PompeyVillan Posted February 17, 2019 Share Posted February 17, 2019 1 hour ago, Xann said: That's actually a bit scary. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted February 19, 2019 Share Posted February 19, 2019 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted February 20, 2019 Share Posted February 20, 2019 David Gauke is wrong about short prison sentences Quote ‘Short term custody isn’t inherently bad, but the way we do it is awful.’ I didn’t expect Justice Secretary David Gauke to start an otherwise thoughtful speech yesterday on prisons like this, but he should have. No one wants people in prison when there are better alternatives that will properly punish them and give them the tools to break away from offending. To do otherwise is stupid. But the debate has been overwhelmed by a fixation on sentence length that wrongly suggests that short imprisonment must always and forever be toxic and counterproductive. Gauke presented his audience with sobering statistics on rates of incarceration putting us at the top of the league in Europe. We seem addicted to custody in this country, as long as it’s cheap. Let’s try some other data from countries often held up by our criminal justice commentariat as progressive role models. In Denmark in 2017, the average sentence length was 31-60 days. In Finland a year earlier, 40 per cent of all sentenced prisoners had served at most three months. Norway’s average prison sentence is just eight months. Why are we unable to send people to prison for short sentences here without making them worse? To be fair, all three of these countries lock up significantly fewer of their citizens as a proportion of their population and are (in sentencing terms) less punitive than we are. But they still manage to make short term custody a useful response to unacceptable behaviour as their much lower reoffending rates will testify. Critics of the British ‘bang-em-up’ school of crime theory are also largely silent on the inconvenient fact that many prison first timers have already been frequent flyers in our creaking criminal justice system; despairing magistrates finally crack after exhausting every community penalty available to them without success. Having a hollowed out probation system, destroyed by a lethal combination of wonkery and cuts doesn’t help either. So why are we so bad at dealing with people who continually offend and don’t seem to want to stop? Let me count the ways. Primarily, if you want to disrupt offending, particularly low-level acquisitive crime linked to drug addiction – the boom town of incarceration – you don’t send convicted prisoners into dystopian hell holes where it is easier to score your next fix than get a shower. The collapse of almost every metric of decency, safety and humanity in prisons is an appalling indictment of government policy weaponised by corporate incompetence. There’s no way around this. Slashing the numbers of prison staff on the landings has created an environment where it is often not clear who is in charge, never mind whether there is a regime, basic services or, God forbid, rehabilitation. Nowhere is this more apparent than in many of our overcrowded local prisons, home to the majority of short term offenders, where, as the Chief Inspector of prisons recently observed at HMP Bedford: ‘Prisoners became very angry, noisy and challenging and refused to comply with staff when directed to lock up. Staff struggled to deal with the incident, and appeared not to know what to do. Supervisors were not in control. For a period of an hour and a half, prisoners made unreasonable demands and many of them were acceded to.’ The lack of suitable and sufficient prison officers, clearly and confidently in charge, has contributed to rocketing, record levels of violence and self-harm. Gauke devoted a sentence to the latest woeful safety statistics calling them, ‘disturbing.’ On the bridge of HMS good intentions, he opines on sentence reform. In the engine room, his excellent prisons minister, Rory Stewart, tries to sweat a few more miles from knackered engines. If you want prisons to be places of reform in the here and now, abstractions and think pieces won’t help broken staff running broken regimes. So what can we do to meet the needs of public protection, punishment and rehabilitation? It’s absolutely true that we send far too many people to custody who are more nuisance than physical threat. But away from the cosy world of the middle class liberals and academics who comprise the bulk of the reform lobby, these same people often torture their neighbourhoods. A lack of effective sanction for their behaviour only encourages them and demoralises poor communities that don’t take the Guardian or shop in Waitrose. There are, let’s be blunt, places in our country, denuded of community policing and authority, where lawfulness is not entrenched behaviour. If you want to cut the dismal supply chain of feckless and impulsive young men from the wrong side of the tracks to custody and back again, there needs to be state-led strategic intervention to dig them out of normalised criminality. That’s a lot more than scrapping short sentences will do. In the meantime, we could explore why Scandinavian countries are so much more successful at short sentences than we are. Prison is an ideal place, uniquely suited, to breaking offending behaviour and getting services around offenders to help them rescue their potential and stop them victimising others. We ought to pay much more attention to the distinction between those in prison because they can’t – and those who won’t – comply, with services and support around them. We need a new generation of ‘enterprise’ prisons solely focused on getting those who are motivated into employment after release. Secure, small scale, community-led detox facilities could do so much more than the bleak penal warehouses that too often accelerate addiction into suicide. There is so much we could do, away from the fixation on short term sentences. But as Gauke says in his speech, the public always want to prioritise hospitals over criminal justice. Which works well as a theory until it’s you in A&E, victim to someone bad and made worse in our blighted prisons. Ian Acheson is a former prison governor 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xann Posted February 20, 2019 Share Posted February 20, 2019 Quote The Westminster government will cut fire and rescue service funding in England by 15% over the next year, FBU analysis has found, despite claiming that “austerity is over”. Firefighters warn that the government is refusing to learn the lessons of the Grenfell Tower fire, nearly two years on from the tragedy. The cuts are packaged up in the annual Local Government Finance Settlement, receiving virtually no scrutiny from Parliament, prompting accusations that the government are trying to “sneak through” further austerity measures unnoticed. The latest settlement was announced by James Brokenshire, secretary of state for Housing, Communities and Local Government, on January 29. Analysis of the settlement reveals: Central government funding for the fire and rescue service will fall by £155 million in 2019/2020, representing a 15% cut from 2016/17 to 2019/20 Between 2010 and 2015 funding was cut by 30%. Union News Quote Firefighters fear they are being “stitched up” in the Grenfell Tower inquiry because their role has already been heavily scrutinised yet conclusions about the fire’s causes are not likely to be drawn until at least three years after the disaster that claimed 72 lives. Matt Wrack, the general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, which is a core participant in the inquiry, claimed the process risked becoming a “whitewash” because ministers’ deregulation of building standards and the roles of companies involved in the tower’s £10m refurbishment will be addressed only when public interest has waned. Wrack hit out as the inquiry chairman, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, drafts his findings about the fire service’s response to the blaze, which are due to be published after Easter. Some of the survivors have clashed with firefighters during evidence about rescue attempts and they branded the commissioner of the London fire brigade, Dany Cotton, “disrespectful” after she told the inquiry she would not change anything about the way the brigade responded. Fresh allegations about fire service failures will be aired on Monday in a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary, which will examine whether the decision to maintain the “stay-put” policy cost lives. It will report that 55 of the people who died in the fire took advice from the fire brigade to remain in their flats, despite the blaze rapidly engulfing the building. It will quote one firefighter who was at Grenfell, who spoke anonymously, as saying “we could have seen this coming” because of the brigade’s experience at Lakanal House in 2009, when six people died in a refurbished south London tower block as a result of fire breaching compartmentation between flats. Several firefighters will be asked to give further evidence to the inquiry in the near future. “The views I am expressing are being expressed more bluntly in fire stations, that this is in danger of turning into a stitch-up of firefighters,” said Wrack. “Even if they did or didn’t make mistakes, the only thing they did on the night was turn up to put a fire out and yet they are the people that have come under the most scrutiny so far.” The second phase of the inquiry, dealing with the planning and decision-making involved in the refurbishment of Grenfell using combustible materials, might not start hearing witnesses until the beginning of next year. The inquiry has been deluged with about 200,000 documents from core participants, including the cladding manufacturer, Arconic, the contractor, Rydon, and the owner of the building, Kensington and Chelsea council. “The stark, staring obvious problem is how can you wrap a building in flammable material like that?” said Wrack. “Everyone asked that within hours and yet we won’t even look at that in three years and before they start to reach conclusions on it it could quite easily be 2021. The order of business was wrong. Looking at the night before looking at the background was wrong. Before any 999 call was made the building was already a death trap. All of the safety arrangements had been compromised, but how we got to that stage we still don’t know.” John Plant, the chief executive of Arconic, the £2.7bn turnover company that made the highly combustible polyethylene-filled aluminium cladding used on Grenfell, last week told reporters there were no “specific claims for compensation or anything like that coming from [the inquiry] and neither does the company believe that it was the cause of this incident”. Grauniad 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted February 20, 2019 Share Posted February 20, 2019 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted February 20, 2019 Share Posted February 20, 2019 19 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said: Ha ha ha. Mercer crapping on about 'compassionate' Conservative party. Such an arsehole. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post chrisp65 Posted February 20, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted February 20, 2019 Johnny Mercer MP, and his modern compassionate conservative dream: 5 votes against laws to promote human rights 15 votes against a right to remain for EU citizens that have built a life here 8 votes against higher benefits for the disabled 21 votes to reduce welfare benefits 10 votes to reduce capital gains tax 10 votes to reduce the power of unions it would appear the man is a lying little turd 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickster Posted February 20, 2019 Moderator Share Posted February 20, 2019 8 minutes ago, snowychap said: Ha ha ha. Mercer crapping on about 'compassionate' Conservative party. Such an arsehole. The comments in reply to Mercer's tweet are quite illuminating though, I'd say those urging him to leave and join TIG (You're it) or those really questioning if it's possible outweigh the congratulations for staying. (taking out the obvious trolling) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wainy316 Posted February 20, 2019 Share Posted February 20, 2019 46 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said: I would love to see a 30 man (or woman) over top rope Tory Royal Rumble. Make it happen Vince McMahon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chindie Posted February 20, 2019 VT Supporter Share Posted February 20, 2019 10 minutes ago, Wainy316 said: I would love to see a 30 man (or woman) over top rope Tory Royal Rumble. Make it happen Vince McMahon Only if it involves knives, bats with nails in then and power tools. And the floor around the ring is made of explosives, rusty spikes and used needles. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 I've been thinking hard about who would win a Tory Royal Rumble, and it seems to me that it's the mythical beast haunting the corridors of power, widely known as 'The Grayling' that would have the best chance. He looks like - and has the brains of - Lenny from 'Of Mice And Men', so maybe he has the same strength too. I wouldn't rule out Nadine Dorries though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 Huff Post Quote Christopher Davies, Conservative MP for Brecon and Radnorshire, has been charged over expense claims. The Crown Prosecution Service announced on Thursday the MP had been charged with two counts making a false instrument and one of providing false or misleading information for allowance claims. He had been accused of falsifying two invoices in support of parliamentary expenses claims. I think that was what McShane was done for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickster Posted February 21, 2019 Moderator Share Posted February 21, 2019 1 hour ago, snowychap said: Huff Post I think that was what McShane was done for. Similar but different, McShane was False accounting (1968 Theft Act), Making a False instrument is Forgery Act 1981 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 1 minute ago, bickster said: Making a False instrument Sounds like he moulded his own dildo. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blandy Posted February 21, 2019 Author Moderator Share Posted February 21, 2019 I'm beginning to think that these Politician types can't be trusted, counter to what is the recieved wisdom amongst even our elders and betters in polite society Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted February 23, 2019 Share Posted February 23, 2019 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ml1dch Posted February 27, 2019 Share Posted February 27, 2019 Brings to mind that Blackadder episode where Baldrick causes them to lose the vote by accidentally voting the wrong way. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted February 27, 2019 Share Posted February 27, 2019 1 hour ago, ml1dch said: Brings to mind that Blackadder episode where Baldrick causes them to lose the vote by accidentally voting the wrong way. "Are you a new bug?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted March 1, 2019 Share Posted March 1, 2019 Right to Rent scheme ruled incompatible with human rights law Quote A key plank of Theresa May’s “hostile environment” immigration policy has been declared incompatible with human rights law in a damning ruling handed down at the high court. The controversial Right to Rent scheme forces private landlords to check the immigration status of tenants and potential tenants. Unlimited fines or even a prison sentence can be levied under the policy to any landlord who rents to undocumented migrants. In a robust judgement, Mr Justice Spencer said the much-criticised policy was unlawful because it caused landlords to discriminate against British citizens from minority ethnic backgrounds and against foreign nationals who have a legal right to rent. He found that requiring landlords to check immigration status caused racial discrimination against anyone without a British passport and against ethnic minorities. The judge also said the government had failed to show that the checks had any effect on encouraging undocumented migrants to leave the country. “MPs who voted for this legislation would be aghast to learn of its discriminatory effect as shown by the evidence,” he added. “In my judgment, the evidence, when taken together, strongly showed not only that landlords are discriminating against potential tenants on grounds of nationality and ethnicity but also that they are doing so because of the scheme. “It is my view that the scheme introduced by the government does not merely provide the occasion or opportunity for private landlords to discriminate, but causes them to do so where otherwise they would not.” ... more on link Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chindie Posted March 1, 2019 VT Supporter Share Posted March 1, 2019 Chris Grayling going for a high score there... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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