pushed on us in controversial circumstances this woman who was pompously described by her annointer, Ed Balls, as a ‘strong, effective and independent voice for the children and young people of our country’.  But she is nothing more than an out of touch, politically biased, bien-pensant, bureaucrat apologist, pursuing her own agenda of absolving youngsters of responsibility for their actions by playing down the seriousness and gravity of one of the most sickening and shocking murders in our lifetimes.

It’s unlikely Maggie Atkinson will resign over this matter.  So Denise Fergus is right, Atkinson should be sacked from the role she should never have been appointed to.  People in such positions should represent the interests of society, not their own personal aims.

Community based sentences being flouted

On the day that the Prison Reform Trust ramped up its efforts to have offenders given the entitlement to vote in elections, a freedom of information request has shown the Trust’s faith in more community based sentencing rather than custodial sentencing looks badly misplaced.

The website Regeneration & Renewal submitted their FOI request to enquire about the number of breaches of community orders recorded in England and Wales.  The figures show that the number of breaches rose by 47% between 2006-08 from 46,589 in 2006 to 68,343 in 2008.  To put this figure into context the number of community orders handed out rose only slightly over the same period, from 119,109 in 2006 to 127,700 in 2008.

It is no surprise that the public remains concerned that offenders are not being suitably punished for the offences they commit.  The odds seem stacked against law abiding victims of crime when numerous campaign groups rally around to support offenders and even online resources are on hand that can help those offenders who are pulled in for breaching community orders to prepare for their court hearing.  At least someone who sees the effect of so called low-level crime seems to have retained a sense of perspective:

Bill Pitt, director of ASB Action, which advises service providers such as housing associations and community safety teams on antisocial behaviour, said the figures painted a “horrific” picture that called into question the effectiveness of community-based punishments. “Breaches of community orders are awful: they bring the criminal justice system into disrepute and leave communities feeling fragile,” he said.

They also dramatically undermine the arguments of those groups who seek to keep as many offenders out of prison as possible, or make prison as comfortable as they can for those whose offences are just too bad for them to be allowed to retain their liberty.  The criminal justice system has become a farce where tough talk is not backed up with appropriate action.  When it comes to community orders, too many of the people given them treat the punishment with contempt because the consequences for doing so are trivial.